CT Redistricting 2020

[Mr.Phips]

Hopefully Republicans will use their leverage to demand a tossup seat

Dems would never agree to that.

[Mr.Phips]

There's not going to be 5 "Safe Democrat" seats in Connecticut in 2022. At least one will be slightly competitive.

CT-5 and perhaps CT-2 would be Likely D at worst given the tough environment, but a status quo map means 5 Safe D seats in a neutral year. Obviously that could change depending on broader long-term trends (I'd be more worried about CT-2 than CT-5 in the medium to long term; Biden outperformed Obama '12 in CT-5 so trends appear to be positive).

Hayes won by 12 in 2020, and every Democrat should prepare for a 10 point swing (or worse) against them for 2022, as that's exactly what happened to Republicans in 2018 and 2020 was better for Dems than 2016 was for R's in the PV. So I don't really think even Likely D is the worst scenario.

Dems were able to hold CT-05 even in 2010 and 2014 and generally have seen less drop off here in bad midterms than in other districts. Biden won here by 11 in 2020. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this a low to mid single digit race, but would be really shocked if it flipped.

[Mr.Phips]

There's not going to be 5 "Safe Democrat" seats in Connecticut in 2022. At least one will be slightly competitive.

It’s honestly awful how this hack Drew Savicki has become the face of Election Twitter, especially around here. Classifying CT-5 as "Safe Democratic" in a heavily Republican environment is just lazy, and even the NRCC has identified CT-5 and CT-2 as target seats (initially they only had CT-5 on their list but then added CT-2 in November). No one is denying that these would be "heavy lifts" under normal circumstances or that Courtney is stronger than generic D (even if overrated), but of all the "heavy lifts", I’d argue that they are among the first to fall in a wave year (and CT-5 may not even require a big wave).

FTR, I don’t think there will be all that many upsets in 2022 given how efficiently/aggressively Democrats have been gerrymandering across the country (I think the GOP's absolute ceiling is a 25-30 seat gain, nothing remotely comparable to 2010), but I’ve always viewed CT-2 and especially CT-5 as prime targets for a 'surprise' flip, and the VA/NJ races somewhat confirmed my suspicion. Any Biden +<12 district in which there hasn’t been serious D gerrymandering compared to the current map, in which Democrats are extremely reliant on rural/small-town voters (even if they are culturally/socially more 'moderate'), and in which some GOP rebound in exurban-ish, heavily white, more affluent areas can be expected (I’d argue this is the case in CT) shouldn’t be considered completely safe. Like Sol, I think 'elasticity' if anything benefits the GOP here.

Dems were able to hold CT-05 even in 2010 and 2014 and generally have seen less drop off here in bad midterms than in other districts. Biden won here by 11 in 2020. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this a low to mid single digit race, but would be really shocked if it flipped.

There are plenty of districts of the kind you just described (held by the dominant party even in wave years for the other party) that nonetheless ended up flipping at some point (ME-2, MN-3, MN-7, TX-32, etc.) because national trends finally caught up with the dominant party in regions/seats which had withstood them before. The same can be observed at the Senate level, where some races tend to 'lag behind' trends (MI-SEN 2014 D blowout, D coalition in MN-SEN 2014, AZ-SEN 2006 R blowout, etc.). Courtney definitely isn’t winning by anything near 20 points in 2022.

Also not sure what this has to do with Ed Perlmutter, who obviously isn’t losing in 2022 because he’s running in a far more Democratic, rapidly D-trending, heavily suburban/urban seat in which the GOP has virtually no chance of offseting unfavorable trends/migration patterns (which is quite clearly not the case in CT-2 and CT-5, both of which lag well behind national trends/realignment as far as potential R gains are concerned).

The thing is that CT-05 is not R trending.  Biden did better here than Obama in 2012.

[Mr.Phips]

Dems were able to hold CT-05 even in 2010 and 2014 and generally have seen less drop off here in bad midterms than in other districts. Biden won here by 11 in 2020. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this a low to mid single digit race, but would be really shocked if it flipped.

There are plenty of districts of the kind you just described (held by the dominant party even in wave years for the other party) that nonetheless ended up flipping at some point (ME-2, MN-3, MN-7, TX-32, etc.) because national trends finally caught up with the dominant party in regions/seats which had withstood them before.

The problem with this reasoning is that CT-05 isn't trending Republican. It voted ~5 points left of the nation in 2012 and ~6 points left of the nation in 2020. Some will argue it's trending D, I'd argue it's generally flat given rural and suburban trends cancelling each other out.

CT-02, on the other hand, is going to be a problem in the long run.

Dems need to really hope Courtney doesn’t retire this year.