Dave's Redistricting App

[Bacon King]

CD's 6 and 8 both look gerrymandered there.

[Dgov]

CD's 6 and 8 both look gerrymandered there.

The 6th for sure, the 8th not really.  It covers both Tacoma and Olympia pretty nicely.  If that one big Grey block if moved to the 8th it would look better.

[Verily]

CDs 4 and 5, too. The only place you should be crossing the Cascades is along the Columbia River at the southern edge of the state. And Island and San Juan Counties are only accessible from the eastern side of Puget Sound; connecting them to the western side makes no sense at all.

CD-8 is very gerrymandered; it's blatant gerrymandering to include two unrelated cities and nothing else in a district.

Basically, the whole map is a Republican gerrymander.

[jimrtex]

The New Hampshire townships have a total population of about 16,000.

The two in Michigan includes one that's about 30% Hispanic (kind of odd, it's in the middle of nowhere and the county population is only about 5% Hispanic), the other is just outside of Saginaw and is less than 10% Hispanic but majority black.

The one near Saginaw is kind of odd, because it is covered under the language provisions, but is majority black, and people think it is covered because of the black population.  In recent elections, participation by blacks was higher than among whites.

Clyde Township I assume must be migrant farm workers of some sort.  It is about half way between Muskegon and Benton Harbor on Lake Michigan and well away from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.  The census shows an extremely large share of the Hispanics were born in Mexico.

[jimrtex]

New Hampshire? Why?

New Hampshire hired a redistricting consultant who wouldn't believe that parts of New Hampshire were covered by the VRA.

[jimrtex]

If that's the reason it might be time to let them off the hook by now.

When the last time the VRA was renewed they could not come up with any objective test that would justify coverage.  Hawaii would have been the only covered State.  So they simply extended coverage - and the Supreme Court chickened out and wouldn't call them on it.

[jimrtex]

CD's 6 and 8 both look gerrymandered there.

The 6th for sure, the 8th not really.  It covers both Tacoma and Olympia pretty nicely.  If that one big Grey block if moved to the 8th it would look better.

Fort Lewis isn't it? 

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Democratic gerrymander of Colorado:





Democrats probably win everything except the Colorado Springs and giant gray districts, so 5:2.

[Verily]

There's no need to make the map so complicated. Have CO-05 take in all the ski lands and wrap around the west of Denver instead of the east. Put Greeley into the Boulder district to make up for the lost population. There should be a map like that that I did recently lying around somewhere...

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Greeley isn't a Democratic city though. You can't see it well on the map that far out, but I had the yellow district take in only the eastern half of it (the older part of the city which is also heavily Hispanic.) The western half (which looks like new development and suburban hell on Google Street View) is in the gray district.

[Skill and Chance]

What would a Dan Malloy Dem gerrymander of CT look like?  Alternatively, what would be the best possible GOP map in CT?  I imagine the GOP map would have Hartford and New Haven in the same CD?

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

Alternatively, what would be the best possible GOP map in CT?

There doesn't seem to be a way to guarantee the GOP even a single seat in Connecticut. The best I managed to do without splitting towns was this:



This district uses estimates and has a deviation of +72. Even this district was carried by Obama by over 20,000 votes, and in 2000 Bush was held to a margin of 2,236 votes.

[Verily]

Greeley isn't a Democratic city though. You can't see it well on the map that far out, but I had the yellow district take in only the eastern half of it (the older part of the city which is also heavily Hispanic.) The western half (which looks like new development and suburban hell on Google Street View) is in the gray district.

Greeley's not particularly Republican (maybe the city itself even voted for Obama), and it doesn't matter anyway. You'd have to be putting Boulder with something like Grand Junction for a district containing it to be at all vulnerable.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Remember the district already contains southern Jefferson County and the most densely populated part of Douglas, Tom Tancredo territory. Also the city Loveland south of Fort Collins which had no problems voting for Marilyn Musgrave. It can easily absorb and handle that now, but something 50/50 like Greeley might leave it a bit too open.

[Verily]

Remember the district already contains southern Jefferson County and the most densely populated part of Douglas, Tom Tancredo territory. It can easily absorb and handle that now, but something 50/50 like Greeley might leave it a bit too open.

Not really. Try this (CO-01 is majority Hispanic):

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I took a stab at this. However I will warn, it was done in the wee hours of the morning.






1. Is very similar but more compact. Majority Black
2. This is probably illegal because its not Majority black but its fairly close (42 b 35 W)
3. Basically the old 13thAs long as KP and Flyers are still in it, thats all I care about it.
4. A more compact 8th, all of Bucks.
5. The old 15th
6. Meet the new sixth, only slightly better then old one.
7. Pretty much the same probably a little more of Chester then before.
8. The old 16th. Not that much change
9. Holden's new seat, still a 54% or McCain seat. He should be fine
10. Stretched Westward slightly. About the same partisanship as before.
11. Stretched more to West and slightly less Dem.
12. The old 19th
13. Pittsburg, 62% Obama or so.
14. The old 9th and part of the old 12. 55%-59% Republican
15. The old 18th, about 53%-54% Republican.
16. The old 5th stretched SW to Westmoreland County.
17. The old 4th stretch to Westmoreland County.
18. The old 3rd stretched to Westmoreland.

I wasn't planning on splitting Westmoreland five ways but it was the first composition that gave the 17th and 18th enough people, and it was 4:00 AM . The largest deviations in population were the 17th and 18th of 1,100 and 1,900. All the others were under 1,000.

The biggest problem was that once the districts got so large and diverse, the Partisan data got shooved off the display bar so many of these are guesses. This was espeically troublesome in the Philly districts. Is there a way to fix that?

[CatoMinor]

Had some fun with Colorado
CD1: Solid Dem
CD2: Solid Dem
CD3: Lean Dem
CD4: Solid GOP
CD5: Toss-up
CD6: Lean GOP
CD7: Lean GOP

[RIP Robert H Bork]

I was actually able to redraw New Mexico 2-1 for McCain. (Current map is 2-1 Obama.) Both McCain districts were very close, but it was done.

[Verily]

Here's a deceptive gerrymander of NM. Every district is 57% for Obama, but only one county (Bernalillo) is split. NM-01 and NM-02 are majority Hispanic, while NM-03 is 41% white, 34% Hispanic, 21% Native. (All three districts are either 41% or 42% white as well.)

It's not obvious from this screenshot, but Las Cruces is in NM-01.

[RIP Robert H Bork]

Here it is.



District 1: Obama 49%, McCain 49% (McCain won by 712 votes)
District 2: Obama 48%, McCain 51%. 48% Hispanic, 46% white.
District 3: Obama 73%, McCain 26%. 47% Hispanic, 30% white.

District 2 underwent little to no change. It must be one of the few McCain districts to also be majority-minority.

[tmthforu94]

Just finished Nebraska with new census numbers. Pretty proud of myself for finding every precinct and getting the three districts within 100 people of each other, as well as only one split county.



Note: I couldn't fit it all on, but just in case you didn't know, everything missing on the left is in CD-03.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Obviously it won't ever happen, but what's everyone think of this Pennsylvania?



Oddly while I didn't intend for it to be a Dem gerrymander it basically is.

PA-01: Phil now gets Brady instead of Schwartz. 74% Obama.
PA-02: 71% black. 94% Obama.
PA-03: 61% Obama. Schwartz will take this now.
PA-04: 59% Obama. Safe for a Dem, Sestak can take this back if he loses and Meehan wins.
PA-05: 54% Obama. Not safe Dem of course, Gerlach might win it.
PA-06: I love this seat. 60% Obama. Not sure what Democrat would take it though, maybe the mayor of Lancaster or York or something.
PA-07: 60% McCain, Todd Platts probably wins it.
PA-08: 54% Obama. Would be held by either Murphy or Fitzpatrick. The two could might end up like Baron Hill and Mike Sodrel.
PA-09: 56% McCain, new Republican would win it.
PA-10: 54% Obama. Carney might want to move here, as well as Dent.
PA-11: Also 54% Obama. Hazelton is removed, but I suppose that racist loon might move here anyway. He'd probably lose to anyone besides Kanjorski though.
PA-12: 54% McCain, but Tim Holden could probably win it.
PA-13: Phil would prefer this new PA-13. 63% McCain. Bill Shuster would be safe.
PA-14: 59% McCain. Very conservative seat, Thompson is fine.
PA-15: 53% McCain, but Critz would probably hold it.
PA-16: The new Pittsburgh seat, 65% Obama, easy hold for Doyle.
PA-17: 52% McCain seat, but Altmire probably would hold it, it's less conservative than his current seat.
PA-18: 52% Obama. Dahlkemper could return to this seat which is more Dem.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Inspired by the brief discussion of Oregon's redistricting process (which prevents party affiliation as a basis for drawing districts, and protects communities of interest), I thought I'd try my hand at a nonpartisan map of the state:



I'm not sure if splitting up Portland and Gresham would be kosher, but otherwise I think the map is pretty solid. The blue, purple, and red districts would all be swing districts, with the Dems probably having a slight advantage in the blue and red ones.

[CatoMinor]

I attempted to un-gerrymander MA, tried not slitting up towns but had to in a few places.
I think MA-04, 5, 6, & 10 could be competitive.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Someone on SSP posted a map of a hypothetical Republican gerrymander of Massachusetts. It had a grand total of two Republican seats and one more maybe winnable one.

Massachusetts is simply not a state where most of the seats SHOULD be competitive. Yes the current map is ugly and not fair to many areas and kind of defies explanation why such an ugly drawing should be needed (I suppose it's largely to maximize the influence of the Boston area, but it's not like they'd be underrepresented without it.) But that doesn't mean drawing it non-gerrymandered would mean Republicans would be likely to win many seats. It's much like saying that the Republicans can't win any of the non-Staten Island seats in NYC because it's gerrymandered, it may be but that's not the reason why Republicans don't win there.