There have been many fantastic maps drawn that highlight the potential extremes of gerrymandering, from both political parties. I humbly submit my attempt at making a safe 5-2 map in Colorado that will endure even in bad years for us. Now, I know that either a compromise map or a court-picked one is likely due to the split control in the Colorado legislature, this is purely a what-if scenario if Democrats ran the process and were very aggressive.
Also, this is my first time using Dave's redistricting app and I would appreciate comments and helpful criticism.
Washington voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election by a wide margin, 57.6%-40.5% (17.1%). Therefore I've created a map where all ten congressional districts have the same Obama percentage, that is the same margin he won statewide.
All ten districts are within 0.05% Obama pecentage and 500 population of the median.
This map creates two Democratic districts with a PVI of at least D+10 and two Republican districts with a PVI of at least R+30, which would be the two most Republican in the country.
The districts are contiguous, even when they don't really look like it, including a narrow strip along the gulf shoreline for the fourth district.
As always I crunched the actual precinct data to produce these maps. However in this case, to my horror, I could have saved a week of transcribing scanned county records and just maximised the minority districts since they produce almost exactly the same map. Nevertheless at least this way we have precise voting totals for each district.
Dave Bradlee finally managed to sort the obnoxious problems with Oregon's 2010 Census data, which means it's time for me to give my home state a whirl.
Nothing too much has changed, as you can see. It just has pretty lines and definitely preserves communities of interest. Only three counties (Columbia, Josephine, and Lincoln) are split between congressional districts, and none of those three are split between more than two districts.
OR-01 (blue)
Democratic Rep. David Wu, who lives in Multnomah County, is out. Unfortunately, some depopulation along the Oregon Coast means this district is stretching a bit further south to find constituents, which is maybe the only part of this map I'm not thrilled about (for aesthetic reasons). As for the politics, as this is a horse-race elections site: Despite Yamhill County's Republican lean, the great majority of this district's population is in true blue northwestern Oregon. If Wu can be kept out by this redistricting job, state senators Suzanne Bonamici and Mark Hass are probably in line, provided Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian doesn't want the job. The inside scoop is that if Wu's job opens up, he's got first right of refusal. Likely Democratic.
OR-02 (green)
Walden lives in Hood River. Hood River has been moved elsewhere. Even if Walden doesn't move back - and I think the diehard conservatives in eastern Oregon, which is (surprisingly enough) one of the most conservative parts of the entire country, may prefer to send Oregon Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli or Bend-area state senator and ambitious "rising star" Chris Telfer to Congress instead of Walden, a close ally of (the possibly doomed) Speaker Boehner who has taken flak for being a leading member of the quasi-moderate Main Street Partnership - this district is red enough to elect an Oregonian version of Christine O'Donnell without a fuss. Anyway, I felt Hood River County belongs with eastern Multnomah County in terms of communities of interest more than it belongs with the high desert cow counties. Safe Republican.
OR-03 (purple)
Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer's district has consolidated all of Multnomah County, taken over Hood River County, and poked up into Columbia County just a tad bit, simultaneously withdrawing from Clackamas County. As for politics: Che Guevara could get elected here by double-digit margins. Walden could run here, but he would get clobbered. Wu could also run here, but he would also get clobbered. Mostly, I just think this district looks nice. Safe Democratic.
OR-04 (red)
One of the enduring mysteries of Congress is the charmed existence of Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, a blunt, unabashed, aggressively off-the-reservation left-winger sitting in a light-blue seat. Last year, when conditions seemed perfect for a Republican to potentially upset DeFazio, Republicans in the district nominated certifiable crazy person Art Robinson. DeFazio's final margin was closer than expected, perhaps on account of his taking victory against Robinson pretty much for granted, but it was still fairly convincing. This district hasn't changed much. DeFazio still has the red ball-and-chain that is Linn County tethered to him, but it's easily offset by flaming liberal Benton and Lane counties, both of which are anchored by legendarily left-wing college towns. In terms of actually drawing the map, since I wasn't consulting political data, it was basically just leftover western Oregon and as much of southern Oregon as fit with population limits stretching east from the coast (which turned out to be not much). Likely Democratic.
OR-05 (yellow)
What is there to do about Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader? Well, one thing to do that would make Clackamas County residents happy would be to give the piece of OR-03 reaching down a little bit into Schrader's home county back to this fairly swingy district. Another thing might be to embark on a registration drive in increasingly Hispanic Salem and its suburbs, but that's not really redistricting's job. Redistricting's job is to preserve communities of interest, and that was my chief consideration here. As a progressive who generally supports Democrats, I'm not honestly worried about Schrader, and this is why: Republicans target OR-05 every cycle, and every time, they do worse than they were expecting. Last year, Schrader was supposed to lose to Scott Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuun (who, yes, still lives in this district). He won by over five points instead. Republicans were supposed to take over the district in 2008 when then-Rep. Darlene Hooley retired. Schrader crushed Hooley's 2006 opponent (who was supposed to beat her then, too) by 16 points. Fun fact: in this D+1 district, Republicans haven't even come as close as five points away since 1994 - the cycle before then-Rep. Jim Bunn lost to Hooley (in 1996) by a margin nearly identical to the margin by which Schrader prevailed last year. For whatever reason, this district is fools' gold for the Oregon Republican Party. But my favorite part of this redrawn district? It consists simply of all of Polk, Marion, and Clackamas counties, and it's just 515 heads over the target population. Sexy. Lean Democratic.
It seemed way too easy to make 2 VAP (Voting Age Population) black districts in Louisiana. I feel like even if there wasn't 3 VAP districts, there could easily be two with another heavily leaning Dem district, making the new delegation a 3-3 split with LA losing one seat this year.
As I gerrymandered through New Orleans, Baton Rouge and LaFayette, I realized I didn't even have to really go to Shreveport to Monroe for 2 districts, and it seemed there were quite a few black precincts left so I decided to try to make 3 VAP districts. It took a lot of maneuvering and one area of water contiguity over the lake, but I did it! It's the most horrible map, though, and would never obviously be drawn.
My other goals were to not use touch-point contiguity, which I did not, and also not use water contiguity, which I failed to do, but oh well.
All racial numbers are VAP, if it was simply out of all population, the black percentage numbers are a few points higher in all districts. Also, the biggest deviation from target population is the blue district, which has 5,691 more than the target.
Illinois is losing one congressional district this year - going from 19 to 18. I have created a map that takes the current map with a delegation of 11 Republicans and 8 Democrats to one with 12 Democratic seats and 6 Republican ones. I consider this an ambitious gerrymander favoring the Democrats, but one that is realistic and keeps a few things in mind:
1.) Michael Madigan is in charge and he will look out for his interests first. He also will never do a dummymander.
2.) The Democratic incumbents also have input and their interests will be considered. None of them will want their district lines to change much and all want their Democratic primary bases to be kept intact. They also don't want to be thrown from safe seats to possibly competitive ones.
3.) African Americans will insist on maintaining their three black majority districts, no matter how much population they have lost in the city. The Hispanics will want at least one - two may be forced by the courts - but Madigan and his allies will likely push for one Hispanic district to maintain Lipinski's seat. Also, we have seen in the City of Chicago that Hispanic majority seats often go to white incumbents who control the Democratic machine. Alderman Ed Burke's 14th ward is 88% Hispanic, Madigan's 13th ward is 72% Hispanic and just elected somebody named "Marty Quinn" to be Alderman.
4.) Madigan will go after Freshman GOP before those with more seniority. Not only are they easier targets, but having seniority on both sides of the aisle is good for Illinois.
Below is each new district with data and analysis. I have calculated the results from the 2010 Senate race (Kirk v. Giannoulias) and from the 2004 Presidential race (Bush v. Kerry - I know, old). I used the 2010 Senate race rather than the Governor's race because it is on the Federal level, and to use data against moderate Republican. I did not calculate data from the 2008 election, because Obama's landslide was far too big and unevenly distributed in Illinois (I feel Chicagoland was much more skewed than Downstate). The 2010 numbers are exact (to the precinct) except for Tazewell, Marion, Moultrie, and Menard Counties, which I allocated votes by ratio of population in each district. The same goes for 2004 numbers, except I had to extrapolate the precinct data for Lake and Will counties from 2010 data.
For now, here are three tables with election data, racial population data, and VAP data. I will add more analysis in the next few days.
This diary presents two different flavors of Ohio maps: Fair Districts (a la Florida) and GOP-Friendly. Ohio doesn't have partisan data in the App, so these maps represent my best guesses. I definitely consider these maps to be more discussion-starters about maps under the newly-released 2010 data than polished proposals. In the comments, please feel free to share your own maps or information about local partisan leanings that needs to be taken into account.
In a similar vein to my previous diary "A Democratic Nebraska" I moved a state south to see how Democratic a Kansan congressional district can be. However, early on I noticed that it was actually possible to make two districts in Kansas with a democratic lean, albeit a very, very slight democratic lean. As in the past the numbers are hand tabulated and should be quite accurate.
CD1(Blue): 53.5% Obama 73/9/10 W/B/H
The blight on the landscape that is CD1 stretches its hideous legs out from its nominal centre in Emporia to swallow up Pittsburg, Parsons, Wichita, Hutchinson, Manhattan, Junction City, Topeka, and parts of Lawrence whilst nimbly avoiding republican counties with any sort of significant population.
CD2(Green): 53.5% Obama 76/9/10 W/B/H
Compared in to CD1 CD2 is has a positively tidy shape. Based in Kansas City (the part that is in Kansas anyway) it runs up along the Missouri through Leavenworth to Atchison and south into the more Democratic parts of Johnson county before turning west into the heart of Lawrence.
CD3(Dark Magenta): 35.0% Obama 88/2/5 W/B/H
South-eastern Kansas wrapping around CD1. It would be a neater district if it was just southern Kansas and didn't turn north-east at Hutchinson, honestly I just didn't want to reassign the precincts south of Manhattan.
CD4(Red): 29.6% Obama 83/1/13 W/B/H
The rest of Kansas. Mostly the western and northern parts of the state but it does follow the Oklahoma state line quite a way east.
The single so called "super-democratic" district turned out to be 57.6% Obama (74/10/11 W/B/H) and appears below.
There has evidently been some discussion of drawing a minority-majority district in Arkansas to give the Democrats a buffer against an 0-4 Republican sweep.
My criteria for making this map was:
1. There must be a minority-majority district, no matter how hideous.
2. Rep. Ross must have a district he could potentially retain.
3. Rep. Griffin cannot be allowed to have a safe district to himself.
I'm not going to go district-by-district, mostly because I'm already up past my bedtime. But we have an open seat here, and it's something new and blue. It's also 49% white, 44% black, and although it goes up to majority-white when you VAP it, most Democratic primary voters will probably be black, and it's diverse enough to be a solid Democratic district.
As for Ross and Griffin, they get to square off over my hideous reincarnation of AR-04, which includes a hefty portion of Pulaski County and has a PVI probably not too far off the current R+7 version. But I'm just eyeballing it, and I've never even been to Arkansas, so someone should correct me if I'm wrong.
Rep. Womack gets to sit pretty in AR-03, and Rep. Crawford should be quite comfortable in AR-02, a.k.a. the Jolly Green Giant.
I just wish I could see ten different ways of dealing with the Democrats in the Triad, rather than ten different variations that all deal with them the same way: using NC-12.
roguemapper
Two of the mostrecent NC redistricting diaries have featured roguemapper's cri de couer against I-85-based NC-12s in their comments. Here, I'm only delivering two different ways of dealing with the Triad Dems instead of ten. I hope the comment section will make up for the missing eight.
The argument against an I-85-based NC-12 is threefold: (1) it was upheld in the courts as a partisan-based and not minority-based gerrymander; (2) creating a minority-majority NC-12 barely requires leaving Charlotte, let alone Mecklenburg County; and (3) state Republicans have said they don't want one. I'm currently too lazy to source any of those statements and I'm not interested in arguing them. My purpose is to discuss North Carolina maps that treat that argument as true. Think about it like a move trailer, if it helps:
(booming movie announcer voice) In a world where North Carolina Republicans are committed to a compact, Charlotte-based, minority-majority NC-12... (/booming movie announcer voice)
I'm presenting two maps here. One is an unaggressive and therefore unlikely map that cuts out Kissell but gives the Democrats a new district in the Triad. (It's also got retrogression issues.) I'm posting it because I think it's an interesting baseline for what a minimally gerrymandered map could look like. There's a grand total of ten counties statewide that are split between two or more districts. The other is an extremely aggressive map which creates 10 McCain districts.
