David Wasserman has seen enough. The litigation-strewn process for drawing new House lines for November's midterms will go on for months.
- But Wasserman — the senior editor at The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter who's so steeped in the intrigue his Twitter handle is @Redistrict — concludes in an analysis posted this morning, "Still a GOP Advantage, but Redistricting Looks Like a Wash."
The surprising good news for Democrats: on the current trajectory, there will be a few more Biden-won districts after redistricting than there are now — producing a congressional map slightly less biased in the GOP's favor than the last decade's. The bad news for Democrats: if President Biden's approval ratings are still mired in the low-to-mid 40s in November, that won't be enough to save their razor-thin House majority (currently 221 to 212 seats).
Cook Political Report's David Wasserman
Between the lines: Wasserman writes that "the partisan distribution of seats before/after redistricting is only one way to gauge the process."
- "Because Democrats currently possess the lion's share of marginal seats, estimating the practical effect of new lines in 2022 still points towards a wash or a slight GOP gain."
Go deeper: Read the analysis.
