Within the Margin

In a state with 52 districts, you’re bound to have some competitive ones – though in the days before California’s independent redistricting commission, that was usually not that case. But as we enter our second decade of the Commission Era, we have plenty to examine in the Golden State. Dems flipped seven seats here in 2018 and Reps took back three of them two years later. Plenty of those in play once again.

California started out with two members upon achieving statehood in 1850. In every census that followed, the state held steady or more often, gained seats. That ended with the 2020 census, when California lost a Congressional seat for the first time in its history. California’s gold-standard independent commission was tasked with drawing a 52-seat map and the final product yielded plenty of competitive seats. Let’s discuss some notable situations after the map.