Challenge: Create as many hypermarginals as possible

[minionofmidas]

without the map looking utterly ridiculous.

Utterly being the instrumental word. Be creative.

Do any state you want.

I'll start: Missouri. "Hypermarginal" defined as 0.5% margin maximum. 6 of them.



Insets:





1st 64.9 Obama - 34.3 McCain, 35.4% Black
2nd 49.2 - 49.6
3rd 49.2 - 49.5
4th 49.1 - 49.4
5th 49.3 - 49.4
6th 49.3 - 49.1
7th 32.6 Obama - 66.0 McCain, 0.9% Black
8th 49.4 - 49.2

[Miles]

Here's NC. I got 7 districts within .5%.  Also, all the districts except for the 2 in the western mountains and the one in Durham are within .6% .



Starting in the east moving west:

Lime- 49.9/49.3 Obama
Pink- 50.0/49.4 Obama
Gray- 48.8/49.4 McCain
Yellow- 49.7/49.5 Obama
Dark Blue- 49.6/49.6 Obama
Orange- 49.5/49.5 McCain
Dark Purple- 49.7/49.4 Obama

Charlotte area:
Green- 49.8/49.4 McCain
Purple- 49.8/48.3 McCain
Blue- 49.8/49.4 Obama

Non-marginal seats:
Salmon- 52.7/45.9 McCain
Light Blue- 62.5/36.1 McCain
Brown- 66.0/33.0 Obama

Overall, not a hideous map, by North Carolina standards.

[minionofmidas]

Heh. I was working on the same state (must be the overall closeness ). I got 11, though the mountain district needs to be utterly hideous to just about make it past the lower perimeter.



No price for guessing which are the odd two out. They're both at 64.odd btw (and the Dem one is far from the maxpack possible in that area. The Rep one, not so much.)

[Miles]

Wow, lol at your mountain district.

I'm sure I could tweak mine to get 9 or 10.

[TJ in Oregon]

Here's an Ohio with 13 districts where Obama and McCain were separated by 0.5% or less:



The only ones that aren't "hypermarginal" are the yellow East Cleveland seat, the navy blue Akron/Youngstown one, and the slate blue Boehner one. The Boehner one is Safe Republican and the other two are safe Democratic. Other than splitting Columbus four ways, this actually doesn't look that bad. I'd have a hard time turning down an Ohio map that has 14 seats with a Republican PVI.

It's mathematically possible to do 15, but you would need some nasty ribbons from northeast to southwest.

[minionofmidas]

Nice map.

[Nichlemn]

Why not try for R+0 (or 53% Obama) rather than making districts that all have Republican PVIs?

[Miles]

Why not try for R+0 (or 53% Obama) rather than making districts that all have Republican PVIs?

Here's NC. I got 10 53% Obama districts.

Not a particularly clean map. I kept NC-02 basically the same. My favorite is the Winston-Salem-to-Asheville district!



Obama %
1- 52.9
2- 52.8
3- 42.4
4- 53.1
5- 37.9
6- 53.2
7- 52.9
8- 53.1
9- 53.0
10- 35.3
11- 53.0
12- 52.8
13- 53.1

[PulaskiSkywayDriver]

These look better than the real maps!

[Bacon King]

Here's Georgia!



The ten blue/purple districts are all roughly R+0 (going by what Nichlemn said above, I kept each one 52.4-52.9% Obama, with the third party vote still included) and the four red/orange/yellow districts are all GOP vote sinks. I ignored the VRA, obviously- only two districts ended up <50% white VAP (the purple Gwinnett district and the grayish blue district south of Atlanta).

The "fajita strips" were required, of course, though I tried to keep them nice looking reasonable; there are only a few parts of the map I'm visually displeased with- the way the cyan district from Forsyth hooks eastward in Dekalb, as well as the awkward shapes of the orange and purple districts in the center of the state.

Also, I'm fairly certain that if I were to redo this I could manage an 11th marginal by chopping up South GA more efficiently; the red district is 38% Obama- and also has a 42% Dem average- while the other three GOP districts are 33% (southern orange), 26% (northern orange), and 28% Obama (yellow), respectively. I doubt I'd spend the time to redo this, but there's definitely some room for improvement.

[Miles]

I made some revisions to NC.

1 and 6 are more compact. I fixed the Forsyth-Buncombe district. Other than 3, 5 and 10, all the districts are exactly 53.0% Obama.

[memphis]

I'm not a good mapmaker, so I won't make a submission in the exercise. However, it is extremely nauseating when it is pointed out so vividly that the politicians choose the voters just as much as the other way around.
I don't think we should take extreme measures to maximize the competitiveness of every district. Our House elections would be so damn volatile even if the House were full of Moderate Heroes. Of course, states have to be readjusted for changes from the Census. I want to maintain one man, one vote as much as the next guy. It's just the whole redistricting process is the ugliest part of the whole sausage making festival that is American politics. I haven't given the matter a lot of thought, and I'm sure there are just as many arguments against it, but this thread very much makes me wish we had proportional voting. Excuse me while I go throw up now.