Google Ads


Site Stats

Where can you gain more Democrats in Central Illinois?

by: jsramek

Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 3:27 AM EDT


Photobucket

After tweaking this district all evening, I am stumped.  Are there any obvious batch of Democrats I am missing?  I want to save southern Montgomery and Macoupin Counties for bolstering the 12th.  I suppose I could always go into Fulton County, but then I would have to replace those Democrats with other voters for my new 17th.  Coles County with Mattoon and Charleston might be another possibility, but if you are going mainly by Kerry 2004 results (which I am - the 2008 Obama results are just too rosy everywhere in the state although not as bad in the central and southern part of the state as in the Chicago metro area), Kerry lost that county quite handily in 2004.  Either way you look at it, because both Springfield and Bloomington-Normal in a neutral year (like 2004) are lean-GOP cities, even with the powerhouses of Urbana-Champaign, Decatur, and the lean-Democratic cities of Peoria and Dansville, you still end up no better than 51.41% Kerry (at least at my valiant attempt at it).

Any thoughts of how I should try to bolster this district to 52-53% Kerry.  That is my goal for creating 3 downstate lean-Democratic seats.  I got Jerry Costello's district up to 53-46 simply by axing out Williamson, Union, Pulaski, and Alexander and adding in the town of Edwardsville in Madison County and bits of southern Macoupin and Montgomeryt counties.  Likewise it is easy to make the 17th into a 53-47 Kerry district by going into Rockford.

This district for what it's worth, voted 59-40 for Obama in 2008 but only 51-48 for Kerry 4 years prior.  I suspect the reason has largely to do with turnout issues among minorities and college students.  We won't have those worries in 2012 but I worry about the remaining 4 election cycles.

I would still advocate drawing this map, even if it is not possible to go higher than 51-48.  Other than Dick Durbin (who represented Springfield and Decatur when he was in the House), these cities as far as I know have never been a) brought together; or b) represented by a Democrat.  Instead Illinois suffers from decades' worth of GOP gerrymanders with the result that these cities are always split up.

Still, if Democrats get a bit skittish, I would not be entirely surprised if they sought to bolster the 17th a bit more as well as the 12th at the expense of a new district.

I welcome your thoughts.
jsramek :: Where can you gain more Democrats in Central Illinois?
Tags: , , , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email

Where can you gain more Democrats in Central Illinois? | 14 comments
the last map I did ...
also had a dist. in this part of IL (though not exactly the same) that was 59 Obama/51 Kerry ... but I did the same thing you did with Peoria -- and included the northern part of the city which has some GOP precincts ...

in a subsequent diary (which I think you wrote ?) where northern Peoria was also included, roguemapper suggested getting rid of those n. Peoria precincts -- which may be the way to increase to 52/53 Kerry ?? and maybe substitute some more Dem. (even maybe some rural areas ??) into the district -- in that way, the dist. can be more Dem. and may even look more compact ...

ok .. not sure about Dem rural areas ...
but may want to include some rural areas even if GOP areas IF the precincts have very low pop -- in that way the district would look more compact w/o the low pop GOP areas having too much of an influence on the overall partisan makeup of district ... (ofcourse, still would need more high-pop Dem areas from somewhere to bring up to 52/53 Kerry)
[ Parent ]
If you swap Fulton
for East Peoria and drop Cass County, you can nudge the district up to 51.85% Kerry, 59.66% Obama.  I think I am satisfied with that level of Democratic performance over two election cycles to say that we have a very good chance of capturing it in an election (with Obama at the top of the ticket no less).  Whoever wins the seat, however, would need to do a really good job at mobilizing student turnout in 2014 and/or minority precincts in Springfield, Decatur, Peoria, etc.

As for how this affects the 17th, not much apparently.  I had only grabbed Peru, Lasalle, and Ottawa/South Ottawa in the original draft of the district (along with most of Rockford and some of Freeport (as my connector).  If you go into Manlius, Mendota and Streator, the district becomes a bit more red but nothing to lose sleep over: Obama goes from 59.6% to 59.2% (of two-party vote) and Kerry goes from 53.0% to 52.6%.  When you consider that my 12th is now at Obama 57.5%, Kerry 53.0% compared to 55 and 52 on the current district lines, you can marginally improve both of the seats that we held in downstate up until 2010 as well as add a third seat.

[ Parent ]
What about the opposite question?
Can you gain fewer Republicans? (In some ways this is what silver spring brought up.) Since the partisan data isn't in Dave's App yet, I'm not sure exactly what to advise. But in general terms, the only thing  I think of is look for ways to drop (for example) 20-80 precincts and replace them with 30-70 ones. (Or better.)

Also, I was under the impression that East Peoria is heavily Republican suburban territory. Is that true?

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.

Cass and Mason Counties
are in the district for this reason... so I could drop some really atrocious Bush/McCain precincts in south Springfiend
[ Parent ]
Springfield
Springfield... of course there are rather fiendish areas that mapmakers need to avoid when drawing the map.
[ Parent ]
When you look at 2008 election results, the parts of western Tazewell
in the district actually are decent.  McCain won the county as a whole because he cleaned up in the eastern part of the county.

Kerry won a decent 25k or so votes out of the country compared to 36k for Bush - Obama closed the gap to 29k to 33k.  There is no public data for 2004 for Tazewell, but I would imagine that Pekin voted Democratic both years.

[ Parent ]
Jacksonville
Your boundaries are close enough to Jacksonville that it'd probably be worth picking up the Democrats there.

If you go from Cass County through Literberry that'd put you next to the Democratic precincts of Jacksonville. It's not huge, but it would make some difference, especially if you can drop some 70%+ GOP precincts elsewhere.


PS.
If you're translating these numbers to Dave's App, bear in mind that S. Jacksonville precincts 1-4 are labelled Jacksonville 25-28 on the App.
[ Parent ]
Where do you guys get your data?
I'm working on a map of my own (a realio-trulio one, not a fantasy map), and the partisan voting information is nearly essential in identifying non-geographic communities of interest.
[ Parent ]
...
I've been collecting data statewide and translating it to match the census voting districts so it can get uploaded to Dave's App. If need be, I've been contacting county boards and asking them to send me a copy of the precinct-by-precinct results.

I'm still waiting on these six counties:

Alexander
Bond
Brown
Calhoun
De Witt
Richland
Scott

I think I should have them by early next week at the latest, assuming I don't have to follow up with any of them, at which point I will send Dave my data and he will upload it to the Redistricting App.

In the meantime, I'm mainly working out issues involving discrepancies between election precincts and census districts.

[ Parent ]
seven..
I really can count!
[ Parent ]
and I have been slowly compiling 2004 Kerry data
and 2010 congressional data (for the Collar Counties and Chicago) based on what has been made publicly available.  In some cases, I am extrapolating backwards from 2008 Obama data what the Kerry 2004 numbers probably were.  This is necessary in cases where the county board of elections have destroyed the precinct-by-precinct data.  They are supposed to keep such data, but some county boards think (erroneously) that they can purge it after 5 years.
[ Parent ]
The folks at Polidata probably still have it
You might send a nice email to Clark Bensen.
[ Parent ]
Where can you gain more Democrats in Central Illinois? | 14 comments

Copyright 2003-2010 Swing State Project LLC

Primary Sponsor

You're not running for second place. Is your website? See why Campaign Engine is ranked #1 in software and support among Progressive-only Internet firms. http://www.mediamezcla.com/

Menu

Make a New Account

Username:

Password:



Forget your username or password?

About the Site

Publisher: DavidNYC

Senior Editor: James L.

Senior Editor: Crisitunity

Contributing Editor: Jeffmd

Search the SSP archives:

SSP Resources

Presidential Vote by CD

SSP Document Collection

Race Tracker Wiki

Dave's Redistricting App

Blogroll

Daily Kos Elections
DemConWatch
Five Thirty Eight
Governing
Hotline On Call
Political Wire
Pollster.com
Prop*50
Public Policy Polling
The Thicket
Powered by: SoapBlox