(TNS) — Who has the fairest district in the land?

That was the question about congressional districts posed and answered by Inside Elections, a Washington-based firm that provides nonpartisan analysis for campaigns.

Writing in Roll Call, editor and publisher Nathan Gonzales provides a rundown of the ten most competitive among the 435 congressional districts and two of them are in Pennsylvania.

In those ten districts one party has a baseline advantage of one point or less, he wrote.

Those highly competitive districts will likely get an enormous amount of attention in the 2026 election when Democrats seek to take back the U.S. House.

The Pennsylvania districts that made this list are the 7th Congressional District in the Lehigh Valley and the 8th Congressional District in the northeast.

The 7th district — which in an earlier configuration was considered among the most gerrymandered in the nation — was held by Democrat Susan Wild before she was defeated by Republican Ryan MacKenzie in 2024. There Democrats have a +1 advantage, Gonzales found.

The 8th district in the Scanton area has a baseline GOP advantage of +.6. In 2024, Republican incumbent Rep. Rob Bresnahan Jr. beat Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright by one and a half points.

Those Pennsylvania districts didn’t magically become evenly divided, says David Thornburgh, former president and CEO of Committee of 70.

“The courts had a significant role to play,” said Thornburgh, noting the battle dates to a 2011 suit over unfair districts by the League of Women Voters and a subsequent suit in 2021 that led to court-selected map for Pennsylvania’s 17 congressional districts.

In 2018, Committe of 70 launched a three-year, non-partisan civics education program called Draw the Lines, which, using the latest technology, put redistricting in the hands of average citizens, allowing them to draw their own maps.

Thornburgh said the thrust of Draw the Lines was to empower regular citizens with the ability to craft maps that would pass muster in the courts, while reflecting community values.

He said overwhelmingly among the more than 7,200 maps produced, participants said what they valued most was competitiveness in districts.

Thornburgh said he wasn’t surprised two of the 10 districts on Inside Elections’ list are in Pennsylvania after so many rounds of mapping efforts produced some of the most equitable districts possible.

“Those two communities are points that made Pennsylvania a purple state – bright blue and bright red,“ he said. ”Pull back lens, it’s purple. That’s the demographics of those areas.”

Thornburgh laments that between gerrymandering and demographic shifts where like-minded people are clustering to live, it’s that much harder to craft fair districts.

Even so, across the nation, 215 districts have a Republican baseline advantage compared to 220 districts the Democrats hold the slight advantage, Gonzales wrote.

The analysis comes on the heels of Texas approving its incendiery gerrymander that will likely give the Lone Star State another five Republican seats.

Solidly blue California has already taken steps to conduct its own gerrymander to counter Texas in the fight for House control.