Date: 2024-08-16 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00020272
US Politics
Election 2020 Data
Daily Kos Elections ... With polarization at a peak, the number of House 'crossover districts' is at its lowest in a century
Peter Burgess
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uoLpGL13OehM1NHx5a3Qb-aWJoF_s6JBDDvFKRnZd44/edit#gid=1424790138
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/11/19/1163009/-Daily-Kos-Elections-presidential-results-by-congressional-district-for-the-2012-2008-elections
With polarization at a peak, the number of House 'crossover districts' is at its lowest in a century Recommend 56 Share Tweet38 Comments 38 New 2020Pres-by-CD-Pennsylvania.png RSS PUBLISHED TO David Nir Daily Kos Elections TAGS PA-01 PA-03 PA-08 PA-17 Pennsylvania Pres-by-CD Share this article
Our project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for all 435 House seats nationwide concludes, appropriately enough, with Pennsylvania, the state whose electoral votes sealed Joe Biden’s victory four days after Election Day. You can find our detailed calculations here, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uoLpGL13OehM1NHx5a3Qb-aWJoF_s6JBDDvFKRnZd44/edit#gid=1424790138 a large-size map of the results here, and https://images.dailykos.com/images/919047/original/2020Pres-by-CD-Pennsylvania.png?1613757771 our permanent, bookmarkable link for all districts here. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/11/19/1163009/-Daily-Kos-Elections-presidential-results-by-congressional-district-for-the-2012-2008-elections
With figures from the Keystone State in hand, we now know that Biden carried 224 congressional districts while Donald Trump prevailed in 211. That’s very close to the 222-213 split between House Democrats and Republicans that emerged from the November elections, which is due to the fact that both parties occupy a similar number of so-called “crossover” districts: Seven Democrats hold seats that Trump won while nine Republicans represent districts that went for Biden.
The number of crossover districts—16 in total—is extremely low by historical standards but continues a downward trend reflecting our nation’s increased political polarization. Following the 2016 elections there were 35 crossover seats, which was an increase from 2012 but a steep drop from the 83 produced by the 2008 Democratic wave. For much of the post-war era, there were 100 or more such districts, according to the Brookings Institution—to find a lower proportion in a presidential year, you have to go back to the GOP landslide of 1920, when there were just 11 crossovers.
These districts are now concentrated in just 11 states—as you can readily see in our “hexmap” that displays all districts at the same size—but Pennsylvania holds the unique distinction of being the only state in the nation that’s home to both a “Biden-Republican” and a “Trump-Democrat” seat: the 1st and 8th districts, respectively.
The 1st, located in the Philadelphia suburbs, is held by Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a perpetual Democratic target who’s always managed to run ahead of the top of the ticket. He did so again in 2020 even as his district went from a 49-47 advantage for Hillary Clinton to a wider 52-47 win for Biden. Fitzpatrick nonetheless held off Democrat Christina Finello by a healthy 56-43 margin.
The 8th, anchored by Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in the northeastern part of the state, also got bluer, though it still went for Trump: In 2016, it supported him 53-44 but this time backed him by a much narrower 52-47 spread. Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright hung on by outperforming Biden, beating Republican Jim Bognet 52-48.
But Pennsylvania also contributed to the decline in crossover seats on account of the fact that the 17th District, based in the Pittsburgh suburbs, flipped from supporting Trump 49-47 to backing Biden 51-48. Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb, who is now considering a bid for Senate, was fortunate to hold off Republican Sean Parnell in a tight 51-49 race.
At the other end of the state, the heart of Philadelphia yielded up the undisputed new holder of the title “bluest district in America.” That now belongs to Democratic Rep. Dwight Evans’ 3rd District, a majority-Black district that backed Biden by a thunderous 91-8 margin. That just edges out California’s 13th District, held by Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, which favored Biden 89-9. It also displaces the 2016 champ, New York’s 15th District, which at 86-13 Biden has fallen to eighth overall.
With our efforts now complete at the congressional level, we’ll soon be turning our attention to crunching the results of the presidential election for the nation’s 6,764 legislative districts, which we expect to occupy us for quite some time.
But before we switch gears, we want to recognize a long list of people who selflessly helped us gather hard-to-find data and patiently answered our many arcane questions, folks without whom this project would never have been possible. We are particularly grateful to Derek Willis and his team at the invaluable OpenElections project, which is devoted to collecting and publicizing election results, and Benjamin Rosenblatt of Tidal Wave Strategies, who's been tireless in his efforts to track down data from every county in New York.
We are also indebted to:
- the incomparable Adam Bonin for all those Pennsylvania counties he carries in his pocket like so many nickels and dimes;
- Jeanne Albert, who's been graciously pestering local officials on our behalf for years;
- Gabe Rosenberg for working his magic at the Connecticut secretary of state's office;
- our data collection volunteers: Mike Piel, Dovid Holtzman, Neal Traven, Graham Crowe, Jason Parsley, and John Ray;
- TC McCarthy and John Tomanelli at Newsday for making the impossible Nassau County happen;
- Aaron Kleinman at Future Now and his team of data collectors, Kim Beck and Lisa Goldenberg Corn;
- Shiro Kuriwaki for teaching us about cast vote records; and
- Jacob Alperin-Sheriff, Ben Forstate, Venkat Ranjan, Jayanth Uppaluri, Lisa Needham, Jeff Smith, Arik Wolk, and James Newton.
P.S. We have one final request for all readers: If you use our data, we’d be very appreciative if you’d cite Daily Kos Elections by name and link to us. Thank you!