Washington Legislative Districts

[KingSweden]

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.

[KingSweden]

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_state_legislative_districts

[KingSweden]

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)

[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

[KingSweden]

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.

[KingSweden]

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.

[KingSweden]

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

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).

[KingSweden]

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...

[KingSweden]

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.

[KingSweden]

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.

The light red HD in NE Spokane would contain Gonzaga University along with several of the poorest ZIP codes in Washington State - no wonder the turnout is anemic there.

That is, furthermore, one of the better splits of Spokane I've seen. The river and Division Street make natural dividing lines. I'm curious what the HD border within the cyan district is, it isn't clear from the map.