The non-partisan Princeton Gerrymandering Project (PGP) has awarded a Grade-A score to the Maryland Citizen Redistricting Commission’s (MCRC) Congressional and State Senate draft maps released earlier this month. The MCRC electoral maps were graded on partisan fairness, competitiveness among other redrawn maps, and compactness and county splits. The PGP assessment helps Marylanders to understand what a fair map looks like, especially when compared to current district maps.
Based on the most recent national and statewide elections data, the PGP-expected results will be 2 Republican and 6 Democratic members of Congress and 14 Republican and 28 Democratic State Senators. Of the 47 state senate districts, five are competitive. Three Congressional districts have 40 percent or more Black Voting Age Population (BVAP); and six have 40 percent or more of total Minority Voting Age Population (MVAP). Fourteen of the senate districts have 40 percent or more BVAP, and twenty-eight have 40 percent or more of MVAP.
Another non-partisan group, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), has developed different analytical software, PlanScore, to evaluate partisan advantage in Congressional districts using the 2020 Presidential election results. Based on the PlanScore analysis, Democrats are predicted to win six Congressional seats, Republicans one, and the eighth district “leans Republican.” For the State Senate, PlanScore predicts 11 Republican seats plus 3 seats “leaning Republican,” and 30 Democratic seats plus 3 seats “leaning Democratic.”
The LWVMD encourages the public to examine these maps and let both the MCRC and the Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission know specifically what is good or not about them. The League invites the public to also observe and respond to the work of both Commissions and to rally in Annapolis when the Maryland General Assembly considers the Congressional map. The MCRC’s maps, in both easily-read PDF and a format suitable for analysis, can be downloaded by the public at:https://apps.planning.maryland.gov/redistricting/commissionproposedmaps.html.
The details of the PGP’s Redistricting Report Cards are at:
Congressional: https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card/?planId=rec0XDaejLCSbXPBs
State Senate: https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card/?planId=recVPsqdcXQzIZzfT
The details of the CLC’s PlanScore are at:
Congressional:https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/plan.html?20211021T165316.184621961Z
State Senate:https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/plan.html?20211020T202801.321259102Z
Historical Maps 2012-2020: https://planscore.campaignlegal.org/maryland/#!2020-plan-ushouse-eg
Maryland’s Delegate map, being a complex combination of single and multi-districts, cannot be graded by standard statistical models.