Swing State Project

At the Washington State Democratic Central Committee meeting this past January, over lunch the delegates discussed the ramifications of the addition of a 10th Congressional District in the State. The goals discussed in the meeting was to ensure that a Democrat would be elected in the new 10th. There was general recognition that the 3rd would go from Vancouver to the outskirts of Yakama (along the Columbia River).

With three districts generally accounted for (the 3rd, 4th and 5th), the main question becomes how the Puget Sound area is divided. In Washington, the redistricting law states that plans should consider electoral competition and not purposefully favor or discriminate against any political party (among all of the normal provisions).

In practice, this means that the bipartisan redistricting commission gets the sign-off by the elected representatives (encouraging little change in the composition in the district, both geographic and partisan). For 2011, this means that Representative Dicks will want a more Democratic district (especially if he loses parts of Tacoma), and Representative Reichart wants a more rural, and Republican district.

With the addition of a 10th District in Washington, the choice facing the redistricting commission is to create 6-8 safe districts (3 safe Democratic 3 safe Republican) or to create a map with 4 safe districts (2 D – 2 R) and another 4 districts that are likely Democratic. (The difference really is should Democrats want to lock in a third safe Republican district in eastern King, Pierce, and Thurston counties or draw a map that is 7-3 in most years [including 2010]).

If the goal is to create 7 Democratic (or competitive) districts west of the Cascades (creating a 7-3 [or in the worst years a 6-4] split), then the existing Representatives should be willing to trade a bit of comfort and security for the potential for more Democratic representatives from Washington.

Some basic rules for redistricting in Washington:

1) While it may be the dream of many Democrats to split Seattle, it is not going to happen. The commission respects geographic cohesiveness, and sending a spur from Seattle to a) the Olympic Peninsula, or b) to Kirkland or Bellevue is not going to happen.

2) The redistricting commission likes to create competitive districts.

3) Two and a half districts will be in Eastern Washington.

Redistricting Washington

So, 6 districts left to draw. Two districts will have their roots in Whatcom, Skagit and Snohomish County. Representative Larson lives in Lake Stevens, west east of Everett. However, if Representative Inslee runs for Governor, then Larson could either run in the 1st or 2nd (and could be happy either way, since he would want more of Everett anyway).

For me, the key to redistricting Washington lies with not where the new 10th District goes, but what will the 6th District go? And, what does Representative Norm Dicks want from this round of redistricting?

The current 6th District includes Bremerton, Representative Dicks' residence, most of the Olympic Peninsula, and extends into Pierce County and has to shed 37,000 people.

If Representative Dicks gets anxious and wants a district that a) resembles his current district and b) becomes more Democratic, then the Democrats lose the redistricting game (and likely all decade). Either the 10th or the 8th District will be a Solid Republican district. If he is a team player, and accepts a Democratic leaning district that has lots of new constituents, Democrats win (or have a better chance of winning). Then, the 8th and 10th will be lean Democratic seats (or better).

The following maps present two options for a 10th CD and the competitiveness of each district (again, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th stay the same).

Option 1: Dicks remains concerned about his reelection

In this scenario, the 6th CD is the entire Olympic Peninsula, the Washington Coast, and most of Cowlitz County and the cities of Olympia, Tumwater and Lacey. While losing his portion of Tacoma, Dicks gains the remainder of Democratic-leaning Kitsap County, and Democratic leaning Olympia. While Dicks is secure about his reelection, the population of the state mean that a Republican-leaning district must be created.

With the Olympic Peninsula off the map, the 1st and 2nd become located entirely in Whatcom, Skagit, and Snohomish County. The 2nd adds Everett, making Larson happy. The 1st (open) becomes southwestern Snohomish counties and several King county cities – Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Redmond, Bothell and Woodinville.

Up to this point – good for the Democrats – 3 stronger seats.

South of Seattle, Representative Smith's (Tacoma) district can also be strengthened – include all of Tacoma and western Pierce County, and include the cities of Kent, Renton, Federal Way, and the other cities immediately South of Seattle not part of the 7th.

So, 4 stronger seats for the Democrats (and all geographically compact).

Now the rub. there are few Democratic areas left in the State to draw two more competitive districts (or better). The 10th ends up in Eastern King County centered around Bellevue. This is the area where Democrats have done well in 2006, 2008, and 2010.

The elusive 8th district becomes the remainder of the State – Auburn, Eastern Pierce County, Lewis County, and rural portions of Thurston County.

So, the end result of Western Washington is 1 SR seat and 4 safer Democratic seats. In essence, this is the status quo and Washington's delegation would be 6-4 for the majority of the decade (with the slim possibility of winning back the 3rd).

But Democrats could do better.

Option 2: Dicks accepts a district with more new constituents

The 6th CD includes Bremerton and other Democratic portions of Kitsap county (Bainbridge Island), Olympia and all of Thurston County, and Pacific, Wahkiakum counties (as well as Lewis County). Every county (or portion of) the county is Lean D (or better) except for Lewis County. While the District would be lean D, and potentially competitive, it would still likely be a Democratic seat the entire decade.

With 2 counties and portions of Kitsap on the Olympic Peninsula not part of the 6th, you then draw a district across the Sound to Whatcom County (via Island and San Juan Counties). The 2nd CD can be all of Snohomish (with a portion of Democratic Shoreline).

So, here we have 2 likely Democratic district and 1 safe Democratic districts.

The 8th CD becomes a Democratic leaning district by adding the King County cities of Federal Way, Kent, Renton, Tukwila, Newcastle and SeaTac. While Representative Reichert still lives in the district, he has lots of new Democratic cities to deal with.

The 9th is a Pierce County district centered around Tacoma.

Again, this is two additional lean/likely Democratic districts.

The new 10th is now exclusively an Eastern King County district.

In this scenario, each district would be competitive (at worse for the Democrats), but likely, year in and year out, sending 7 Democrats to DC.

And, did I say from the outset that the commission likes competitive districts?

To summarize:

Option 1 (max deviation 174):

3 safe Democratic seats, 3 lean/likely Democratic seats, 3 safe Republican seats, 1 likely/lean Republican seat.

Option 2 (max deviation 140):

2 safe Democratic seats, 2 safe Republican seats, 4 lean/likely Democratic seats, 1 likely/lean Republican seat.

Bonus – State Legislature Map (max deviation 590):

Snohomish County

King County

Pierce County

Thurston County

Kitsap County

Clark County

Benton County

Spokane County

 

Not a huge surprise:

Former New Mexico congresswoman Heather Wilson will announce her Senate candidacy Monday, two Republicans inform POLITICO.

Wilson is expected to be the first official candidate in the race since five-term Democrat Sen. Jeff Bingaman announced his retirement on Feb. 18.

I’d be shocked if Wilson were not the recipient of a mighty teabagging. In comments, I saw someone suggesting she could run for her old seat in NM-01 if Rep. Martin Heinrich got into the senate race. Do you think that drop-down could happen?

crossposted at RRH

We at Stochastic Democracy are proud to announce preliminary forecasts for selected 2011 Gubernatorial, 2012 Gubernatorial and 2012 Senatorial contests- namely the 24 out of 48 races that have already been polled. We expect to expand our forecasts in this area within the next few weeks, but for now our predictions are little more than a smoothed average of available polling data.

Still, it’s useful to have all of this data in one centralized place. All of the polls were done with Registered Voters, and so we have provided adjustments for different turnout scenarios in the same style as our Presidential forecasts.

2011 Gubernatorial Elections

The 2011 West Virginia Gubernatorial Race is fully open at this point. Well, that’s maybe the wrong way to put it- West Virginians have clear preferences depending on if Congresswoman Shelley Moore-Capito (WV-02, R) gets in the race. If she does, she’s a clear favorite, if not, then the leading Democratic candidates (SoS Tennant and Acting Governor Tomblin) are heavily favored.



2012 Gubernatorial Elections

If North Carolina Republican Pat McCrory decides to run for Governor, the race leans strongly in his favor. Incumbent Missouri Democrat Jay Nixon is favored to win his race against probable Republican nominee, Lt.Gov. Peter Kinder at this point.



2012 Senate Elections

Now this is a lot of data to digest- and we won’t attempt to give an interpretation of it right now. But depending on the turnout scenario and the success of the party committees in candidate improvements it appears as if the Republicans would either narrowly miss picking up the Senate or narrowly take it over. Informative!

This is the second part of three posts analyzing the 2010 South Carolina  gubernatorial election, in which Republican Nikki Haley won a  closer-than-expected victory over Democrat Vincent Sheheen. The main focus of these posts will be to explore whether a racial effect  accounted for Ms. Haley’s unexpected poor performance.

The previous post can be found here, and the next post can be found here.

(Note: This is also part of a series of posts analyzing the 2010 midterm elections.)

More below.

How to Find a Racial Effect

The purpose of this series of posts is to determine whether or not Ms. Haley’s relatively weak performance was due to a racial effect.

In order to due this, it’s necessary to define what to look for. In this case, it would be normally Republican voters abandoning Ms. Haley due to her race.

Now, South Carolina is a state in which less than 5% of the population is neither white nor black; minorities other than blacks play a negligible role in the state’s politics. It is also a very racially polarized state, like most places in the  Deep South. Blacks vote Democratic; whites vote Republican.

There is one final factor to take into account. When Republican Bobby Jindal ran for governor in 2003 and faced racially-based opposition by (white) Republicans, such opposition was not evenly distributed. The Republicans who abandoned Mr. Jindal tended to be predominantly from rural, relatively lower income areas. This is something that is not especially surprising, although it conforms to some unfortunate stereotypes.

For these reasons, an examination of Republicans who abandoned  Ms. Haley for racial reasons would look specifically at areas with lower-income whites. These areas would be expected to shift more Democratic than the norm.

Democratic Shifts

To begin this post, let’s examine the places where Republicans improved upon their 2008 performance, and the places where Democrats improved upon 2008.

Naturally, given that Ms. Haley did worse than Mr. Sheheen, one would expect Democrats to have relatively more improvement.

This turns out to be the case:

Here one sees a very interesting regional pattern, a pattern that I did not expect when making this map.

The northern parts of South Carolina moved strongly Democratic in 2010. The sole exception is York County, which for whatever reason shifted Republican (there is, strangely enough, very little that differentiates this county with others in the region; nor did either Ms. Haley or Mr. Sheheen represent the county as politicians before 2010).

On the other hand, the coastal regions actually supported Ms. Haley more than they did Senator John McCain.

This is a very interesting regional divide; it is something that is entirely hidden by normal partisan patterns.

Whites

Now, let’s take a look at white registration figures:

This map shows what percent of South Carolina’s registered voters are white. The information is mandated by the Voting Rights Act, given South Carolina’s history of preventing minorities from voting, and can be found at this website. It is also quite useful for the purposes of this analysis. (For fun: compare this map to President Barack Obama’s performance).

In order to make comparisons easier, the same color scale was used in this map as in the previous map. The whiter a county’s voter population, the bluer the county on the map.

If white Republican voters rejected Ms. Haley due to her race, then the whitest counties here would also have the strongest Democratic shift (i.e. the colors in each map would roughly match).

Let’s compare the maps:

There is a bit of a match, but not much. A lot of very white counties shift strongly against Ms. Haley, but a lot of them also shift strongly for her (especially along the coast).

One can reasonably conclude that a lot of white voters – i.e. Republicans – remained loyal to Ms. Haley despite her Indian heritage.

This is not entirely unexpected. Mr. Jindal also retained a large amount of white support, mainly amongst suburban and wealthy whites.

Adjusting For Income

Where Mr. Jindal did especially poorly – and why he lost the 2003 gubernatorial election – was amongst rural, lower income whites in Louisiana.

Let’s therefore shift this analysis by adjusting for income; in other words, by focusing upon lower-income counties in South Carolina.

South Carolina’s median household income was $42,580 as of 2009, according to Census Data (which can be accessed here).

One can therefore adjust for income by restricting the analysis only to those counties in which median household income was below the state median.

This is what happens:

This looks like a far stronger relationship. In the poorer parts of South Carolina, it appears that the whiter the county, the more against Ms. Haley it shifted.

It seems that we have found something here.

So far this analysis has been relatively light on the statistical side of things; it kind of looks like there is a pattern in the map above, but perhaps there isn’t one. How likely is it that this could have occurred by chance?

The next post will answer this question.

–Inoljt

Of the states rolled out in this week’s Census 2010 releases, North Carolina is by far the most interesting one. North Carolina narrowly missed out on a 14th seat, so it’s staying at 13; its target is 733,499, up from about 619K in 2000. Unsurprisingly, the big gains come in the Charlotte and Raleigh metropolitan areas, with NC-09 in Charlotte’s suburbs and NC-04 in Durham and Chapel Hill both well past the 800K mark. (The 9th is represented by GOPer Sue Myrick, although the state’s district that shifted the sharpest to the left from Kerry to Obama, while the 4th belongs to Dem David Price and is the bluest white-majority district in the state.) NC-01 on the coastal plain, one of the nation’s few truly rural African-American-majority seats, gained the least, followed by the three mostly-rural Appalachian-flavored seats (NC-05, NC-10, and NC-11).

How this shakes out for redistricting is complicated, because Republicans control the process for the first time ever and will want to undo a pretty Dem-friendly map from 2000… but without getting too greedy. What may be their first task, shoring up newly-elected Renee Elmers in what’s currently a swing district, may be made easier by the fact the mostly-suburban/exurban 2nd will probably need to give a lot of its African-American population in Raleigh proper to the next-door 1st in order to preserve the dwindling 1st’s black-majority VRA status. But since the 2nd didn’t grow that fast, it’ll then need to look elsewhere to grab some enough white votes to replace them… and since the GOP probably won’t want those to be liberal transplants in the Research Triangle area, they may need to reach south into the 3rd or 7th instead.

I could see that in turn pushing Dem Mike McIntyre’s 7th further west into Fayetteville and south central rural counties, keeping his district swingy, while also pushing Larry Kissell’s 8th further west too, probably giving him a heaping helping of dark-red Charlotte suburbs and making him the likeliest Dem to get targeted for extinction. But the GOP has many, many ways to play this (see the Aaron Blake article linked above), and this isn’t the only scenario.

The other two multi-district states are much more clear cut and present similar profiles: in both Nebraska and Kansas, the big empty western districts need to expand greatly, and the urban/suburban districts need to shed population. The GOP controls the processes in both states; the only real intrigue might be whether they try to get fancy and crack the only-slightly-red Omaha-area NE-02 and Kansas City-area KS-03 to make them safer Republican seats. The target in Nebraska is 608,780, up from 570K in 2000. (Notice how low that is… Nebraska seems right at the top of the list for a lost seat in 2020.) In Kansas, the target is 713,280, up from 672K in 2000.

The US Census release last month of Citizen Voting Age Population allowed me to run all the Assembly, Senate and Congressional districts to find their estimated CVAP Latino, CVAP African American and CVAP Asian.  

The news that stands out is that there are 20 districts, 9 Assembly, 5 Senate and 6 Congressional, that are Majority-Minority – and ALL are Latino.  

See all the numbers here: Http://www.redistrictingpartners.com/PDI

Here are the highlights for Congressionals:

Highest Latino CVAP

38 (D) Napolitano 65.3%

34 (D) Roybal-Allard 64.8%

32 (D) Chu 53.6%

39 (D) Sanchez 51.8%

43 (D) Baca 51.7%

20 (D) Costa 50.5%

31 (D) Becerra 49.9%

51 (D) Filner 47.8%

Highest African American CVAP

35 (D) Waters 43.6%

33 (D) Watson 35.7%

37 (D) Richardson 31.2%

9 (D) Lee 25.3%

Highest Asian CVAP

12 (D) Speier 31.8%

13 (D) Stark 31.3%

15 (D) Honda 29.1%

16 (D) Lofgren 28.0%

8 (D) Pelosi 27.0%

29 (D) Schiff 24.1%

32 (D) Chu 23.5%

Even though California has a commission process with its own set of rules, the first rule is “follow the VRA” which would suggest that they would first work to keep these districts from retrogressing.

This strategy, in fact, was exactly what the Republican-leaning Rose Institute suggested: Start with the VRA seats, then draw the rest of the state with the new rules.

• AZ-Sen: Arizona Dems could see a big name get into the senate race: 4th CD Rep. Ed Pastor says he’s considering the race, but wants to see how Rep. Gabby Giffords’s recovery goes before making any decisions. (He also says he hasn’t spoken to the DSCC yet.)

• CT-Sen: Chris Murphy just scored a trio of big fat endorsements: state Attorney General George Jepsen, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, and Comptroller Kevin Lembo all just gave their backing to the 5th CD rep. Notably, Merrill succeeded Murphy’s primary opponent, Susan Bysiewicz, as SoS this year.

• NM-Sen: Couple of developments in the open-seat New Mexico race. First, Dave Catanese says that Heather Wilson is starting to staff up for a potential run. Second, Steve Pearce says that he’s spoken to Republican Lt. Gov. John Sanchez and says that Sanchez is “thinking about” running. Pearce, who earlier was urging NM Republicans to reach a consensus pick, is sounding more and more like he’s interesting in playing the role of fixer rather than running himself – not too surprising, given that he’s 63 and just ran tough campaigns two cycles in a row.

• OH-Sen: Actual retail value of a Drew Carey senate run? $0, apparently. The Price Is Right host’s publicist says that Carey “does not plan to run for office,” despite a movement trying to draft him to run against Sen. Sherrod Brown. Does this remind anyone else of talk about recruiting Jerry Springer on our behalf in the 2005 timeframe? God that was sad.

• VA-Sen: Ex-Rep. Rick Boucher tells the National Journal that while he isn’t ruling out a senate run, he isn’t “giving any active thought” to one, either. Based on the linked NJ item, it sure sounds like Boucher is heading for a second career as a lobbyist. Anyhow, Boucher also says that Tim Kaine is the “obvious Democratic candidate.”

• WI-Gov: So now the RNC, like the RGA, is putting up an ad in support of Darth Walker. No Word On The Size Of The Buy (in case you aren’t familiar with that phrase, it means “NWOTSOTB”), or whether it’s cable or broadcast, but The Hill does say it will run “in Milwaukee and Madison through the end of this week.”

• NY-26: Though he met with teabagger David Bellavia for over an hour, Conservative Party chair Mike Long says he “made it very clear” that Republican nominee Jane Corwin has “a leg up on” Bellavia in terms of getting the Con endorsement. Long said his party’s executive committee may meet later this week or early next week to make a final decision. With any luck, Bellavia will pursue his plan to petition on to the ballot if he gets passed over.

• Tampa Mayor: The city of Tampa, FL had a mayoral election the other night, and Republican Rose Ferlita (26%) and Dem Bob Buckhorn (24%) will proceed to a run-off. All of the other candidates in the first round were Dems, though former Mayor Dick Greco (who was trying to return to office) was definitely more of a DINO.

• MS-Gov: Four Democrats filed for the gubernatorial race: Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, attorney Bill Luckett (who seems to have some money), and  Some Dudes Guy Shaw and William Compton, who also ran in 2007 and took just 12% in the Dem primary. But the rest of the picture is pretty brutal. Not a single Dem will be on the ballot for the positions of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, or auditor. As for the Republicans, five candidates qualified for the gubernatorial race: Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, businessman Dave Dennis, Pearl River County Supervisor Hudson Holiday, Some Dude Ron Williams, and teabagger James Broadwater.

• Special Elections: Unsurprisingly, in Florida’s SD-33, Dem Oscar Braynon routed his Republican opposition in his bid to succeed Frederica Wilson (who replaced Kendrick Meek in the House). Dems also lost a very Republican state house district in Maine, HD-11, where the GOP candidate got all of 697 votes to the Democrat’s 557.

• WI-St. Sen.: The Wisconsin Democratic Party is launching an effort to recall the eight Republican state senators who are legally subject to the recall process. (As you probably know, WI elects half its senators every two years, so only those who won in 2008 can be recalled right now.) The SEIU has also announced that they are backing the effort.

This is going to be one hell of a task for state Auditor Tom Salmon:

“I do need to take the next step, and that step will be to, beginning tonight, I’m declaring that I’m entering an exploratory phase for U.S. Senate,” the Republican told WCAX-TV in Vermont on Wednesday. He had already announced that he would not seek re-election as state auditor, a statewide elected position he has won three times.

Unseating Sanders is a “daunting task,” Salmon said.

“I think at this point, there are probably three people who think I can win, and the good news is I’m one of them. … The idea here is to make a smart decision before fully declaring myself as a full-time committed candidate for U.S. Senate,” he said.

In 2008, Vermont was the second-bluest state in the nation, giving Obama a 37-point victory. Only Hawaii, the president’s birthplace, saw a bigger margin. Salmon, who was a Democrat until 2009, is probably as good a get as the GOP can hope for, but Sen. Bernie Sanders is no slouch. In his first senate campaign in 2006, he raised an impressive $5.5 million – a huge sum for a tiny state – and crushed his wealthy Republican opponent Rich Tarrant 65-33, despite Tarrant spending over $7 million of his own money on the race.

Anyhow, Salmon, who once told Dave Catanese that he’s “65% in” but now seems less certain, sounds like a cross between Charlie Sheen and L. Ron Hubbard here:

“I am not attached to the 2012 outcome, my odds, or my political career. I don’t need to be senator, or governor, or stay put as state auditor – I need to be an authentic self-utilizing power along the lines of excellence,” he said. “I am deeply concerned that we address risks of economic, political and spiritual significance through a new brand of leaders that communicate effectively from the sincere center.”

Tom Salmon will destroy you in the air. Right after he’s done purging his body thetans.

UPDATE: We’ve been leaked an advance preview of Tom Salmon’s first campaign poster!

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just put out its first list of vulnerable incumbents for its “Frontline” program for the 2011-12 cycle:

One note: The “O/K” column refers to the share of the vote that Obama and Kerry respectively got in the district. In any event, the vagaries of redistricting obviously make selecting endangered incumbents a difficult enterprise, but there are still some notable names missing on this list. Who else do you think should be on here?

Fast-growing Nevada is adding a fourth congressional district in this round of redistricting. The C.W. says Republicans, who control the governor’s mansion, and Democrats, who control both houses of the State Legislature, will work toward a 2-2 compromise, although the solidity of one Republican seat may be dubious. I tend to think a 2-1-1 map is likelier, with the swing district favoring the incumbent.

Forth Eorlingas:

Now, uh, before getting deep into this, I should note that unlike some of our Nevadan SSPers, I haven’t memorized the home addresses of every sitting congressperson in Nevada or every prospective candidate for the new NV-04 or a (likely) vacancy in NV-01 or NV-02. So, this map may need some tweaking. Just let me know, help me out.

I’ll start out of order, because the way districts are numbered in Nevada is weird.

NV-02 (green)

Rep. Dean Heller, the Republican congressman for this district, is widely expected to launch a primary challenge to sleazy Sen. Ensign, but he seems to be crossing his fingers for a retirement in the meantime. The trend for Republicans in Northern Nevada is…not great. Washoe County is quickly becoming another Democratic stronghold in the state, and the surrounding counties appear to be on a blue trend. Elko, in northeastern Nevada, is a Republican stronghold, and the minor population center there combined with the still-reddish sprawl around Reno and Carson City should keep this district on the Republican side of the PVI line, but it’s uncomfortably close to EVEN PVI and there doesn’t seem to be a lot Republicans can do about it. If Heller runs, he’ll probably retain it, but if he goes for Senate, it’s going to be very close in a presidential year. Tossup/Tilt Republican.

NV-01 (blue)

I think the expectation is that Democratic Rep. Shelly Berkley will run for Senate, potentially setting up a marquee battle with Heller, her colleague in the Nevada congressional delegation. I’m pretty sure her house is included in this district either way – but the person I had in mind while drawing this district is Steven Horsford, the term-limited Nevada Senate Majority Leader. Horsford, if elected, would become the first African American congressman from the Mountain West in…a while. The racial breakdown, for the curious, is 52.3% white, 13.4% black, 20.2% Latino, and 10% Asian. Safe Democratic.

NV-03 (yellow)

This district is represented by freshman Rep. Joe Heck, the Republican who put Southern-talkin’ Democrat Dina Titus on ice last year even as Sen. Reid stomped nutty Tea Party conservative Sharron Angle by a five-point spread. Interestingly enough, Heck would see his district balloon out substantially to eclipse NV-02 in size under this map. While the vast majority of this district’s population is in Clark County, the little fraction that comes out of the rest of the state has a huge geographic footprint, because the cow counties are so underpopulated (this may have something to do with them being a jumble of arid desert, craggy mountain ranges, and current and former nuclear test sites). Heck, who lives in Henderson, gets the lion’s share of exurban Clark County, as well as bedroom communities in Nye County, and the more conservative Las Vegas suburbs. Titus has been redistricted out, but she could always move back, I suppose. Likely Republican.

NV-04 (red)

Nevada is getting a brand-new district, and that means at least one open-seat contest next year. Potential Democratic candidates for this VRA seat (31% white, 10.1% black, 49.2% Latino, 6.7% Asian) include Ruben Kihuen, a Mexican American state senator with an independent streak; John Oceguera, the term-limited Speaker of the State Assembly, who would become the country’s only Native American congressman if elected; Richard Carrillo, also a member of the State Assembly; and Dina Titus, the former NV-03 representative. This district should be solid ground for the Democrats, whoever runs, although I think a Latino Democrat would be favored in the primary. Safe Democratic.