50 Equal States

[muon2]

Nice project. Those black states (particularly in the Delta) are very intense on the map, though.

[muon2]

Some changes. I think it looks much better now.

If only you could get rid of that grey finger in central NY.

[muon2]

I'm not a fan of the link from Ventura to the Antelope Valley to Long Beach. I'd rather split LA city at the Hollywood Hills. The hills extend east to west and form a natural break across the county. That puts the San Fernando Valley with Ventura, Antelope Valley and the San Gabriel Valley. Southern LA would go with Long Beach and the SE LA county suburbs. The split is very close to even.

[muon2]

The Sacramento metropolitan area as you've drawn it makes no sense.

Do you have a suggestion on a different way to do it?

No, of course not. They never do.

Sometimes they do. I got some helpful feedback on my redivision of the 50 states a couple of years ago. Of course to get the flexibility to make changes, I only required that the states be no less than half nor more than double the average population. You can see the population spread in my treatment of Sacto and the Pacific NW.

Ecotopia (with principal city) and population in millions:
Duwamish (Seattle) 4.7
Chinook (Portland) 3.6
Shasta (Sacramento) 3.6
Ohlone (San Francisco) 9.5

[muon2]

Well, I guess we can thank you for gerrymandering the new states so that no Democrat could win the presidency.

As much as it may look like it, I had to intention to gerrymander. Some of these could be considered Republican gerrymanders too.

This is one of the reasons I wanted to experiment with this. Many of these uber Dem states here are usually metro areas that are part of more than one state or are part of bigger states. Uber Republican states like Wyoming and Idaho are smaller so therefor its harder to make very Republican states when there's only so much population of very conservative areas. You can easily find uber Dem areas concentrated, but its hard to find as Republican areas (at the same margin of concentrated D areas) even if they're very spread out. Its just how US elections generally turn out now.

As I have suggested over the last decade, the D/R divide is not really about labor/business anymore, it's really become urban/exurban-rural. The Big Sort has driven some of this, but the parties shifting positions have, too. Policies have adapted as to whether they are designed for high density or low density communities where the perceived need to survive in proximity to strangers differs greatly.