2024 House

Dear Readers: This is the latest edition of Notes on the State of Politics, which features short updates on elections and politics. — The Editors KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — The pending resignation of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R, CA-20) and Rep. Patrick McHenry’s (R, NC-10) retirement announcement are notable developments, but they do not precipitate rating changes. — With New York’s George Santos (R, NY-3) expelled from Congress, a special election in his district will be held in February. — A recent special election in Utah’s 2nd District stood out as something of an exception: a special election where Republicans overperformed. — Though Georgia Republicans were ordered to draw a new congressional map, the plan that they produced maintains the state’s existing 9-5 Republican split. McHenry, McCarthy leaving Congress As our regular readers are well aware of by now, one thing that we’ve been working to document over the past month or so is the high clip of retirements in the House. On Tuesday, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R, NC-10) joined the roster of members heading for the exits. Considering McHenry was one of now-former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R, CA-20) top lieutenants while the latter was in power, it

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — As the calendar year draws nearer to a close, more House members have looked towards the exit. — In Michigan, Rep. Dan Kildee (D, MI-8) would have been favored for a seventh term, but without him, his Biden +2 seat moves into the Toss-up category. — On Long Island, the saga of Rep. George Santos (R, NY-3) may soon be ending, as an expulsion vote looms. — Santos already announced he’d forgo reelection and, despite representing a district that would be favorable to Democrats on paper, we are holding the race to replace him in the Toss-up category. Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating change Member/District Old Rating New Rating MI-8 Open (Kildee, D) Leans Democratic Toss-up More seats opening up As we were about to head into Thanksgiving week, we wrote about what we called the congressional “retirement flood.” Even before the holiday season got into full swing, several members, from both sides, were announcing their retirements at a notable clip. Well, more retirements have come since, so we’ll take a moment to catch up to where things stand. On the Democratic side, the most significant news came out of Michigan. Rep. Dan

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — After North Carolina’s then-Democratic state Supreme Court blocked a GOP congressional gerrymander last cycle, the new court re-opened the door to a Republican gerrymander for 2024. — A new map that legislative Republicans approved yesterday could up their advantage in the state’s currently evenly-divided 7-7 delegation to 11-3. — Assuming the new map stands, we are moving three Democratic-held seats to Safe Republican while leaving Rep. Don Davis’s (D, NC-1) contest as a Toss-up. Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating changes Member/District Old Rating New Rating Kathy Manning (D, NC-6) Toss-up Safe Republican Wiley Nickel (D, NC-13) Toss-up Safe Republican Jeff Jackson (D, NC-14) Toss-up Safe Republican A new version of an old gerrymander Over a decade ago, as the post-2010 round of redistricting was on the horizon, the Washington Post called North Carolina the GOP’s “Golden Goose” of redistricting. In 2010, North Carolina’s House Democrats weathered a tough election cycle to maintain a 7-6 edge in their marginal state’s congressional delegation — that map had been a Democratic gerrymander. But lower down the ballot, Republicans took control of both chambers of the state legislature. In a state where the governor plays no role in redistricting,

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Two years ago, we began looking at the states that produced “excess” House seats for one party or the other — states for which the partisan ratio in House seats exceeds what would be predicted by the state’s presidential vote in 2020. — Back then, we found a rough parity: Republicans squeezed out 32 excess seats, while Democrats squeezed out 28. Now, after a round of aggressive redistricting following the 2020 census, the GOP has expanded that lead to 39-24. — The biggest states for Republican excess seats are Florida, with 5.5; Texas, with 4.9; and Tennessee, with 2.4. The biggest states for excess Democratic seats are California with 6.2, Illinois with 4.0, and Massachusetts with 3.0. House overperformances by state In an era of sharp partisan polarization, it’s increasingly common to find a correlation among House, Senate, and presidential results. Still, differences exist — and those differences help explain why the Democrats control the White House but the Republicans control the House. Two years ago, we looked at the states that produced “excess” House seats for one party or the other — that is, states for which the partisan ratio in House seats

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Despite a requirement that congressional districts have roughly identical populations within states, the number of raw votes cast in each district can vary widely, both within a state and across the country. — In 2022, there was a nearly 300,000-vote difference between the lowest-turnout district (NY-15 in New York City) and the highest-turnout one (MI-1 in northern Michigan). — Republicans won about two-thirds of the districts that cast the most votes (300,000 or more) while Democrats won about two-thirds of the districts that cast the fewest (less than 200,000). The huge differences in House turnout Over the years, voter turnout has often been measured in percentage terms — such as percentage of voting-age population (all U.S. residents 18 years of age and older), percentage of voting-eligible population (U.S. citizens only of legal age and who are eligible to vote), and percentage of registered voters. But this look at voter turnout in 2022 takes a different tack. The measurement used here is the total number of ballots cast for the House of Representatives by congressional district (minus blank and void ballots). The U.S. House was the only office contested in 2022 in all 50 states.

Dear Readers: For more than five decades, the Almanac of American Politics has set the standard for political reference books. This month, the Almanac is publishing its 2024 edition, with some 2,200 pages offering fully updated chapters on all 435 House members and their districts, all 100 senators, all 50 states and governors, and much more. One of the Crystal Ball’s senior columnists, Louis Jacobson, is also a senior author of the Almanac. Jacobson has written for seven editions of the Almanac, going back to the 2000 volume. Currently, he writes the 100 state and gubernatorial chapters. For the 2024 edition — the first volume to be published after the post-2020 Census redistricting — Jacobson also worked with chief author Rich Cohen to revise every congressional district description to reflect their new lines. Below are excerpts from the chapters in the 2024 Almanac that cover seven House districts located either fully or partly in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. Jacobson revised these chapters, aided by a day-long visit to these boroughs in December 2022 in which he was accompanied by a tour guide well-versed in the local demographics. The visit — by foot, subway, bus, boat,

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — The Supreme Court’s Allen v. Milligan decision should give Democrats at least a little help in their quest to re-take the House majority, but much remains uncertain. — As of now, the Democrats’ best bets to add a seat in 2024 are in Alabama, the subject of the ruling, and Louisiana. — It also adds to the list of potential mid-decade redistricting changes, which have happened with regularity over the past half-century. — The closely-contested nature of the House raises the stakes of each state’s map, and redistricting changes do not necessarily have to be prompted by courts. Milligan’s ramifications Landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions can sometimes be categorized as either beginnings or endings. Take, for instance, a couple of past important decisions that at least touch on the topic of redistricting. In 1962, the court’s Baker v. Carr decision was a beginning: After decades of declining to enter what Justice Felix Frankfurter described as the “political thicket” of redistricting and reapportionment, the Supreme Court opened the door to hearing cases that argued against the malapportionment of voting districts. A couple of years later, the court’s twin decisions of Reynolds v. Sims and Wesberry

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — In last night’s high-stakes state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, Democratic-aligned Janet Protasiewicz comfortably dispatched former Justice Daniel Kelly, giving liberals a 4-3 majority on the court. — Compared to some previous Democratic-aligned judges, Protasiewicz had a more “nationalized” voting coalition, although she still carried several Republican-leaning parts of the state. — A liberal state Supreme Court could revisit redistricting-related matters, to the benefit of Democrats, although there are a lot of moving pieces. With that in mind, we are downgrading our rating for southeastern Wisconsin’s 1st District from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating change District Old Rating New Rating Bryan Steil (R, WI-1) Safe Republican Likely Republican Another 11-point win for Democrats In Wisconsin last night, Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly in what became a nationally-watched (and very expensive) race. Importantly, Protasiewicz will be replacing the retiring Pat Roggensack, a conservative veteran of the court — this will give the court’s liberal bloc a 4-3 majority on the bench. During the campaign, Protasiewicz was clear that, if elected, she would side with Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) over the Republican leadership in the