Until this general election, only two congressional districts touching the Pacific Ocean remained represented by Republicans. Alaska and Southwest Washington.
That has changed in 2022.
Now, every district that has the Pacific Ocean as a border, including Hawaii, is represented by a Democrat, with the flipping of Alaska and the Third Congressional District of Washington, where Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler lost in the primary. Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won in the general election over Trump-backed Joe Kent to represent southwest Washington, the last 38-mile Pacific Coast stretch in the continental USA that was represented by a Republican, albeit a liberal one who voted to impeach President Donald Trump.
Now, there’s a stripe of blue down the entire coastline. In other states across the country, the trend has been red, according to congressional maps going back more than a decade.
Maps from 2009, 2018, and 2022 show Florida getting more red, while the far West Coast has become a blue line. While big cities are still voting for Democrats, most of Florida has now voted for Republicans, with 20 congressional seats going GOP and just 8 seats won by Democrats. In Texas, 25 congressional seats went to Republican, and 13 seats went to Democrats.
Alaska is an outlier. While Congresswoman Mary Peltola prevailed in ranked-choice voting over two Republicans and a Libertarian, she still is a member of a party that represents less than 13% of registered voters; only 77,137 Alaska voters are enrolled with the Alaska Democratic Party, while 144,000 are registered Republican (24%).
Although Alaska can no longer be considered a bright red state, without ranked choice voting, it’s clear Peltola would not have won election to the temporary seat to replace Congressman Don Young, or the two-year seat that begins in January, and the blue stripe on the West Coast may be stopped short by Republicans in 2024. Young died in March, while being run too hard by his campaign handlers and staff. He was 88 years old and had hoped to run one last time to see Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, retired from the speakership, he told Must Read Alaska in January.
