US House Redistricting: Missouri

[JohnnyLongtorso]

MO-01 as drawn in 2000 is just below 50% black, so I don't think it's protected by VRA.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Well, I'm getting tired of people clutching their pearls about "it must be majority-black!!!!".

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I doubt the Republicans would put Carnahan's portion of St. Louis County into the former MO-09; it would be safer for them to put it into MO-08, since the district is more Republican and Emerson is extremely well-liked for whatever reason.

Here's what I came up with:

State:



St. Louis area:



- MO-01 is 49% black, takes in all of St. Louis now.
- MO-02 takes in some parts of St. Louis County from MO-01 and MO-03, and adds a few of the heavily-Republican counties to the west to compensate.
- MO-03 is parts of the former MO-09, MO-08, and MO-03. Luetkemeyer would go here.
- MO-04 adds Columbia and some counties to the northeast and southeast; probably makes it somewhat more Democratic, but the Democrats aren't getting that district back.
- MO-05 is all of Jackson County and a bit of the suburbs north of Kansas City.
- MO-06 stretches across the north third of the state now. MO-07
- MO-07 is pretty much the same.
- MO-08 takes in the St. Louis County part of MO-03, but should remain pretty Republican.

At a guess, I'd say MO-01 is about 75-25 Dem, MO-05 about 60-40 Dem, and the remaining districts about 60-40 Republican.

Edit: Did a rough calculation of MO-04, it would be 57-43 McCain.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Can't Nixon just veto any map that eliminates a Democratic seat?

The Republicans are 3 votes shy of a veto-proof majority in the House, and have one in the Senate. All they need to do is peel off a few Democrats, which they're expected to do by placating the African-Americans through keeping Cleaver safe and maintaining the black population in Clay's district.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Yeah, you'd have to split up Kansas City proper; the non-KC part of Jackson County basically votes in line with the statewide totals (according to their crappy elections website, it went 50-49 McCain and 54-41 Blunt; yes, apparently they report their results separately from KC's results).

Either way, it won't happen; the best case scenario for the Dems is a 5-2 map with one swing district.

I took another stab at a 6-2 map:




I think (I did this a week or two ago, never bothered to post it) I calculated MO-03 and MO-08 as being over 60% McCain without the parts of St. Louis and Jefferson, so putting those in there shouldn't affect the districts too much. Either way, all of the districts except for MO-01 and MO-05 should be at least mid-50s McCain districts.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Well, if the Republicans can get two Democrats in the House to vote for it, they can override his veto...

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Looking closer at the map, it looks like they left nearly all of the existing part of Jackson County in and added the little sliver from MO-04. I don't think this will change the district's partisan lean all that much. My guess is it's still about 60-61% Obama.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

There's apparently a split between the House and the Senate over the maps. These are the two proposals:



Yes, they're arguing over what would seem to be incredibly minor differences.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I drew a nonpartisan/court map of Missouri:



It would still be 5-2-1, and even then, the one swing district (green) would have been at best around 50/50 in 2008.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Check out this post on SSP:

http://swingstateproject.com/showComment.do?commentId=257428

Western St. Louis County is pretty Republican.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Check out this post on SSP:

http://swingstateproject.com/showComment.do?commentId=257428

Western St. Louis County is pretty Republican.

Do you know if the bit about Cleaver's district is true? There must be a reason that they're excluding large sections of Jackson County and adding rural counties instead.

The only source I keep hearing from is that notpjorourke guy with his super-leet insider information, but I can believe that it was drawn to protect Cleaver from a primary challenge. I do think his "Cleaver would lose a general election in a Jackson County district" thing is BS, though.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Ze map:




MO-02 wouldn't be out of reach for a Democrat, I don't think (though it almost certainly voted McCain), but Carnahan is not the man to win that seat.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

VETO

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Yeah, the article seems to imply that they either override the veto or it goes to the courts.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

The scuttlebutt is (at least from one guy and his super-leet insider sources) that Jo Ann Emerson didn't want her district to take in too much territory in the St. Louis media market.