Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district | |
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Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district - since January 3, 2013.
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Current Representative | Pat Meehan (R–Drexel Hill) |
Population (2010) | 692,866 |
Median income | 73,638 |
Ethnicity |
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Cook PVI | R+1 |
Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district incorporates parts of the Philadelphia suburbs, including most of Delaware County along with portions of Chester County, Montgomery County, Berks County, and Lancaster County. It is currently represented by Republican Pat Meehan in the 115th United States Congress. The district's extreme non-congruity is widely considered to be the result of gerrymandering.
The 2013–2023 version of the district contains most of Delaware County outside of the City of Chester and the heavily African American townships and boroughs in the eastern portion of the county. It also contains parts of central Montgomery County, southern portions of Berks County, southern and central portions of Chester County, and a small portion of eastern Lancaster County. The district as it stood in October 2016 was named on NPR's On the Media as an egregious example of gerrymandering; the shape of the district was described as "Goofy kicking Donald Duck; the only point that is essentially contiguous there is Goofy's foot in Donald Duck's rear end. ... However these district lines are the building blocks of democracy, and when they get as perverted and twisted as this, it leads to deeply undemocratic outcomes."
The 2003–2013 version of the district was located in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It contained the western and northwestern suburbs of Philadelphia. It consisted of the majority of Delaware County (except for the City of Chester and some of the eastern boroughs), a portion of Chester County east of West Chester in the affluent Main Line area, and a portion of southern Montgomery County centered on Upper Merion Township.