This writeup will be brief and will lack detail pictures. Dave’s app ate one of my save files for the Maryland map, and the Utah map I drew up on a public computer when I was bored.
Utah will gain one seat. Rep. Matheson, the only Democrat in the Beehive State’s congressional district, has resisted every effort to defeat him. With the Wasatch Front gobbling up so much of Utah’s voting population and Salt Lake County trending blue, I think Utah Republicans will be relieved to confine Matheson to the state’s most populous county and parcel out his redder rural and suburban territory to help create a new district. Rep. Chaffetz will probably run against Sen. Hatch in 2012, but if he doesn’t, he could run in the new UT-04, as he’s been drawn out of UT-03. It really doesn’t matter, as UT-01, UT-03, and UT-04 would probably vote for Attila the Hun as long as he could prove he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
All of these districts but MD-06 (teal) are safe Democratic seats. I posted this map in the comments section of a now-buried diary, but I figured I’d repost it in a new diary. Rep. Kratovil can run for MD-01 (blue) from his Stevensville home in coastal Queen Anne’s County. Rep. Bartlett has been drawn out of MD-06, with the blueing city of Frederick (as well as its little cousin of Hagerstown, in Washington County) drawn into Rep. Van Hollen’s MD-08 (slate blue). Rep.-elect Harris would probably do just fine in MD-06. Just to give you an idea of exactly how Democratic this state is, MD-06 voted for Sen. McCain over Sen. Obama in 2008 by within a point of the same margin by which MD-05 (yellow) and MD-08 broke for Sen. Obama. MD-04 (red) and MD-07 (grey) are black-majority VRA districts (54% black, 22% white; and 53% black, 33% white respectively). I may have drawn Rep. Sarbanes out of MD-03 (purple), but moving across Baltimore is really not a big deal for a congressman.