What it says on the tin - redraw the state boundaries of the United States. Make it as simple or as complex as you want for whichever purpose, be it for geographical, cultural, aesthetic, partisan purposes, or a mix.
The only rules are that the map must have fifty states, each state must be populous enough to sustain at least one Congressional district, and each state (with the exception of Michigan, surrounding islands, etc. must be contiguous). Territories may not be counted as states, but DC may be converted to a state if you would like. (Just state that you've done so for your map if you so choose.) Everything else is up to you.
Here is my new map:
This is what changes:
- Appalachia becomes its own state
- DC becomes a state
- New York City becomes its own state (separate from Upstate NY)
- Upstate NY extends to Erie, PA
- Iowa absorbs Omaha, NE
- New Mexico absorbs El Paso, TX
- A new state ("Delta") is created as the first majority-black state in the United States, not counting DC
- The remainder of MS and AL merge and absorb the FL panhandle
- Chicagoland becomes its own state (minority-majority)
- Kansas City and Topeka form their own state, "Topansas" (minority-majority)
- Some changes made for aesthetic purposes (MO bootheel to AR, OK panhandle incorporates TX panhandle)
- Maryland absorbs Delaware ("Deryland")
- Tennessee and Kentucky merge ("Kentessee")
- A single "Dakota"
- Eastern Oregon and Washington merge ("Cascadia")
- Idaho merges with eastern OR/WA ("East Cascadia")
The end result is a map that grants more political autonomy to people in rural areas who are constantly outvoted by their urban peers, and vice-versa for small-to-midsize cities that are caught in seas of red (or Atlas blue).
How does this affect national politics? By my estimates, Democrats would have a much stronger firewall in the electoral college. Here is a map of the last presidential election with these boundaries, using (very rough) estimates for margin of victory:
As you can see: a comically polarized map. I won't bother calculating the exact numbers, but if I had to guess I'd say Obama expands his victory in the electoral college by quite a lot. With this map, Virginia is fairly safe for Democrats, and North Carolina (which retains Asheville) is a lot more inclined to favor Democrats in presidential races while remaining competitive in midterm elections. Under these circumstances, I'd assume that Obama would have directed more resources to Georgia from Virginia, allowing him to narrowly take the state. Nonetheless, I gave Georgia to Romney out of fairness.
(For those interested,
this article does a great job predicting how an 'independent' Appalachia would affect neighboring state politics. It's worth the read.)
Notice, also, how the formation of "Chicagoland" swings the rest of Illinois to Romney's column. Obama narrowly won Illinois-sans-Chicago in 2008, but lost it in 2012.
So how would this affect control of the Senate? Under the current alignment, the map would probably give us something like this (accounting for most recent Senate races and state fundamentals):
Republicans: 53
Democrats: 47
Even though I tried steering the boundaries to favor Democrats (while attempting to redraw borders that would accurately reflect cultural boundaries), this new composition only gives Democrats a net gain of one seat (assuming Manchin, McCaskill, Donnelly, and Heitkamp could not win in a neutral year in their respective 'new' states ... McCaskill probably would have won her last election without Kansas City, but she almost certainly wouldn't in any other year unless she moved to "Topansas." This map also assumes a Kagan win in her last election in NC).
In conclusion, we are left with a presidential map that favors Democrats by default and a Senate map that's about as competitive as the current one.
So, that wraps up my contribution. I look forward to seeing others'.
