After the successful Soto Palmer v. Hobbs Voting Rights Act lawsuit, Washington State finally finished its second state legislative district redistricting process this decade, with new state legislative district maps sent to the Secretary of State for the 2024 election. Unlike the first redistricting process for 2020, however, these maps were drawn with substantive consultation from communities of color and fully comply with the Federal Voting Rights Act.
This is because the first redistricting process was conducted by a legally-fraught bipartisan commission of two Democrat and two Republican voting members that drew a racist, illegal gerrymander barring Latinos from their right to elect candidates of their choice.
Latino voters brought a Section II Voting Rights Act lawsuit against the State just weeks after the bipartisan Commission unanimously passed their gerrymander. Then last August, federal district court judge Robert Lasnik ruled in favor Latino voters and ordered the State to draw a new legislative map ahead of the 2024 elections. Instead of recalling the very commission that passed the initial illegal maps, the State opted to let the courts redraw a legal map that meets the requirements laid out in the Voting Rights Act.
Now that the remedial process is completed, Latinos in Yakima and Pasco have the ability to elect candidates of their choice to Olympia for the first time in history in the new 14th Legislative District.
While this decision — and subsequent map — is already being appealed by right-wing groups, those appeals won’t be settled until far after the map deadline for the 2024 election. Thus, these new maps will almost certainly be used in 2024 to elect the next State Legislature for the 2025–2026 legislative sessions.
The bulk of the consequential changes in this new map revolve around Latino and Native communities in Central Washington, namely the 14th and 15th Districts.
In the old map used 2022, the 15th District was the faux-Latino district with a population of 73% Latino and 77% people of color (POC) according to the 2020 US Census.
However, of eligible voters, only 51% were Latino and 57% POC. In the new 2024 map, the 15th district got relabeled as the 14th District.
This was intentional and important because the 14th District’s senator gets elected during presidential years with high Latino turnout whereas the 15th District elects its senator in lower-turnout midterm years.
Latinos comprise a similar 70% of its population and 50% of its eligible voters. However the new 14th District unites Latino and Native communities in the Yakama Native American Nation with shared communities of interest elsewhere in the Yakima Valley, which increases its POC population to nearly 80% and a strong 61% POC eligible voting population. This is a 4% increase in the POC eligible voting population of this district and links shared communities of interest across the Yakima Valley for the first time in decades.
These demographic changes have substantial electoral impacts.
The old 15th District typically voted Republican in both top-ticket statewide contests and down-ballot legislative contests. Democratic Governor Jay Inslee and US Senator Maria Cantwell both lost the old 15th, and Democratic President Joe Biden only barely bested former Republican President Donald Trump by fewer than 100 votes.
Conversely, the new 14th District’s more diverse population typically votes for Democrats. Biden won the new 14th District by double digits (57%-41%) in 2020, with Inslee winning by a similarly large margin. In 2018, a lower-turnout midterm year, Cantwell also won by double digits (55%-45%).
So historically, Democrats easily won this new majority-Latino 14th District and would be a near automatic pickup for Democrats in 2024.
But it’s not as easy as it appears anymore.
Democratic U.S. Senator Patty Murray lost the new 14th District in 2022 by a wide margin (43%-57%). This comes after a sizable evaporation in Latino Democratic support and Latino turnout in the 2022 midterms. This Latino Democratic decrease is a part of a greater national trend, with some 2024 polls showing Trump leading Biden among Latinos.
To flip the 14th, Democrats must substantially increase their grassroots presence and funding to the new 14th District and its Latino and Native communities across Central Washington. Despite Senator Murray’s strong 57%-43% statewide victory, her 15% loss in this historically blue new district proves Democrats cannot take this district — namely, Latino support — for granted.
The 14th and 15th Districts weren’t the only districts that were redrawn.
To allow for a compliant Latino-opportunity district, several other districts changed. In fact, thirteen of the state’s forty-nine legislative districts were changed. Most of the impacted districts are surrounding rural, heavily-Republican districts east of the Cascade Mountains. Generally, these already-red districts got slightly redder.
However there are a few noteworthy shifts: the swingy 5th, 12th, and 17th Districts all became even more purple. In particular, the blue-leaning 5th LD got about 2% more Republican; the red-leaning 12th LD got 2% more Democratic; and the red-tinged 17th LD got 1–2% more Democratic.
The 5th LD has an all-Democratic delegation to Olympia, and even with these changes, is likely to stay that way. This is because Democrats hold a consistent double-digit advantage since 2018 in this increasingly Democratic, affluent suburban and exurban district in King County. Biden and Murray both won here easily in the new, redder district, as would the two Democratic incumbent representatives Lisa Callan and Bill Ramos.
The old 12th LD is much more Republican than the 5th, with no major recent Democratic candidate winning the old version of this district. However Biden won the new 12th LD in 2020 by a slim 50–47 margin; Murray only lost 48%-52% in 2022. Democrats did not contest the district in 2022, but given its newly-cemented purple district status, Democrats should not just contest but invest in flipping the 12th LD.
Finally the 17th LD — one of the swingiest districts in Washington—got about 1.5% more Democratic in this new map. While seemingly small, this change was enough to flip this district from a 49–51 Republican win to a 51%-49% Murray win in the 2022 US Senate race. While Democrats tend to perform worse downballot, this meaningful leftward shift in the new 17th gives Democrats an incredible opportunity to end the longtime all-Republican delegation from this Vancouver-area suburban district.
While these changes may only net Democrats one new district out of 49, that one district could be substantial. Currently, Democrats hold twenty-nine Senate seats and fifty-eight House seats, out of forty-nine and ninety-eight total. Both chambers are a mere one seat short of a three-fifths Democratic majority — thirty senators and fifty-nine representatives. If Democrats can flip the 14th District Senate seat and just one House seat, they would unlock new legislative powers in Olympia relating to fiscal policies around the budget, bonds, and the debt.
As I laid out, though, this new map could potentially flip two other districts: the 12th and 17th. Both of these Biden districts have all-Republican delegations.
Flipping those seats on top of the 14th district would put Democrats at a 32–17 Senate majority and 64–34 house majority — just one district short of the important two-thirds threshold. If Democrats additionally flip, say, the 10th LD Senate seat and both 26th LD House seats — both districts Biden won in 2020 and elected Democratic legislators in 2022— then Democrats could do many more things, like pass constitutional amendments and override gubernatorial vetoes. The last time a party held such a supermajority in both chambers was 1960, when Democrats held a 35–14 Senate majority and 66–33 House majority.
Beyond the partisan numbers, though, this map could allow issues affecting Yakima and Pasco Latino communities to be brought front and center to legislative chambers by Latino-elected legislators for the first time.
In 2025, there may be a delegation truly fighting for labor rights for Latino agricultural workers, state resources for rural immigrant communities, and so many other issues impacting communities of color east of the Cascades that too often get drowned out by Eastern Washington Republicans and Western Washington Democrats.
Figures 1, 2, and partisan voter index data were sourced from Dave’s Redistricting App, an excellent resource offered by NPI’s friend Dave Bradlee.
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