Washington Legislative Districts
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KingSweden
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« on: February 05, 2016, 09:43:06 AM »

I thought of an interesting experiment.

Washington state has 49 Legislative Districts, which each elect one Senator and two Representatives on the same map. It has been pointed out before that this essentially makes each Rep. a "min-senator" and often concentrates political influence as Senators and Representatives often hail from the same part of each district.

It'd be interesting to see if splitting each LD into two House districts - f.e. 1A and 1B, and 2A and 2B - made a major difference or not in the House caucuses. Each sub-district would be couched within the district entirely, of course, and try to aim for half of the population. As of 2010 census, each LD has a population of roughly 137-139k, so a target sub-LD would have between 68-69k inhabitants. As always, it would make most sense to keep communities of interest together.

My hypothesis is that doing so will net Democrats 2 to 3 House districts at maximum, but in both safe Democratic and Republican districts would diversify the geographical distribution of members.

I drew some maps of Spokane earlier, but DRA hasn't been working well for me. I'll submit my Spokane maps later and anyone else is welcome to submit districts as they please. It's doable to get close to the actual district lines in DRA, though they aren't perfect.
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KingSweden
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« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2016, 09:44:25 AM »

Here is a list, with maps, of every LD is Washington state:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_state_legislative_districts
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Asian Nazi
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« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2016, 10:13:05 AM »
« Edited: February 05, 2016, 10:15:22 AM by d32123 »

Oooohhh

Looking forward to this

EDIT: Might contribute.  Is there a way to load the outlines of the current legislative districts onto DRA?
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KingSweden
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« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2016, 10:34:03 AM »

Oooohhh

Looking forward to this

EDIT: Might contribute.  Is there a way to load the outlines of the current legislative districts onto DRA?

Not that I know of. When I did a handful I had to eyeball it. The precinct lines don't match up exactly but they're close enough (for me at least)
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d32123
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« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2016, 02:46:14 PM »

District Name: WA-42
Location: All of Whatcom County outside of southern Bellingham and its southern suburbs.  Major populations centers include the northern half of Bellingham, Ferndale, Lynden, Blaine, and Birch Bay.
Partisan Lean: Tossup
Current Representatives: Sen. Doug Ericksen (R), Rep. Luanne Van Werven (R), Rep. Vincent Buys (R)



Proposed Mini-districts

District Name: WA-42a
Location: North Bellingham + Bellingham's northern suburbs + Ferndale and Lummi Reservation
Partisan Lean: Safe D



District Name: WA-42b
Location: Rural Whatcom County, Sumas, Lynden, Blaine, Birch Bay, Point Roberts
Partisan Lean: Safe R




How does this look?
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jimrtex
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« Reply #5 on: February 05, 2016, 03:39:21 PM »

I thought of an interesting experiment.

Washington state has 49 Legislative Districts, which each elect one Senator and two Representatives on the same map. It has been pointed out before that this essentially makes each Rep. a "min-senator" and often concentrates political influence as Senators and Representatives often hail from the same part of each district.
There is no requirement that house districts and senate districts be coterminous, or that representatives be elected by position (A and B). There is a requirement that they nest.

Back before OMOV was rigidly enforced, there would a variable number of representatives per senate district, and they were not elected by position. In the 50s and early 60s, representative districts would be moved into the Seattle area, as a way to fend off a popular insurrection. So in more rural areas, there would be one senator and one representative, while in the Seattle area there might be three senators and one representative.

After the OMOV rulings were applied to Washington, there were several instances of separate A and B house districts, particularly in more rural areas. This may have been to preserve existing districts, since while the area became part of larger senate district, its representative district might have remained the same.

IIRC, the last of these were in the 1990s. There was one senate district that went down the Columbia to the Pacific Coast, and one representative district was on the coast, and the other in the Longview area.

A particular problem with the current system is the stagger of senate elections, since if a district is drastically altered, it may cause some areas to have no senator for two years, and other areas to have two senators. This is somewhat mitigated in Washington since most districts in the eastern part of the state elect senators in off years, while in the west area they are mostly in the presidential/gubernatorial year. With higher turnout in these elections, there may be reinforcement of the partisan divide. Since Democratic turnout is higher in the presidential-gubernatorial years, swing districts may be pushed to lean Democratic, and Democratic success may lead to ambitious local politicians to run as Democrats for the legislature.

In the off years, Democrats tend not to run in strongly Republican districts. There are no coattails, and no money to run a campaign.

When a representative proposed a bill that would have split the representative districts, he got a decidedly cold reception. A particular concern was that it would probably have paired many incumbents. When he suggested that this could be worked out in most cases (for you to do that, you would have to know where the representatives lived, and probably draw odd fingers to separate the two).

Those opposed to the idea mentioned the case of one representative who could look down into their  fellow representative's back yard. Since it was a he and a she involved, it sounded kind of creepy.
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KingSweden
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« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2016, 04:45:19 PM »
« Edited: February 05, 2016, 04:53:47 PM by KingSweden »

District Name: WA-42
Location: All of Whatcom County outside of southern Bellingham and its southern suburbs.  Major populations centers include the northern half of Bellingham, Ferndale, Lynden, Blaine, and Birch Bay.
Partisan Lean: Tossup
Current Representatives: Sen. Doug Ericksen (R), Rep. Luanne Van Werven (R), Rep. Vincent Buys (R)



Proposed Mini-districts

District Name: WA-42a
Location: North Bellingham + Bellingham's northern suburbs + Ferndale and Lummi Reservation
Partisan Lean: Safe D



District Name: WA-42b
Location: Rural Whatcom County, Sumas, Lynden, Blaine, Birch Bay, Point Roberts
Partisan Lean: Safe R




How does this look?

This looks awesome! Very similar to what I have that I'll upload later this weekend. A pretty fair split of that district, too.

EDIT: I should add that it'd be an interesting thought experiment to consider if Buyd or Vanwerven would be the GOP survivor in 42B
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muon2
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« Reply #7 on: February 05, 2016, 05:47:34 PM »

A fairer test of how the political balance should go requires drawing the districts from scratch according to a neutral set of rules.

Before I would draw districts, I first draw up regions of whole counties that contain whole numbers of legislative districts such that they can be drawn within 5% of the quota. This minimizes the number of split counties.

Here is an example with the number of legislative districts in each region. The representative districts can then be drawn in each region.

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KingSweden
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« Reply #8 on: February 05, 2016, 11:28:42 PM »

Here's the 1st LD



Current Representatives: State Senator Rosemary McAuliffe (D). State Rep. Luis Moscoso (D) and Derek Stanford (D)

This is a fairly typical suburban Seattle district - Democratic, but not overwhelmingly so. This district contains Bothell, Mountlake Terrace, parts of Kirkland, and some south Snohomish exurbs. The score in 2008 was Obame 60-39 McCain.




A north (1A) and south (1B) split is what made most sense here, keeping 1B essentially a Bothell district with a little spur of Kirkland thrown in for good measure and letting 1A be entirely in Snohomish County. Both Reps get to stay in their seats, too.

1A was 59-38 O/M, while 1B was even more Democratic at 62-36. Both seats absolutely Safe D.
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KingSweden
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« Reply #9 on: February 05, 2016, 11:49:01 PM »

Next, we have LD 2.



McCain won this district 50-47, so it definitely Leans R, if not Safe R by Washington standards. It includes some of Thurston County like Yelm and the Olympia exurbs, Mt. Rainier and rural Pierce County south of JBLM, and the outer Tacoma suburbs like Orting and Spanaway.

Current Representatives include State Senator Randi Becker (R), Rep JT Wilcox (R), and Rep Graham Hunt (R).



Simple split here - the Tacoma suburbs are cohesive and together in 2A, while 2B is a sprawling monstrosity that includes the southern portions of the district. Interestingly enough, 2A is the more conservative of the two, going for McCain 51-46, while 2B was only won by McCain by 94 votes, ending up just barely 49.1-48.8. While a Democrat could hypothetically run ahead of the national ticket in 2B, it's still an uphill battle.

I'll consider 2A Safe R, and 2B Likely R due to its R-friendly PVI.
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d32123
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« Reply #10 on: February 05, 2016, 11:55:14 PM »

Fun fact, Rep. Graham Hunt resigned just a few days ago due to a scandal involving him lying about his military service. Tongue
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KingSweden
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« Reply #11 on: February 06, 2016, 12:12:19 AM »

Fun fact, Rep. Graham Hunt resigned just a few days ago due to a scandal involving him lying about his military service. Tongue

Ha! That is a fun fact, I must have missed that. Of all the scandals you can get busted for, I don't think there's anything that can sink an American politician's career faster than lying about military service (and for good reason).
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Kingpoleon
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« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2016, 05:19:02 AM »

Who would Sawant challenge if she wants to be in the State Senate?
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« Reply #13 on: February 06, 2016, 08:33:37 AM »

Who would Sawant challenge if she wants to be in the State Senate?

She ran in the 43rd district for the State House in 2012 against Speaker Frank Chopp but lost bad (70-29) thought that was before she was famous.  Socialist Alternative ran against Speaker Chopp again in 2014 with a different candidate named Jess Spear and lost 82-18. 

Since the time of her run against Chopp, Sawant has moved from Capitol Hill to Leschi and is now in the 37th District.

I can't see her running against either Sen. Jamie Pederson (who represents District 43) or Sen. Pramila Jayapal (who represents 37) both of whom, unlike Richard Conlin or Frank Chopp, are considered strong progressives.  Jayapal is running in WA-7 to replace retiring Rep. Jim McDermott.  If she wins and vacates her seat, I could maybe see Sawant running to replace her, but it would be questionable as to whether this would actually be an upgrade over her Seattle City Council seat.  One advantage is that City Council races occur during odd years, so she could plausibly challenge for state or federal office without sacrificing her seat.
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KingSweden
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« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2016, 11:11:43 AM »

Who would Sawant challenge if she wants to be in the State Senate?

She ran in the 43rd district for the State House in 2012 against Speaker Frank Chopp but lost bad (70-29) thought that was before she was famous.  Socialist Alternative ran against Speaker Chopp again in 2014 with a different candidate named Jess Spear and lost 82-18. 

Since the time of her run against Chopp, Sawant has moved from Capitol Hill to Leschi and is now in the 37th District.

I can't see her running against either Sen. Jamie Pederson (who represents District 43) or Sen. Pramila Jayapal (who represents 37) both of whom, unlike Richard Conlin or Frank Chopp, are considered strong progressives.  Jayapal is running in WA-7 to replace retiring Rep. Jim McDermott.  If she wins and vacates her seat, I could maybe see Sawant running to replace her, but it would be questionable as to whether this would actually be an upgrade over her Seattle City Council seat.  One advantage is that City Council races occur during odd years, so she could plausibly challenge for state or federal office without sacrificing her seat.

I doubt, personally, Sawant ever runs for anything above the city level. Her district is one of the rare places in the entire United States where someone of her unique ideological profile can win consistently and has a base that reaches 50%+. Besides, on City Council she has one vote out of 7, rather than one out of 98 (which is why Jess Spear's run was so odd), and even the more "moderate" Democrats (who by Seattle standards are archconservatives) are not that ideologically removed from her on many issues, while she'd get an outright hostile reception from the half of the legislature dominated by Republicans who would try to paint her as representative of the entire Democratic caucus.

A statewide run by Ms. Sawant would likely not end well either, for a variety of reasons. I have a hard time picturing many people in Eastern Washington, even Democrats over here, coming around to supporting her bid. A run for Mayor, however...
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d32123
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« Reply #15 on: February 06, 2016, 11:21:13 AM »

Yeah, I agree, and like I said I question whether State Senate would really be an upgrade for her.  I don't see Mayor Murray getting credible opposition next year, but maybe a run in 2021 is in the cards.
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KingSweden
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« Reply #16 on: February 06, 2016, 11:41:48 AM »

Yeah, I agree, and like I said I question whether State Senate would really be an upgrade for her.  I don't see Mayor Murray getting credible opposition next year, but maybe a run in 2021 is in the cards.

2021 wouldn't surprise me. I read somewhere that Ed Murray is the most popular big-city Mayor in America. It's too bad he backed off on some of the HALA provisions, his winning streak is too hot to back down on something that important.
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muon2
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« Reply #17 on: February 09, 2016, 08:57:59 AM »
« Edited: February 09, 2016, 09:02:22 AM by muon2 »

As I noted ealier, I wanted a baseline to compare the current WA assembly with the potential advantage of split districts. The starting point was to draw revised legislative districts according to neutral rules. I started with this set of whole county regions with each region containing a whole number of districts. Districts here are required to be within 5% of the population quota, though the actual districts are much closer in population.



Then I divided each of the regions again allowing a 5% deviation from the quota. Divisions were made to minimize county chops, reservation chops, city chops within a county, and school district chops within a county in that order of priority. There's one extra county chop in Lewis county due to the geography of Fort Lewis going to the shore. That resulted in this plan.




The political division of the LDs is
21 uncompetitive D (PVI 6+)
5 competitive d (PVI 2-5)
8 even (PVI 0 or 1)
2 competitive r  (PVI 2-5)
13 uncompetitive R (PVI 6+)

This is a SKEW of 1 for the Dems, that is they only have one more seat (or the Pubs one less) than the statewide vote from presidential years would predict. In 2012 the national vote was D+2 so one would expect the even seats to swing Dem resulting in a House with 68 D - 30 R, which clearly isn't reached because of the effects of incumbency. In 2014 the national vote was R+3 so the even districts would be expected to swing Pub as would one or two of the lean d seats. Without incumbency the House might be expected to be 49 D - 49 R.

With this in hand I can now look at how the same map would perform if each seat is split into two using the same rules.
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muon2
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« Reply #18 on: February 13, 2016, 08:52:21 AM »

To complete the test of nesting districts on the WA partisan balance I created a plan of 98 House districts based on the 49 LDs in my previous post (similar colors show the nested pairs).



The political division of the HDs is
39 uncompetitive D (PVI 6+)
17 competitive d (PVI 2-5)
12 even (PVI 0 or 1)
9 competitive r  (PVI 2-5)
21 uncompetitive R (PVI 6+)

This is a SKEW of 6 for the Dems. The LD map with 49 districts was 1 Dem and for the House with 2 seats per LD the SKEW would be 2 Dem. This nesting of the LDs has tilted the balance in an even year towards the Dems.

In 2012 the national vote was D+2 so one would expect the even seats to swing Dem resulting in a House with 68 D - 30 R, which is the same as would be predicted with 2 elected from each LD. In 2014 the national vote was R+3 so the even districts would be expected to swing Pub as would about third of the lean d seats. In that case House might be expected to be 50 D - 48 R, which is a change of only one seat compared to the situation with 2 per LD.

The change is more noticeable in the SKEW than in the actual House composition. This is because the biggest change between the two plans was the increase in seats that lean for one party (PVI 2-5). The Pub lean seats were matched by a reduction in solid seats. But the Dems lean seats came more at the expense of the even seats than the solid seats.

Looking at the detail by region one can see where nesting has the most effect. In King county there are 14 LDs and they went 13D-1e. When they split it became 23D-4d-1r, where the even LD split into a lean d and lean r HD and three other solid LD created 1 lean d seat each when they split. But that's no change in the SKEW.

In the northern Puget Sound region there are 9 LDs that went 4D-1d-3e-1r, and the split into 18 HDs went 8D-4d-3e-2r-1R. This increased 1 Dem SKEW, but the biggest change was that even seats were reduced creating more lean seats. In the southern Puget Sound region there are 10 LDs that went 3D-2d-2e-1r-2R, and the split into 20 HDs went 6D-4d-4e-3r-3R which is essentially no partisan change. Overall nesting had little effect on the partisan makeup of seats from the greater Puget Sound area.

In the southwest and west regions there are 5 LDs that went 1D-2d-2R, and the split took it to 1D-4d-2e-2r-1R. This is noticeable change with the more polarized LDs adding many more lean and even HDs. The SKEW however didn't change since it there was 1 excess Dem LD and 2 excess Dem HDs which is expected from a split into two parts.

In the next post I'll show how the major changes happened in eastern WA.
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Kevinstat
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« Reply #19 on: February 13, 2016, 09:38:54 AM »
« Edited: February 13, 2016, 09:58:19 AM by Kevinstat »

As I noted ealier, I wanted a baseline to compare the current WA assembly with the potential advantage of split districts. The starting point was to draw revised legislative districts according to neutral rules. I started with this set of whole county regions with each region containing a whole number of districts. Districts here are required to be within 5% of the population quota, though the actual districts are much closer in population.



To complete the test of nesting districts on the WA partisan balance I created a plan of 98 House districts based on the 49 LDs in my previous post (similar colors show the nested pairs).



I know you came up with the multi-county groupings for the Senate and not for the House directly, but it would be interesting to see the resulting county groupings for the House.  It's pretty clear, for example, that Asotin and Whitman counties together form a 1 as do Garfield, Columbia and Walla Walla together.  But are there any 3s, 5s, 7s, etc.?  (These could cover multiple counties, just not the entire Senate grouping as that would obviously result in an even number of House districts.)  At first I thought Benton County might be a 3 and Franklin and Adams counties a 1, but looking closer it's clear that the Richland district crosses over in to Franklin County to include area between Richland and Pasco if not Pasco itself.  It might be close to a 50-50 split between Benton and Franklin counties in fact.

Also, as a Senate (and House) district crosses the King County-Snohomish County boundary, shouldn't the 9 and the 14 be a 23?  Or did you give yourself flexibility to cross the borders of your groupings when it came time to divide those groupings into Senate districts?  Either way, a second Senate "base map" showing the actual resulting groupings (so a 23 in the grouping including Seattle, which looks like it would be one 42 in the House map) would also be nice.
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muon2
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« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2016, 11:01:11 AM »

There's a trade off involved with nested districts. If I form regions by the Senate district I minimize the county chops at that level, but there may be more chops (particularly of subunits) to form House districts from them. If I form House district regions first then wherever there is an odd number of HDs in a region I'm likely to end up with an LD that spans county lines, that is I tend to increase county chops at that level. The best way to avoid chops is to de-nest the HDs from the LDs.

As an aside, the Whitman-Asotin HD only exists under the rules by forming the LD first. Asotin has no state highway connection to Colfax in Whitman that doesn't leave those counties so I couldn't for it directly. However, there is no way to divide the larger LD without using at least link involving local roads, so the version that keeps the counties whole is preferred.

The only reason the Snohomish district dips into King is due to the rule that in a macrochopped county (like King) all the subunits have to be connected. The Skykomish school district along the Stevens Pass is isolated from the rest of King. Its population is so small it could be added to the district to its west, but the rules require it to connect to Snohomish instead.
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Torie
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« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2016, 11:08:05 AM »

No UCC areas for this exercise?
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muon2
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« Reply #22 on: February 13, 2016, 11:54:22 AM »

Splitting the LDs into HDs had a substantial effect in eastern WA. In the LD plan that set of regions had a political breakdown of 2e-9R. There were no districts that favored Dems at all. In the HD plan the same area was 1D-1d-3e-1r-16R. Not only are there 2 districts now that favor Dems, but one is solid D. In term of SKEW the net effect was to shift 3 points to the Dems.

In most of the regions of eastern WA there was no effect. Both parts of the Ellensburg-Moses Lake LD are just a solid R as the whole. Same thing with all four parts of the 2 LDs in the Tri-Cities area where the Hispanic population doesn't (or can't) vote and the rest is very Pub. The one lean r HD comes from the effect of Washington State Univ in Whitman county.

The shift in the distribution comes from the two large cities in the east: Spokane and Yakima. Spokane county has a population for about 3 1/2 LDs or 7 HDs. The city itself has more population than 1 LD, so it was divided along the Spokane river. The part of the city north of the river was one LD (reds) and the part south plus the west and south school districts in the county formed the other LD (cyans). Both of these were politically even with PVIs of 0 or 1. However when they were split the light red is a lean D (D+4) and the light cyan is a solid D district (D+9), leaving the dark red HD even (D+0.1) and the dark cyan HD as solid R. It is interesting to note that adding the reds together only creates a D+1 LD, but that's because the dark red provides 50% more votes than the other half and dominates the result.



The other significant change in skew comes from Yakima. Both the salmon and green combined LDs are solid R. However, the light salmon HD in the Yakima school district part of the city is an even political district, though it has half the voter turnout of the West Valley school district part of the city due to the high Hispanic population in the east part of the city. The green HD north in NE Yakima county has an even higher Hispanic population (HVAP 52%) than the Yakima city HD (HVAP 42%), but lacks the urban white Dem crossover vote of the city, so the green HD stays solid R. The light green HD in south Yakima county includes Klickitas and Skamania and is 31% HVAP, but also is 9% NVAP from the Yakama reservation. Those coalition minority votes are enough to make it an even political HD.

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muon2
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« Reply #23 on: February 13, 2016, 12:33:13 PM »


For this exercise I just concentrated on county and subunit integrity. King came out to 14.07 LDs, so I placed it in its own region and worked from there. The only UCC violation is from that choice and its impact on the Seattle and adjacent UCCs.

Since the interesting results were in eastern WA, I don't know that the UCC factor would make a difference in the conclusions about nesting. There are four yellow-green counties on jimrtex's WA UCC map, but none are in a UCC (I'm guessing they are left over from an earlier map) so there are no violations in the east. However the three county Seattle UCC is a nice 25.07 LDs so I will take a look. In the meantime my clean connection map examples for the other thread will have to wait. Tongue
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jimrtex
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« Reply #24 on: February 13, 2016, 04:04:01 PM »


For this exercise I just concentrated on county and subunit integrity. King came out to 14.07 LDs, so I placed it in its own region and worked from there. The only UCC violation is from that choice and its impact on the Seattle and adjacent UCCs.

Since the interesting results were in eastern WA, I don't know that the UCC factor would make a difference in the conclusions about nesting. There are four yellow-green counties on jimrtex's WA UCC map, but none are in a UCC (I'm guessing they are left over from an earlier map) so there are no violations in the east. However the three county Seattle UCC is a nice 25.07 LDs so I will take a look. In the meantime my clean connection map examples for the other thread will have to wait. Tongue

I had not used the final map for the NW USA. It is now corrected.

At the scale of legislative districts, there is little risk of spanning multiple UCCs. Even if an apportionment region spanned multiple UCCs there is little risk of districts doing so. My preference would be to minimize county splits, rather than having a UCC pack rule.

A county pack rule, as used in Ohio and Texas might be a reasonable control.

*Texas and California senate districts, and perhaps California assembly districts are exceptions.
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