TJ's District Maps Series

[muon2]

Also, should the county split rule still hold in New England, where most counties have literally no function?

This is the question I'm trying to fully flesh out in the NECTA thread. Counties don't count for chops, but NECTAs do. No town should be chopped either.

[muon2]

A county fragment can be a bridge as long as it doesn't link two whole counties that cant be otherwise linked in the district. Bridges between county fragments are OK though they tend to increase erosity and become disfavored. I agree that the double-chop of the same two districts splitting two different counties is the thing to avoid.

[muon2]

I’m not counting the MD and TN maps since I think they probably violate the VRA by chopping Memphis (and in the case of MD an 81% black seat).

Well in that case here's a different Maryland that should fix the VRA issue, with four black-majoirty districts all under 60 percent and a fifth plurality, and additionally finds two whole-county groupings, pretty neatly divided between DC-area and Baltimore-area.

The Eastern Shore is basically the same; I decided to chop one precinct out of Cecil (yes, there's a bridge in the right place) to keep deviations down.  I think this is a district I'd have a hard time splitting even if the rules told me to, luckily I found the other grouping and I didn't find a Shore-splitting map that got three groups out of the state.

As Xahar noted, most of these town lines are just CDPs and local government below the county level means vanishingly little in MD.  Tried to mostly keep to them in spirit anyway.

[map]
[map]

District 1 (Eastern Shore): Obama 43.1%, Dem 45.4%.  Safe R.
District 2 (Harford County & NE Baltco): Obama 39.7%, Dem 43.1%.  Safe R.
District 3 (Inner Baltimore County- Towson, Essex/Dundalk, Owings Mills): Obama 58.7%, Dem 63.7%.  66.3% White/23.6% Black VAP.  Safe D.
District 4 (Most of Baltimore City): Obama 84.8%, Dem 84.5%.  37.3% White/53.1% Black VAP.  Safe D.
District 5 (Baltimore City south and west, Catonsville and associated suburbs mostly in Baltco): Obama 75.2%, Dem 74.8%. 38.8% White/51.9% Black VAP.  Safe D.
District 6 (almost all of Anne Arundel): Obama 47.9%, Dem 50.5%.  Tilt R.
District 7 (Carroll, almost all of Howard): Obama 50.4%, Dem 50.8%.  Tossup.
District 8 (Charles, St. Marys, inner south PG- Suitland, Ft. Washington): Obama 72.6%, Dem 73.2%.  38.7% White/51.5% Black VAP.  Safe D.
District 9 (Calvert, outer PG- Bowie etc.): 79.7% Obama, 79.1% Dem.  31.2% White/58.5% Black VAP.  Safe D.
District 10 (spanning PG and Montgomery- Greenbelt, College Park, Silver Spring): Obama 85.7%, Dem 85.3%.  26.3% White/40.1% Black/24.6% Hispanic VAP.  Safe D.
District 11 (all Montco- Wheaton, Rockville, Gaithersburg): Obama 70.8%, Dem 71.5%.  47.4% White/16.8% Black/18.7% Hispanic/14.7% Asian VAP.  Safe D.
District 12 (mostly Montco with some Frederick- Bethesda, Germantown): Obama 66.3%, Dem 66.1%.  Safe D.
District 13 (Western MD- Frederick, Hagerstown, Cumberland): Obama 44.4%, Dem 43.4%.  Safe R.

8-0-1-1-3... which is actually kind of a bonanza for Republicans given how Democratic the state leans.  But the geography is unkind, and as much consternation as that horrible Carroll-Howard district gives me, it's basically forced.  Oh well.

Obviously drawing a Carroll-Howard district in real life would be insane, and I don't like the Calvert-PG district much at all, but it looks good otherwise. It goes to show how hard it is to draw Maryland with these rules.

Many people would actually like the Carroll-Howard district because of its inherent competitiveness. The general public does not like a plan where all the districts are locked for one party or the other, even though the more politically aware tend to favor districts that will produce a predetermined outcome so they can seek out representatives who think like themselves.

That same split in thinking occurs when people look at places to live and work. Climate, jobs, and schools, along with leisure-time amenities (cultural or recreational) tend to dominate the decision processes for most people. If you poll people who are politically aware they will look at policies in place and those likely to be enacted in a given area, but this is a distinctly minority view.

[muon2]

Quadruple feature!  All the small Northeastern states.  NECTAs were mostly ignored in Maine and New Hampshire on the grounds that minimizing their splits was mutually exclusive with minimizing county splits, and the rules here care about counties.  I guess New Hampshire would be drawn a bit differently despite not having any whole-county groups; the Merrimack Valley NECTA divisions cross Hillsborough and Rockingham in such a way that you'd possibly want to double-span those counties; possibly also around Concord as well.



Rhode Island:



1 (Providence, Pawtucket): Safe D.
2 (Warwick, Cranston, Newport): Safe D.

Deviations 466 and 467, no partisan numbers given but let's be real; 1 is higher minority but still two-thirds white.  Would rather have one district entirely in Providence, but sticking Bristol in 1 makes for neater lines and smaller deviations.  Not that it matters.

RI being the one state in the series where the map can double for actual CDs.

[muon2]

Colorado is one of those states where elevating county splits above other considerations leads to some... unfortunate shapes.  In particular I am thinking of that District 9, which is Adams County and 15K worth of random Eastern Plains counties.  But hey, it doesn't have a split!  (Other groups include the whole-county 1 and 2, as well as the two-district group in the north.)  You could probably get a Hispanic-majority district if you had it straddle Adams and Denver, but the exclaves plus that whole-county district means that Denver has to pair with Arapahoe instead, in a fairly large Front Range grouping; best we can do is an all-Denver district that is min-maj by total population, as well as getting the Pueblo district up into the 30s.

This is why I've come to appreciate the UCCs as a constraint on whole county plans. The 4-county, 2-city Denver UCC has about 203K more than 5 CDs with the 11 CD apportionment. In principle there shouldn't be more than 6 CDs to cover that area. You can add Weld, or the excess from El Paso plus some of the Front Range counties to get there.

I've confirmed that a 50% HVAP CD is possible in Denver+ Adams+a bit of Aurora in Arapahoe.