TJ's District Maps Series

[Adam Griffin]

I hope I've done this somewhat correctly!

All in all, it wasn't too difficult to keep counties intact, save for the four that are bigger than a CD in this case (Dekalb, Fulton, Gwinnett & Cobb). Besides these, all counties are wholly-contained within a CD.

Unlike up north and as far as municipalities goes, the general rule of thumb around here and outside of heavily-Democratic areas (and not exclusive in this case either) is that municipality boundaries mean jack-crap when deciding precinct lines. In many cases, a precinct may almost match up with a section of a city's borders, but not entirely. There are several cases of this, but it's very hard to avoid in a state like this. In keeping with the spirit of the Michigan Law, however, there were only two adjacent cities that I had to substantially split in order to create this map (Sugar Hill & Buford in Gwinnett County, in order to connect the remainder of District 11 with Forsyth and avoid splitting the county).

This is a pretty GOP-friendly map, but the right circumstances could pull anywhere from 2 to 5 of the districts McCain won into the Democratic column. As it stands, there are only 7 congressional districts in which Obama's margin of victory was larger than two points. There are 4 congressional districts (shaded in purple; Athens, Savannah and Macon are three of them) where the margin of victory for Obama or McCain, or the aggregate between Dem & Rep was within 1 point. In one of these districts, Obama lost by 6 points (15). Obama won another (4) and the other two were close McCain wins.

A total of 9 of these districts are what I'd consider Section 5-friendly in spirit. The blue/red shading below was done using Dem/Rep as opposed to Obama/McCain, sorry. Also, I always forget to position labels, so I had to add them after the fact.



3: Obama 81.1%
2: Obama 73.8%
1: Obama 65.8%
8: Obama 60.9%
17: Obama 56.2%
9: Obama 53.4%
4: Obama 52.8%
21: Obama 50.1%
18: McCain 50.3%
6: McCain 50.4%
16: McCain 51.1%
15: McCain 52.5%
7: McCain 55.7%
5: McCain 62.1%
20: McCain 63.2%
19: McCain 66.3%
14: McCain 67.2%
13: McCain 71.3%
10: McCain 72.6%
11: McCain 74.8%
12: McCain 76.1%

[Adam Griffin]

Davidson (Nashville) and Shelby (Memphis) had to be split due to both being larger than a district. A silver of Blount had to be added to Knoxville's district, while Dickson County also had to be split due to the Nashville metro.

This is a 9 R, 5 D map in a presidential election year; most likely 10 R, 4 D in a mid-term.

CD-4: 70.6% McCain, 27.9% Obama (Morristown)
CD-3: 69.2% McCain, 29.3% Obama (Johnson City)
CD-6: 68.3% McCain, 30.2% Obama (Oak Ridge)
CD-8: 65.7% McCain, 33.0% Obama (Columbia)
CD-7: 62.1% McCain, 36.5% Obama (Murfreesboro)
CD-2: 61.9% McCain, 36.2% Obama (Cookeville)
CD-5: 60.8% McCain, 37.7% Obama (Knoxville)
CD-1: 59.5% McCain, 39.4% Obama (Chattanooga)
CD-9: 59.3% McCain, 39.2% Obama (Clarksville)
CD-12: 50.8% Obama, 48.1% McCain (Nashville-Ashland City)
CD-11: 52.6% Obama, 46.1% McCain (Nashville-Hendersonville)
CD-14: 53.9% Obama, 45.4% McCain (Memphis-Germantown)
CD-10: 54.7% Obama, 44.6% McCain (Memphis-Jackson)
CD-13: 58.9% Obama, 40.3% McCain (Memphis-Millington)