Gerrymandering is not what's wrong with American politics

[Republican Michigander]

What people blame as "gerrymandering" due to overall state vote is often caused by two things.

1. VRA laws

2. Self packing. In a lot of states, most of the democrats are in a few densely packed areas. There are not a lot of 50/50 regions/counties, and most of them are moving in one direction or another. Even in some of those 50/50 regions, one side may be strongly R and the other strongly D.

In Michigan, the VRA laws require one district to go up from Detroit into the democrat part of Oakland County. Southfield/Oak Park can't anchor a D seat anymore unless it's Detroit. That impacts the VRA seats which are 80%+ D, as well as the shapes of other districts.

Places like Detroit are 95% democrat. Literally. That's going to be a vote sink unless you bacon strip a bunch of districts. Creating a South Lyon to Detroit baconstrip district to get it to 50/50 isn't fair to anybody.

[Republican Michigander]

Michigan naturally has a huge vote sink area for Democrats in the Detroit metro....but the rest of the state doesn't vote heavily enough Republican to warrant all but 1 other seat outside Detroit being red.   MI-7, MI-8, and MI-11 already are baconstrip districts almost really.    That area in the southeast is probably what the GOP focused on the most in redistricting.

I do agree any sensible map would favor Republicans regardless of how it's drawn though.

There's only two other districts that are completely in Metro Detroit (which I consider the tri-county area). MI-09 (Levin) is blue, and MI-11 (Trott) which is largely middle and outer ring suburbs. MI-11 is grotesquely shaped due to MI-14.

MI-07 doesn't go to Metro Detroit at all and while it's a long and somewhat narrow area, it does for the most part keep county integrity which is important and traditional in Michigan. It's usually considered a Jackson based seat, if anything.

Most of MI-08 is outside of Metro Detroit outside of it's portion of North Oakland. I don't consider Livingston County metro Detroit, and Ingham County (one of the other main D bases) is definitely not Metro Detroit. MI-08/MI-11 could have been cleaner (they didn't want to bump Rogers and McCotter districts together and didn't want to create more county splits either)

Most of MI-10 is in Macomb, but it also has the thumb.

MI-12 is about 1/2 in the Detroit area (Downriver) and 1/2 in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti areas.