House Dems just got a 'huge insurance policy' to help them keep their majority: elections analyst

The Republican Party's path to retake the majority in the House of Representatives got significantly steeper on Monday after a panel of North Carolina judges signed off on a newly redrawn district map that will be significantly more favorable toward Democrats.

Elections analyst Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report writes on Twitter that the new map means Democrats are now "virtually guaranteed" to pick up seats in North Carolina's 2nd and 6th districts, which respectively encompass the cities of Raleigh and Greensboro.

Wasserman then calculates how these new districts will make winning back the House even more of a grind for the GOP than what they were facing before.

"This is a huge insurance policy for Speaker Pelosi/Dems' 17-seat majority -- before the 2020 election even starts," he writes. "Technically, House Rs need to pick up 19 seats (counting Rep. Justin Amash (I)'s #MI03) to win the majority back in 2020. But this new NC map and four R retirements from majority non-white districts mean they may actually need to flip 25+ Dem seats. That's huge for Dems."

Read the whole Twitter thread below.