U.S. House Redistricting: Illinois

[BigSkyBob]

So, best-case scenario? 13-5 Dem delegation.

Best case for Republicans?

A series of felony indictments are unleashed on Chicago Democratic members of the House creating a wave of public outcry that forces downstate and suburban Democrats to reject the current systematic overrepresentation of Chicago in the legislature.

Beyond that, the best case scenario is that the GOP wins the Presidency in 2012 and offers the defeated members executive jobs.

[BigSkyBob]

Chicago's African-American population went down, it's unavoidable for Davis' seat not to lose some of the percentage.

Mathematically, all that we can say is that one of the three Black Representatives was bound to have fewer Blacks in his district.

[BigSkyBob]

I doubt the 8th or 11th can be held by the Republicans. Roskam and Hultgren will go for the safe districts (6th and 14th, respectively), leaving, what, Joe Walsh (put into the 14th) for the 8th and Adam Kinzinger (who is either in the 2nd, 13th, or 18th, depending on who you believe) for the 11th? Judy Biggert's put into the 5th, so she'll probably just retire. Bob Dold is also probably screwed, since he barely won in a great Republican year against a terrible Democratic candidate. Making his district any more Democratic is probably going to push him over the edge.

Assuming that the two-point swing from 61% to 63% Obama were repeated congressionally in Dold's seat, he would have lost this new seat in 2010 49-51 (instead of winning 51-49), let alone in 2012 with Obama at the top of the ticket.

So, it all revolves down to the question of whether, or not, being the incumbent is worth 1.00001% of the vote.

[BigSkyBob]

I doubt the 8th or 11th can be held by the Republicans. Roskam and Hultgren will go for the safe districts (6th and 14th, respectively), leaving, what, Joe Walsh (put into the 14th) for the 8th and Adam Kinzinger (who is either in the 2nd, 13th, or 18th, depending on who you believe) for the 11th? Judy Biggert's put into the 5th, so she'll probably just retire. Bob Dold is also probably screwed, since he barely won in a great Republican year against a terrible Democratic candidate. Making his district any more Democratic is probably going to push him over the edge.

These are merely educated guesses presented as fact.

[BigSkyBob]

I doubt the 8th or 11th can be held by the Republicans. Roskam and Hultgren will go for the safe districts (6th and 14th, respectively), leaving, what, Joe Walsh (put into the 14th) for the 8th and Adam Kinzinger (who is either in the 2nd, 13th, or 18th, depending on who you believe) for the 11th? Judy Biggert's put into the 5th, so she'll probably just retire. Bob Dold is also probably screwed, since he barely won in a great Republican year against a terrible Democratic candidate. Making his district any more Democratic is probably going to push him over the edge.

These are merely educated guesses presented as fact.

I agree with Johnny.

I, too, tend to agreee with Johnny. As I said, I consider them educated guessess. But, there are exactly that, educated guesses.

[BigSkyBob]

You can't really calculate an incumbent bounce in areas that weren't in the seat before.

I'm surprised they didn't give Dold a few precincts from Evanston.

True enough, 5% times what percentage of his old district does he still have?

Unless his district is 80% new to him, that is still the necessary incumbent advantage he needs.

[BigSkyBob]

I doubt the 8th or 11th can be held by the Republicans. Roskam and Hultgren will go for the safe districts (6th and 14th, respectively), leaving, what, Joe Walsh (put into the 14th) for the 8th and Adam Kinzinger (who is either in the 2nd, 13th, or 18th, depending on who you believe) for the 11th? Judy Biggert's put into the 5th, so she'll probably just retire. Bob Dold is also probably screwed, since he barely won in a great Republican year against a terrible Democratic candidate. Making his district any more Democratic is probably going to push him over the edge.

These are merely educated guesses presented as fact.

I agree with Johnny.

I, too, tend to agreee with Johnny. As I said, I consider them educated guessess.[With the exception of his writing off Dold, which I consider nonsense. Dold may have a high probablity of losing, but, it simply is not a certainty.]  But, there are exactly that, educated guesses.

[BigSkyBob]

Greg Giroux reports that Quinn has signed the Congressional map into law.

Now that it is law the GOP delegation officially announced that a lawsuit will be forthcoming. I expect that it will be about Latino representation.

I suppose it will be about the lack of Latino representation.

[BigSkyBob]

It's not possible to make another 50%+ VAP Hispanic district in Illinois, one with just a plurality would never be ordered by any court, it's already clear about how the court views those districts. Illinois is not Texas, you aren't going to get a plan that gets rid of every white legislator that isn't a Republican.

Since a second Hispanic majority seat has been drawn, and posted here, it is "possible."

[BigSkyBob]

Swing State Project had a post yesterday that included two Hispanic districts as well as three black-majority districts.

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I know that one can do better than a Hispanic-plurality for the second district, but I wanted to see what one could do at the precinct level in Dave's App. I also wanted to avoid running all the way out to Kane county to link Elgin or Aurora with Chicago. All districts are within 50 persons of the ideal population. Here's an image of my five majority-minority districts:



CD 1 (Rush) 51.3% Black VAP
CD 2 (Jackson) 50.7% Black VAP
CD 3 (open) 59.4% Hispanic VAP
CD 4 (Gutierrez) 50.1% Hispanic VAP
CD 7 (Davis) 50.8% Black VAP

All the districts could go up about 1% with block-level mapping. The open CD 4 should be quite viable for a Hispanic candidate, and Gutierrez' incumbency could overcome the reduced VAP in CD 4.

Here is a map posted here with a second 50.1 VAP Hispanic district.

[BigSkyBob]

All it takes is an extension of the northern half of the "earmuff" to the west to take in some Hispanic suburbs. South here is 59.2% Hispanic VAP while the north is 50.2%- it's easy to make it up to 53% VAP or so but I shifted things around to be as tidy as possible while still Hispanic-majority.

Also possible: rather than extending out to Elgin the northern district could remain a pseudo-earmuff and take in part of my map's southern district. Doing so, you could have two districts that were 53-56% Hispanic VAP. (edit: and this would make a bit of since anyway, since Gutierrez is from the northern half of the existing district and it'd allow him to keep his existing district mostly intact).

So, while a second Hispanic district wouldn't exactly be tidy or compact, it isn't very difficult to create.

Here is a second two majority-Hispanic-VAP-district-map that was posted here.

[BigSkyBob]

Well, those are an inelegant solution to get you to barely scrape by above 50.0%, which historically hasn't been sufficient for Latino districts.

I understand your partisan motivations here, but that is an ugly and ineffective answer to hold up as ideal.

1) My response wasn't about "ideals," it was in response to a specific claim that drawing two Hispanic districts wasn't possible. Clearly, the answer to that claim is, simply, "Yes, it is possible."


2) It is facetious to note that creating a district for VRA result is "ugly" to when in Illinois the districts are extremely "ugly" in order to achieve a Democratic partisan result. Nor, can the "earmuff" district be considered any prettier than the two districts in the maps above.

[BigSkyBob]

He said he hadn't seen them, he never said they weren't possible. If you want to be that literal.

His exact words were,

"It's not possible to make another 50%+ VAP Hispanic district in Illinois..."

So, being "literal" I was exactly right, and he, and you, were exactly wrong.

[BigSkyBob]

If anyone has looked at the Republican's map yet, they should post it.  It looks much more fair and less gerrymandered than the one that Democrats passed.  Post it if you can find it.

You can find a copy of the map here:

http://mchenrycountyblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/GOP-Cong-Map-Proposed-in-Suit.png

[BigSkyBob]

Yah, a partisan map passed with minimal debate and no public input is not anything to be proud of.

I'm not proud of it in the way you mean, I dislike gerrymandering by either party.  However, until all states adopt a truly independent redistricting process it seems unreasonable to expect one party not to try to use control of the trifecta to its advantage.  I wasn't proud of it, but I am happy that the Democrats didn't role over and play dead like they did in Arkansas, Missouri, and (with the state legislative maps) Virginia.

Here's a variation of the "The Republicans made us do it" argument.

[BigSkyBob]

Yah, a partisan map passed with minimal debate and no public input is not anything to be proud of.

I'm not proud of it in the way you mean, I dislike gerrymandering by either party.  However, until all states adopt a truly independent redistricting process it seems unreasonable to expect one party not to try to use control of the trifecta to its advantage.  I wasn't proud of it, but I am happy that the Democrats didn't role over and play dead like they did in Arkansas, Missouri, and (with the state legislative maps) Virginia.

Here's a variation of the "The Republicans made us do it" argument.

No, it isn't.

"However, until all states adopt a truly independent redistricting process it seems unreasonable to expect one party not to try to use control of the trifecta to its advantage."

If that isn't the "The Republicans made us do it" argument, what is?

[BigSkyBob]

Yah, a partisan map passed with minimal debate and no public input is not anything to be proud of.

I'm not proud of it in the way you mean, I dislike gerrymandering by either party.  However, until all states adopt a truly independent redistricting process it seems unreasonable to expect one party not to try to use control of the trifecta to its advantage.  I wasn't proud of it, but I am happy that the Democrats didn't role over and play dead like they did in Arkansas, Missouri, and (with the state legislative maps) Virginia.

Here's a variation of the "The Republicans made us do it" argument.

 

No it isn't, but thanks for playing! 

My point was that it is silly to expect EITHER party to simply waste its trifectas unless there is an independent/bipartisan redistricting process in every state (from a practicality standpoint).  It isn't just Republicans making Democrats do it, the reverse is also true, and the only way to break this vicious cycle is for every state to have a California-style independent redistricting commission.  Until that happens, I'd rather see the Democrats respond in kind to gerrymanders than roll-over and play dead in the face of maps like NC, MI, OH, TX, PA, and FL (although I am well aware that this is what BigSkyBob wants to see). 

"Until that happens, I'd rather see the Democrats respond in kind to gerrymanders..."

That is the "The Republicans made us do it" argument for gerrrymandering.

[BigSkyBob]

Yah, a partisan map passed with minimal debate and no public input is not anything to be proud of.

I'm not proud of it in the way you mean, I dislike gerrymandering by either party.  However, until all states adopt a truly independent redistricting process it seems unreasonable to expect one party not to try to use control of the trifecta to its advantage.  I wasn't proud of it, but I am happy that the Democrats didn't role over and play dead like they did in Arkansas, Missouri, and (with the state legislative maps) Virginia.

Here's a variation of the "The Republicans made us do it" argument.

 

No it isn't, but thanks for playing! 

My point was that it is silly to expect EITHER party to simply waste its trifectas unless there is an independent/bipartisan redistricting process in every state (from a practicality standpoint).  It isn't just Republicans making Democrats do it, the reverse is also true, and the only way to break this vicious cycle is for every state to have a California-style independent redistricting commission.  Until that happens, I'd rather see the Democrats respond in kind to gerrymanders than roll-over and play dead in the face of maps like NC, MI, OH, TX, PA, and FL (although I am well aware that this is what BigSkyBob wants to see). 

"Until that happens, I'd rather see the Democrats respond in kind to gerrymanders..."

That is the "The Republicans made us do it" argument for gerrrymandering.

No it isn't, it is an example of the logical fallacy of quoting out of context.

"Until that happens, I'd rather see the Democrats respond in kind to gerrymanders..."

In context, your remark is stating that you support the Democrats gerrrymandering because Republicans in other states are doing it. That is, you are claiming the effect is your supporting gerrymandering by Democrats, and the cause is Republicans gerrymandering in other states. That's the "The Republicans made me do it!" excuse.

[BigSkyBob]

Yah, a partisan map passed with minimal debate and no public input is not anything to be proud of.

I'm not proud of it in the way you mean, I dislike gerrymandering by either party.  However, until all states adopt a truly independent redistricting process it seems unreasonable to expect one party not to try to use control of the trifecta to its advantage.  I wasn't proud of it, but I am happy that the Democrats didn't role over and play dead like they did in Arkansas, Missouri, and (with the state legislative maps) Virginia.

Here's a variation of the "The Republicans made us do it" argument.

No, it isn't.

"However, until all states adopt a truly independent redistricting process it seems unreasonable to expect one party not to try to use control of the trifecta to its advantage."

If that isn't the "The Republicans made us do it" argument, what is?

"Illinois would have drawn a fair map if only the Republicans hadn't done what they did in Michigan/Texas/whatever, serves them right."

The arguments you point out here and elsewhere are variations on "the system is screwed, so the Dems shouldn't practice unilateral disarmament."

You are smuggling in a false premise here. The issue is not "the system is screwed." If that were merely the issue, the solution would be, "....so, Democrats ought to pass commissions in states they hold the trifecta."

Your real point is the bit about "unilateral disarmament," which is merely a restatement of the  "The Republicans made us do it." argument.

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Look, by not "unilaterally disarming" you are claiming that if the Democrats passed commissions, while the Republicans gerrymandered, the net effect would be harmful to the prospects of the Democrats, so the actions of those rascally Republicans are forcing Democrats to gerrymander.

Claiming "the system is screwed" is moral cowardice in the face of evil. What isn't "screwed" is the system, but, rather, the Democrats in Illinois, and Republicans in North Carolina, etc.

Look, politicians stand for office. They ask the people of their states to represent their interests in the legislature. They have no right to offer the excuse of serial killers and drug addicts:

"Stop me before I kill again!"


"Stop me before I shoot up again!"

"Stop me before I redistrict again!"


If you believe, as you claim, that the best interests of the folks they represent lies in passing commissions, then those representatives ought to have the moral courage to put the interest of their constitutents before their partisan interests.

Look, "the system" gave the legislators the ability to pass a commission in both Illinois and North Carolina. They chose the option of gerrymandering.  "The system" wasn't screwed, the people within the system were.