US House Redistricting: Michigan

[ilikeverin]

How did you split Ingham up, exactly?  I'm curious what district I'd've ended up in.

Your wish is my command - of course!  I did the map zoom in aerial format, the better to assist you. Cheers.

Ugh, that's grotesque; well done!  Yeah, the horridness of city/township boundaries in Michigan can hardly be overstated, and is one of the reasons I assisted in the anti-BigSkyBob shouting match earlier in this thread; the notion that counties, cities, townships, and whatnot actually correspond to anything meaningful is quite demonstrably false in the case of Michigan.  If I'm reading the map correctly, it looks like I'd be in a completely different CD from two of my best friends who live literally across the street from campus.  Another friend of mine, who lives with his wife in DeWitt and commutes from there, would be in still a third district.  Brilliant!

It looks like those random patches of blue are indeed parkland.

You might have Snyder to thank for the boundaries ending up where they are.  There's certainly things to complain about, but he actually seems set on governing Michigan from the center-right, which is an awkward place to be with the Michigan GOP so far to the right.  He was going to be tested with the homophobic "anti-"bullying bill that was going to be passed, but thankfully the State Senate made it more reasonable; perhaps this will be the next test.

[Torie]

Does anyone have the Kerry-Bush results for the adopted new map? That would be a better measure in Michigan.

I did the 2004 numbers "by hand" for different maps way back when above. As you can see from the trend map below, the reader's digest version is that outside the Wayne County dominated CD's, and MI-01 and MI-04, and to a far lessor extent MI-10 (the trend in Macomb was flat), the GOP PVI numbers look considerably more robust using 2004 numbers, particularly for the CD's in SW Michigan. The 2004 numbers going forward are probably closer to "the truth"  for SW Michigan (that is snapback country), but I doubt Inghram has much snapback potential, and parts of MI-11 in Oakland probably don't either. MI-08 is probably not as sick as it looks however, because its exurban portion of Oakland is better snapback county, and Livingston trended 3% to the Dems in 2008, and it probably will trend back in 2012. So MI-08 is a mixed bag. Going forward, MI-08 is the big issue really. It will be fine however as long as Rogers hangs around.

[Torie]

Regarding what the Pubs actually did, as opposed to what they "should" have done, MI local politics experts at Red Racing Horses, say it was because of a Dem State Senator, Barcia, who lives in Bay County, and used to represent much of what is in MI-10 the way that I drew it, but then his CD disappeared in the 2001 redraw, but he really liked Washington DC, and wants to go back. In a word, the Pubs are scared sh*tless of him. So Barcia was "quarantined" into MI-05, and since he is pretty conservative on social issues, the Pubs kind of hope he will take MI-05, and that can't happen with Lansing in it anyway (the Dem's there don't like pro-life, gun-rack type Dems).  So thus the map. They figured Rogers can handle Lansing (yes he can, admittedly), and left MI-09 tantalizingly close to competitive, but just out of reach.

And there you have it!