Morning Digest: This year's House map is even more tilted toward the GOP than last cycle's

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● House: Now that congressional maps are likely finalized for the 2024 elections, we know that the House battlefield will be even more tilted toward Republicans this year than it was in 2022. This state of affairs is a direct result of Republicans in Congress and the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority repeatedly blocking efforts to end gerrymandering nationwide.

We can demonstrate how this distortion works using Daily Kos Elections' calculations of the 2020 presidential election results for every district that will be used in 2024. These results are visualized in the cartogram at the top of this story (click here for a larger image), as well as in this traditional geographic map.

One way to measure a map's bias toward either party is to rank every district from bluest to reddest. There are many ways to assess a district's partisanship, but presidential election results give us a consistent baseline that also correlates strongly with downballot performance. That is to say, if a district voted for Joe Biden, the chance is overwhelming that it also supported a Democrat for the House, and vice-versa if it voted for Donald Trump.

To perform this ranking, we sort every district from Biden's widest margin of victory to Trump's largest win. This way, we can look at the district in the very middle—the median—and compare it to the national popular vote for president. This allows us to gauge how much voter support each party would need to win a bare majority of 218 districts.

Biden would have won 224 districts on the 2024 map, compared with 211 for Trump, but the president's margin in the median district, Virginia's 2nd, would have been just 1.9 points. Since Biden won the national popular vote by a wider margin of 4.5 points, the median district would have been (after rounding) 2.5 points to the right of the nation as a whole.

Put differently, if every district were to shift toward Trump by the same margin, he could have lost the national popular vote by 2.5 points yet still carried a majority of districts in the House. In a nation as closely divided as ours has been in recent years, that advantage could make the difference in terms of which party wins the House in a tight election.

And not only does the median district favor Republicans, it's gotten more favorable to them due to a further round of redistricting in five states that followed the 2022 midterms.

In 2022, the median district was Michigan's 8th, which Biden would have carried by 2 points. Since the new 2024 median, Virginia's 2nd, backed Biden by just 1.9 points, that means the median has now moved to the right. In addition, Biden would have won a 226-209 majority of districts on the 2022 map, meaning the 2024 map has two fewer Biden districts overall.

Those shifts might seem small, but with control of the House balanced on a knife's edge, they could loom very large. And the end result dashed widespread expectations earlier this cycle that litigation in several states could result in a fairer map overall.

Despite the tilted playing field, Republican candidates for the House collectively won a similar share of the nationwide vote as they did seats in the House—roughly 51%. But it's very possible that their share of seats will outstrip their proportion of the vote this year because turnout dynamics will likely be different in a presidential election.

Another way to assess the GOP's advantage is by looking at how many districts nationwide were drawn with the intent to favor Republicans or Democrats, or were intended to favor neither party. We've illustrated this on the cartogram below, in which states are sized according to their number of districts (click here for a larger image).

Forty-two percent of districts were drawn to favor Republicans while just 14% were drawn to favor Democrats. The rest were drawn without discernible partisan intent, mostly by courts and commissions. These proportions were virtually unchanged compared to the 2022 map.

Under the Constitution, every state was required to redraw its congressional map following the most recent census, but five of them did so a second time following the midterms. Each of these cases involved the courts in some capacity.

In Alabama and Louisiana, successful lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act compelled the creation of two new districts where Black voters should be able to elect their preferred candidates. As a result, one Republican-held seat in each state will almost certainly flip toward Democrats.

In Georgia, though, a similar lawsuit saw the state's map overturned only for Republicans to pass a new map that maintained the partisan status quo, once again locking in a wide advantage for the GOP.

Meanwhile, North Carolina Republicans enacted one of the most extreme maps in the country after winning back control of the state Supreme Court, which immediately overturned its own previous ruling that banned partisan gerrymandering. The GOP's new map replaces a court-drawn plan and shifts four Democratic-held districts much further to the right, making three of them unwinnable for their current incumbents and endangering the fourth.

Many observers had expected New York Democrats to counteract North Carolina's new map by replacing their state's own court-drawn map with a new gerrymander. But Democrats unexpectedly made only minor changes and even turned one Biden district into a Trump district to boost a neighboring incumbent.

These adjustments were so modest that Ed Cox, who chairs the state Republican Party, said the GOP had "no need" to sue because the new "lines are not materially different from" the court-drawn map used in 2022, which he described as "fair."

In the final analysis, Republicans are all but guaranteed to net an additional seat, since the three safely red districts they gerrymandered in North Carolina outweigh the two new VRA districts in Alabama and Louisiana. So while Democrats, on paper, need to net four seats to take back the House, in practice, they'll need five.

Democrats still have a strong chance to do just that, particularly given the House GOP's escalating disarray. But widespread Republican gerrymandering still puts Democrats at a distinct disadvantage—a disadvantage that's only grown worse over the last two years.

Senate

● MO-Sen: Marine veteran Lucas Kunce, who is the Democratic frontrunner to take on Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, is airing what he says is the first TV ad from any Senate campaign focused on in vitro fertilization. The Huffington Post says the spot is backed by "five-figure" buy.

Kunce's ad stars a mother identified as Jessica who begins by telling the audience how the procedure allowed her daughter to be born, then lights into the incumbent. "Josh Hawley has proven that he won't protect IVF," she declares, "and he would let politicians make me a criminal." She concludes, "I want Josh Hawley to look me in the eye and tell me that I can't have the child that I deserve."

The senator has insisted he's "pro-IVF," but critics have highlighted his 2019 vote to confirm Sarah Pitlyk as a federal judge despite her strong opposition to IVF. The Guardian last month also published a story explaining how some of the arguments contained in the Alabama Supreme Court's decision threatening the procedure are similar to those advanced by Hawley a decade ago when he represented Hobby Lobby in its successful lawsuit to avoid providing birth control coverage for its employees.

Governors

● NJ-Gov: The New Jersey Globe's David Wildstein reports that U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs official Shereef Elnahal, a Democrat who previously served in Gov. Phil Murphy's cabinet, is considering a bid to succeed his old boss next year. Wildstein adds that Elnahal, who would be the nation's first Muslim governor, "is not expected to make any moves until after the 2024 election."

House

● CO-04: The Republican vacancy committee on Thursday evening unexpectedly picked former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, who is not running for a full term, to be the party's nominee for the June 25 special election to replace former Rep. Ken Buck. Lopez, who lost both the 2018 and 2022 primaries for governor, should have no trouble prevailing in Colorado's reliably red 4th District. (Democrats will choose their nominee on April 1.)

Lopez's nomination came as welcome news for Rep. Lauren Boebert, who urged delegates to choose a placeholder to "avoid giving an unfair advantage to any one particular candidate" competing in the concurrent June 25 Republican primary for a full two-year term. Boebert, who is trying to make the jump from the 3rd District to the 4th, did not run in the special after accusing Buck of timing his resignation as part of "a swampy backroom deal to try to rig an election."

While Buck has denied that he deliberately did anything to hurt his now-former colleague, Boebert's detractors hoped that the 98 delegates who convened Thursday would choose one of her opponents and thus give this person an advantage in the primary. That's not what happened, though, as Lopez beat out Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg 51-46 during the sixth and final round of balloting. 

In addition to Sonnenberg, six other Republicans who lost on Thursday are campaigning for the full term: former state Sen. Ted Harvey; state Reps. Richard Holtorf and Mike Lynch; former congressional staffer Chris Phelen; Hispanic Energy Alliance chairman Floyd Trujillo; and perennial candidate Peter Yu. Conservative radio host Deborah Flora, like Boebert, did not compete in the special but is running to be a member of the next Congress.

● GA-03: The Club for Growth followed Donald Trump's lead on Thursday by endorsing Brian Jack, a former aide to Trump, in the May 21 Republican primary to succeed retiring Rep. Drew Ferguson. The move comes at a time when the Club's long-running on-again-off-again feud with the GOP's master seems to be firmly in the "off" setting. "[W]e're back in love, we're deeply in love," Trump himself proclaimed early this month.

Jack, who launched his campaign a day before filing closed three weeks ago, faces six intra-party rivals, and a June 18 runoff would take place if no one secures a majority in the first round. Jack's most prominent foes in this dark red seat in the southwestern Atlanta exurbs appear to be former state Rep. Philip Singleton and a pair of former state senators, Mike Crane and Mike Dugan.

● NH-02: Former Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern on Thursday became the first major candidate to announce a bid to succeed Rep. Annie Kuster, a fellow Democrat who unexpectedly announced her retirement the previous day. However, there are many other local Democrats being talked about as possible contenders in the Sept. 10 primary, and they have a while to decide before the June 14 filing deadline.

Van Ostern was Kuster's campaign manager during her 2010 campaign for Congress, when she narrowly lost to Republican Charlie Bass. But just two years later, he won a seat on the state's powerful Executive Council on the same day Kuster avenged her defeat by unseating Bass.

In 2016, ​​Van Ostern was his party's nominee for governor, but he lost by a narrow 49-47 margin to Republican Chris Sununu, who was his colleague on the Executive Council.

​​Van Ostern reemerged on the political scene following the 2018 elections when he put his name forward to become secretary of state, a post that's filled by the legislature rather than by voters. Van Ostern hoped that the new Democratic majorities in both the state House and Senate would end the 42-year-run of incumbent Bill Gardner, a nominal Democrat who had infuriated voting rights advocates by serving on Donald Trump's bogus voter fraud commission.

But Gardner, who spent his decades in office protecting the Granite State's first-in-the-nation presidential primary, maintained enough support from a minority of Democrats to hold on in a 209-205 vote. ​​Van Ostern did not seek public office again until launching his House campaign this week.

He's unlikely to have the primary to himself, though. Reporters mentioned several Democrats as possible contenders in the hours after Kuster's retirement announcement, and the Concord Monitor reports that one of them, former Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky, is considering. We haven't seen any public statements from Volinsky, however, who lost the 2020 primary for governor to state Sen. Dan Feltes 51-46 two months before Sununu beat Feltes in a landslide.

The Granite Post News also names a few other Democrats as possibilities:

• State Rep. Angela Brennan
• Former state Sen. Matt Houde
• 2018 gubernatorial nominee Molly Kelly
• Regional Planned Parenthood official Kayla Montgomery
• State Rep. Laura Telerski

On the Republican side, 2022 nominee Bob Burns tells the New Hampshire Journal he's all but certain to try again, one cycle after his 56-44 loss to Kuster. The site also says that businessman Vikram Mansharamini, who took a distant fourth place in the 2022 Senate primary, is thinking about running. Finally, the Union Leader mentions former state Rep. Steve Negron, who lost to Kuster by double digits in both 2018 and 2020.

● DCCC: The DCCC announced on Thursday that it had added four candidates to its “Red to Blue” program, which highlights contenders the committee thinks have the strongest chance of picking up Republican-held districts or defending competitive open seats. The new additions are:

• CA-45: Derek Tran
• CA-47: Dave Min
• NJ-07: Sue Altman
• NY-04: Laura Gillen

While the DCCC included a few contenders in competitive primaries when it released its first list in January, that's not the case for this quarter. Both Tran and Min already advanced out of their respective primaries, while Altman is the only Democrat who filed to take on GOP Rep. Tom Kean.

Candidate filing is still open until April 4 in New York, but Gillen's most prominent rival for the nomination, state Sen. Kevin Thomas, dropped out late last month. There's no indication any other serious Democrats will seek to join the primary, leaving Gillen with a clear path to a rematch against freshman Republican Rep. Anthony D'Esposito.

● SC Redistricting: A federal district court said on Thursday that South Carolina could hold elections this year using its current congressional map despite ruling more than a year ago that the map unconstitutionally discriminated against Black voters.

In the interim, the Republican officials defending the state appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in October. The lower court said it would not impose a remedial map while an appeal was pending, saying there was only an "outside chance" that the matter would not be resolved in time.

But the Supreme Court's inexplicable five-and-a-half-month delay, which election law expert Rick Hasen called "inexcusable," turned that outside chance into reality. As a result, Republicans will be able to defend the existing version of the 1st District even though the lower court said that they had "exiled over 30,000 African American citizens" from the district, a move that helped ensure the seat would stay solidly red.

Legislatures

● NC Redistricting: North Carolina's new Republican-drawn Senate map will remain in use this year after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court's decision not to block the maps on the grounds that they discriminated against Black voters. Further appeals remain possible, however.

● WI State Assembly: Far-right activists seeking to recall Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced Thursday that they were launching a new signature collection campaign even as they said they were still hoping they had turned in enough signatures earlier this month to force a vote.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission's initial review found that they'd failed to do so in the district that the Republican speaker was last elected to represent, though the bipartisan body has asked the state Supreme Court to clarify whether a recall would be conducted under the old or new district lines.

Obituaries

● Joe Lieberman: In a new piece, Jeff Singer takes a deep dive into the late Sen. Joe Lieberman's many decades in Connecticut politics, including the multiple setbacks that threatened to end his promising career before he could make it onto the national stage.

• An anti-war insurgent. While Lieberman's advocacy for the Iraq War would make him a Democratic pariah in the 21st century, the 28-year-old Yale graduate first ran for office as an ardent opponent of the United State's involvement in Vietnam in the 1970 Democratic primary. His bid to unseat a state senator attracted the attention of other anti-war activists―including a future president.
• Poking the bear. Lieberman aspired to climb higher than the Connecticut legislature, but an embarrassing 1980 loss in a House race left him in danger of becoming a has-been. However, he soon revived his career, setting himself up for a Senate race that saw him campaign to the right of a Republican incumbent.
• The kiss. The Democrats' 2000 vice presidential nominee faced his greatest test six years later when Ned Lamont did everything he could to tie the senator to the Bush White House. But the administration would prove to be an asset for the Connecticut for Lieberman nominee―in ways that both were and weren't obvious in 2006.

Check out our obituary for a detailed look at Lieberman's climb through Nutmeg State politics and his battle to stay there―including why some of his biggest detractors were only too happy to help him win a spot in Congress. Campaign Action