Redistricting Recap Episode 1: Oregon
This is going to be a 44-part series covering the 44 states doing congressional redistricting.
I will provide a few details for each district. The districts will be rated to least to most competitive (by my predictions). I will provide before and after rankings for each district based on partisan lean and incumbency. (To simplify this, I will only use safe, lean, and tossup rankings.) Oregon was the first to finish, so I will cover it first. I'm hoping to be caught up sometime in December.
The partisan lean is my own calculation. 60% is based on the 2020 vote relative to the nation, while 40% is the same for 2016.
In case you are curious:
AK-AL: R+15.6
DE-AL: D+12.5
ND-AL: R+38.2
SD-AL: R+31.1
VT-AL: D+28.4
WY-AL: R+48.6
Overall, Oregon is a Democratic gerrymander. The map is 5-1, meaning it gives Democrats one extra seat above a proportional map. Still, this is far from the worst gerrymander we'll be seeing in this series.
#6 OR-3
Incumbent: Earl Blumenauer (D)
Predecessor: OR-3 (Safe D)
Lean: D+42.2
Ranking: Safe D
Location: Portland
#5 OR-1
Incumbent: Suzanne Bonamici (D)
Predecessor: OR-1 (Safe D)
Lean: D+33.1
Ranking: Safe D
Location: Northwest Oregon
#4 OR-2
Incumbent: Cliff Bentz (R)
Predecessor: OR-2 (Safe R)
Lean: R+29.3
Ranking: Safe R
Location: East Oregon
#3 OR-4
Incumbent: Peter DeFazio (D)
Predecessor: OR-4 (Tossup)
Lean: D+7.3
Ranking: Safe D
Location: Southwest Oregon
#2 OR-6
Incumbent: None
Predecessor: OR-5 (Lean D)
Lean: D+7.1
Ranking: Lean D
Location: Southwest Portland Suburbs
#1 OR-5
Incumbent: Kurt Schrader (D)
Predecessor: None
Lean: D+3.0
Ranking: Lean D
Location: Central Oregon
Net change: +1 Safe D, +1 Lean D, -1 Tossup
Running Total: +1 Safe D, +1 Lean D, -1 Tossup
If you see an error in one of these posts, please let me know. I'll issue a correction.
Posted Nov 3, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC