If you can't understand why Iowa has such a high proportion of white liberal voters, then you probably are thinking of "white liberals" as exclusively as like the stereotypical resident of San Francisco or like hippie organic farmers. If you interviewed a bunch of people in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids or Davenport about gay marriage, tax rates, health care, the environment and marijuana, and then a bunch of people somewhere like southeast Minneapolis/southwest St. Paul or Madison, WI, you'd find that the views expressed would be pretty similar. The Iowa cities might have more conservatives in general, but the median voter is going to be someone with generally liberal views on all those issues.

(I didn't mention Iowa City because that's actually closer to San Francisco or west central Minneapolis.)

In other news, Iowa is not a pot friendly place. I was a guest of the Winterset jail on a pot possession bust. The police chap was kind enough to drive me, with me next to him in the front seat, to the ATM to post the bail money, and pay for the car towing charge. The amazing thing is that you lose you license for six months for a pot possession bust, even if it had nothing to do with driving. I worked the system, and plea bargained down to a $600 fine, for possession of paraphernalia  (however you spell that).  

The police chief of Winterset emailed me today (he made it clear what his station was in life), to inquire about buying some land from the family "land empire" there, as it were. I emailed him back, and in passing, noted about 18 months prior,  I appreciated being chauffeured by one of his "staff" to the ATM to secure the bail money, and found the Winterset jail cells in good order (even though no one bothered to lock the door once I was sequestered there).  In his email back, he stuck to business. He  is probably not quite used to that kind of email.  

So Iowa is not quite up to date in Kansas City when it comes to pot, but they kind of know it. And so it goes.

Is it realistic to believe that any government program within the realm of economic possibility will cause much of a change in the otherwise applicable projections?  What is the evidence for that? And did Politicus document the claim that "investing" in "Green" that will allegedly do the trick per the current Green agenda, will cost anything other than trillions upon trillions of dollars?  Even but one trillion is still real money these days. To me the above is the weakest part of the Green case.

And then when I read Snowguy's stuff, I just have to think that given the current play of the data, and what we know, and don't know, going Green except around the edges to the extent that it is  primarily "fueled" by the global warming specter, just makes no sense at all - particularly when we still have about a billion or two folks on this planet who are desperately poor (this agenda will not be in their economic bests interests at all).  That just seems wrong to me - indeed morally wrong.

He's a troll. STOP FEEDING HIM.

no harm in allowing him a day or two in the sun.  it would be cool if he stopped taking up half a board with new topics though, perhaps a compromise of sorts is in order.

I think his inevitable banning is in order.

Unless he's a sock, why should he be banned?  I hope he just junks up Torie's board and leaves the rest of us alone

My Boards are designed to be repositories of junk.  And I find this sock-symp mentality utterly baffling. We let them run wild, and this place will descend to a lower level of Dantian Hell in time, until DAVE just shuts in down in embarrassment. Thank you.

It seems to me, that at the end of the day, libertarians tend more often to be outside the mainstream of political discourse. Some of their ideas are so impractical, to just not be of this world as we know it, but rather more a utopian construct of their minds. But I have already opined more than once, about my lack of fondness for political labels; often the most thoughtful when it comes to the issues, concoct their own recipes of a little of this, a dash of that, and so forth. Nobody has an exclusive monopoly on good ideas - or bad ideas.

Being brutally honest, I am very impressed with the quality of both afleitch's mind and body. And except for Scottish nationalism (no big deal to me actually), we agree on most things more or less as well, including our mutual lack of religious faith. We have never had a cross word with each other ever. The chap could be more active in the cave, but he is more active than many as a Mod. I also adore his accent, which I have had the pleasure of hearing, when afleitch put up an audio for us commenting on the contents of a thread a few years ago. Hopefully, if he comes to the US with his partner, his accent will not be unduly Americanized. That would be near tragic. Can be a bit impatient with homophobes, or folks insensitive about gay issues, etc.  

In sum, an all around horrible person. Cheers.

For Nappy, D + 3%. More and his econ score makes it appear that the relative moderation is not needed for election by his party, and much less, and the social score gets iffy for swing voters, unless in an urban  high SES kind of place.

Oh, what happened? Anyway for Goldwater, about R +4%. Same problem the other way, with his social score. But that econ score suggests that there might be problems outside Wyoming, Alaska, and quite special places like coastal Orange County, CA. His ilk just get real thin on the ground in most places. Those Pubs out there on economics but "up to date in Kansas City" on the socially hip, that used to rule the Upper East Side of NYC, are dead, or decided that "economic freedom" was just not socially acceptable anymore, and bagged it for something more acceptable among their troop - or realized that big government was actually a money maker for them if they played their cards right, or because the economy changed, the monied these days in such places are in much higher percentages from the knowledge and literary and artistic fields, all of whom are exponentially better paid than when it was just the financial services field that raked it in.

I am just waiting patiently for all the facts to come out about all these alleged scandals. They all should be investigated, relentlessly, until we have the facts, including all the players testifying before Congress under oath on all of them, and being called back when there is a conflict in testimony, and then it would be appropriate to opine, assuming that we are adequately informed as to those facts. In the meantime, less is more when it comes to bloviating about all of this. But any suggestion that they should not all be investigated, thoroughly, in the light of day, under oath, is a total non starter. They should all be so investigated, and will. Life is beautiful.

The farms are big, and their influence on the population is de minimus. Madison County, the county with the family farm, has maybe 500 farmers max. Iowa makes its living on insurance/financial services in Des Moines, and manufacturing usually related to agriculture, and its share of the federal bureaucracy  (e.g., Des Moines has a major IRS office, involved in chasing down deadbeats and non tax return filers).

Bravo to Senator Reid (for once in his sad sack life), who when the Pubs controlled, protected filibusters even more than his package from harm. The reason?  Because it makes clear, that any party, at any time, can dump the filibuster, all of it, so at some point, when that party holds the trifecta. And so  it will so go perhaps, and we can finally got some accountability in government, rather than one side, not holding all the cards, blames the other for poor results, because some of the agenda was filibustered. Let each party do its thing, and let the voters judge, and if they vote thumbs down, the other party with a majority rather than supra majority rule, can reverse it. Keep at it Harry!

Here, I'm slightly confused; I was under the impression that the VRA forbid cracking minorities to lessen their chance of gaining a representative who is the choice of the minority group. I'd imagine the Cleveland NAACP for one would throw a fit over the newest map you proposed. Apart from race, honestly that map does better serve the communities of interest in the Cleveland area better than the first two you drew. Clearly, as a Republican I'd prefer it not to be drawn either, but other than that, this map isn't bad.

Only section 5 has that approach, TJ, and unless section 5 applies to Cuyahoga, Muon2's map is legal. Section 2 of the VRA only protects minorities, if one of them hits 50% VAP or CVAP, depending on the appellate court district. But whether for prudential reasons, a state law should have a section 5 overlay of some sort, is the issue that I am raising - for the same reasons as you. It is an evidentiary matter as to whether 39%-40% or so black VAP is enough to trigger Section 5, or whether blacks are out of the hunt irrespective here. As I noted above, it is in the grey zone, and is really a function of odds, so maybe there should be some penalty for dilution in the grey zone, rather than just prohibiting it.  Section 5 also has an anti-dilution aspect, but I don't favor incorporating that prong of it. And as we all know, Section 5 may not be long for this SCOTUS world.

Putting that aside, as to other aspects of Muon2's map, which is beginning to look similar to mine (or mine to his, or both), other than the erosity issues, that split of Canton from Akron should count as a metro chop. And that nasty chop of Medina should count as a half chop. Granted, mine has Carroll and Ashland as half chops itself, but somehow that does not seems as bad for smaller counties. Maybe it should only count as a half chop if the smaller portion of the chop exceeds say 20,000- 30,000 people or something (my Ashtabula chop has 26K), in addition to being more than 20% of the county's population.

Muon's map has 8 county chops, a metro chop for Akron-Canton,  2 metro chops for Columbus  (mine between 2 CD's has one metro chop into Columbus), 1 chop for the Franklin County tri-chop, and a .5 chop for Medina. Mine has 11 county chops, 1 metro chop for Columbus, plus one potential .5 chop for Ashtabula using my formula. So Muon's map has 11 .5 chops, and mine has 12 to 12.5 chops. I guess we both also have a metro chop into Cuyahoga, so add one chop for both maps. So Muon wins with the denominator. The issue is whether my numerator for erosity is sufficiently better to come up with a better score or not. It probably does,  but it may be fairly close if Ashtabula counts as a half chop.

Oh wait a minute - Muon2 loses a chop of Carroll solely because he has different population numbers. So I have 11 chops, not 12 to to 12.5 (assuming other variances don't blow out my chop-less OH-09 and OH-05).  But then I see I forgot to count for my map a half chop for Summit, so I'm back to 11.5 chops, tying Muon2's map (assuming I don't have chops I can't avoid for OH-09 and/or OH-05 using different population numbers).  In that regard, I think using my number set is better, because it probably has more realistic projections, than just straight line extrapolations, and thus is likely to be closer to what will actually obtain in 2021, generating more interest.

Muon of course got his chop count down by using Franklin as his dumping ground to equalize populations. My formula takes the profit out of doing that, particularly if it violates the 10% rule. It's a great way to cut down the chops, but it screws the metro area that serves as the dumping ground, not only as to its unity, but also by using a high population county as a tri-chop vehicle. The same thing goes on with the great temptation to tri-chop Summit. Such an exercise should not be rewarded, simply in order to avoid chops in some far away small counties that nobody will really care about. The reason we count chops is to avoid gerrymanders, not to facilitate (and indeed encourage) the shredding of metro areas, and/or subjecting a host of rural counties to their domination.

The focus here needs not only to be to avoid gerrymanders, but also to actually have a map which makes good public policy sense (that is where compactness comes in again, along with other factors), avoiding subjective criteria that can be gamed. The black box needs to rule, and then a procedure can be used to let the contending sides pick one of the high scoring maps, and if they can't agree, let a court do it (actually better would be to pick the top five scored maps (if 5 is not deemed enough, it could be the top seven), that are deemed substantially different (because X percent of the population is moved to another CD, or the partisan effect based on what CD's are in play based on PVI analysis changes enough, and let each party veto two (or three) of them, leaving the one remaining as the adopted map).

If within a substantially similar subset of maps, both parties agree one with a lower but still high score is preferable, presumably because after negotiation both sides have agreed on that map, they can switch that one in as the choice within that subset. Thus if say there are 3 similar maps within each subset, then the two parties will have a choice of between 15 or 21 maps (depending on whether there are 5 or 7 finalist maps), from which to choose. So the parties will have some room to wheel and deal, save key incumbents, or whatever, without such back room stuff resulting in something embarrassing as the map, designed primarily for the care and feeding of incumbents, or whatever.

The above procedure will cull out maps spit out by the black box that for all the good intentions, simply in the end for subjective reasons as to which everyone agrees, are just silly, or which turn out to really favor one side, when another high scoring map is more neutral.

Too bad the data sets are different. It really does not matter what data set is used, for this exercise, as long as we use the same one. I know my numbers are now accurate (I have a fancy spreadsheet - well I'm off by about 1,000 folks, but that should not make any difference here), and with my data set, below I think is one of two possible winning maps.  The other (which I need to re-prepare) removes the two cuts for OH-14, but adds cuts into Cuyahoga and Summit, and improves erosity. However, it then depends on how you score trichops, chops into metro areas, and chops of counties that take more than 20% of its population. I used the 0.5% population deviation allowed to not only get rid of county chops (two of them in this map), but also locality chops. This map has none (except Columbus). I also used it to straighten out lines.

I also have come up with an erosity test. You can either put a square around a CD that measure the percentage of the area in the CD not in the square, or put a square that fits entirely within a CD, and then draw straight lines connecting the farthest points outside the square (whichever approach gives you the highest score). You then take the area that is that not within the CD that is within the polygon that connects the outside points, or the area outside the CD that is within the square that contains all of the CD within it, as a percentage of the square or polygon, subtract that from 100%, and that gives you the erosity score for the CD. You then sum the percentage scores (with a perfect square CD getting a 100 score, and one that takes up half the polygon, or say 60% of the square that contains the entire CD within it,  getting a 60 score (you take the higher score), and that gives you a total erosity score for the map.

You then divide that score by the number of chops, to get your final score. County chops count as one chop, locality chops an 0.5 chop (unless say the chop involves more than say 5,000 people, and then it counts as a full chop), chopping more than 20% of the population of a county as a half chop, and maybe chopping say more than 20% of the population of a metro area as a chop potentially, along with a tri-chop counting as a double chop. (I just added the trichop thing, because I could lose a chop, by tri-chopping Summit, or for that matter moving OH-15 into Lorain avoiding Summit, which would increase the erosity of OH-15, but not enough to make it not worth getting rid of the chops for OH-14; I guess that is why there needs to be a rule counting  traveling county chops as two chops - which still might be worth it, if it avoids a metro chop, however that is defined.)

I would count as a chop a county that is part of the CD that has no state highway connecting that county with any other part of the CD. Other than that, I am not sure I think using Muon2's highway thing is a workable or wise exercise. I don't think anybody cares, and matters can turn on whether a highway is a mile this way or that. That does not make much sense to me.

Some section 5 overlay is needed as well (I see Muon2 disagrees, but ignoring that is going to kill this project in its crib - black politicians will freak out, if they think that freezes them out), but again, there is a gray zone, within which perhaps again it is not an all or nothing deal. In my map, OH-11 is 39.3% black VAP. The CD using my numbers cannot get any higher than 40%.  Oh, I don't have local projections, so I assumed the 81K population loss for Cuyahoga all come out of OH-11. If you guys have projection data for the localities, all on an organized spreadsheet, that would be helpful, but to actually use it to draw maps would take too much work I think, beyond dealing with section 5 issues, and for the Columbus CD. You guys didn't actually do that did you? Well I suppose you need it only for the chopped counties. In my map, there are 11 county chops.

Any comments on my scoring methodology? I am now fully convinced one needs to use this kind of balancing test approach to get the best maps, rather than a bright line, or lose, test, based solely on chop counts.  And how does my map score compared to the ones above, using either my scoring method, or whatever one that you prefer?

I must say it is kind of hard to work together, because we don't seem to agree on so much. Is there any way to get our ideas more in sync, or is this a negotiation that is just destined to fail? I know not using a balancing test scoring formula where erosity is a key factor, and measured by shape rather than road connections, is  something that I cannot accept. The maps will just look a whole lot uglier, and in my view, for no good reason. I think using my approach, or some facsimile thereof, will make for more "salable" maps.

I will study your map in more detail. Perhaps you can send me the data file. I can't see you muni lines of course, although maybe that is in a map of yours above. Yes, the double chop in Cuyahoga was simply an error. It needs to be corrected. I still believe that not worrying about erosity, and focusing solely on chops is a big mistake. The public does not need to understand the software program. They can see it's product with their own eyes, and say, hey, that makes sense. One can get fairly close just by eye balling stuff. My map is off in population totals, and so now I am doing a proper spreadsheet to get it right (the good news is that the chop into Lorain will be far less due to correcting the errors). What I don't think they care about is the number of larger chops versus micro chops.

Anyway, it would be interesting to try to score our two maps in some way, using different formulas, when they are finalized, and we both think we simply can't do any better. As I say, it's all a balancing test, so using my approach, we might both get some points that the other does not.

Hey, I think I was first in launching a Jihad against ideology around here. How come I don't get any credit for that? 

What Hash said basically.

What I have learnt from this forum is really how rhetoric doesn't so much hug reality in some all embracing glow as rather strangle it violently trying to remove all life from it but, like in consentual BDSM, it needs the victim to keep breathing so it can keep on going.

That's quite a mouthful Mr. Foyle. I had to read it three times to absorb it all into my decaying synapses. I am trying to get my mind around an example of the practice of torturing "reality" while taking care not to kill it. That might take awhile! 

Politico seems to have taken the gloves off in its coverage of Obama and his administration (Dick Allen, its owner, was on the Hugh Hewitt show yesterday, just chewing up Obama and spiting him out, much to Hewitt's delight obviously). Is all of this just manageable vein leakage, or has a major artery of the Administration been severed, with the intensive care room its next venue?  

I am a bit surprised that none of this chatter seems to have been put up on this Board (at least that I have noticed). It appears the Pubs around here have been beaten into submission, and have become tame little puppy dogs. Where's krazen?!

My rather uneducated impression is that Calvinism was a mixed bag. Predestination motivated folks to be productive, and pillars of the community, as the Yin, but also as the Yang fueled a perception that those of low station were out of God's favor, which tended to lead to something of a Social Darwinist attitude. Failure = sin.

Wasn't Lief (along with Eraserhead) at the epicenter of the Dem trolling for Herman Cain? 

Sam Spade was Scots Irish, and proud of it. He in part attributed his ancestry for his roguish and politically incorrect behavior.

The first map is too erose. The second one looks good, but it depends what it does to the overall erosity of the map.  However, 37.5% black VAP may be an issue. My OH-11 has 40% black VAP.  I suspect that 40% is probably right around the tipping point where the black voters in a Dem primary fall below 50% for this area (5% of the VAP is Hispanic, and 20% voted for McCain). Black politicians are simply not going to tolerate the black box screwing them out of a seat - particularly if something that looks reasonable will hold it for them.  As a practical matter, as I noted above, there needs to be some sort of variant of Section 5 to the black boxes computer program.

I am looking forward to your comments on my set of rules Mike, and particularly how to measure erosity. I have suggested that you fit a perfect square into the CD in a way that takes up the most area within the CD, and then with respect to the percentage area of the CD outside the square, you weight that area outside by its distance from the edge of the square on some exponential basis.

I  kind of like my locality chop rule, where the higher the population for the smaller  share of the chop, the more of a point deduction the CD gets. What do you think?  That rule will also effectively "solve" my concern about chopping major cities. You can chop them at the margins, but you can't halve them, or anything close to that. That way, you get a rule that comes the closest I think to treating all localities equally (except that I like my extra chop rule, where a locality that can suck up a whole CD, including its surrounded burbs, fails to do so because another CD takes up too high a percentage of it).

I disagree Mike with you idea that the size of a county chop prevails over the metric of reducing erosity. That is not to say that there cannot be some sort of balancing test, so if you can lose a chop because its a micro chop, that gives you positive points, to measure against the negative points from the additional erosity. Putting aside the issue of keeping metro areas together, a smaller number of positive points could be given for smaller county chops, just as with locality chops. But to come up with a map that has considerably more erosity to get the chop avoidance score up solely due to reducing the size of the chop or to bag micro-chops, I think just has the priorities wrong. I don't think that would be the choice of the voters if asked just which emphasis that they prefer. And it will make the end product less salable, and more controversial is my guess.

Anyway in looking at your map (and why can't you guys make pretty maps the way I do? ), I see that you have a deep and nasty chop of Stark, severing the Canton, or Canton-Akron, merto area. That is not good - at all - in my opinion. Putting aside Lorain (a substantial chop in population, but not in area), my nasty chop is Fairfield, but that chop is justified as dividing the part of Fairfield in the metro area from that outside - just as is the case with Warren County, on which we both agree I see now.

I think I now have about 90% of the names of counties in Ohio memorized from their location and shape. At least I have accomplished that much with this exercise, if nothing else.

It was done for political reasons, and to make his wife happy. Constantine was a pragmatist. That all is my impression anyway. Somewhere I read, that he really didn't convert. He just made it clear that Christians were now part of the establishment.

Pennsylvania.

Clarence I am so touched, with so much pressing in on you, that you felt the desire to take the time to pen that beautiful post of yours to let us know how you are doing. It tells me that you really care about us, as we care about you. And it's great that you are doing well, not only by virtue of the the text of your note, but also simply because you did, and with eloquence and some elaboration. All the best, and thanks.

Is the meme here that Pubs are mad dogs running around in the sun along with Englishmen, while the Dems are serene rationalists, who keep their cool inside air conditioned buildings?

At the very least, a tri-chop counts as an extra chop, and maybe it should count as a chop and a half. I tried very hard to avoid tri-chops in my map. There needs to be a damn good reason to have one, and the only one I can really think of, is to keep metro areas together (intelligently defined metro areas, not necessarily as defined by the census, which tend often to include large tracts of relatively empty land, etc.).

The trick here is to find a formula which balances erosity scores with chop counts. The more I do this, the more I think some sort of balancing test, where both the chop count, and the erosity score, factor into a total score. And I am thinking that if a city can be fully contained in one CD, if part of it is in another CD, while other cities are within its CD that are not surrounded by it, that counts as a chop (i.e., this involves cities, plus surrounded burbs, with more population than a CD). And in choosing which local place to chop, the more population that is within the smaller share of the chop, the more the negative score. So that way, there is a balancing test between not having relatively even chops of higher population places, and limiting erosity. One will simply not get the best map, and the most salable map, without these sorts of balancing tests. Thanks heavens for computers. This could never be done without them.

As to intelligently defined metro areas, if one CD impinges into the metro area, and in doing so chops a county, while a metro CD impinges out, and in doing so chops a county, that should count as a three chops rather than two perhaps.

All of these rules are designed to have a map that looks nice on paper, and also avoids any one locality of relatively substantial population from thinking it really got the shaft. And then add some VRA Section 5 variant, so we don't start putting a slew of minority Congresspersons out of jobs over time. It is essential to avoid that, because otherwise this project will never get traction.

I might add that my map above, as revised now a zillion times, has a lot of potentially swingable CD's. For a state like Ohio, which is relatively closely balanced overall between the parties, that tends I think to be what happens when you focus on keeping the erosity down. In a wave election, the losing party could lose a bunch of CD's.  Only 4 CD's, 2 for each party, will be truly safe, by 2022. And that is good.  Having swingable CD's I strongly suspect, will lead to better public policy formulation in the end. One will more incentive to try to find some accommodation, rather than just stick it to the other side.

I know it is very early, but I am already making prediction maps for the 2016 elections. It is a hobby of mine and I would love to share with all of you. If it is okay, I would like to keep this thread to do just that.

This I think is the wrong forum for this. It's Muon2's call of course, but prediction maps go on the 2016 Board I believe. This subforum is about demography and election districts, not predicting who will vote how in the next election, given the candidates.