US House Redistricting: West Virginia

[minionofmidas]

Drawing Capito in with Rahall is probably the best way to get her to take that risk and run for Senate or Governor.

The question is, would Democrats want that?

[minionofmidas]

It's probably as balanced as you'll get on these estimates, and despite the issue with Nicholas County it's not horribly noncompact.

It also pits Moore Capito into an uphill battle against Rahall, or perhaps rather into a statewide run, and probably leaves the GOP slight favorites in both north seats, with McKinley running in the green one.

[minionofmidas]

Nobody seems to have presented a north/east/southwest type map yet.



We've seen better balanced seats though, this one is -711/+1502/-792.

I kind of like how Nick Rahall gets the most Republican seat. (58.1 TPP, vs 57.5 for McWhatever and 54.4 for Capito.)

[minionofmidas]

Damn contiguity requirement.

Give Rahall McDowell, Mingo, Wyoming and Logan in comparison to here, shed Grant, Randolph, Barbour, Upshur, Webster and Nicholas to blue, and give Capito Wood, Ritchie and (from purple) Clay, and you have a noticeably more Democratic seat for Rahall in the same basic setup and the lowest population deviation I've seen so far: +29/+2/-32. But no contiguity. Tucker's still in Rahall's district.

[minionofmidas]

You're right about map 1; must have overlooked some tiny precincts and not checked contiguity.

The second list seems also to omit Braxton. It also carries the error from the first map, and apparently additional errors. It seems that (unless there's new errors now. Ones the app doesn't find. Which has happened in the past.) it's actually very balanced if you give Tucker to McKinley (is that his name? Good.) at +277 / +2 / -280. (As to the mathematical purism issue... you and the app are both wrong. Persons cannot be divided in redistricting, and thus a rounded-down population and a rounded-up population should both be considered ideal populations, and the third district is -279.)

[minionofmidas]

:-/

At least they didn't tell'em to split counties.

[minionofmidas]

Maximum deviation is defined as from the ideal, or from largest to smallest seat? I think this is the most balanced map we've had in the thread, anyhow:

[minionofmidas]

As long as you're not splitting counties... you can fairly easily calculate them yourself.

[minionofmidas]

It also has the same second district as my map!

[minionofmidas]

Nah, it's two of them slapped together. Which is still much better than most congressional districts in the US.

[minionofmidas]

The heart of the Southern coal country does stay together in that map, of course (because it was actually purpose-drawn to ) and the South would be completely dominant in Dem primaries in that district. While R candidates are more likely to be from the Eastern Panhandle. Rahall wouldn't like it but should actually be fine absent a massive wave.

[minionofmidas]

If you compare the Cooper plan to my map, it's pretty clear that it's intended to protect McKinley and Rahall. It's a map aimed at 1-1-1 with the Republicans having an entrenched incumbent in the wouldbe swing seat, so really 2-1 R.

[minionofmidas]

It kind of depends how you define a GOP-friendly map. Does McKinley need some moderate shoring up if he's not to remain a fluke (I think he does)? How many Democrats and how much new territory can Moore take (quite a bit, clearly, though there are limits to it)? What would it take to endanger Nick Rahall (is it even theoretically possible to do so as long as the southern coal country remains undivided, and ready to vote as parochially as it did in the gubernatorial election)? All of these are sort-of open questions on which the answer of what a GOP-friendly map is depends. If you think McKinley has settled in very nicely and there are limits to Rahall's capacity even with the southern coal intact, my map is very GOP-friendly. If you think neither of these things, it's very Dem-friendly.

[minionofmidas]

Rahall doesn't seem to want to share the wealth.

No surprise there. -_-

[minionofmidas]

Stayed? So that means in this case... what, exactly? The Feds will hear the case, but the state map is used for 2012?

[minionofmidas]

In science classes we teach that one should not use more precision than the data warrants. After two and a half years the precision of the map drawn to a single person is irrelevant with its first use in a general election.

Well yeah. Frankly anything below 5% is pretty sick imho. Making districts as even as possible was a weapon against reasonably drawn maps and for gerrymandering, and nothing else really.

If you want to address the issue of America's massive and fast population shifts, the answer is redistrict more often...  although you are going against the founder's will to an unusually express degree with that.

[minionofmidas]

In science classes we teach that one should not use more precision than the data warrants. After two and a half years the precision of the map drawn to a single person is irrelevant with its first use in a general election.

Well yeah. Frankly anything below 5% is pretty sick imho. Making districts as even as possible was a weapon against reasonably drawn maps and for gerrymandering, and nothing else really.

If you want to address the issue of America's massive and fast population shifts, the answer is redistrict more often...  although you are going against the founder's will to an unusually express degree with that.

How so?  When Congress was considering the first apportionment, they added language that would have resulted in another census.  It didn't make it into the final version.  The every 10 years is a maximum, not a minimum.

Is it? I didn't know that.

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That was not always the case though.

Eh. If it were all up to me, I'd set some target range - say 15% deviation maximum - and redistrict whenever my data suggest a district is in urgent danger of violating it (or when the feds decide to allocate me a new district).
And I'd try to have some very accurate data on what people consider their legal primary residence (with the definition broadly up to them as long as they have only one)... preferrably some form of compulsory registration.
But it's not, so all of this is neither here nor there.

[minionofmidas]

Woah. That third is hilarious. Nick Rahall ought to like it though.

[minionofmidas]

Because they need to take it if they want to overrule the lower court (which did find a pressing need, for whatever bizarro reasons)? They can't just stay the lower court's decision indefinitely, can they?