2022 SPECULATION

The total 2020 votes have yet to be cast, let alone counted, and the political class is already turning its attention to what could possibly happen once Michigan’s voter-approved commission starts its work redrawing political districts against the background of early census population projections that suggest Michigan could well lose a seat in Congress. While the new redistricting process is purported to be more free of politics, the numbers are the numbers when the census totals are announced next year. Speculation has it that the districts of both Democrat Representative Hayley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin could be impacted. As the theory goes, these two members of Congress could lose some of their Democratic base when new districts are redrawn for the 2022 elections – not good news for the two districts which made headlines in 2018 as they were flipped from Red to Blue, and appear likely to stay in the Democrat column this year, despite the fact that these districts were drawn a decade ago to favor the GOP. As the population count in the state is expected to decline, don’t look to the base of current Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Brenda Lawrence – both Democrats – whose districts are protected somewhat because of federal court rulings that buffer minority-majority districts.