US House Redistricting: Wisconsin

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Since we seem to be doing separate threads for each state now, here's a Republican gerrymander of Wisconsin:




WI-01 (blue, Paul Ryan - R) - Removes Racine, adds more of the suburbs west of Milwaukee, so the district should have a small Republican lean now.
WI-02 (green, Tammy Baldwin - D) - Goes west instead of north, and is probably even more safe now.
WI-03 (purple, Ron Kind - D) - Stretches the length of the state to take in some of those heavily-Dem counties in the north, and also picks up most of Portage County. Should be solidly Dem now.
WI-04 (red, Gwen Moore - D) - Virtually unchanged. Safe D.
WI-05 (yellow, Jim Sensenbrenner - R) - The most Republican district in the state probably moves a few points to the left, as it pulls in Racine from Paul Ryan's district. Should still be a pretty safe Republican district, though.
WI-06 (teal, Tom Petri - R) - Somewhat different, but still safe R.
WI-07 (grey, Sean Duffy - R) - Stretches the northern end of the state to take in as much Republican territory as possible. Should at least lean Republican now.
WI-08 (light purple, Reid Ribble - R) - Population still centered in the Green Bay area, but the district goes west and south instead of north. Maybe slightly less Republican, but shouldn't be too much of a change.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The Dem votes are too spread out in the western part of the state to pack them all into one district -- Dane County (Madison) alone takes up the lion's share of a district.

Looking at it from a pure numbers perspective, you'd have to shunt about 11-12 points of Republican performance from Sensenbrenner and Petri's districts to make Duffy safe and turn Kind's district into a Republican-leaning one. I don't really know how you'd do that without making a complete and utter mess of the map (and I doubt Sensenbrenner would take kindly to his district being made anything less than rock-solid Republican).

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Looks like Kerry won pretty much everywhere in Dane County, not just Madison. I only see a handful of towns that Bush won, and even those were fairly close.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I think you're missing the human ego part of things. Sure, from a game theory perspective, maximizing the amount of winnable seats is probably the best goal, but when you dilute Republican districts, you will get strong objections from some of the established Republicans. In this case, I don't think Sensenbrenner, who doesn't exactly have much crossover appeal, will take kindly to his district being made anything other than a heavily-Republican district.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I guess Torie and I just have differing philosophies on redistricting. If I were advising the Republicans on redistricting, I'd tell them to lock in their gains from 2010 rather than trying to take out even more Democrats. I'd rather have 200-ish seats locked in as fairly safe than trying to get even more Republicans in office while risking a landslide in the next Dem year.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Good for them, but there are two in Kerry-won districts (Kapanke and Schultz), and there are two others in districts that were close (Leibham and Harsdorf).

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Either way, the other two are in vulnerable districts, and there are a couple others, like Darling and Hopper, that are potentially vulnerable. I'd be surprised if it flipped control of the Senate, but it's silly to dismiss it out of hand.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

PPP are polling all eight of the Senators who are vulnerable to a recall, so I guess we'll find out something. Though I'm sure if they're vulnerable people will just dismiss it because Kos is sponsoring it.

I suspect that Kapanke is screwed; he's in the most Democratic district of the eight. Hopper is also in some trouble; his district is pretty Republican, but inconveniently for him, it's just come out that he doesn't live in his district any more, he lives in Madison with his ex-lobbyist girlfriend.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

This is getting really off-topic; I made a thread for the recall elections. I'm going to go ahead and post those numbers there.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

If I may be allowed to float a 4-2-2 map...



WI-01 (blue, Paul Ryan - R) - carves Racine out of the district and adds more of the reliably Republican Milwaukee 'burbs. I don't have numbers on this one, but it definitely moves to the Republicans.
WI-02 (green, Tammy Baldwin - D) - Safe Dem territory centered around Madison; this one's about 63-64% Kerry.
WI-03 (purple, Ron Kind - D) - Loses St. Croix, adds some counties to the east, pretty much unchanged, still 51% Kerry.
WI-04 (red, Gwen Moore - D) - Pretty much the same, safe D. No need to figure the numbers on this one.
WI-05 (yellow, Jim Sensenbrenner - R) - Wraps around Milwaukee and pulls in Racine from WI-01. Not sure on the numbers, but it should still be >55% Bush.
WI-06 (teal, Tom Petri - R) - Pulls Portage County out of WI-07, most significantly, but should still be >55% Bush.
WI-07 (grey, Sean Duffy - R) - If the Republicans want to cede WI-03 to the Democrats, they'll cut the heavily-Dem counties out of the northwest part of this district. Here, I decided to go "good government" and leave them intact. I did try to annex as much Republican-friendly territory as possible; the district definitely flips from Kerry to Bush, and should be around 51% Bush.
WI-08 (light purple, Reid Ribble - R) - Pulls in most of Marathon and loses the counties to the north; I'm estimating it's around 54% Bush.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

There are rumors that the Republicans are going to try to shove through redistricting in a special session this week.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

There are rumors that the Republicans are going to try to shove through redistricting in a special session this week.

All 3 levels?

I'm not sure, but I don't see how they could do Congressional redistricting without the new ward data (since they would need to have zero deviation, while state legislative districts get a 5% leeway). Besides, they just need to do the state legislature right now to screw up the recalls.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Here's an article about a proposed Congressional map being passed around. PDF of the map is here.

Drops WI-07 down to 53-45 Obama and pushes WI-03 up to 59-39 Obama. All the other districts look to be pretty much unchanged, number-wise.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Yeah the Ryan Medicare plan didn't cause any problems for the GOP in NY-26 obviously.

Well, i could argue about that, but that's not my point.  We just had a big congressional recess, and you guys couldn't even scoop up a few busloads of protestors to make a scene?

The media doesn't care about protests in DC unless it's a Tea Party rally.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

So yes, they are trying to ram through maps before the recalls.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

What exactly is "angry" about him in this article? He sounds pretty reasonable to me.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Probably giving up on it and focusing on their remaining seats. They did other things to screw Democrats over. Two of the other recall candidates were drawn outside of their seats. I believe Holperin is also drawn out of his district.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I'm also assuming the reason they didn't change the Senate map more radically is that the Assembly districts are nested within the Senate districts. It's harder to do a radical remap when you're affecting the other house of the legislature at the same time.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Um... the redistricting process is over, Walker signed the bills this week.