The bare minimum number of seats should be equal to the population of the 50 states divided by the population of the smallest state.  Based on the 2010 Census that puts you at a minimum of 547 seats.

Another major problem with too much local government within a metro area is the way businesses exploit tax incentives designed to attract new jobs in the region..  Companies hop around from city to city within the Columbus metro in order to send the cities into a tax-incentive bidding war.  Almost every month there is a story or blurb about how a business is moving its offices from one city to another within the same county because they were offered a better tax incentive.  This keeps the businesses from ever having to pay the full amount of local taxes and hurts the local government budgets which means they have to increase taxes on residents in order to continue providing basic services.  It also sucks up resources that could be better aimed at attracting new businesses and jobs to the region instead of allowing already established local companies to exploit the system.

One of the things that was unfortunately drowned out in the debate about SB 5 here in Ohio was Gov. Kasich's call to reduce the level of duplication in local services.  One of the major goals of the legislation was to increase incentives for local governments to pool resources.  There is already some of that happening in Ohio but as you can see from the map we are on the higher end of things when it comes to the number of local governments and cooperation is definitely not that common. 

One of the biggest problems I think we have is the shear number of school districts.  We have over 600 school districts in our state which puts the average number of students per district at less than 5,000.  We could deliver a far better education to our students if we were less focused on maintaining hyper-local control of "neighborhood schools" and we moved to a regional level magnet schools approach.  That way families could choose to send their kids to a STEM school or a music academy instead of everyone getting force fed the same vanilla HS Diploma that doesn't really qualify you for anything.  It would never fly though because the PTAs and school boards in every 100 person town would cry about how they were losing "local control" of their schools.

Central Ohio:
DISTRICT 17 (Navy): COLUMBUS EAST. Pop 311,504. O 79.1% 50.2% VAP Black. Columbus has a large enough black population for a compact VRA seat with districts of this size. Safe D.
DISTRICT 18 (Yellow): COLUMBUS WEST. Pop 311,240. O 64.5% The rest of the inner-city of Columbus including Ohio State. Safe D.
DISTRICT 19 (Brown): DUBLIN-UPPER ARLINGTON. Pop 311,466. O 47.1% Columbus western suburbs. This one is solidly Republican at the moment but trending toward the Democrats. Still, if Stivers managed to win what was basically a combination of this and district 18 3 years ago, this would probably not be close. Lean R.
DISTRICT 20 (Lime Green): DELAWARE. Pop 311,538. O 44.0% The very wealthy northern Columbus suburbs and Delaware County. Safe R.
DISTRICT 21 (Brown): LANCASTER-PICKERINGTON. Pop 310,823. O 43.4% The rest of the Columbus exurbs. Safe R.
DISTRICT 26 (Cadet Blue): ZANESVILLE-NEWARK. Pop 311,681. O 44.2% This is sort of ugly looking but the population numbers came out well for this arrangement. It dips into the rural Southeast some but not much into the ancestrally Democratic areas.
DISTRICT 28 (Crimson): MT. VERNON. Pop 311,111. O 37.5% Incredibly, I think Mt. Vernon may be the largest city in this sprawling rural area. This is about as Republican a seat you can draw outside of west-central Ohio or the Cincinnati suburbs. Safe R.

Well done overall on Ohio.  There are a few strange configurations but most of them make at least some sense.

I do think there is a slightly better way to configure the East/Southeast Columbus metro and still have good numbers.

District 21: Pickaway, Fairfield, Hocking, and Perry counties plus Canal Winchester, Obetz, and Groveport in Franklin county.

District 26: south Licking, Tuscawaras, and east Guernsey counties plus Reynoldsburg and parts of Gahanna in Franklin county.

This cleans up the shape of District 26 and avoids the unnecessary three-way split of Licking County.  It does create a three-way split within Franklin county but that was essentially already there anyway.

If I were starting from scratch I would have initially combined Licking and Fairfield counties since their population together is only +851.  

Also, if the three districts within Franklin County are drawn in the north, you can combine the southern "leftovers" with Pickaway and Fayette counties.  Assuming all four districts have equal populations each one would be about +240.

Wasn't the birthrate for upper and middle class Americans already lower than the replacement rate pre-recession?  I thought the only reason we weren't at European levels of population growth was because of immigration.

This is actually a pretty fair representation of each state's population.  If you multiply the state's percentage of the US population by 10 it comes out as roughly equal to the above numbers.

Although many people think a Congress so large would be too unwieldy, I think that smaller Congressional districts would decrease the amount of money needed to campaign and in turn allow for representatives to be more in tune with the actual voters rather than the lobbyists.

The current trend among states is a reduction in coal and an increase in natural gas + renewables. I'm surprised how fast coal is declining though.

Much of the decline in coal can also be attributed to new EPA rules on emissions.  It's been written up quite a bit in the local news hear in Ohio.  That's no surprise though given the concentration of both coal plants and coal mining in our state.

I'm sort of surprised that people in the general public don't find it all that important to have a successful marriage or to be a good parent(!).

Remember that marriage is on the decline in the US.  With 50% of couples getting divorced I'm not that surprised that the gen pub doesn't have a very high opinion of the institution.

On another note, it would be interesting to see where the newcomers are settling.  I know that Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast have fairly high Asian populations just based on proximity.  I'm wondering if there are any "interior" or eastern enclaves also or if it is a geographically neutral thing.  I'm sure it differs somewhat by country of origin.  I believe their is a significant Vietnamese population in New Orleans; New York is always a general immigrant hot spot; I've also gotten the impression that DC and Atlanta have higher than average Asian populations.  Are their any other major destination cities?

It's possible that there will be some pressure on Congress to increase the size of the House since that would be over 1 million people represented by a single representative.

I think that's a hard question to answer for a variety of reasons.  Possibly the biggest unknown is how tolerant the current generation of Americans really is.  Baby boomers were born and raised during the height of the Civil Rights Movement which means that a lot of them might know that racism is wrong but they still "inherited" some of the prejudices of their parents.  Thus, the fact that white flight has continued to be common 50 years after the fact is not all that surprising.

However, I would argue that the majority of baby boomers probably made some effort to raise their children without prejudice.  Therefore Gen Xers and Millennials are probably more tolerant of living in a diverse neighborhood.  These generations have also grown up in a media environment saturated by both implicit and explicit messages regarding diversity.

Florida Congressional map precleared.

http://atr.rollcall.com/justice-department-pre-clears-florida-congressional-map/


And supported by a judge.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/judge-rejects-dems-attempt-put-congressional-map-hold-during-trial


He said that absent a determination that the map is unconstitutional "I do not have the authority to replace it with another map while the case is pending." Absent that, he said the result would be that the 2002 map would remain in effect -- a map, he said "was admittedly drawn to favor the Republican Party and incumbents."



That would be very funny indeed if the judge used the 2002 map with 2 at large districts.

I think "supported by a judge" is a fairly strong overstatement since he clearly believes the map is in violation of the new redistricting requirements.  I think the Dems only lost this one on a technicality.  Although it is certainly not great for the Dems this year, we'll have to wait and see how things go with the actual arguments over the map's constitutionality.

Here's OK with 7 seats.

I'd say its 6-1 R. Democrats could at least be competitive in the 7th.



A TX Democratic gerrymander with 45 seats is also on the way.

I don't know much about Oklahoma politics but if you ignore the '08 presidential numbers I would say that almost any of those districts could be won by a legitimate Blue Dog.  Granted, the Blue Dogs are dying out pretty rapidly but most of them typically can win in districts where the typical D-R split is less than ten points in favor of the Republicans.

"Hispanic" is a ridiculously over-broad racial category in the US because "Mestizo" and "Mulatto" are considered to be offensive terms.

That's really strange. Eurasian is also considered offensive by some Americans. Why did those practical descriptions of people of mixed race became "offensive"?

Eurasian is offensive?  I've never heard that term used in a racial/ethnic context.  I've always heard it in a geographical context.

As Hispanics integrate, they will be lumped more into the existing racial categories. I'm Cuban, but look indistinguishable from an Italian or Greek person. Plus, like immigration from Ireland, Italy, Germany, etc, immigration from Latin America will eventually slow, and may be doing so already.

I think this is a good point and may be one of the reasons that Hispanic/Latino is not actually considered a race but an ethnicity.  I think that Hispanic Americans are likely to begin assimilating into the culture in the same way earlier waves of European immigrants were able to.  Many people who identify as being Hispanic have virtually no outward physical characteristics to distinguish them as being such.

According to the 2010 1 year ACS Census Estimates, the ten CDs with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents are:

FL-21 (58.11%)
FL-18 (53.16%)
CA-31 (51.53%)
NY-05 (48.07%)
CA-47 (46.86%)
FL-25 (46.78%)
CA-29 (46.33%)
NY-06 (44.32%)
CA-34 (44.26%)
NY-09 (42.06%)

The ten CDs with the lowest percentage of foreign-born residents are:
KY-05 (0.60%)
WV-03 (0.78%)
OH-18 (0.95%)
MO-08 (1.14%)
OH-04 (1.19%)
PA-12 (1.22%)
WV-01 (1.23%)
OH-06 (1.35%)
MN-08 (1.50%)
PA-09 (1.58%)

Does that include single district states?  I'm surprised that Wyoming wouldn't be in the bottom ten.

Do we have national numbers yet for the likely (or PVI) seat distributions?

I estimated the national totals a while ago and had Obama winning about 225-230 CDs, down from 242 under the old lines.

Interesting. I'm also kind of surprised by what looks like a majority of geographically large districts in New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada being red. No other states (maybe Illinois) seem to have that given the current rural and suburban voting distributions. Due to Republican control of redistricting?

Actually, my estimate was a bit low. I ran the tally again and, assuming Obama won both NH districts, he's won 234 districts overall on the new map.

This, to me says that if Democrats don't win back the House then they need to get some better people recruiting candidates.

I wish they gave some data on domestic net migration. I wonder if there is that large of a net migration out of California or not. I suspect there is out of Southern California, but wouldn't be surprised if the Bay Area, especially the Silicon Valley, held it's ground.

There is in fact data on domestic net migration.
http://www.census.gov/popest/data/counties/totals/2011/CO-EST2011-05.html

No wonder Ohio's unemployment rate is so much better than the national average.  Everyone is leaving!  The domestic migration out of the state is greater than the natural increase in population.

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-55.html

This got mentioned in the Columbus Dispatch this week so I thought I'd post it here for all to enjoy.  Let the 2020 speculation begin!

First thoughts: Will the North Dakota energy boom send the state over 750,000 this decade?

Very nice swingy Ohio.

Whats the black VAP in CD11?

I forgot to record it exactly but it I remember it was between 55-60%.  Also, the East Columbus and Cincinnati districts were around 30% black VAP if I remember right so they it is likely they could elect black representatives as well.

Here's Ohio.  Could go 15D-5R or 8D-12R depending on the year.




Cincinnati


Columbus


Cleveland-Akron

Initially, yes there will probably be a decline or at least some stagnation.  Once it's know how well or to what extent the law will be enforced and how easily it can be circumvented we'll know more.  It's hard to say what the long term affects will be so soon.

Sorry if I missed it in an earlier post, but what are the PVIs for final court map?  Also, what is the generally accepted net loss/gain for each party with that map?

The Dems would probably love that map, since it would give them a close-to-safe district. NH-02 becomes 59-40 Obama.

I dunno.  I think Democrats probably prefer to have both seats as competitive targets every year.

I don't understand what the deal is with the border between the 1st and 2nd in the GOP map/current map.  What's the reason for the 1st hooking underneath the 2nd.  Is it to keep incumbents in their districts or something.  I actually like the GOP map better except for that part.

I didn't dig deep enough to see if any maps were released publicly but there appears to be some more movement here.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/Redistricting-Maps-Starting-to-Move-in-Florida-211483-1.html

I wonder if Montana will get its second district back if it passes Rhode Island.

Also, it looks like Nevada's growth has come to a screeching halt.  I wonder if it will recover at all once the economy is stabilized.