News analysis: Districts could bring new challenges for Missouri's representatives

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Several of Missouri's congressional districts may become more competitive among Republicans and Democrats in the 2012 elections, if the first drafts of Missouri's proposed redistricting maps are any indication.

Republicans in control of a state House committee on redistricting released a proposed map last week that reconfigures Missouri's nine existing U.S. House districts into eight based on the results of the 2010 Census. The consolidation is necessary because Missouri's population grew more slowly than the nation's. Population shifts within the state further exacerbated the need for different boundaries.

The House committee is scheduled to vote on its plan Tuesday. A separate Senate committee is to release its proposed redistricting map today.

The most obvious change in the new plans is that Democratic Reps. William Lacy Clay and Russ Carnahan would live in the same St. Louis congressional district. Clay's 1st District would grow and Carnahan's old 3rd District would be absorbed into as many as four other districts. Clay and Carnahan aren't too pleased by the proposal. But whoever wins the new 1st District could represent an even more solidly Democratic district than before.

Political analysts often rely on the results of past elections to determine whether voters in a particular area tend to favor Democrats or Republicans.

The state Office of Administration has provided the House and Senate redistricting committees with the demographic data capable of making those determinations.

Using mapping software, for example, it's possible to overlap 2010 census figures with the results from the 2008 and 2010 elections for state and federal legislative races, statewide executive offices and president. That's how it's possible to predict that the newly proposed 1st District, which encompasses St. Louis city and parts of St. Louis County, will be just as reliably Democratic than the current 1st District.

Some incumbents could face changes in the geographic size and partisan voter preferences of their districts.

Republican Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, who currently represents the 9th District sprawling from the Lake of the Ozarks through Columbia to the northeast corner of the state, would be placed in the newly redrawn 3rd District under one plan.

Luetkemeyer would inherit 444,000 new residents, meaning more than half of his constituents would be new.

Political scientists say the proposed boundary changes also could have implications for Republican Rep. Jo Ann Emerson. Emerson's 8th District in Southeast Missouri is likely to pick up more Democrats because of its proposed reach into Jefferson County just south of St. Louis.

But the district would retain a Republican voting preference, according to an analysis that applies the newly proposed boundaries to the 2008 and 2010 elections.

For Emerson, the proposal likewise "makes it perhaps more Democratic, but not so much that it would offset that entire swath of the south part of the state that is going to vote Republican no matter what," said George Connor, head of the political science department at Missouri State University in Springfield.

"I'd say the map makes more districts more competitive," said Rupp, R-Wentzville.