DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney opted to run in the new 17th District, where more than 70 percent of voters were new to him.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

The 2024 map

Democrats have a relatively easy task in drawing up targets for 2024. Although court fights could shift the maps in a few states, more than a dozen Republican incumbents will be running in districts Biden won with the Democratic president himself likely to be on the ballot.

Some of those Republicans are incumbents who survived this cycle despite being top Democratic targets — including Reps. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) — and battle-tested incumbents such as Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) who will be tough to oust. But the group also includes newly elected members who took advantage of poor Democratic performances in states such as New York, where six Republicans will represent districts won by Biden.

By contrast, only five Democrats — Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, Mary Peltola of Alaska, Marie Gluesenkamp P?rez of Washington and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio — represent districts won by then-President Donald Trump in 2020.

House Majority PAC, Democrats’ top congressional outside group, released a preliminary 19-district list of districts it would try to flip in 2024 full of Republicans in Biden-won districts. Among its targets: Garcia, Bacon, Fitzpatrick, Lawler, Chavez-DeRemer, along with Reps. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Young Kim (R-Calif.), Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) and Reps.-elect Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), Tom Kean Jr. (R-N.J.), George Santos (R-N.Y.), Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.).

The next redistricting battlefields

Several states could see another round of redistricting before 2024 as their current maps face legal challenges that were not resolved this year — although some states will depend on future court rulings.

In Ohio, the midterm elections were carried out under Republican-drawn maps that the state Supreme Court had deemed an illegal gerrymander — although Democrats actually managed to gain a seat anyway. The state’s redistricting commission is tasked with drawing new maps ahead of 2024. If it ends up in front of the state Supreme Court again, it might be handled differently, as the Republican justice who had sided with Democrats against the original maps retired this year.

Earlier this year, a divided U.S. Supreme Court blocked a district court’s ruling that Alabama should be forced to draw a new map with a second majority-black district, deeming such a move would come too close to the primary election. When the court heard the full case on its merits in October, the justices seemed skeptical of Alabama’s race-neutral interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. But several conservative justices also seemed wary of the claims from civil rights groups, and the high court has generally not been friendly to challenges based on the VRA in recent years.

Maps in Texas and Florida have also faced challenges on the basis of racial gerrymandering, although it’s unclear whether either state will be forced to redraw its maps.

But a second case before the U.S. Supreme Court could have broad implications for redistricting. The high court next month will hear oral arguments inMoore v. Harper, which argues that North Carolina’s maps — created by a court-appointed special master after the state Supreme Court ruled the maps drawn by the Republican-led legislaturewere an extreme gerrymander — are unconstitutional on the basis that only state legislatures, not state courts, can decide district lines.

A ruling in favor of the Republican legislators who challenged North Carolina’s special maste- drawn-map could potentially open up avenues for legal challenges to maps in a range of other states where courts were involved. But the high court could also rule against them and let North Carolina’s maps stand.