Redistricting victims next cycle.

[Tartarus Sauce]

MA has pending legislation to get an independent commission. If that happens I think atleast 3 or 4 of the current delegation gets shafted by either double bunking (Kennedy, Lynch, Presley, Trajan?) or being drawn into more competitive districts (McGovern, Keating)

I think the commision might take into account incumbents like NJ does.

That might be difficult since 4 of them are in core Boston (Kennedy, Lynch, Presley, Clark). And the wording says that lines should respect municipal boundaries, and not be drawn to dilute voters of certain parties or race. So the 2 I most likely see are MA-2 becoming primarily a Central MA swing seat by taking Amherst/Northampton out and MA-9 becoming a south shore swing district taking New Bedford and Fall River out and adding The parts of Plymouth/E Norfolk that are in 8

Making a swing seat out of central Massachusetts is a stretch unless it was specifically designed to be a swing district, and the Democratic legislature has no incentive to do so. You have to draw the lines in a very deliberate manner to get a true swing district out of central Mass.

A swing district in the southeast is probably the best that Republicans could hope for.

[Tartarus Sauce]

MA has pending legislation to get an independent commission. If that happens I think atleast 3 or 4 of the current delegation gets shafted by either double bunking (Kennedy, Lynch, Presley, Trajan?) or being drawn into more competitive districts (McGovern, Keating)

I think the commision might take into account incumbents like NJ does.

That might be difficult since 4 of them are in core Boston (Kennedy, Lynch, Presley, Clark). And the wording says that lines should respect municipal boundaries, and not be drawn to dilute voters of certain parties or race. So the 2 I most likely see are MA-2 becoming primarily a Central MA swing seat by taking Amherst/Northampton out and MA-9 becoming a south shore swing district taking New Bedford and Fall River out and adding The parts of Plymouth/E Norfolk that are in 8

Making a swing seat out of central Massachusetts is a stretch unless it was specifically designed to be a swing district, and the Democratic legislature has no incentive to do so. You have to draw the lines in a very deliberate manner to get a true swing district out of central Mass.

A swing district in the southeast is probably the best that Republicans could hope for.

 "Proportional Representation"


1. D+18 (Springfield, Amherst) NEAL
2. R+1 (Fitchburg, Ludlow) OPEN SEAT
3. D+15 (Worcester, Waltham) MCGOVERN
4. D+19 (Quincy, Newton) KENNEDY
5. D+13 (Malden, Lynn) MOULTON vs CLARK
6. D+7 (Lowell, Lawrence) TRAHAN
7. D+34 (Boston, Cambridge) PRESLEY vs LYNCH (Lynch retires or runs for Senate)
8. EVEN (Weymouth, Taunton) OPEN SEAT
9. D+6 (New Bedford, Plymouth) KEATING

"PRIORITIZE COMPETITION"


1. Springfield, Amherst (D+18) NEAL
2. Worcester, Gardner (D+2) MCGOVERN (way too liberal for this MA-2)
3. Lowell, Fitchburg (D+3) TRAHAN
4. Quincy, Newton (D+19) KENNEDY
5. Framingham, Waltham (D+17) CLARK
6. Lawrence, Lynn (D+10) MOULTON
7. Boston, Cambridge (D+34) PRESLEY vs LYNCH (again, Lynch probably retires or runs for Senate)
8. Fall River, New Bedford (D+4) OPEN
9. Weymouth, Plymouth (D+2) KEATING

Districts 2, 3, 8, and 9 could be highly competitive seats

Like I said, you have to deliberately draw the maps with maximizing competition in mind. Getting 4 competitive seats for Republicans is a pipe dream in reality.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Like I said, you have to deliberately draw the maps with maximizing competition in mind. Getting 4 competitive seats for Republicans is a pipe dream in reality.

This why we need an expanded House. A 12 or 13 seat MA, makes drawing three or four lean seats for the GOP very easy.

As somebody who usually draws 13 seat Massachusetts maps, it really isn’t without blatant gerrymandering. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to get an even slightly R leaning seat outiright without gerrymandering even with 13 seats. The Republicans are simply too inefficiently distributed throughout the state outside of the southeast and Democrats have respectable floors just about everywhere, falling below 40 percent of the vote in only a handful of towns. I tend to draw my districts with compactness in mind, attempt to group together logical communities of interest, and try not to split towns, all of which actually leads me to make districts less Democratic than they potentially could be, especially outside the core Boston metro. It is not even close to enough on its own to make a seat actually lean right even slightly. Southeast comes closest, but still usually ends up between D+1-2.5