Breaking Down Pennsylvania's New Congressional Map In Delaware County
DELAWARE COUNTY, P.a. (CBS) -- The national Republican party says it plans to join in with the Pennsylvania GOP in appealing the state's new Congressional map, and the appeal could be filed as early as Wednesday.
In the prior map, Delaware County was split between the 7th and the 1st district, now the entire county is in the 5th.
"We're no longer split between two congressional districts, so it has achieved what we had hoped for," said Delco Democratic party chairman David Landau.
Along with Delaware County, the new district includes a sliver of Lower Merion, and a swath of South and Southwest Philadelphia, but Landau says he thinks the representative should be from Delaware County.
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"Doesn't mean the rep would service Philadelphia and work on constituent services and so forth but 78 percent of the seat in Delaware County, it's overwhelming," he said.
Delaware County Republican party chair Andrew Reilly says there were ways to make a Delaware County seat more compact while keeping it competitive, but adding part of Philadelphia unfairly skews the district to the left.
"This is probably the third most democratic seat drawn in the state and that includes the cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia," Reilly said.
He points to the Cook Partisan Value Index which lists the new 5th district as D+13, the third most democratic seat in Pennsylvania.