Wait, Oregon Has Six Congressional Districts Now?!?
Redistricting pretty significantly rewired Oregon’s congressional map. Most notably, the Beaver State gained a House seat thanks to Oregon’s population growth in the 2020 census; today is the first election ever held for Oregon’s 6th Congressional District. (Still sounds weird to say!)
The Democrats who controlled state redistricting also pushed through a great map for themselves overall. It has four Democratic-leaning seats vs. just one Republican-leaning seat and just one highly competitive seat (the 5th). They drew the new 6th to elect a Democrat, and they made the 4th District, which used to have a FiveThirtyEight partisan lean of R+1, a D+9 seat as well.
As a result, in most years going forward, we’d expect Oregon to elect five Democrats and just one Republican to Congress, despite being more like a 55-45 Democratic state. However, this year could be different. Because the 4th and 6th districts are just slightly Democratic-leaning, it’s not crazy to think that Republicans could flip them (along with the 5th) in a “red wave” election, which would give them a 4-2 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.