Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, Tennessee Republicans unveiled a new map that would split up Memphis among multiple districts and virtually guarantee that all nine representatives from the state will be Republicans. This is a harbinger of future maps elsewhere that will be winner-take-all, like the electoral college.
Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) called the legislature into a special session last Friday and they got to work getting rid of the one Democrat in their House delegation, Steve Cohen, who represents Memphis and is white. Memphis has 388,000 Black and 152,000 white voters. TN-09, which contains Memphis and some northern suburbs, is 60% Black and 25% white. It was D+23. Charlie Cook hasn't calculated the new PVI yet, but there are enough new Republican areas added that it will be virtually impossible for Cohen to win reelection. Here is the old map:
Here is the new map.
As you can see, Memphis, in the far southwest part of the state, has been split up and incorporated into three districts: the new TN-05, TN-08, and TN-09. The latter is almost disjoint from Cohen's old district. Also, more Republicans have been added to TN-05, Andy Ogles' district, because Democrats were planning to target him. Now that is impossible.
The map is heavily gerrymandered, but it doesn't have the classic lizard shape of other gerrymanders because Tennessee is so heavily Republican (read: white) that even a map that respects county boundaries will produce deep-red districts. The only problem was Memphis, so it was split among three districts. Problem solved. You may have recalled from high school history class something about the rotten boroughs in 19th century England. Think of Tennessee creating its own rotten boroughs using computer-assisted mapmaking. At least the British ones more-or-less happened organically as towns that became depopulated over time still had representatives in the House of Commons, even though nobody lived there anymore. (V)