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Cook: State Republican parties gave national GOP 9 seats for 2012.

A much better gift than a tie or set of dishes, by the way.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  April 15th, 2012 at 03:30 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Cook Political Report has more or less formalized their 2012 redistricting scorecard; their final score is a gain of one Republican seat, based solely on redistricting. Cook notes that this total actually represents about 10 to 15 seats being fortified for the GOP, given that the majority of legislators who benefited from redistricting were Republicans. This will no doubt infuriate Democrats, but then: elections matter.

In particular, state legislature elections matter.

As you probably remember, in 2010 state Republican parties did very well, flipping state legislatures across the country. This is important because it happened just before it came time to redraw congressional districts as per the new Census.

Which means that the GOP was extremely lucky to have gotten control of a critical number of state houses before the axe came down. Below are Cook’s estimated gains/losses that occurred in states where the legislature flipped to the GOP (none of them flipped to the Democrats, of course). Note that Colorado is listed as divided: we flipped the state House in 2010, but not the state Senate.

State Control +/- D +/- R
Colorado Divided 0.5 -0.5
Indiana Rep -1 1
North Carolina Rep -3.5 3.5
Ohio Rep -1 -1
Pennsylvania Rep -1
Total -6 3

That’s nine net Congressional seats that the national GOP may very well pick up because of state GOP parties. That’s the equivalent of 14% of our gains in 2010. And our projected net gains could have been larger, yet. Consider Illinois, where the Democratic-controlled legislature has manipulated the map to wipe out Republican gains in 2010: Cook calculated that our failure to be more competitive in Illinois state races will ending up costing us a net seven seats.

In other words: elections have consequences. Please keep this in mind in November; as well as the fact that there is no such thing as an unimportant race.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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COMMENTS

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  • checkmate2012

    had the DOJ not blocked redistricting lines in Texas. Are there are blocks against other states? It’s ironic that the Dems are free to re-draw the maps like a doodle when they’re in charge but raise cane when Reps. in the majority do the same…of course they have the DOJ to come to their rescue when they don’t get their way.

  • gmscan

    This seems to be missing a lot. Didn’t Utah gain a seat? Didn’t the Dems in Illinois knock out a R seat? Yes Texas was somewhat neutralized, but it still gained a couple seats. Where’s Florida? This rally is pretty sketchy, ISTM

  • jomo2009

    Democrat Steve Rothman was pitched into the newly redrawn 9th CD against Democrat Bill Pascrell. Every little bit helps.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    …to know that I expect people to actually read my posts before commenting on them.

    Please don’t do that again, thanks.

  • gawken

    With control of the WH, and both houses of Congress, it is long past time to repeal the VRA, and end these majority-minority districts. All they serve is to perpetuate the careers of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and in effect disenfranchises the voters in those CDs of any chance of ever having INTELLIGENT representaton thataccurately reflects their beliefs.
    The screams from the Dems and the left will be cataclysmic..so we might as well just do it first off.

  • barleycorn

    It allows us to carry other districts 52-48 that we otherwise could not have won.

  • Dave_A

    Right now, our concerns about vote-fraud are being played as ‘A secret plan to disenfranchise poor minorities’ (under the absurd notion that requiring someone to have a state-issued photo ID in 2012 is some sort of obscene burden)…

    And in that climate, you want to try and repeal the VRA? Seriously? That’s about as bad as Rand Paul’s right-to-be-racist pitch…

    Further, there’s nothing wrong with the VRA. There was gerrymandering before VRA, and there will be gerrymandering after it – and since the voting proclivities or various ethnic groups are well known to state legislatures, you can damn-well bet that majority-minority districts would still exist…. As would every other my-3yo-drew-this-district-map-before-naptime concoction you can think of…

  • moonmad

    Do you live in a VRA state? I do and once the legislature does it’s thing we still have to do the mother may I with the DOJ. It doesn’t seem right to be held down especially since it was the Dems that instituted the Jim Crow laws in the first place. Now VRA seems like a tool of the Dems to either put a brake on republican influence or as an out right stop to it.

  • texashistorian

    that way and will continue to be abused until there is enough political stones to repeal the offending provisions, which may be a long time. Conservatives and GOP often can’t seem to do an effective job with voter ID laws and the public, let alone something like repealing the VRA.

  • ihateliberals

    The Tea Party! If not for the Tea party the House would have remained Democrat. Most of the states followed suit for the same reason.The Tea Party has been successfully killed by the Republicans and my prediction is that we will be lucky to hold on to the House and if we do it will be by a very thin margin. You can’t keep biting the hand that feeds you and expect a smooth ride.

  • gmscan

    I missed you graph on Illinois. Must have been tired. Still, there seems to be a lot missing in Cook’s wrap-up. And a seven seat loss in Illinois???? Doesn’t seem plausible.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    In a devilish sort of way. My look-out list only has about five on it, but I could see six and seven is not actually impossible.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    I was being cranky. Just back from an actual vacation. :)

  • YnotNOW

    when we drastically underperformed in a Republican sweep year. And then the Dems used their “divided” state legislature and redistricting committee to run the tables on redistricting. We will be OK in 2012, because of relatively strong R candidates and weak D candidates, but could cause problems within the next 10 years before the next census.

    And even worse on the Reapportionment Committee writing maps for the state legislature. This will make it much harder to flip the Colo Senate and gain R control of both houses.

  • acat

    is just how much it extends the power of the Chicago Dem machine.

    Illinois is in for a very rough time if we cannot find statewide candidates to bring together downstate and suburban GOPers.

    Mew

  • edintexas

    I think the general public understands the Voter ID issue. Those who rail against these laws are Democrat politicians, Community Organizers, Official Professional Race Baiters (e.g. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton), the MSM and those whom the Democrats can count on over 90% of their votes virtually without fail. In other words Democrats.

    We don’t see a whole lot of publicity about the Caucasian who went to the official polling place of AG Holder, proclaimed himself to be Eric Holder and received the Primary Ballot for Eric Holder. Of course he didn’t vote for Holder – that would be a crime committed. But the point was made – it just wasn’t “news” because it didn’t fit the talking points.

  • CarolT

    We lost one congressional district here and I’m happy about it. One less dem rep from here is good for the country.

  • MF

    He didn’t actually receive the ballot. He was offered it, but he then said he didn’t have ID, needed to go back to get it, etc. What it means is that he didn’t commit voter fraud, because if he had taken the ballot into his possession, even if he didn’t turn it in, that would be breaking the law.

    He had to be extremely careful, because you know that if he had broken the law, even a trivial technicality, the DOJ would have been all over him like flies on rotting flesh.

  • johninohio

    This could very well mean that those nine Republicans will take their easily earned wins for granted and become RINOs. You know, those Repubs we hate because they are out of touch, arrogant, self serving, semi-socialists. If they had to fight to win, they might appreciate the folks who put them in DC. This ‘good fortune’ scares me.