Redistricting updates (and, of course, Texas)

Welcome to the Wednesday, March 2, Brew.

By: Samuel Wonacott

Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:

Redistricting roundup: The latest news from Louisiana and Ohio
Texas primary election results
President Joe Biden’s approval at 41%, congressional approval at 20%

Redistricting roundup: The latest news from Louisiana and Ohio

We’re back with another redistricting update—this time from Louisiana and Ohio.

To date, 36 states have adopted congressional district maps.

Meanwhile, 37 states have adopted legislative district maps.

Now, let’s look at the news out of Louisiana and Ohio.

Louisiana

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) has until March 14 to sign or veto the legislature’s new congressional and legislative maps, or allow them to become law without his signature. The legislature approved those maps during a special legislative session that ended Feb. 18. If Edwards does not act by March 14, the maps will automatically become law.

Republicans have majorities in both chambers of the Louisiana Legislature.

Regarding the state’s congressional map, The Advocate’s Blake Paterson wrote, “Republicans passed two identical maps — Senate Bill 5 and House Bill 1 — that would maintain the status quo of a single majority-Black district and would all but guarantee Louisiana sends five Republicans and one Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives in the congressional midterms this fall.”

After the Legislature approved the maps, Gov. Edwards said, “I remain adamant that the maps should reflect the growth of the African American population in our state over the last 10 years…and I do have concerns that several of the maps do not fulfill that moral and legal requirement.”

The congressional redistricting bill passed the state Senate, 27-10, strictly along party lines. The state House of Representatives approved it 64-31, with 61 Republicans, two independents, and one Democrat voting in favor and 27 Democrats, three Republicans, and one independent voting against.

Ohio

The Ohio Redistricting Commission voted 4-3 to approve new legislative district boundaries on Feb. 24 and plaintiffs had until Feb. 28 to file objections to those maps with the Ohio Supreme Court. The commission has until March 3 to respond to those objections before the court rules on the constitutionality of the maps, which is expected next week.

According to Cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias, “The maps the redistricting commission approved on Thursday favor Republicans to win 54% and Democrats to win 46% of Ohio’s state legislative districts. That matches the percentage of the statewide vote each party got during the last decade’s worth of statewide, partisan elections.” The Springfield News-Sun’s Jim Ganes wrote that groups challenging the maps say that “19 House and seven Senate seats lean Democratic by less than 4%, while no Republican districts are that close.

In two 4-3 rulings on Jan. 12 and Feb. 7, the Ohio Supreme Court struck down commission-passed legislative maps for not adhering to the state’s 2015 constitutional amendment that created a bipartisan state legislative redistricting commission. The amendment requires that the districts are contiguous and forbids district plans from favoring or disfavoring either political party.

The redistricting commission also met on March 1 to draw new congressional district boundaries. The state supreme court ruled 4-3 on Jan. 14 that the map state lawmakers approved was unconstitutional. The Columbus Dispatch’s Jessie Balmert wrote that “Ohio’s GOP-controlled Legislature passed a map in November that could have given the GOP a 12-3 advantage.”

The candidate filing deadline for major-party congressional and legislative candidates in Ohio is March 4.

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We’ve got Texas primary election results

Yesterday, Texas voters decided a raft of federal, state, and local Republican and Democratic primaries, and our team worked late into the night to collect those results and monitor the most significant developments.

In tomorrow’s Brew, we’ll bring you in-depth coverage of the biggest storylines from the Texas races. You can also subscribe to The Heart of the Primaries, our weekly dive into key congressional, legislative, and executive races. This week’s edition will go out tomorrow, so click here to sign up!

In the meantime, check out our March 1 election hub to see all the latest results from Texas, Vermont, and other states that held elections.

If you’re interested in seeing results from our key Texas battleground races, click on the links below:

Additionally, click here for Texas Senate election results and here for Texas House of Representatives election results.

Texas is the only state with a statewide primary in March. April, with no statewide primaries, is the calm before the storm. The primary schedule gets more crowded in May and June, when a combined 30 states will hold primaries.

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President Joe Biden’s approval at 41%, congressional approval at 20%

Last night, President Joe Biden (D) delivered the annual State of the Union address before Congress. With that in mind, let’s turn to the latest presidential and congressional approval ratings.

As of March 1, Ballotpedia’s polling index shows Biden at 41% approval and 54% disapproval. Biden’s approval rating peaked at 55% on May 26, 2021. His lowest rating came on Feb. 18, when it reached 40%.

Congress was at 20% approval and 67% disapproval. At this time last month, its approval rating was 17%. The highest approval rating this Congress has received is 36%, on July 16, 2021, and the lowest approval rating it has received is 14%, on Jan. 26.

Ballotpedia’s polling index takes the average of polls conducted over the last thirty days to calculate presidential and congressional approval ratings. We average the results and show all polling results side-by-side because we believe that paints a clearer picture of public opinion than any individual poll can provide. The data is updated daily as new polling results are published.

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