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Majority of Pennsylvanians Support Independent Commission for District Lines: Poll

A new poll sponsored by the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center with Common Cause PA, Why Courts Matter – PA, and the League of Women Voters of PA shows that a majority of Pennsylvanians want a change to how Pennsylvania draws its legislative districts.  

68% of the respondents said they support an independent commission to draw district lines, with a majority, 55%, strongly supporting the change.  22% of respondents wanted to keep the process in the hands of legislators.

The poll also showed that a slight majority, 53%, sided with the state Supreme Court’s actions of redrawing the state’s Congressional maps, while 24% sided with the calls for impeachment for the Justices.  

The new data will likely be used by the four organizations who commissioned the poll to continue to push for Pennsylvania to change the way the legislative maps are drawn.  State House Republicans recently amended a bill to move redistricting to an independent commission to instead give more power to legislators.

Update: PoliticsPA received a copy of the methodology of the poll, as well as the results for the questions related to redistricting reform.  The poll surveyed statewide, but also purposefully over-sampled in selected districts in the southeast and western parts of the state, and weighted those responses in the poll results for an effective sample size of 600.

The polls was conducted by TargetSmart, a D.C. based research and polling fim, that surveyed 1,150 registered voters.  The poll has a margin of error of 4%.

9 Responses

  1. “Independent Commission”. That will be the title of it, but it will I’ll be a buy out of whichever party could pay more.

  2. My main worry, as someone who believes in this system, is that the never ending games justifying districts that look like Donald Duck kicking Goofy in the backside (which was the case in a recent congressional redistricting) will cause folks just tune politics out. They will get so disgusted at the gross unfairness of these districts and how the political bosses are taking their vote and twisting it into a pretzel to gain advantage—that they will say the entire process is designed the marginalize them and walk away. If the public reaches that point (and it is getting close), our democracy is in big trouble. In the name of democracy, we need to take redistricting out of the political process and have a non partisan independent committee.

  3. Most corrupt thing I’ve seen in years. Independent commission would be a joke just like the “Stanford Researcher” Wolf hired this year to overturn the maps. Same guy that donated to a bunch of Dems in the past including Obama.

    The boundaries were supposed to be made by the legislators, not the SC. If they can find a way to make this independent commission truly independent (no governor appointments, etc) then present the case in how you’ll form that commission, the legislature can vote on whether they should adopt the rule, and the public will deal with the legislatures who don’t represent them.

    AKA THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. Not changing the rules in the middle of the night like the Democrats did just because President Trump and Senator Toomey (PA’s good senator) won in upset fashion.

    I can taste the salt from here.

  4. Who exactly is making the appointments to this “independent commission.” If it’s elected legislators, the governor and/or the state supreme court, how independent can it be.

  5. Except it’s not an independent commission. Tie breakers go to the Supreme Court which in PA is elected. The same state Supreme Court justices that did not recuse themselves after going around the state telling voters they wanted to overturn the map. Please stop calling it this it is an outright lie.

      1. Marc, your outfit understands polling. The “push” is in the questions, not the “random sampling.” Publicize the entire thing, questions and cross tabs. Let informed critics decide for themselves.

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    Total Voters: 30

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