Wednesday, September 29, 2021

The Oregonian and The Hill (9/28/21) on Oregon Becoming the First State of this Cycle to Sign New Maps Into Law (OREGON)

Two nice articles -- one from The Oregonian and the other from The Hill   -- on Oregon becoming the first state of this redistricting cycle to have its U.S. House, state Senate, and state House districts signed into law. Oregon will be getting an additional U.S. House district due to the state's population growth, thus expanding from five seats (4-1 Democrats) to six.

The Oregonian article includes interactive maps of the current and newly adopted U.S. House district configurations. If you hover your cursor over a given district, you can see its partisan composition. 

Every source I've seen agrees that there are three very safe Democratic seats and one very safe Republican seat. How the remaining two seats are characterized varies by who you listen to. The Oregonian offers that one of the two seats "tilts in Democrats’ favor" (presumably the new 6th district, with a partisanship of D+4.3), whereas the other (the 5th, D+1.2) is fairly even, but "include[s] fast-growing Bend, where expected Democratic growth could make the district bluer over the next decade." The Hill, on the other hand, describes the new map flatly as a 5-1 Democratic lean.

Eighteen-term Democrat Peter DeFazio, who has represented the 4th District in the southwest part of the state (Eugene and Coos Bay among other towns) and has received 55, 66, and 52 percent of the vote in his last three general elections, will have a new district (still designated as the 4th) that "will likely be less competitive in future elections," according to The Hill. The map in the Oregonian article pegs DeFazio's new district as D+10.

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