This post is the first in a series exploring America’s new majority-minority House districts. Check out this introductory post to get up-to-speed and see the full group breakdown.

What is the Urban Coalition?

• 27 House districts across eight states: CA, IL, MA, NJ, NY, MD, PA, TX

• Majority-minority House districts where no single racial or ethnic group can claim a majority.

• Representatives form the backbone of the Democratic Party. No Republicans currently hold any of the seats in this group.

Districts that makeup the Urban Coalition are known for being what I’ll call “melting pot” districts. These are majority-minority House districts where no single racial or ethnic group can claim a majority, forcing several cultural communities to work together and create coalitions. These districts also fall within (or are very close to) major American cities, so they’re often tightly packed with high population densities. This group forms the backbone of the Democratic party as their representatives include Democratic leadership and many high-ranking members in cultural caucuses.

The districts that makeup the Urban Coalition can be divided into two discrete subsets: those that fall within the Northeast Megalopolis and those within Western cities.

Northeast Megalopolis

The primary subset of this group falls within the “BosWash” corridor stretching from Boston, MA all the way down the Atlantic Coast to Washington, DC. There are 21 majority-minority House districts within the Northeast Megalopolis and I’ve put 19 of them into the Urban Coalition. (The remaining two districts are majority Black and will be covered in the Black Belt group later on.)

Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Houston

A couple more majority-minority House districts out West also fit well into the Urban Coalition. Four House districts in the Los Angeles area are included as they’re “melting pot” districts where no single racial group holds a majority.

Chicago alone holds five majority-minority districts in part due to its history as a hub for domestic migration. I’m only placing the city’s most urban district, IL-7 home to the Chicago Loop, into the Urban Coalition. This is the city’s only “melting pot” district as the four others hold either African American or Hispanic majorities.

The final western cities with “melting pot” districts are in Texas. Houston and Dallas together hold three majority-minority US House districts worth including in the Urban Coalition: TX-9, TX-18, and TX-30.

A ‘True Blue’ Hue

Democrats absolutely dominate the Urban Coalition. There are currently no Republicans representing any of the districts in this group. The average 2020 presidential vote margin across these House districts is a whopping 54 points in favor of Biden. The support for Democrats runs deep as many of these districts have not voted a Republican into the House in decades.

As a reminder: I completely ignored the partisan lean of majority-minority districts when sorting them into these groups. Voting for Democrats was not a requirement for being included in the Urban Coalition, it just kinda ended up that way!

Democrats’ Rising Stars

House members representing the Urban Coalition are some of the most influential in the Democratic party. Both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are well represented within the Urban Coalition: 15 members of the CBC and 6 members of the CHC currently represent these House districts.

Even better: this group of congresspeople includes many rising stars that are poised to take control of the party in the coming years. The Urban Coalition includes three of the six members of “The Squad:” Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Ayanna Pressley (MA-7) and the infamous Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14); proving that these districts are ‘Ground Zero’ for the emerging progressive wing of the Democratic party.