Ron Paul Won't Seek Reelection For Congressional Seat In 2012

Representative Ron Paul has announced he will not seek reelection for his congressional seat in 2012 after serving for almost 24 years.

He will instead focus on his bid for presidency in the 2012 election, attempting to be the GOP nominee to go up against Barack Obama who is campaigning to be reelected.

“I felt it was better that I concentrate on one election,” Paul said. “It’s about that time when I should change tactics.”

His announcement will give enough time for anyone with aspirations for his seat to think about running, he said. Paul didn’t want to wait for filing in the 2012 primary to let people know he wasn’t seeking reelection.

“I didn’t want to hold off until in December,” he said. “I thought it shouldn’t be any later than now.”

Paul has served 12 terms in Congress. District 14 encompasses a 10-county area along the Gulf Coast.

“The people in the area have supported me for many years,” he said.

The Hill reports:

Paul is seen still as a relatively long-shot candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012; he ranks as the choice of 7 percent of Republican primary voters, according to the latest Gallup poll. The latest poll in Iowa pegs him at 6 percent among likely GOP caucus-goers, and he checks in at 7 percent in New Hampshire, good enough for third place.

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The Republican Messaging Problem

We find it amazing that the Democrats and the mass media are not making a big deal out of how much trouble the Republicans are in at the moment. Even liberal leaning pundits seem to think that the Bin Laden bounce for Obama has run its course. We do not know where they get this idea because we cannot find one poll that is not positive for Obama and they actually are getting stronger for Obama with every passing day. If the presidential election were to be held now, Obama would be a shoo-in.

Now it is true that the Democrats and the media tried to convince the public that the special election held in New York's district 26 showed that the Ryan budget plan is the kiss of death for the Republicans in 2012 and most pundits did not buy that. The problem is not with the Ryan budget plan but rather with the Republican messaging. They are trying to sell it as as a necessary reform to balance the budget. They keep pushing that line and not only will they not gain control of the Senate in 2012, but they will not defeat Obama and will come close to losing the House of Representatives as well.

At the time of the 2010 elections, the generic congressional ballot was running from 7 to 15 points in favor of the Republicans depending upon which poll you looked at. Right now our average of those polls is actually slightly in favor of the Democrats. Clearly the Republicans have a gigantic messaging problem. How about a message that proclaims they are try to SAVE Medicare before it goes bankrupt? Is that too much to ask of the Republican leadership? The voters voted for Republicans in 2010 in hopes that the Republicans would jam the brakes on all that the Democrats had done in the previous two years.

What have they gotten in exchange for this vain hope? They have gotten Democrat-lite from the Republicans instead. As Obama has said, Democrats bring a gun to a knife fight. The Republicans do not bring a knife or even martial arts to the fight. The Republicans are wimps and they have no clue on how to go for the Democrat jugular. The Democrats run ads proclaiming that the Republicans are trying to destroy Medicare and kill granny. How do the Republicans respond? They point to charts and figures that there is a problem with the financing of Medicare. How about proclaiming that the Democrats are sitting idly by while Medicare goes broke and that this is what will kill granny?

Republicans seem to think that the baby steps they have taken towards controlling government spending are all it takes to win public approval. How about wielding a meat axe instead? Whole departments need to be axed as they are doing more harm than good. Polls showed that a majority of the likely voters did not have a problem with shutting down all but the essential parts of the federal government if that was what it took to get the Democrat's attention to their habit of spending other people's money like a whole carrier group of druken sailors. What did the Republicans give them instead? They gave them cuts that did not even come to the amount the government borrowed while they were arguing about it.

The debt ceiling hike is the last chance the Republicans have to make good on their promises for the 2010 elections. They have just one chance to make believers out of the voting public that they are serious about cutting government spending. They need to refuse to raise the debt limit no matter what cuts the Democrats agree to. The public will support this stand. The folks in Congress need to learn to live within their means just like everyone else has had to do. The Republican leadership (and that means you, Mitch McConnell) need to get in the Democrats' face and stay there no matter how much the media beats up on them for doing that. Frankly, we doubt that the Republicans have the guts to do this and that means that we get four more years of Obama and continued Democrat control of the Senate and perhaps the Democrats regaining control of the House to boot.

YouCut Phase ll And Spending Cuts Dollar For Dollar Equal To Raise In Debt Limit

YouCut Phase 2 was unveiled Wednesday and works much like the original YouCut with a few additional advantages.

The Daily Caller explains:

“This updated version builds upon the success of the original YouCut program by allowing Americans to vote on a spending cut, and track the legislation in real-time, from introduction by a member of our freshman class, through the committee process, to a floor vote and ideally to enactment,” Cantor said.

The initial numbers for YouCut were quite impressive with 500,000 votes each round and Republicans are hoping to double that amount of participation from the general public.

The three options for this week for the public to vote on what spending to cut are Terminate the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation which would save $60 million, Terminate U.S. Contributions to the Asian Development Fund which would save $356 million or Terminate U.S. Contributions to the United Nations Population Fund which would save $400 million.

Below your vote option is a place where you can suggest your own ideas for spending cuts.

When the first version of YouCut was unveiled, Democrats controlled the House so Republicans could suggest a vote on the winning spending cut but was often refused the opportunity to bring it to the House floor by Nancy Pelosi who was Speaker of the House at that time.

Now that Republicans control the House, these votes will come to the floor and the newly improved site will allow you to track the progress of the cut, see when it comes to the floor, if it passed and the public can continue to participate by following up by encouraging your Senate reps to bring it to the floor. (Senate is still controlled by Democrats, so those calls will be important)

Democrats are fast to criticize the YouCut idea because the cuts are a drop in the bucket in comparison to the overall federal deficit.

Freshman Austin Scott of Georgia responds "Well, that’s fine. Lets get started. We didn’t get into this situation overnight. And we’re not gonna get out of it overnight. Nobody’s gonna wave a magic wand one night and we’re gonna wake up tomorrow and everything’s gonna be OK fiscally."

I have pointed out before and it is worth repeating. You put a bucket under a leak, each drop may be small in comparison to the size of the bucket itself, but as they all drip in, eventually the bucket fills up.

Nobody is going to pretend that each cut, individually, is going to fix our deficit problems and by the same token, Scott is correct, we didn't get this far into debt overnight so any and all cut must be accompanied by a concrete long term fiscal plan.

Human beings are hard wired into wanting to see results instantly but any savings, spending cuts and long term budget deficit plan is going to have to account for long term spending cuts where the results are not only seen instantly but where a change in spending set the standard in the long run.

So a plan to cut trillions isn't and shouldn't be trillions right this second but should be spread out so that over the course of time so that Washington is reprogrammed to spend less.

We could cut trillions right this second but without a spending plan for the future, we would simply be making a one time cut and the deficit would be rising again at an unsustainable level by the time the next budget comes up for a vote.

Debt Ceiling

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has made it clear that if Obama wants a debt limit increase it will be dollar for dollar, hand in hand with spending cuts to equal the amount of the increase.

Boehner took the ambitious stand in negotiations to raise America’s debt ceiling while speaking to the Economic Club of New York, saying, “Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase. And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given.”

While the Treasury Department has yet to specify exactly the size of the increase Congress will need to approve for the $14.3 trillion debt limit, estimates are currently settling in around $2 trillion. That means, according to Speaker Boehner, that the White House and congressional Democrats would have to agree to spending cuts equal to at least $2 trillion as well.

The only thing “off the table” is tax increases, said Boehner. Everything else – including entitlements — will be subject to spending cuts.

Washington has spent decades learning the bad habit of spending more money than America has, then borrowing even more so they can spend even more. Anyone living on a budget knows that is not only unsustainable but if Washington was a household, that family would be homeless, unable to put food on the table, their credit cards taken away and their credit rating would be shot for a decade.

Politicians need to be retrained.

Republicans were thrown out of power by doing the very same thing and apparently they learned their lesson because not only did they promise while campaigning for the 2010 midterms to be fiscally responsible and force spending cuts, but after winning the largest net seats in the House of Representatives in over 70 years and being handed control of it, they are still fighting tooth and nail against Democrats to keep those campaign promises.

Now it is time to retrain the Democrats and if they continue to fight again fiscal responsibility, well, the 2012 elections can take care of that.

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Ballot Box: GOP In 'Solid Shape' To Take Control Of Senate In 2012

Via The Hill:

An early spate of Democratic Senate retirements has put Republicans in solid shape to retake the majority in the upper chamber next year.

The first edition of The Hill's 2012 race ratings puts five Democratic-held seats in the toss-up column. Republicans need a net gain of at least three seats to win the Senate.

Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) are the two incumbents that top of the list of vulnerable Senate Democrats in 2012. And, thanks to retirements, another three Democratic-held seats are toss-ups -- the ones held by Sens. Kent Conrad (N.D.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.) and Jim Webb (Va.).

In 2012, Democrats will have to protect 23 Senate seats and Republicans only 10, the breakdown as follows, according to Ballot Box's Race Ratings:

Democratic Seats (23)

Safe Democratic: (8)
Feinstein (Calif.)
Carper (Del.)
Cardin (Md.)
Klobuchar (Minn.)
Menendez (N.J.)
Gillibrand (N.Y.)
Whitehouse (R.I.)
Sanders (Vt.)

Likely Democratic: (6)
Lieberman (Conn.) - OPEN
Akaka (Hawaii) - OPEN
Stabenow (Mich.)
Casey (Pa.)
Cantwell (Wash.)
Kohl (Wis.)

Lean Democratic: (4)
Nelson (Fla.)
McCaskill (Mo.)
Brown (Ohio)
Manchin (W.Va.)

Toss-up: (5)
Tester (Mont.)
Nelson (Neb.)
Bingaman (N.M.) - OPEN
Conrad (N.D.) - OPEN
Webb (Va.) - OPEN

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Republican Seats (10)

Safe Republican: (5)
Lugar (Ind.)
Wicker (Miss.)
Corker (Tenn.)
Hatch (Utah)
Barrasso (Wy.)

Likely Republican: (3)
Kyl (Ariz.) - OPEN
Snowe (Maine)
Hutchison (Texas) - OPEN

Lean Republican: (0)

Toss-up: (2)
Brown (Mass.)
Ensign (Nev.)

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Redistricting Louisiana

Since Louisiana has six Republican and only one Democrat Congressmen, when it loses a seat one would assume that it will come at the expense of the Republicans. Analysis shows that this does not have to be the case as a result of the effects of Hurricane Katrina. That caused a lot of damage to homes in New Orleans and resulted in a flight of a lot of people to neighboring states. However, New Orleans is the major Democrat area of the state and the loss of population has come at the expense of the Democrats. You may recall that the Democrat representing the New Orleans area was caught with his hand in the cookie jar or more accurately with the money in his freezer. That allowed a Republican, Congressman Gao, to get elected in 2008 only to be defeated in 2010 when the Democrat candidate was scandal free.

It turns out that ex-Congressman Gao can get his seat back if the Republican controlled state legislature redistricts the state in a certain way. Since there is a Republican governor one can assume he would not veto such a bill. Still when a state loses a seat, unless one incumbent retires, two congressmen have to run against each other, namely the two that live closest to each other. In this case, that turns out to be two Republican congressmen who live in adjoining parishes (that's what they call counties in Louisiana). Perhaps either Congressmen Landry or Boustany would rather retire. Here is how Louisiana can be redistricted to produce six Republican congressmen and freeze the Democrats out:

That blue area below the large white area (Lake Pontchartrain) is New Orleans. The white dots that represent where the various congressmen live and you will see two right together below the lake. That is because Republican Congressman Scalise lives in Metarie which is a suburb of New Orleans where Congressman Richmond lives. By taking the area north of the lake out of Congressman Scalise's district and giving it to Congressman Richmond and giving the area south of New Orleans to Congressman Scalise, the result would be six Republican districts as the following table demonstrates:

New Congressional Districts Figures

Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation	Dem Votes	Rep Votes
Scalise (R)	752,449	-3,113	-0.4120%	60,733	132,377
Richmond (D)	757,037	+1,475	+0.1952%	90,360	122,405
Landry - Boustany (R)	757,466	+1,904	+0.2520%	85,606	133,742
Fleming (R)	757,130	+1,568	+0.2075%	59,108	128,592
Alexander (R)	756,436	+874	+0.1157%	59,371	148,628
Cassidy (R)	752,854	-2,708	-0.3584%	98,201	178,955
Total/Average	4,533,372	+/-1,940.3	+/-0.2568%	453,379	844,699

We never had to split a parish to get totals close enough to the equal population figure of 755,562. Congressman Boustany had no Democrat opposition so we were forced to use the votes from 2008 in his district. We only plugged those figures into parishes than were not part of any other district since we have no idea of how to prorate the split parishes without a precinct map. Thus the foot totals do not add up to the correct total votes for all of the congressional candidates of both parties since no 2010 results were reported for Congressman Boustany's district. Congressman Alexander had no Democrat opponent but he did have an independent candidate in opposition so we used those results for the Democrat column which no doubt under-reports the Democrat total but would not change who won.

Redistricting New Jersey

New Jersey has lost a house seat so all of the districts in the state will have to be redrawn. When there is a loss of a House seat, unless one Congressman chooses to retire, two incumbents will have to run against each other. Will it be two congressmen from opposite parties or two from the same one and if so, which one? Unless outrageous gerrymandering takes place, where the congressmen live as opposed to where the people now live often dictates the answer. As was the case with Illinois, there are three Republican congressmen who live too close to each other. Both Houses of the state legislature are controlled by the Democrats so they will have to approve the map drawn by an independent commission. Unlike Illinois, New Jersey has a Republican governor, the infamous Governor Christie. Still all he can do is veto any plan that is totally biased in favor of the Democrats. First let's look at what the districts look like now:

As you can tell from the map, these districts have been gerrymandered at some point. The problem is that each district has an incumbent who wants to be protected and in this case, the incumbent Democrats can lean on the Democrats in the state legislature to do just that. Therefore the new map must protect those incumbent Democrats to get passed by the state legislature in the first place. When a congressman lives at one end of such a district, there is no way to cut the pie and not have the result look fairly gerrymandered. Of course, the same is not true for Republican incumbents. However, there is no need to sock it to the Republicans because the geography already dictates that they are going to lose a seat. In the following map, the white dots show where the congressmen currently live:

As you can see the purple and tan districts have three white dots which represent three incumbent congressmen. There is no way without horrible gerrymandering to prevent two of these three from running against each other. Naturally a Democrat controlled legislature has no reason to help these three Republicans out. The fact that each district has to cover more territory is bound to shore up the incumbents of both parties. The Republicans have one incumbent, Congressman Runyan, who is on the endangered list and is in the orange district. The Democrats have two such congressmen, Congressman Pallone in the dark red district and Congressman Holt in the bright green district.

Except for the bright blue district, all of the districts in the lower part of the state are in Republican territory. There is no way to weaken the three Republican incumbents with endangering either Congressman Andrews in the bright blue district or the two already endangered Democrats north of the Republican area. Thus the commission might as well shore up all the congressmen in the six southern districts and let the geography kill off one of the Republicans in the northern part as is suggested in our proposed map. We never split a county subdivision and still got close enough to the required equal population as the following table demonstrates:

New Congressional Districts Figures

Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
LoBiondo (R)	732,109	-549	+0.0749%
Andrews (D)	733,581	+923	+0.1260%
Runyan (R)	732,907	+249	+0.0340%
Smith (R)	733,625	+1,057	+0.1443%
Garrett - Felinghausen (R)	731,889	-769	-0.0965%
Pallone (D)	733,275	+707	+0.0061%
Lance (R)	731,305	-1,263	-0.1500%
Pascrell (D)	731,559	-1,099	+0.1384%
Rothman (D)	732,431	-227	-0.0310%
Payne (D)	732,119	-539	-0.0736%
Holt (D)	731,832	-826	-0.1124%
Sires (D)	734,722	+2,064	+0.2817%
Total/Average	8,791,894	+/-856	+/-0.1168%

Redistricting Illinois

One only needs to take a look at the outlines of the current Congressional districts in Illinois to see gerrymandering run wild. This kind of gerrymandering is usually caused by one party that has control of both the state legislature and the governship using their advantage to stack the deck against the other party. In the case of Illinois, both parties collaborated in the gerrymandering since neither party had total control in 2000. This resulted in really weird shaped districts like district 17. It is also a prime example of how gerrymandering can backfire because the whole purprose of district 17 was to give the Democrats control of the district and protect control of neighboring Republican districts. The problem is that redistricting only happens every ten years and a lot can happen in that time like Republicans winning this "Democrat" district in 2010. The following map of the current districts shows what happens when politicians turn into map makers:

No doubt Illinois will again see gerrymandering run wild only this time just for the benefit of the Democrat Party since it controls both houses of the state legislature and the governorship. Actually there is no need for the Democrats to do this because just drawing nice neat districts will cause the Republicans to lose House seats. That last exercise in gerrymandering is what gave the Republicans their current 11 seats compared to only 8 for the Democrats. There is no way the Republicans in a blue state like Illinois should control that many districts and it is only because of gerrymandering that backfired that they do. Illinois has lost a congressional district because of the 2010 Census and all of these districts must be redrawn as a result. The Republicans are going to lose at least two seats and maybe three and at least two Republicans will have to run against each other no matter how much gerrymandering takes place.

That being the case how about a really strange idea? Why not let a geographical area that votes Democrat have a Democrat congressman and an area that votes Republican have a Republican one? That way everyone will get what they are voting for to the maximum extent possible instead of trying to stack the deck in favor of an outcome that will probably change in the next ten years anyway. We have prepared a map that does that as a guide to how playing the game fairly lets the chips fall where they may. Here is our suggestion:

The white dots show the location of the homes of the current congress people from Illinois. As you can see there are four white dots in the area of the purple, brown and dark blue districts. All four are Republican and there is no way they can be separated without more ridiculous gerrymandering. Why should a Democrat controlled state be so kind as to preserve four Republican congressmen? One Republican congressman is history no matter what happens. Two other Republican Congressmen barely got elected in districts 8 and 10 (the two in the upper right hand corner). One of them is in a district that was carried by Obama by 12 points so he is likely history in any case. As to whether Congressman Dold can survive no matter how his 10th district is drawn is questionable but there is no way to insure his defeat without endangering Congresswoman Schakowsky in district 9.

Our plan makes no attempt to draw the 6 districts for Chicago (the bright blue area) since it will come down to what the six Democrat congress people want to do there and it has no partisan political implications in any case. One could gerrymander things so that Congressman Costello (Dem) and Congressman Shimkus (Rep) have to run against each other at the bottom of the state since they live failrly close together but no matter how you drawn the lines, the aqua area will elect a Democrat and the orange area will elect a Republican so why bother? The 2010 Census gave Illinois a population of 12,864,380 and 18 congressional seats so ideally each district should have a population of 714,687.77. Our districts contain whole counties in southern Illinois and whole townships in Northern Illinois. Here is how our districts work out by population:

New Congressional Districts Figures

Incumbents	2010 Population	Deviation	% Deviation
Shimkus (R)	718,581	+3,893	+0.5471%
Schock (R) - Schilling (R)	714,010	-678	-0.0949%
Manzullo (R)	713,052	-1,636	-0.2289%
Johnson (R)	715,793	+1,105	+0.1546%
Hultgren (R)	712,455	-2,233	-0.3124%
Biggert (R)	710,287	-4,401	-0.6158%
Costello (D)	717,910	+3,222	+0.5408%
Kinzinger (R)	709,271	-5,417	-0.7580%
Dold (R)	720,446	+5,758	+0.8057%
Walsh (R)	715,176	+488	+0.0683%
Roskam (R)	712,098	-2,590	-0.3624%
Lipinski (D)	707,888	-6,800	-0.9515%
Total/Average	8,566,967	+/-3,185	+/-0.4534%

Reapportionment and the House

One of the big problems in predicting how the House races will turn out in 2012 is that all of the states except Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming must reapportion their House districts to allow for changes in where the people in their state now live according to the 2010 Census. Those seven states have such a small population that they only have one Congressional District that is the entire state so there is nothing to adjust. Making matters even tougher is that many states have either lost or gained House seats and must then change every district to allow for that.

The other pertinent fact is that this reapportionment process will be gerrymandered to benefit one political party if that political party controls the state legislature and the governorship. To see how all of this will effect the partisan balance in the House in 2013, we need to know several things. Which states are controlled by which party or is it split? What is the present partisan breakout of a state's congressional delegation. Is there a change in the number of seats that the state has? What was the margin in 2010 of all the House seats added together in favor of one party or the other. All of that information is set forth in the following table:

State	2010 Margin	Legis Control	Governor	House Dems	House Reps	Change	Net Gain
Vermont	32.54%	Dem	Dem	1	0		0
Massachusetts	27.70%	Dem	Dem	10	0	-1	0
Maryland	26.93%	Dem	Dem	6	2		0
Hawaii	24.57%	Dem	Dem	2	0		0
New York	21.20%	Split	Dem	21	8	-2	DR-1
Connecticut	18.97%	Dem	Dem	5	0		0
Rhode Island	18.46%	Dem	Dem	2	0		0
Delaware	15.74%	Dem	Dem	1	0		0
Maine	12.07%	Rep	Rep	2	0		0
California	10.81%	Dem	Dem	34	19		0
Illinois	7.14%	Dem	Dem	8	11	-1	R-1
Washington	6.75%	Dem	Dem	5	4	+1	D+1
Oregon	3.99%	Split	Dem	4	1		0
New Mexico	3.32%	Dem	Rep	2	1		0
Minnesota	2.04%	Rep	Dem	4	4		0
Pennsylvania	0.53%	Rep	Rep	7	12	-1	D-1
New Jersey	0.64%	Dem	Rep	7	6	-1	R-1
South Dakota	2.23%	Rep	Rep	0	1		0
Colorado	5.27%	Split	Dem	3	4		0
New Hampshire	6.88%	Rep	Dem	0	2		0
Nevada	6.90%	Dem	Rep	1	2	+1	D+1
Michigan	7.68%	Rep	Rep	6	9	-1	D-1
North Dakota	9.81%	Rep	Rep	0	1		0
Mississippi	10.02%	Rep	Rep	1	3		0
Ohio	11.75%	Rep	Rep	5	13	-2	DR-1
North Carolina	11.78%	Rep	Dem	7	6		0
Wisconsin	11.90%	Rep	Rep	3	5		R+1
Arizona	12.46%	Rep	Rep	3	5	+1	R+1
Virginia	12.57%	Split	Rep	3	8		0
Iowa	13.12%	Split	Rep	3	2	-1	D-1
West Virginia	13.21%	Dem	Dem	1	2		R-1
South Carolina	16.14%	Rep	Rep	1	5	+1	R+1
Arkansas	17.28%	Dem	Dem	1	3		0
Indiana	18.78%	Rep	Rep	3	6		R+1
Missouri	19.71%	Rep	Dem	3	6	-1	R-1
Florida	20.70%	Rep	Rep	6	19	+2	DR+1
Montana	26.57%	Rep	Dem	0	1		0
Idaho	27.82%	Rep	Rep	0	2		0
Kentucky	28.41%	Split	Dem	2	4		0
Tennessee	28.75%	Rep	Rep	2	7		0
Georgia	31.29%	Rep	Rep	5	8	+1	R+1
Utah	31.29%	Rep	Rep	1	2	+1	R+1
Kansas	31.45%	Rep	Rep	0	4		0
Louisiana	33.79%	Split	Rep	1	6	-1	R-1
Texas	34.72%	Rep	Rep	9	23	+4	R+3
Oklahoma	35.27%	Rep	Rep	1	4		0
Alaska	38.44%	Split	Rep	0	1		0
Nebraska	40.02%	Rep	Rep	0	3		0
Alabama	43.03%	Rep	Rep	1	6		0
Wyoming	45.94%	Rep	Rep	0	1		0

So what does all this information tell us? If you see two Dems in the party columns, then the Democrats can gerrymander the reapportionment process to benefit their party and hurt the Republicans. Likewise if you see two Reps in those columns, the opposite is true. There are 12 states controlled by the Democrats, but in 7 of them, the Republicans do not have any seats to be taken away from them. There are 22 states controlled by the Republicans but 6 of them do not have any Democrat seats to damage. The rest are split and the reapportionment process most likely will wind up in court if a compromise cannot be hammered out in the state legislature that also gets the governor to sign the bill.

It is the states that are gaining or losing more than one seat where gerrymandering can have the biggest effect. Texas is gaining 4 seats and is controlled by the Republicans but since the Democrats only have nine seats, it is hard to see how the Republicans can pick up any of the Democrat seats especially when they need to shore up districts 23 and 27 where the winning margin was under 5%. On the contrary, if they try to get greedy and make all four new seats Republican, they endanger holding ones they already have. The wisest course is to go for three to be Republican and let the Democrats have the fourth one. Thus the best the Republicans can hope for is a gain of 3 seats.

Florida is gaining two seats and it is controlled by the Republicans. Since the Democrats only have six seats it is hard to see how the Republicans can do any better than to split the two new seats with the Democrats. The same thing is true in Ohio only each party will have to lose a seat. If the Republicans controlled New York both seats that must be lost would come out of the Democrat majority. Since control is split, the most likely result will be a compromise in which each party loses a seat. Our best guess is that reapportionment will give the Republicans four new seats on top of whatever other gains or loses they might otherwise get.