Talk Elections

It looks like almost 3 districts will fit into Wayne County, save for about 60,000 people. Since county splitting needs to be avoided when possible according to the guidelines for gerrymandering in the state, would the GOP be required to draw 3 Wayne County districts, with a little bit sticking into Oakland or Monroe County? This would make the current 11th district about D+3 or so. On the other hand it becomes easier to make the 9th more Republican. It might also make the 15th more Republican, unless the GOP shores Dingell up by adding Lansing to his district, but I don't see why they would do that.

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Something like this. Obviously the GOP won't want to do it, and keep like it is now and give the southern suburbs to Dingell, but will they be allowed to?

I looked this up, and the relevant text is as follows - all emphasis mine. Note that the word "reasonably" appears in the line about county splits, so there's a bit of wiggle room. Also, I don't understand the bolded (iii). Does it mean that if you have to split a county, you have to split the part of the country that's left over from the districts entirely within the county into even fractions?

(link: www.legislature.mi.gov/.../documents/.../mcl-Act-221-of-1999.pdf)

The simple meaning of the section you highlighted is to only split counties between two districts when balancing population. I believe the wording is to permit multiple fractional districts in the large counties like Wayne and Oakland, where the split is not simply to make final adjustments in population between two districts.

In September I posted a neutral version of MI using the statutory rules you cited in a thread about deceptive gerrymanders.

That Detroit area map looks like something the GOP would not be remotely happy with, at first glance. It looks just awful. Am I missing something?

They don't have a lot of choice due to the law requiring minimalization of county splits. And it's not bad for the GOP at all; they get to try to dilute Flint by putting it with ultra-GOP parts of Oakland County, and they drop some of the more Democratic parts of Macomb County into a black-majority seat.

I think the way muon deals with Washtenaw County is too risky for the GOP, though. If the GOP has to separate Dingell from Ann Arbor, they should combine Ann Arbor and Lansing to keep their other seats safe.

Where is McCotter supposed to park his hat?  There must be a better way than this.  The idea is to get rid of a Dem, not a Pubbie. Why not have CD-13 stay in Wayne, and pick up Dem precincts from the green district, and have the green district go north of the Wayne County line, and pick up GOP precincts?  At ;east CD-13 should pick up the most Dem precincts in Macomb. It isn't with this map. And do the districts have to be a rectangular as possible?  The Flint district, should reach down and pick up the most Dem parts of Oakland County, not the most GOP parts.

That Lansing district is kind of cutting it close.

Calm down. If you read my post, you'll see it was an attempt to defend the Apol rules that were used for the 1980 and 1990 cycle handled by the court, then ensconsed in statute before the 2000 cycle. I took a blind approach in the map above to show that the rules were not inherently biased, but still left a lot of wiggle room for one party as seen by the map enacted 10 years ago. Needless to say, I assumed that a party in control would act as before, and bend the map within the rules to improve their chances.

Well in my defense, that post was kind of hard to read the way it was formatted. :)  Anyway, I am pleased that you don't think the law dictates this horrible map. If it does, well the law needs to be changed. :P  Is there some supra majority requirement to change it, because it is in the Michigan Constitution or something?  

It's just state law. The constitution provides no guidance on congressional districts.

Here's what I think is the absolute minimum number of county splits (12), with two black majority seats (might be able to cut it down by a split if that requirement were waived). It also happens to be a relatively fair map (6D, 8R, but some of the R seats are winnable for the Dems).

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In that map, the GOP gets 6 seats, with the gray district a toss-up.  The Dems have 7 safe seats. :)

How on earth, do you find 8 GOP seats? The red district is a pretty heavily lean Dem district. It has Eaton, without much in the way of heavy GOP counties to neutralize it, like Livingston.

The GOP gets 7 seats on that map, plus the Macomb seat, which would favor them.

The northern seat, the mitt seat, the Ottawa-Muskegon seat, the Grand Rapids seat, the SW seat, the south-center seat and the Livingston seat are all R seats, although the south-center seat and the northern seat in some circumstances are competitive.

The two black seats, the all-Wayne seat, the Ann Arbor-Lansing seat and the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City seats are all D seats. The all-Oakland seat is probably D but is not totally safe.

Eaton County is only 53% Obama. The district overall is R+2 or 3 or so. You're thinking of Ingham County, which is Lansing.

We disagree about the red seat. Oh, my bad. I thought Eaton was Lansing. OK fair enough. This map ain't happening though. It really only has two safe GOP seats, the one with Livingston in it, and the one with Ottawa in it. The rest are somewhat to very marginal.

I wouldn't really consider the Grand Rapids seat or the mitt seat or the SW seat to be at all winnable for the Dems, certainly not with their current incumbents. And generally speaking this is what has to happen anyway; if there are this many "marginal" R seats on a 6D-8R map, imagine how bad it would be if you started trying to crack Lansing or Ann Arbor. The loss of a seat really puts a squeeze on the current gerrymander since so many R seats are already marginal. I think McCotter is going to end up lost in the shuffle even on an R gerrymander. They certainly can't knock the Dems below their current 5 seats without further endangering incumbents.

Lansing is cracked now. How much population do the two black seats and the Dingell seat need to pick up is part of the question. If they have to pick up a lot, that means a lot more Dems if the map is drawn right, can be shoved into them. That is the key.

They've definitely shrunk, and they will try to extend one of the black districts up to take in Pontiac. But that's not going to be enough to make someone like McCotter safe when he ends up in a district with Peters or in a primary with Mike Rogers.

The trick is whether it is possible to squeeze Levin and Peters together. That is the dance vis a vis the Wayne County CD's.

And here is I think the GOP solution, and will be the solution that the GOP will take. The trick is to have Dingell lose Monroe County (which when added to MI-7 (the gray district that you can barely see a sliver of at the bottom of the screen shot), nicely gives the additional population that district needs), and in exchange, plus having to add population, he picks up white precincts from the southern portion of the black districts, mostly from the one to the west - rather than the white precincts in McCotter's green district (not colored yet, except for a couple of precincts).  Picking up white Dems, not white Pubbies, is what we do for Mr. Dingell. He keeps what he has in Wastenaw (even though the utility is not large enough to show he still has Ann Arbor, but he does). Then the east black district takes from precincts from the west black district, and the west black district rounds up every precinct in Oakland County where there are significant numbers of blacks, plus picks up a few white precincts to equalize population, and effect the link up to Pontiac.

So now the most Dem areas of both the Levin and Peters districts are gone. Candice Miller in the Macomb County red district, has more of a headache, but it can't be helped. The turquoise district (east Oakland north and east of where the black district stops, is not finished. It can expand in northern Macomb, or elsewhere. So  northern Macomb, and the thumb, and the balance of what is left of Peters' MI-9 district in Oakland are open for one district to replace the Peters and Levin districts, and for the other districts to expand into, and the territory is pretty GOP friendly. The GOP districts like dominoes can all be shoved east into or towards that zone, I would think. This map is the only one that creates two black districts that are 60% black. The blacks in Oakland just have to be picked up to hew to a 60% black population target, and if the percentages get down much below 60%, the black representatives are not going to be happy anyway. It should be pretty bullet proof from any judicial standpoint.

The  GOP loser to some extent is Candice Miller, but she will be able to hold her somewhat more Dem district I would think against Levin. It is either that, or get rid of the Michigan law, so more erose and precise gerrymanders can be effected. In exchange though, the GOP has the potential to replace two Dems (Levin and Peters) with one Republican, which is not a bad day's work. It will be very hard for Peters to win in his totally redone district.  At worst, even if Levin wins, that means in effect that Peters is gone, and Miller is replaced by some other Pubbie in a more GOP Oakland district, that can expand into Northern Macomb and the thumb, which it will have to, because the eastern part of his district needs to go to other Republicans. Poor Oakland - the sliced and diced county, time after time.

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And here is the final "solution" for the Detroit metro area.  I suppose actually that the turquoise district should pick up a bit more of Saginaw, so the green district can pick up a few precincts in Oakland from the turquoise district, while losing its four precincts in Wastenaw, so that county split can be avoided. I will do that later, and replace this map.

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That is so much harder to view than version 1.0. I'll stick with version 1.0 for most things from here on. The only real advantage 2.0 has is that the partisan data for it now works for California, Texas and New York which didn't in 1.0 for me for some reason, so I'll just use it to compare partisan figures.

It looks like it does real projections.  I don't see how one could avoid a seizure working with the old lat/long data.

Well this is about as nasty a gerrymander of Oakland County as I could manage, and it is probably illegal, but I leave that to Muon2 to tell me. My aim is to try to equalize the PVI's for the pink, turquoise, green and purple districts, with the purple having a bit more, since the Obama swing was more in the purple zone, as far as I can tell, but maybe not given what I have put in it. The goal is to get the PVI's four all four districts to about GOP +3, with the purple district a bit more. I am not sure I have done that (probably not for McCotter's Green district , but I packed as many GOP districts into it as possible in Oakland, while leaving what it has in Wayne County alone), but I did the best I can and it should hopefully get up to about an GOP plus 1-2% PVI anyway. If the turquoise CD  jut down to the Wayne County line is illegal, and the Green district has to fill much of it in, then the green CD's PVI of 0% will not change much, and might even drop a tad.

Leips' application does not have the partisan data for Michigan yet, but looking at the township and city returns, and the black percentages in Oakland, I am pretty sure I have corralled all, or almost all,  of the most GOP precincts for the Pubbies in Oakland, after dumping most if not all of the most Dem precincts in Oakland as possible into the black district. So,  it is just a matter of divvying the more GOP oriented districts in Oakland between the green, turquoise and purple districts. I wanted to chew up Saginaw and Bay City, because I don't think the northern CD's can afford to include either city, and thus they need to be neutralized from the south (and were by the turquoise district), since the Flint district instead of neutralizing Bay City and Saginaw as it did before, now neutralizes Lansing. The turquoise district also has a long thin jut down into south Oakland, which is about even territory for Bush 2004 (maybe a slight Bush 2004 lean of plus 1-2% or so, since I chopped up the townships in the jut area between what appears to be the more Dem and GOP pieces, so it has a somewhat Dem PVI - maybe a Dem PVI +2% or so.  I did that to try to get the GOP PVI for the Green district up as much as possible; the green district  is now  PVI 0%, and it needs as much beefing up as possible. So its expansion was into new more heavily GOP Oakland territory, with a GOP PVI of maybe plus 4% or so, although I am not sure. If the turquoise CD jut down south to the Wayne County border is illegal, then the green CD's PVI of 0% will not change much, and probably go down a fraction to maybe Dem +0.5% or so.

In any event, as long as McCotter, Miller, and Rodgers hang around, Levin and Peters face a near hopeless task of getting elected anywhere, at least absent a big Dem shift in this area, and some new Pubbie has in the purple district pretty ripe hanging fruit to pick up.

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The simple application of the Michigan law is that within a split county there can be only one split city or township between a pair of districts. All the districts in your Oakland map seem to share multiple split municipalities. So I'm afraid to advise you that it would be an illegal gerrymander. :P

For instance, I think that if you are going to have a narrow finger linking Pontiac through West Bloomfield, then you would have to have all of Farmington Hills in the Pontiac - Detroit district. Waterford would have to be out, and Auburn Hills would have to be all in or all out since it looks like it is split three ways.

Thanks Muon2. But can you override all of those annoying little requirements via the VRA  in order to get the black districts up to 60% of the population? You have to slice townships and towns to do that (probably also in Wayne, if the same requirement obtains there), or you are going to fall down to 57% or something, and among VAP, lower still (and among voters, we may then be barely over 50%)? I checked the black percentage of each precinct I appended to the black district in Oakland, in order to maximize its black percentage. And there are no other blacks to be had to speak of in the Detroit metro area. I corralled them all.

By the way, for future reference, here (http://www.legislature.mi.gov/%28S%280zpycme4wfbv2u450opafz55%29%29/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-3-63) is the text of the Michigan Law. The Pubbies revised it to do their last gerrymander, hewing to some Michigan Supreme Court precedents apparently, based on what I don't know. I suppose it could be tweaked if necessary. For example, my turquoise district is not very compact, but that is just the way it has to be.

There are VRA districts out there that are only 52-53% black. You certainly don't need 57%, let alone 60%, of the general population to be of the minority group, at least not for blacks, who are not far from whites in proportion in the VAP (compare to Hispanics, who are disproportionately below voting age).

Anyway, the VRA only applies to Michigan insofar as you need to avoid having districts that intentionally dilute the black vote such that their preferred candidate routinely loses. Even 45% black wouldn't be an intentional dilution.

OK Verily. It won't do too much "damage" to fix it. The purple district will get maybe 1%-2% more Dem in its PVI, and the Green district about 1%-2% less or so, I would guess. I was fighting hard for every PVI point. Michigan is an interesting state to do, because it has these Dem nodes in it, and so the game is to neutralize them, one by one (with two black districts of course a given): Muskegon, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Bay City and Saginaw, Flint, the Dem areas of Macomb and Oakland, Ann Arbor, and the white Dems of Wayne. One does that by packing multiple nodes into one Dem district, or neutralizing the nodes by appending them to otherwise GOP areas.

You get an "A" for this exercise if you hew to the rule of 4 - 4 Dem seats each for Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. :)

Yes, the election of Peters and Levin shows that you probably don't need a 55% black district to have a black Democrat win the primary and then the general election. There is surely a white Democratic base that won't reflexively switch to the Republicans to vote against a Dem candidate, although the Detroit vs. suburbs dynamic is an issue.

I would really be interested in seeing a PA map with only 4 Democrats. And what is meant by "Dem seats"? Would you consider a district that voted 51-47 for Obama a Dem seat or a Rep seat if I put one of the Republicans there? In any case a PA map with just 4 Democrats is a disaster in the making for the pubbies. Even in Ohio I had trouble keeping the Dems down to just 4 seats.

No, a Pubbie seat in general is one where in an even election, the Pubbie wins by say at least 3%.  Since Obama won the nation by 7%, if he wins by 4%, that is that 3% GOP lean. Sure a 6% GOP lean would be better, but in some places, that is just not possible, without conceding too much, or simply isn't there at all, like in the Philly suburbs, even if you knock out the most Dem areas of them.

Bear in mind, that since this exercise is mostly about protecting GOP incumbents now, rather than knocking out Dem ones, as long as the Pubbie incumbents stay around, and do a reasonably good job, they should be OK in districts with this amount of GOP lean from an even partisan baseline, even if Obama wins the nation again by 7% (incumbency should give them a 3-5% margin pad or so I would think).

But in the Detroit metro area we have an exception, where we are trying to knock out Dem incumbents Peters and Levin.

Did you see what I did to the inner city Pittsburgh district?  :P  Again, in west PA, the Dem districts have lost a lot of population, which allows for a big Dem pack, particularly since PA lost a CD. So the Dems in west PA will have but one seat - on paper. Yes, Holden and Altmire may hang on (and probably will), and the Dems win 6 seats, but those two will be representing GOP districts - and vote accordingly. Good for them. And in suburban Philly, the Dems will be competitive, if there is a rather significant shift back their way, defeating some GOP incumbents, but nothing can be done about that. The available territory is too marginal.

Seeing all this--how exactly did Peters survive this year in his current district?

P-O-N-T-I-A-C (80% for Kerry - 17,759 to 4,499 in the city, and about 53% for Kerry in neighboring Auburn Hills I think).  And he had West Bloomfield (about 59% for Peters - that must be where the Jewish lawyers live :P), and Farmington Hills (57% for Peters).  All three are gone now, appended to the black district (except for about 15 precincts in Farmington Hills which were added to McCotter's green district). He also had to lose marginally GOP Waterford (47.5% for Peters). Instead, he now has marginally (56% for  Levin) Dem Madison Heights (not that big a town, but I needed to put it in his district, to shove all of West Bloomfield out of his district and into the black district to make its march to Pontiac both legal and via all Dem - and heavily Dem, pathways), and three townships in Macomb, two GOP (Shelby 60% for Bush, and Sterling Heights 52% for Bush) and one marginally Dem (Warren - 56% for Kerry, and maybe 53% for Levin or less).

But Pontiac is 90% of the story.

What I did was create Holden a Democratic district within SE PA, and then tried to shore up the Philly area Republican. Actually worked decently well though I did end up with a 54-44 Obama 15th district. Every other Republican district is at least 50-48 Obama or more Republican.

Your Michigan gerrymander is also fascinating, but you should keep one thing in mind. Those blue collar voters that swung hard agains the Democrats this year, could come right back to them and more. If Obama loses in 2012, and a pro business Republican is elected with the economy still stagnating, expect huge swings back in these sorts of areas. Did these areas go even more Republican in 2010 than in 2004? 2004 is a good prism to view how things are really. 2008 was too screwy of an election as well as 2010.

I am well aware that among the cohort of voters that I am talking about, 2010 was a GOP high tide mark. That is one reason why I split the marginally Dem areas of Macomb that are now in Levin's district between the Peters' district and the Miller district. And that was why I worked so hard to try to shore up McCotter's district, which is very vulnerable if he is not the incumbent. I largely failed in the latter endeavor. It just is not possible given the Michigan law constraints. And if you have to have Dem areas in your CD, better that it be ones that can swing your way, rather than those that think Pubbies are generally toxic, and will give you the permanent finger, no? 

Another trick is to see where the demographic growth will be. At least McCotter's district has a lot of real estate ripe for more middle class exurban Pubbies to move into over time. It seems clear that the population growth in his part of Oakland was pretty robust. That is why the Green district did not have to add much territory, even with the bounce up in the population requirement per CD juiced by Michigan losing a CD.

In Michigan, certainly.  PA - less certain actually.  Ohio - if they didn't, I'd be shocked.  Blue collar Dem voters in Ohio have the habit of swinging Republican a lot historically.

adding a few images with some concept ideas

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I don't know enough about how Oakland County breaks down to tell you how Peters v. Rogers would go with that alignment.

Dingell v. Conyers wouldn't happen but it would be a pretty vicious map.

Adding Pontiac to Levin's district as a vote sink district is also vicious.

Removing the two counties won by Schauer and adding Republican friendly counties is also pretty devious. Along with the open Dem seat.

So that might wind up as a 9-5 map in a current 9-6 state.

I'm not sure if 10-4 is realistic. But crushing Peters at the expense of 4 other Dems could occur. And I doubt that Kildee could be drawn out of his district.

The green district is far too Dem, and you did not get rid of Levin. The Dems would love your map. Mine will have a more GOP green district, and get rid of both Levin and Peters. The Levin district that you designed might not fly because it is too erose. One needs to make the districts look more compact, by filling them out with places without many voters. Granted my latest little work in progress gets a bit erose with the Flint district, as I have the Flint district now taking in Pontiac (I "need" to do this to beef up the McCotter district and get the Peters district to the point where Peters will have to vote like a Pubbie to survive), but I am trying to cosmeticize it, but the more cosmetic it is, the most GOP votes I have to lose, so it is a balancing test. The trick is to design every CD but 4 in Michigan, to all being carried fairly comfortably by Bush 2004, and if not by McCain, he at least would have got quite close.

The first thing you need to do, is to strip the black districts of white votes in their south tails, shoving those voters into the Dingell district, so that one of the black districts needs close to 400,000 more in population, all made up with Oakland County Democrats. The more you can strip the black districts of white voters in the south, the more you can round up Dems in the north.

I never said I was gonna get rid of Levin. I said I was gonna turn his district into a vote sink.

And there is NO Dingell district on this map. Dingell is drawn out of Congress in this map.

And are there minorities in Oakland County that aren't in Levin or Conyers district?

You put Ann Arbor into a Pubbie district?  Oh dear. Do you think a Pubbie could win the gray district absent a wave? And yes, there are a lot of blacks in the Peters district, particularly in Pontiac, but beyond that, in the upper middle class more Jewish parts of Oakland, in particular West Bloomfield and Farmington. That is where the bourgeoisie blacks live now (those that cannot quite afford that, live in Southfield). Why on earth would they live anywhere else, if black? Unless you have an intellectual bent, and want to live in Ann Arbor, which is certainly where I would live, if I were "sentenced" to live in the Detroit metro area. Ann Arbor was such a joy to live in when I was in law school there. Gosh, how I love that town. :)

Let me make this easier for you to understand


Or as I said "Along with the open Dem seat."

Which for the first election will occupy Democrats on a primary when they could be trying to increase momentum for Peters or a challenger for one of the other Freshmen.

"And yes, there are a lot of blacks in the Peters district, particularly in Pontiac"

I wasn't referencing the current map when I said that "are there minorities in Oakland County that aren't in Levin or Conyers district?".. I was referencing my map, where Pontiac is in Levin's district and Bloomfield Hills is in CD8.

So, a summary
CD1 is redder (picking up the solid red Grand Traverse area, dropping the purpleish tail)
CD6 is redder (losing Schauer's house/Battle Creek, losing another county Schauer carried, picking up turf that John Dingell's challenger won)
CD8 can use work but it's Livington and presumably redder parts of Oakland County
CD9 is now the Lansing/Ann Arbor seat which Dems will win
CD10 picks up some random parts of Macomb.
CD11 could use some pruning but if McCotter keeps it in 2008, he won't lose it
CD12 becomes redder with Pontiac
CD13 picks up Hamtramck/Highland Park and is like 58-59% Black
CD14 combines parts of Dingell's seat with Conyers district and is majority black.

Rather impressive, I must say.  Let us know how it goes.

Your 8th, 11th, and 12th all likely voted for Obama handily and could easily go Democratic in a good Dem year.  Gary Peters could well win MI-09 in 2012 on Obama's coattails.

Yep, and there is not a darn thing that can be done about it. If the Dems win the nation by 7%, some GOP seats are going to go down - certainly if they have no incumbent, or a suck incumbent. And that is how it should be. If you play much with this map, if a GOP incumbent retires, the Dems are more likely than not to pick the seat up, in an even election. Michigan is not the South. There are not huge partisan variations, after one gets done with the black, Jewish, and Dutch areas. And the Dutch live a long way from the blacks and the Jews. Combine that with the legal constraints, and if you can do better than this map, send it along to the redistricters.

By the way, Rodgers won CD-8 in 2008 by 57%-40%, while Obama was carrying it by 7%. Some GOP incumbent congressmen are nebbishes (like a long string of them in CD-7, who keep getting defeated, and the one that just got elected is more in the nebbish category, carrying on that tradition), and some are mensches. Rodgers is an uber  mensch. And McCotter is a mensch, if not quite in the uber category. Obama carried his CD by 9%, while McCotter carried his CD-11 in 2008 by 9%.  Oh, and nobody is going to beat Candice Miller, in Macomb. She won her CD in 2008 by 66%-31%, while McCain was carrying it by 2%.  So while her margin in her new district in 2008 might have been more like 63-37 or so, she remains invulnerable. Plus, her new Dem portions of Macomb are trending GOP. I keep such matters in the back of my mind.

Now, you cant be so sure about these things.  Democrats have never targetted these members.  People said that Allen Boyd, Melissa Bean, Jim Oberstar, Rick Boucher and Charlie Melancon and Bart Gordon(both of whom would have been defeated had they run for reelection) were invulnerable.  Democrats are likely to start targetting these Republicans in Obama districts and in a better Democratic year, they are likely to win some of these districts. 

Other than Oberstar (D+3 district), these are bad comparisons.  Bean was only a 3-termer, first elected against an old/weak incumbent and re-elected only in strong Dem years; the only reason her loss was an upset this year is because nobody thought Walsh was a strong candidate.  The 4 southerners that you mention represent districts that are R+6,+11,+12,+13, whereas you are complaining about districts that are roughly even, or maybe R+1 or 2.  With incumbents who have demonstrated an ability to win even through two straight Dem waves, you can take those chances.  (It's not as if *every* Dem in a D+3 or worse district went down this year - Minnesota still has Walz and Peterson, for instance.) 

I have figured out in my head a Michigan map that I think might work, which cedes a CD where Peters and Levin fight it out, while strengthening some of the GOP seats, and in particular CD's 8, 11 and 12.   I will put that map up in due course. This is a fun game actually.  :)

The numbers look sweet, but I'm not sure about the Ann Arbor area. It looks like there is a three-way split of Washtenaw. That would probably be disallowed under the statute.

Well in the current plan, Oakland has a four way split, and that certainly could have been avoided, but it wasn't. The law basically has a reasonable standard; there is no special award of negative points for having 3 way rather than 2 way splits of a county. The Washtenaw split is really just a population equalizer in any event. In the current plan, note that CD-05 does an adjacent split of Bay and Saginaw Counties, to take in both Bay City and Saginaw;  that would seem illegal on its face since the splits are both involving just one CD, CD-04, but it flew anyway.

I could squeeze CD-08 out of Washtenaw, without doing much damage really. Not that many people are involved. The effect however, would be to make CD-11 a bit more Dem, because that CD would have to take some territory from CD-12. Or all the CD's in the area would have to look more erose (with CD-08 and CD-11 both a tad more Dem, as they would have to reach down and take in Madison Heights, Berkley and Royal Oak in southeast Oakland.

I have another plan that puts Pontiac and West Broomfield in CD -08. That allows CD-11 to yes take in marginally Dem Farmington, but that it punches through Southfield Township (Beverly Hills, not the city of Southfield), and then take in GOP Broomfield, Birmingham, and Troy.  That way at the south end of his CD, he can lose 58% Dem Westland. The advantage of this plan is that Rogers can keep Livingston, and McCotter keeps Livonia, their respective home fields. And CD-09 is just shredded away, so Peters has nowhere to run at all. He would face Rogers in CD-08, with only Rochester where he lives in it, along with the GOP northeast corner of Oakland, and Pontiac, Auburn Hills, Waterfield and West Bloomfield, but the rest of the district is all Rogers territory, and heavily GOP (northwest Oakland and Livingston).  So basically CD-08, takes in heavily Dem Pontiac, marginally Dem Auburn Hills, 60% Dem or so West Broomfield, with the balance of the CD all comfortable to heavily GOP territory.

I am combining my three plans into one post.

To give some definition to my terms, I consider a "safe" GOP seat, one that Bush 2004 got at least 54.5% of the two party vote, with 55% being even better, and that was my goal, not quite reached in a couple of instances (I am between 54.5% and 55%).  A 52.5-54.5% Bush 2004 seat is lean GOP, and anything less than that is really in the tilt to tossup category.  Every percentage point counts - and counts a lot - in our divided and quite closely balanced partisan environment, with relatively few swing voters. A 54.5% CD by the way is a +3% GOP PVI from Bush 2004 numbers (Bush 2004 got 51.4% of the two party vote). Pubbies have been pretty successful in holding +3% or better GOP PVI districts in the past (well outside the South, until now, where some Dem fossils held on). Sure, some are lost from time to time, but not many.

The first plan is the one that tries to cut down the Dems to holding just 4 seats.  It does this by getting rid of CD-12. The Dem parts of CD-12 in Oakland County, are given to one of the black seats, CD-14.  (All 3 plans do that in fact.) CD-09 takes in the marginally Dem CD-12 areas in Macomb of Warren Township, and its third of Sterling Heights, while CD-10 takes the marginally Dem areas in Macomb of Eastpointe, St. Clair Shores, Mt Clements, and Clinton Township, all marginally Dem, while losing much of its thumb territory. So CD-10 becomes a more marginally GOP seat, renumbered CD-12. CD-09 in Oakland becomes comfortably GOP having lost its Dem areas in Oakland, in exchange for less Dem areas in Macomb. But having CD-05 go south to take in Pontiac, creates a barrier that makes it impossible for CD-11 to get at the heavily populated GOP areas in eastern Oakland (Rochester, Troy, Bloomfield), so it struggles to find GOP territory, without a whole lot of success; so CD-11 becomes just a tad more GOP and somewhat marginal.

Meanwhile CD-08 becomes a marginal GOP seat, because it still has to take in Lansing, and while it gains some GOP territory in the East, it loses its heavily GOP territory in northern Oakland (now taken up to some extent by CD-05 so that it can link up to Pontiac.

So this plan creates 4 marginal GOP seats, CD's 01, 08, 11 and 12. And that is why this plan will not be adopted.  Rogers in CD-08, McCotter in CD-11, and Miller in now CD-10, to be renumbered CD-12, will not be very happy. Plus, one cannot beef up CD-01 much, without it looking embarrassingly erose. And given the play of geography in the next two plans, we can put MI-01 in safe GOP territory, without being so embarrassed.

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So that brings us to the second plan. In this plan, CD-12 again loses its Dem areas in Oakland to CD-14, but this time is all in Macomb County, and also takes in the Gross Pointes in Wayne County. This is possible in this plan precisely because CD-12 is now otherwise all in Macomb county, with nothing in Oakland. Having CD-12 go into three counties, is probably not legal. So with the Gross Pointes in CD-12, we can make that a toss up district (rather than marginal GOP in the first plan), but in exchange, Miller (CD-10), Rogers (now all in Oakland in CD-09, with his old CD-08 now the number for Dingell’s old CD-15), and McCotter (CD-11) now all have safe districts. CD-01 becomes safe GOP as well. This plan is elegant, because it creates nice compact looking districts, and minimizes county splits, with CD-09 now all in Oakland County, and Oakland now having only 3 CD’s in it rather than 4.

The problem with this plan however, is that Livingston County is now appended to McCotter’s CD-11, so Rogers will have to move to Oakland County (where about a third of his district currently is).. Rogers will not want to move if it can be avoided.

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So I suspect a third plan will be adopted: the one below. In this plan, Rogers keeps his Livingston base, with the rest of his district now in Oakland (except for a sliver of Washtenaw as a population equalizer taking up marginal political territory). The key to this plan, is to give Rogers the Dem areas of Pontiac and West Broomfield in Oakland, which he can handle, since the balance of what he has in Oakland is mostly heavily GOP, along with Livingston (CD-08 no longer has to cope with Dem Lansing and Inghram County, so he as plenty of GOP partisan pad to contain and neutralize Pontiac and environs).  

The old CD-09 is totally chopped up, and Peters has nowhere to run. (Yes, in that sense, it is convenient (http://domemagazine.com/lessenberry/jl111210) that Peters won in CD-09 this year, because if the Pubbie had won, then there would have been a real pushing and shoving match, as to which incumbent Pubbie gets what, and it might have been a toss up whether my first plan (which creates 3 marginal GOP seats), or this plan, were adopted.)

The last map at the bottom, shows what was the new now CD-08 looks like, with the green part in Oakland from the old CD-09 (except for GOP White Lake Township, which is from CD-11), the gray in the old CD-08 (CD-08 lost the pink area to the east, largely in Inghram County), and the green in Washtenaw (marginal partisan territory), is from the old CD-07. By CD-08 taking in Pontiac and West Broomfield, that  creates a geographic pathway for  McCotter’s CD-11 to then capture heavily populated GOP areas in Oakland of Troy and Broomfield via cutting through marginally Dem Farmington.  If  Pontiac is put in CD-05 or CD-14, a barrier is created that makes it not viable for CD-09 to take in West Broomfield, and that leaves CD-11 to cope with both Farmington and West Broomfield and drop some Dem precincts in Wayne, while trying to get at Broomfield and Troy;  that is just too much population in which to switch for CD-11. It does not work, because the 3 Dem districts in metro Detroit, the two black districts, and the Dingell district, end up with too much population.

So, in summary, I think this plan will be adopted more or less, because it makes all the GOP incumbents happy, and gives the GOP an even shot of winning what is now the 5th Dem seat in Macomb County (CD-12). We shall see what happens. I am going to send all of this data to the Michigan “redistricters.”

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If they actually do put part of the 5th in Wayne County, that's gonna make for some interesting happenings during the county meetings back home... especially since the county has never really interacted with the 5th.

The 5th never hits Wayne in any of the 3 plans, just Oakland in one of them, to take in Pontiac. By the way, who is the Pubbie point man in the legislature for redistricting?  Would you happen to know, or could you find out?  I am not getting much cooperation so far when I call.

In the never ending saga of Torie meets Michigan, I have yet another new "improved" map. Muon2 in his gentle but persistent professorial way, was kicking my butt so hard about my triple CD split of Washtenaw County from a legal standpoint, that my cheeks were metaphorically black and blue. I resisted him because it seemed to me that doing but a double split of Washtenaw, meant yet another county split elsewhere, an exercise that I went through time and again. But I was fixated on either CD-08 or CD-07 taking all of Washtenaw left over from CD-15 (the Dingell district, now CD-09, since the old Oakland County CD-09 is now gone).

But alas I failed to consider Dingell himself taking over the territory of one of the other CD's in Washtenaw (yes, Torie was a total dumb on that one), and as soon as I considered that, I realized, that yes indeed, Dingell could take over the northern strip of Washtenaw from CD-08, without another county split. So it had to be done. The consequence is that CD-08 needed to grab some of the precincts at the northern edges of CD-11 (to replace the lost Washtenaw precincts), comfortably to heavily GOP (I cherry picked the precincts in Troy City, and thus the ugly CD-08 spike down along the Macomb County border, because the northern row of Troy City precincts were like 60-40 Bush, and I just hated to give them up, so thus the spike which is about 55-45 Bush). This in turn forced CD-11 to then pick up some marginal Dem territory to its south in Oakland (Berkeley and most  Royal Oak City (all but 11 of most of the most heavily Dem precincts which conveniently are in the southern edge of Royal Oak).  (The two black CD's then had to pick up some territory from Dingell in Wayne County, which is not relevant for this exercise, since those CD's are designed to all be massively Dem.)

This merry-go-round involved about 43,000 people, and the results were less harmful to CD-11 than I feared. It dropped from 55.04% Bush 2004 to 54.32% Bush 2004. The number of folks was small enough, and the new Dem territory marginal enough, to limit the damage.

I suspect the CD-11 Bush 2004 number will get back up to about 55%, when the real census numbers come in, and we find the Pubbie areas of Oakland County have more people relative to the Dem areas, thereby affording a relatively more populated Pubbie zone in Oakland for CD-08 and CD-11 to divvy up as compared to the Dem areas in order for the CD's to meet the equal population requirement. The only fly in the ointment is if Pontiac suffered a rather catastrophic population loss relatively speaking, which while massively Dem, represents an island in the otherwise heavily GOP CD-08 sea (except for 60-40 or close to it middle to upper middle class Dem West Bloomfield, which CD-08 also seamlessly sucks up), that potentially could cause CD-08 to get greedy again for CD-11 Oakland County precincts. But I strongly suspect the net effect will be fairly substantially positive for CD-11, since most of the balance of what is in CD-08 in Oakland is heavily GOP and probably had pretty good population growth relative to the Dem south to southeast corner of Oakland.

Are we happy now Muon2?  :)  Thanks by the way; I needed your help!

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Torie, now you're cooking with gas. ;)

I think it's fascinating to compare your ingenious work using the MI standards to the neutral application I prepared a few months ago. Here we used the same data and same standards but reached radically different results. I think it conclusively shows how geographic requirements alone are insufficient to suppress partisan gerrymandering.

Only Rogers could hold CD-08 in your map Muon2, and even he might have trouble in a year like 2008. If he retired, a Dem would take that CD without too much of a sweat all things being equal. The university precincts are just deadly to the GOP. Some other Pubbie incumbents would also be quite vulnerable. They would not like your map - at all. :)

But then as you say, it is a relatively non-partisan map.

I was referring to muon's original map.

As for the point man in the legislature for redistricting... I'll see if I can find that out.

Here's what I drew up.  I know it sucks, and probably isn't very legal.  But I spent a good 4 hours on it one night, and I've tried fixing it and after 2 hours of fiddling, it was just worse.  So, here's my map, for what it's worth :)

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Well, Inks the map of the Detroit metro area certainly looks legal, but Kerry may have carried CD-11 (the green district) because you have both Farmington and West Bloomfield in it in Oakland, plus it goes too far south, and takes in all of Westland, which is at once both a big place and a  "bad place" (about 57% Kerry), and Wayne, which is an even worse place (although much smaller), at 59% Kerry.  Redford also sucks at 56% Kerry or something (and it is a fairly large suburb as well). Overall, your MI-11 looks like it might be something like a +2% Dem PVI CD. McCotter will freak. Your cyan CD (MI-09), is a Dem district basically, which Peters will easily carry (putting 85% Dem and large Southfield in it, and 85% Dem Pontiac, plus some other towns almost as Dem like Huntington Woods and Farmdale, along with some marginal Dem towns, probably makes it something like a 58% Kerry CD).

In my map, McCotter in CD-11 was far safer (no West Bloomfield (close to 60% Kerry with a pretty big population), no Wayne, no Redford, and only a partial of Westland). I eliminated CD-09 rather than CD-12, and my new MI-12 CD is marginal (and all in Macomb County, where Levin was very weak in 2010, only carrying that portion of his CD (the most Dem part of Macomb, by 53%), with a PVI at about even. One of the keys there is to unlock and pump into my MI-12 the Pubbie Gross Pointes, while not picking up 57% Kerry Harbor Woods. That is what enables it to be made a dead even CD - and nothing else - of remotely equal importance. The rest was playing games like trying legally to get small but something like 57% Kerry Mt. Clemens out of MI-12 legally, which I finally figured out how to do. The Mt. Clemens cutout  was worth about 15 basis points or something for MI-12 on my map in the Pubbie direction. In this game, you fight for every basis point.

Oh, and Camp in MI-04 is going to hate his CD. It is probably only about 52% Bush, if that. Ouch! Pubbie CD's in this neck of the woods need to be 54.5% Bush 2004 (+3% GOP PVI) to be viewed as reasonably safe. Anything less, and the odds of them falling in a wave, or falling if open, begin to go up exponentially. You can't cut him off from heavily GOP Grand Traverse, and a couple of other surrounding counties up there, and saddle him with Bay City (both of which I did as well), without giving him some compensating solid GOP territory, which ends up having to be Kent County adjacent and probably Dutch influence Ionia and Barry Counties. They just have to be in his CD, if you are going to cut him off from the NW, in order to make MI-01 more GOP. I also see that you have Mt. Pleasant in Camp's CD as well, which needs to go. I put that place in the Kent County CD, in order to neutralize it.

Camp is currently at about 55%, and I shaved him down to 54.6% or something (the numbers are in a post of mine above), and I would like if I could to get it higher, but I can't given the legal rules, unless I push MI-01 into the marginal zone. Hopefully Camp won't bitch too much. All of the other Pubbies will be deliriously happy with their CD's, except perhaps for Miller in CD-10, who was shaved down a bit, but she is still above 55%, and I doubt will complain. The trends in her zone are good.

Oh wait. The CD that you label CD-12 which is some of Detroit, some of Dearborn maybe, the Gross Pointes and Harbor Woods, and the southern tier of Macomb, may  not by the look of it to me be 50% black. Is it?  If it isn't, then yes, the map is illegal under the VRA. But that can be fixed by shifting around precincts between the two CD's that take in Detroit.

I made 9 heavily Democratic since it basically ate up a large portion of the 12th, that way since the Dems lose Levin (assuming Peters would stay over Levin), they'd be happier they have a strong hold.

As for the 11th, I thought I was careful enough to keep it Republican enough to stay favorable for McCotter.

As for the 4th, yeah... I know... that whole thing with Bay City and Saginaw is just weird... I gave him Bay City over Saginaw because Saginaw would be way too Democratic heavy.  But then it got weird trying to connect that to the thumb, otherwise the 5th got too many people.

Well you "wasted" a bunch of Pubbies in the thumb by locking them up in the Flint CD.  The Flint CD needs to go in the opposite  direction, and lock up Lansing Dems rather than thumb Pubbies.  Inks, face it, you just don't have the hyper partisan killer instinct.  :P

Am I correct in assuming that Levin and Peters both live in the seat drawn for McCotter, Torie? (Actually, I'm sure that Peters does, but Levin is more interesting - the district seems to be far more Oakland than Wayne, and Levin has been around for ages, so it might make for those "McCotter's safe once he gets past 2012" situations.) So... who're the prospective candidates for the new, open Macomb County district, from either party?

Levin lives in Royal Oak, which I have split, but it was split before, so I think he lives in one of the 11 most southern precincts that are in MI-02.  I don't think Levin will run in MI-02. :P  Peters lives in Rochester, which is in MI-08, the Rogers district. Beating Rogers will be a hopeless task for Peters. Candice Miller lives in MI-10, but barely in Harrison Township, about one precinct away from the boundary between MI-10 and 12. MI-10 and MI-12 can be redrawn to put her home in MI-12 (and I can make the seat about 50 basis points more GOP or so, if she chooses to take the risk and run in marginal MI-12).  

In all likelihood, Levin will move a couple of miles east into Macomb County, and run in his newly redrawn MI-12. He should be a slight favorite if Miller is not his opponent, I would think, although this year he would have lost MI-12 the way that I drew it (I know that because he only got 53% against a nothing Pubbie opponent this year in the Macomb part of his district, and that is about 55% Kerry, while the new Macomb portion of MI-12 (which is most of the CD), is 50.2% Kerry, with the Pubbie Gross Pointes pushing MI-12 into the Bush zone - about 51% Bush). But 2012 is a different year than 2010, isn't it? Of course, Levin is 79, and in the minority now, and is likely to stay that way, and he might choose to retire. On the other hand, he got his ranking member slot on whatever committee it is that he is on, which is an important one, so perhaps not.

You will have to ask Inks and crew, and those who knew the Pubbie and Dem Macomb benches in MI, about who out there will cast a lean and hungry look at my new MI-12. I just deal with major league players, not minor ones. :)

If Miller runs in MI-12, then MI-10 becomes an open seat, which will probably set up  a regional GOP primary battle between a Thumber, a Macomb County-Port Huron exurbaner, and a Flint suburbaner. Those areas are the three components of MI-10.

You mean 14, but you answered my question anyways. :)
Wiki says Bloomfield Hills, which is in McCotter's. Still, either district is too Republican for me to like his chances.
Yeah, that part of the question was really directed at anybody reading this. :D
I don't think Miller's the type to run a personal risk just to make things easier for the Republican Party. After all, she and Thad McCotter basically drew the last map together with the single objective of going to Washington, in their respective functions of SoS and State Senate Redistricting Committee chair (IIRC - well, I seem to recall he chaired the redistricting committee and looked up whether he was in the state house or senate at the time).

I mixed up MI and PA when it came to recalling the numbers of the black CD's. :P

Yes, you might be right that Peters lives in Bloomfield Hills (his kids go to school there). This bio (http://www.petersforcongress.com/free_details.asp?id=1) gives you an idea why it is confusing. If Peters were a Pubbie, I would look up his actual address through a title company. Bloomfield Hills is probably the richest town in Michigan, so Peters has money I guess. And no, he can't win against McCotter either, and McCotter's district will get a tad more Pubbie when the intra county town census numbers come in. I worked very hard on MI-11.  It is my piece de resistance really. :)

You are probably right that Miller won't put herself at risk for the team, although it is more  possible perhaps if Levin retires. One reason her existing CD is so "over-Pubbied" is that the Pubbies in 2000 were desperate to get rid of that high profile Congressman, David Bonior, who was sticking it to the Pubbies rhetorically, and sort of a Dem folk hero, for holding all those lower middle class Catholic voters, while still being an in your face out of the closet liberal. So the Pubbies wanted to give him a clear message that his day in the sun was over, and in fact he did not run for re-election.

Quite (and I remember his name) - though he didn't just retire.

Michigan Gubernatorial Election 2002 - Democratic Primary
Party    Candidate    Votes    %    ±%
   Democratic    Jennifer Granholm    499,129    47.69    
   Democratic    David Bonior    292,958    27.99    
   Democratic    Jim Blanchard    254,586    24.32    

Alright... this edition is a lot more GOP friendly, and it's gerrymander-licious ;) ... (also... made a mistake the first time and missed one slice of a 5th district inside the 4th, so add 6 voters to the 4th that come from the 5th.

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Why bother?  Torie's last map is the way to go - Dems down to 4.5 districts.  I don't see how one can improve on it. 

Inks your new map is illegal unfortunately it looks like because for starters it appears to have too many gratuitous county splits. It also seems to have some illegal township and city splits (you can only have one per CD vis a vis another CD, but those can be fixed). Isn't this fun?  :P

Yeah... I figured it was illegal (anything I describe as gerrymander-licious probably isn't exactly legally ideal, you know ;) ).

And that is why I just loved drawing Michigan. How can I draw a legal map that maximizes the F'ing of the Dems?  That was just an ideal project for my  aggressive little legal mind, as I worked through all the little, sometimes rather complex, traps, and tried to be creative. It was almost as enjoyable as sex, although not quite. :)

While it's not legal, I'm proud of my last one... especially CD 10.

Your CD-10 has a Pubbie excess, so it violates the Goldilocks Rule. :P  But yes, your CD-10 is beautiful. :)

So, I didn't realize I could see info for the whole district (which, I thought that was incredibly stupid not being able to see demographic stuff by the entire district instead of just by "voting district"), so to answer your question about my initial map, regarding the legality of CD 12, it is 51% black.

That might not work, because the Dave Bradlee numbers are population numbers, and not VAP numbers, and although the gap is much narrower than it used to be, blacks still have a higher percentage of minors in their population, than whites do. You need to get up to about 53% or so to be in the safe zone, unless you can persuade a court, that enough whites will vote for a black, that you can go lower. That won't fly very well in a state like Michigan, unless you are talking about Oakland County. Macomb is a different breed of cat. The Pubbies will have zero interest in litigating that issue in Michigan.

Well, it's close enough that if that were the map, it could be fiddled with to add a few Detroit areas and take out some of the metro areas and move it all around.

Yes, indeed it is an easy fix, and one that I needed to do, until I hit 53% for my eastern Detroit CD, while still trying to make the two black CD's look "compact." I was balancing beauty (and in this case beauty is a factor for the court) against the VRA.

Is anyone else unable see the last two maps there.  This is interesting, even though it depresses me that Michigan Republicans, which seem to me to be the worst kind of Republicans (a "racist bake sale" at the University of Michigan purporting to emulate the state's affirmative action admission policies - at least the Berkeley College Republicans called it an Affirmative Action bake sale and were a little more clever about it - yeah I guess racism is what it is but don't pick on the students benefiting from that, and don't try to tell me that isn't what they're doing), will have another opportunity to gerrymander the state in their favor.  I hope the UMich College Republicans enjoy the ultra-liberal congressperson who takes over after Dingell retires.

I can't see them either...

I am combining my three plans into one post.

To give some definition to my terms, I consider a "safe" GOP seat, one that Bush 2004 got at least 54.5% of the two party vote, with 55% being even better, and that was my goal, not quite reached in a couple of instances (I am between 54.5% and 55%).  A 52.5-54.5% Bush 2004 seat is lean GOP, and anything less than that is really in the tilt to tossup category.  Every percentage point counts - and counts a lot - in our divided and quite closely balanced partisan environment, with relatively few swing voters. A 54.5% CD by the way is a +3% GOP PVI from Bush 2004 numbers (Bush 2004 got 51.4% of the two party vote). Pubbies have been pretty successful in holding +3% or better GOP PVI districts in the past (well outside the South, until now, where some Dem fossils held on). Sure, some are lost from time to time, but not many.

The first plan is the one that tries to cut down the Dems to holding just 4 seats.  It does this by getting rid of CD-12. The Dem parts of CD-12 in Oakland County, are given to one of the black seats, CD-14.  (All 3 plans do that in fact.) CD-09 takes in the marginally Dem CD-12 areas in Macomb of Warren Township, and its third of Sterling Heights, while CD-10 takes the marginally Dem areas in Macomb of Eastpointe, St. Clair Shores, Mt Clements, and Clinton Township, all marginally Dem, while losing much of its thumb territory. So CD-10 becomes a more marginally GOP seat, renumbered CD-12. CD-09 in Oakland becomes comfortably GOP having lost its Dem areas in Oakland, in exchange for less Dem areas in Macomb. But having CD-05 go south to take in Pontiac, creates a barrier that makes it impossible for CD-11 to get at the heavily populated GOP areas in eastern Oakland (Rochester, Troy, Bloomfield), so it struggles to find GOP territory, without a whole lot of success; so CD-11 becomes just a tad more GOP and somewhat marginal.

Meanwhile CD-08 becomes a marginal GOP seat, because it still has to take in Lansing, and while it gains some GOP territory in the East, it loses its heavily GOP territory in northern Oakland (now taken up to some extent by CD-05 so that it can link up to Pontiac.

So this plan creates 4 marginal GOP seats, CD's 01, 08, 11 and 12. And that is why this plan will not be adopted.  Rogers in CD-08, McCotter in CD-11, and Miller in now CD-10, to be renumbered CD-12, will not be very happy. Plus, one cannot beef up CD-01 much, without it looking embarrassingly erose. And given the play of geography in the next two plans, we can put MI-01 in safe GOP territory, without being so embarrassed.

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So that brings us to the second plan. In this plan, CD-12 again loses its Dem areas in Oakland to CD-14, but this time is all in Macomb County, and also takes in the Gross Pointes in Wayne County. This is possible in this plan precisely because CD-12 is now otherwise all in Macomb county, with nothing in Oakland. Having CD-12 go into three counties, is probably not legal. So with the Gross Pointes in CD-12, we can make that a toss up district (rather than marginal GOP in the first plan), but in exchange, Miller (CD-10), Rogers (now all in Oakland in CD-09, with his old CD-08 now the number for Dingell’s old CD-15), and McCotter (CD-11) now all have safe districts. CD-01 becomes safe GOP as well. This plan is elegant, because it creates nice compact looking districts, and minimizes county splits, with CD-09 now all in Oakland County, and Oakland now having only 3 CD’s in it rather than 4.

The problem with this plan however, is that Livingston County is now appended to McCotter’s CD-11, so Rogers will have to move to Oakland County (where about a third of his district currently is).. Rogers will not want to move if it can be avoided.

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So I suspect a third plan will be adopted: the one below. In this plan, Rogers keeps his Livingston base, with the rest of his district now in Oakland (except for a sliver of Washtenaw as a population equalizer taking up marginal political territory). The key to this plan, is to give Rogers the Dem areas of Pontiac and West Broomfield in Oakland, which he can handle, since the balance of what he has in Oakland is mostly heavily GOP, along with Livingston (CD-08 no longer has to cope with Dem Lansing and Inghram County, so he as plenty of GOP partisan pad to contain and neutralize Pontiac and environs).  

The old CD-09 is totally chopped up, and Peters has nowhere to run. (Yes, in that sense, it is convenient (http://domemagazine.com/lessenberry/jl111210) that Peters won in CD-09 this year, because if the Pubbie had won, then there would have been a real pushing and shoving match, as to which incumbent Pubbie gets what, and it might have been a toss up whether my first plan (which creates 3 marginal GOP seats), or this plan, were adopted.)

The last map at the bottom, shows what was the new now CD-08 looks like, with the green part in Oakland from the old CD-09 (except for GOP White Lake Township, which is from CD-11), the gray in the old CD-08 (CD-08 lost the pink area to the east, largely in Inghram County), and the green in Washtenaw (marginal partisan territory), is from the old CD-07. By CD-08 taking in Pontiac and West Broomfield, that  creates a geographic pathway for  McCotter’s CD-11 to then capture heavily populated GOP areas in Oakland of Troy and Broomfield via cutting through marginally Dem Farmington.  If  Pontiac is put in CD-05 or CD-14, a barrier is created that makes it not viable for CD-09 to take in West Broomfield, and that leaves CD-11 to cope with both Farmington and West Broomfield and drop some Dem precincts in Wayne, while trying to get at Broomfield and Troy;  that is just too much population in which to switch for CD-11. It does not work, because the 3 Dem districts in metro Detroit, the two black districts, and the Dingell district, end up with too much population.

So, in summary, I think this plan will be adopted more or less, because it makes all the GOP incumbents happy, and gives the GOP an even shot of winning what is now the 5th Dem seat in Macomb County (CD-12). We shall see what happens. I am going to send all of this data to the Michigan “redistricters.”

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Here is a new map with the updated intra county population figures, but not the final census figures. Most of the adjustments went according to expectations, except that MI-12 had to expand more than expected, taking in more GOP territory (I guess those lower middle class to working class Anglos in Warren have been leaving town in large numbers or something).

MI-11 had a slight issue, because it had to lose all of Garden City (the only way to get to it is through Westland, and that ended up causing MI-11 to have too much population, so out went Garden City, leaving MI-11 with about 15 very carefully chosen precincts in pretty heavily Dem Westland (up from about 5 precincts) to limit the damage). MI-11 also picked up three GOP precincts in Troy from MI-08.

The partisan stats have been updated only for MI-11-, MI-12, and MI-08, which were the CD's with which I was more interested (highlighted in bold). I will probably wait for Dave Bradlee to add the partisan data to his map drawing utility for updating the rest of the CD's (they won't change much).  Enough is enough (it takes a lot of work to calculate the partisan data manually).

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Detroit's population has fallen to 713,000; Wayne County's to 1.8 million. This means only one VRA district equal to the city of Detroit. How does this change the maps?

The 2009  estimates for Detroit (910,921) and Wayne County (1,925,848) really stunk.  Especially Detroit.

Have census estimates historically been as notoriously bad as they were this decade?

I don't know.  I hope someone from the press asks that question at Thursday's press conference.  Estimates for some cities were real stinkers.  It's not just Detroit.

I guess that upends all those neat plans about putting together Peters and Levin.

I don't get what you are trying to say. These numbers are worse for the Dems than previously thought.

I don't know if they are worse or better. I just made the observation that today's numbers throw the entire redistricting process into uncertainty.

It looks as if the population growth in the state is piling up in already Republican districts to the west, which is going to make it harder to sustain Republicans in the east, especially if the county line rule causes weird outcomes in the vicinity of Wayne County. When Dem districts start stretching outward to reach full population, territory McCotter needs to survive will be laid in front of them like bread crumbs for Hansel and Gretel. Drowning Pontiac in a sea of blue may not be feasible, either.

Conyers should finally get crunched rather than Peters or Levin. More likely they just keep pushing the Detroit districts further into the suburbs.

I don't see how they justify two Detroit districts. And if you go down to one Detroit district, then Ann Arbor is no longer in with Dingell, and you have a lot of Democrats in Macomb and Oakland who don't really fit into a single district. I am curious what happens.

I'm thinking 1 district for Macomb Democrats, 1 district for Oakland Democrats, 1 district for Ann Arbor, 1 district for Detroit, and 1 district for everything else in Wayne County that McCotter doesn't want.


That Detroit district might displace NY-16 as the new Mordor.

Where does the Ann Arbor district go after it fills up on Washtenaw? It would need nearly 400,000 other people. That, coincidentally, is the population left over in Wayne County after you allocate it two districts.

On edit: Wayne + Washtenaw = 2,165,000. 
Three districts = about 2,130,000.

The Ann Arbor seat could go to Lansing (Ingham County). The Republicans would like to get that problem off their hands.

Well, two districts will have to contain at least part of Detroit. Detroit proper is about one district, but you have to remember Highland Park and Hamtramck are entirely contained within Detroit as well and mean at least around 30,000 Detroiters or so (probably Mexicantown) have to be in a different district.

The Pubbies are protected by the Voting Rights Act. One can't draw two 50% VAP black CD's that way. The VRA is a wonderful thing for Pubbies, except sometimes in the case of Hispanic CD's, when it is not so good. But for blacks, it's wonderful!  :)

I think the question has become whether two VRA districts can be drawn in the first place. It might be possible but it will be rather tough.

That post was a brainfart, so ignore it. I miscounted.

That math doesn't work because the GOP wants to salvage the good parts of Wayne County.

Actually, I see your problem now. If you can only cross Wayne > Oakland once (and that has to be McCotter), drawing the other Dem districts does become a bit problematic no matter how you slice it. Moving Monroe County out of Dingell's district and putting Ann Arbor college kids in with inner city Detroit is a nice f u possibility.


I would love to see the 98% Obama detroit pack at least floated. Michigan isn't a preclearance state and it makes sense from a community of interest perspective.

Calling Torie! We need the Michigan 4 district plan:

1. Detroit
2. Warren to Pontiac
3. Flint, Saginaw, Lansing
4. Mexicantown to Ann Arbor


Can this be done?


Edit: I started poking closer at Torie's plan.

1. I'm not sure as to the legality of the double split of the Oakland/Wayne border. I think its moot, though. Dumping all of Detroit into CD-13 solves that issue.

2. That opens up CD-14, which can cross into Macomb and grab Warren, and a couple other neighboring towns. That should push the Macomb CD up a couple points in PVI; Bush won Macomb county as a whole.

This is my concept map:

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MI-07 poking into Wayne is an illegal county split, you lost a black CD illegally, and MI-11 the way you drew it is marginal in a partisan sense. After a lot of thought, the poke of MI-12 into Wayne to pick up the Gross Pointes does have some legal vulnerability the way I drew the CD's in the Detroit area, but then they allowed a triple split of Oakland last time in 2000 (when the law was the same) that was not necessary, and this time the only reason for the triple split of Oakland is the VRA, so that does not count as a point against the map drawers really.

In any event, the argument is that MI-12 split two counties last time (unnecessarily), and does this time (unnecessarily), and otherwise there are no more county splits except the one mandated by the VRA. That is the case for its legality. Your poke doing the same thing is no more legal or illegal than mine; just because you kept one black CD out of Oakland (illegally), does not mean that the arguably unnecessary split of MI-12 into Wayne is any more legal. The problem here is that not doing the split of MI-12 does not mean there is another county split elsewhere. If it were otherwise, than the cut out of the Gross Pointes would be clearly legal.

If my map is ruled illegal, than MI-10 just has to suck up more of the Flint area, potentially to the point of hitting the heavy Dem zone. It can take some more people in Genesee, but maybe not 40,000 more.

If the Pointes are lost to the Pubbies, MI-12 won't get much more Dem, because it will just take up heavily GOP territory to the north, but a Pubbie point or two will be lost to MI-10, making it closer to the marginal status, but still I think above the +3% GOP PVI benchmark.

Ugh, this is going to be a challenge.

I see where you are finally coming from. In order to get 2 black districts you're going to have to round up Pontiac blacks, Southfield blacks, Inkster blacks, and Detroit blacks, which total up to about 900k or so per the new data, and  you're going to use that to quad chop Wayne (and double traverse the Wayne Oakland border) rather than tri-chop.

It still seems to me like you can shove a Detroit district into Warren and grab 100k voters. Macomb population is about 802k, so it has to be split somewhere, and you might as well grab out the most Democratic voters in the south edge of the county.

One of the Pointes has a precinct in Macomb County. Poor guys don't deserve to be stuck with the Detroit districts year after year; I hate the idea of letting good Pubbies drown.

The Pointe that has a precinct in Macomb is Gross Pointe Shores.  It was two separate townships in 2000.  It incorporated as a city during the past decade.  Its population is relatively small, though - about 3,000.

Michigan has a few other cities that straddled county lines in 2000.  Are there special rules for cities that straddle county lines?  Can they be placed in either county, or do they need to be broken up?

I seriously doubt the legislation was sufficiently thought-through to account for such municipalities.

In theory, when the 2 provisions conflict, I suppose I'd just pick the one that favors the GOP more.

Well, there are a number of them, including the state capital of Lansing, which is mainly in Ingham but also part in Eaton County.  I know this in part because it screws up the labels on my forthcoming population change maps.

No, they can be placed in either county.  The money quote from the statute is this: "Congressional district lines shall break as few city and township boundaries as is reasonably possible."  Notice that the splitting of municipalities and counties are given equal weight from counting demerit points as it were. So, one get one point as I see it for either splitting a city or a county, and if you have to do one or the other, you can pick, and of course since the split is necessitated one way or the other, the split by definition is "reasonable." Reasonableness is the benchmark here; it is not a bright line test, so one can argue away that your additional splits are "reasonable." The court might buy it - or not.

An interesting thought occurred to me as a legal argument for me dipping MI-12 into Wayne County to pick up the Pointes. It is a nose in the tent argument. Since for that one town that is bifurcated (by one precinct) between Macomb and Wayne, you get to pick which split you want to do. You pick to cross into Wayne to avoid the municipality split. And since you are now in Wayne anyway, you're in baby, and now free to suck up the rest of the Pointes precincts. It is just another arrow in the quiver. Another is to whine that the Flint area is split enough, and to do anymore will prove inconvenient for this reason or that, and so to avoid it, the dip into the Pointes by MI-12 crossing a county boundary is well - "reasonable!"  :)

It can be done - easily. In my map, one black CD is 63.5% black, and the other 52.1% black.  That is for non final population numbers. The final VAP census numbers may push MI-13 down below 50% black VAP, but if so, the precincts between MI-14 and MI-13 can easily be jiggled to get MI-13 above the 50% black VAP threshold, even if it necessitates a municipality split that would otherwise be illegal under Michigan state law.

Mordor has a lot of surface. I think you mean the new Rivendell. :P

Torie, your map's two districts have probably no more than half a million inhabitants each. Sorry to break it, but all your work here is only good for the trash can now. Detroit is gone. Party's over. The city is no more.

Wait a minute. I thought the county numbers were accurate; it was only the intra county numbers that were subject to adjustment. If so, it would be near impossible to have that much of an error factor. Or am I missing something?

I was slightly exaggerating, but Wayne County as a whole has 130,000 people fewer than your map supposes.

No. The estimates were still estimates; they were not actual Census numbers. And apparently the 2009 estimates way, way overestimated Detroit (or, rather, underestimated its decline). Detroit as a whole has almost 200,000 fewer people than your map presupposed. There was huge error.

How many people does Wayne have? Mine has 1,977,977.

1,820,584

It looks to me that all the Pubbies being counted on to keep McCotter's career on life support are 300 miles further west than expected.

Wow, just wow. Does anyone know the population of Macomb? I will calculate what I have. If it dropped enough, the dip into the Pointes will be airtight legally. Thanks.

Macomb actually grew. It's around 802,000 people IIRC (don't recall the exact numbers).

My number is 827,770. Oh, I found the data link to all of this, here (http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/).  Macomb is 840,978, actually a tad above my number. But the population drop in Wayne, will just suck up a bunch more Dem precincts, and the Pubbies may be totally unleashed if they can draw two black VAP 50% CD's, but need to go where convenient to do it, like into Washtenaw or the SW corner of Macomb, or whatever. And excising the Pointes may be "necessary" as well. It could give the Pubbies quite a hunting license, and quite possibly shove MI-12 out of the marginal zone, in which event it will be Pubbies +1 point, rather than just +.5 points.

Pity Ohio is taking so long. I would like to get it done by the time the Dave Bradlee software gets the census numbers in its data base for Michigan. I can't wait!

Washtenaw is about 12% African American according to the discredited 2009 data (40,000 African-Americans) and McCotter's district lies between there and Detroit. It may well be that the future is as you imagine it, a Republican boot stamping on a Democratic face forever, but it's conceivable that not as many teeth will get knocked out. We shall see.

Eh - that estimate was actually accurate, for once.   Washtenaw is 12.5% non-Hispanic black with approximately 43,000 African Americans.  That's barely up from 12.2% non-Hispanic black in 2000 with about 39,000 African Americans.  The black population fell by about 12.6% in Ann Arbor.  It rose in the surrounding townships.

Trivia question: What is the size of the largest precinct in Detroit that gave McCain 0 votes?

For the record, Obama got 325,534 votes in Detroit City. McCain got 8,888.


That analogy actually works well. The elves after all were fleeing Rivendell. :)

If I were the Michigan GOP I would just change the law to allow more county splits in and adjacent to Wayne County. You need it to protect Detroit's black districts anyway.

Where would the Democrats Valinor be? California?

Two black majority VAP districts remain possible even without any weird snakes or an extra cross into Macomb, so the Detroit pack is clearly VRA-incompatible. But you have to go much further afield than we have been expecting. I'm not sure what the GOP will decide to do about this. Two examples, without having calculated all the ramifications to the surrounding districts: first, you can now go way downriver and totally overwhelm Dingell's core territory if you want; the second uses the brown district to attack the Oakland Dems more. (I've just moved the brown northward on the second map, but if the unneeded Macomb crossover is allowed by the law, which I'm not sure about, then in the second map the blue might as well also go north instead of south given that you're leaving Dingell his district.)

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Would it be possible to do an extension into Macomb? Macomb has to be split regardless; it's too big for one seat.

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The two Wayne County districts here are both ~53% black.

The other option is to use southern Macomb for another Dem district and add it to the non-black lean Dem areas of Oakland county and combine the 9th and the 12th that way. The second map that linus posted is what I think is likely. It still frees up territory in south Wayne for Dingell that no pubbie probably wants as well as eliminates a Dem district without any consequences.

Although I guess it also depends on whether a whole district will be forced within Macomb. But if they didn't do it in 2000, they probably won't do it now.

You could do a whole district in Macomb regardless, although the lack of one in 2000 does indicate that they won't bother this time, either. If they do try to leave a whole seat in Macomb, it would contain everything but Eastpointe, Center Line and most of Warren, which either go in a Detroit CD or in a Macomb-Oakland Dem CD.

Strictly speaking, there's no need for a black district to cross into either Macomb or Oakland counties; I managed two districts barely over 50% black VAP in Wayne County alone.

Oh God, I am getting an orgasm over that map. Perfecto! That is just what I wanted to see. :P

If you have to slash and burn in Wayne (chopping up cities, to get there), and one can make a nicer map jutting into Macomb, then voila, a cut into Macomb will be legal. Isn't that grand?  But how in the world did you get two black CD's out of Wayne alone?  That surely is impossible, without using all those black precincts in southern Oakland. The point of course is to draw a Pubbie gerrymander that is legal, because the Pubbies are drawing the map, not you. :)

Sure, but no Republican (or Democratic, for that matter) legislature in any state is going to be as aggressive as you are, Torie. There are other considerations than partisanship, after all (however logical or illogical they may be).

If the pubbies can cross 1 black district into Oakland, and 1 into Macomb, this becomes very easy. If you can cross into 1 or the other, better to cross into Macomb, and plop a full CD in Oakland.

What kind of 2 district plan in Wayne alone has 50% black VAP on both districts? Please post! Like Torie said better an additional county crossing than a slash and burn.

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Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

I just checked, and I was able to make two 50% Black VAP districts in Wayne alone. They are both just barely over 50% and follow city lines as needed. However, I like the idea of reaching the two districts separately into Macomb and Oakland as I suggested last Sep.

Can you cross a black district into Oakland while also crossing the McCotter district into Oakland?

Yes, but is it legal? Of course, that will facilitate a better Pubbie Gerry - if it is legal. What you just posted worries me. What does the map look like?

Which statement worries you? If it is the first - then here's the map I drew for Wayne.

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On the second point, to make the map legal depends on the value of putting parts of Macomb with Wayne vs reaching the Macomb district into the Grosse Pointes. It looked to me last fall that the former was better, but you have better precinct numbers now.

How do you remove Monroe County from the Dingell district with that map?

Muon2, with that map, if the Dingell CD took all the rest of Wayne except the points, still have a shortage of population after taking all of Wastenaw?  Will one of the black CD's fall below 50% black VAP if it takes in all of the Pointes?

Now, this is interesting. Joe Knollenberg's son, Rep. Marty Knollenberg, sits on a redistricting committee in the legislature.

Why the need for two districts reaching up into the suburbs? As long as the Black parts of Oakland County are in one of those districts, it can also pick up a chunk of Macomb and then the rest is composed of Detroit. So only one Black district goes into the suburbs, as well as Mcotter's.

It looks like this map has 2 cities split between CD-13 and CD-14 (Detroit and Dearborn Heights), and 2 cities split between CD-14 and CD-9 (Southgate and Lincoln Park).

I guess county crossings do take priority over township crossings in the statute though.

I don't  think that works too well. For one, that kind of district obviously crosses 3 counties. Second, the Macomb portion has to be about 200k people (Warren + Eastpointe + a couple other towns), and when you tack on Southfield + Pontiac + other in the way towns, what exactly do you do with places that are lean Dem (Farmington, Auburn Hills)?

Earlier I posted the map of only crossing into Macomb; this is what happens when you cross only into
Oakland. The good news is that both districts cross 55% black VAP which often people like Conyers want; it also gives Dearborn back to its rightful owner.

 The bad news is that the skyblue district (12) is 65k people short and I have no idea where to move it, and that McCotter's district becomes Oakland County dominated which he may not want.

Dumping the Pointes into a Dem district would solve that problem, but the GOP probably doesn't want to do that; I have to look up the areas surrounding Ann Arbor and see how liberal they are (Pittsfield).

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Whee, that salmon district is ugly. Besides, aren't you conceding the Dems an extra 0.5 seats compared to Torie's old map? Or is the Flint/Saginaw district unnecessary now?

No, Flint/Saginaw/Lansing remains the same, so yeah, it does concede a 5th seat, at least under this configuration. That 12th district would be Democratic; I suspect though that between the green and pink districts taking on some more Democrats, that blue 12th could become a tossup (perhaps for Knollenberg Jr)? I would put West Bloomfield into the green 11th, and some of Mount Clemonts/Roseville into the 10th, and put Troy and some north Oakland areas into the 12th).

The salmon district is split ugly like that with the gold district to even out the black %. Those districts are 55.6/56% AA. If Conyers want to grab a 60% AA district and shaft Clarke by giving him only 50-51% AA, the split becomes cleaner.


I think though its important that the Macomb district not be marginal. Candace Miller has more ties to Macomb than the rest of the thumb, and I presume she would run in the Macomb dominated district.

Go for it. Clarke comes to those new White voters with a reformist, clean (if flaky farleft :P ) dragonslayer reputation. White Liberals will love to vote for the guy.

Ah yes districts can't traverse 3 counties for no reason. In that case 2 districts will need to go into the suburbs. The district that gets macomb gets more of Detroit and vice versa. I do believe it is important that no one other than Dingell or mcotter gets parts of Wayne so you are limited in how much population in the suburbs you can put in the Dem pack.

Also is washtenaw pretty Republican outside ann arbor? I find krazens map to be intriguing. You can make it look nicer but he has the right idea.

It just can't be that Republican... AA has only 1/3 of the county's population but the county votes almost as Democratic as Wayne does, or at least it did in 2008. Putting the rest of Washtenaw and Monroe in the 7th district could make Walberg's job tougher.

Monroe isn't too bad; in 2010 they voted against Dingell pretty heavily, so they're at least willing to contemplate voting Republican.

In 2010, Washtentaw voted for Dingell 55k to 25k; Ann Arbor provided 20k of that margin. Ypilsanti provided another 8k; the rest of it could be moved to the 7h somewhat safely.


Here is the Muon-2 map; where both black districts enter the suburban counties.


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There could be too many county splits here, and McCotter and Miller get some more Dem territory, but the 12th (skyblue) becomes a district that Knollenberg Jr. could do somewhat well in.

At least 1 county split could easily be eliminated that I see.

A complete district that linked the Livonia corner to the south Wayne area would use the eastern 3/5 of Washtenaw and the northern tier of townships in Monroe. One could swap some of Washtenaw's rural townships out and extend into the city of Monroe.

Combining enough precincts to make two districts in Wayne cannot exceed 50.1% black VAP. Thus there's no wiggle room to add the Pointes without dropping a district below 50%. The splits of towns within Wayne was the minimum I could find that kept both above 50%. It's extremely tight.

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This is a map of the 2004 Presidential election results for Washtenaw County.

I might add that suburban black population has exploded in places like Farmington Hills, Warren, and Roseville in the last decade even as the overall population has declined, and the white population here has plummeted. Overall, it seems worth it to concede a 4th district in the Detroit metro if you can keep those areas out of a Republican district.

Pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered, right?

I took your advice and cleaned up the CD-13/14 split.

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CD-13 is down to 51.1% black VAP, CD-14 is up to 60.6%. Sander Levin can easily clean up in the new CD-12 (sky blue) although he can't act like a crazy liberal by any means. Truthfully given his seniority the Michigan GOP probably shouldn't take a shot in the dark and try to get rid of him, anyway.

OK, if you have to down town splits, and county splits, to get your two 50% black VAP CD's, then the Pubbies have a hunting license to go anywhere in the Detroit metro area, without violating Michigan law. I should be able to take MI-12 out of the marginal zone, or close to it. So the Dems are going to lose two congressmen in both Ohio and Michigan it looks like.

By the way, Brian Lamb had some black opinion columnist who works for the NY Times, who was on last night on CSPAN. He got his feet wet working for the Detroit News, and what he said about Detroit was sobering. There are no appliance stores in Detroit (yes, none!) because it is too dangerous (presumably a store owner can't get insurance), and the office buildings are a Potemkin Village - most are empty - and unrentable. Very sad indeed.

I don't normally read Swing State Project, but I've started to look a little bit at some of their redistricting threads, and it seems to be the opinion over there that the Michigan law prohibits two districts from crossing over the same pair of counties. Notice that the current map does abide by this constraint - while there are lots of county splits that might seem unnecessary from a certain angle, there is no pair of counties which both have the same two districts in them.

Does anyone have any evidence as to whether this is how things are actually interpreted in Lansing? If it is, then contrary to what we have been assuming, you can't have two districts in both Wayne and Oakland, one for McCotter and one for Conyers or Clarke.

I actually expect that part of the statute to be amended to allow for such in Wayne County, if its needed, mostly because 2 districts entirely in Wayne are almost certain not to be majority black by the end of the decade. Heck, they might not even be majority black now.

And that, and only that, is arguably the only thing that saves the Pubbies from a worrisome legal challenge. Here's the rub: 3 CD's can fit (barely, but barely is enough to create a potential problem) into Wayne and Washtenaw (see below). Since we know Dingell has to grab Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti, if we could create two black 50% VAP CD's in Wayne alone, then what is the rationale for another county split? Arguably, McCotter in MI-11 could only dip into Wayne to the extent needed to have Dingell pick up the rest of Washtenaw - not many people. What is the rationale for a black CD to cut into Oakland?  Yes, I suppose a black CD could cut into Oakland, but then McCotter could not cut into Wayne, and again the cut arguably could not be more than the Dingell shortfall in population in Washtenaw. It could be a potential disaster.

But potential disaster was averted - barely. A black CD can jut into Oakland. But at that point, there is no need for MI-12 to take the Pointes to create two black CD's anymore, so since an entire CD can still fit into Macomb, unless you can figure out how cutting out the Pointes, or cutting into Macomb, saves a split elsewhere, we have a potential legal problem.  Hey, come to thing of it, a black CD could cut into Macomb to avoid a cut of Macomb at its northern boundary and that is 125,000 people, so maybe that is the way to go. And that unleashes McCotter to get what he needs in Wayne. That's it baby I think; we fit MI-12, the two black CD's, Dingell's CD, and McCotter's CD, MI-11 entirely into Wayne, Macomb, and Wastenaw and Oakland, and MI-07 has an even county line on one side, and gets its population equalization from Washtenaw, and Rogers in his CD gets what he needs out of Oakland after taking Livingston.  We have a plan! Fantastico! God bless demographics, and the VRA.  What would we do without you?

And this map will be adopted into law. If I am right, it is an absolute no brainer. Even given the games the Dems are playing with the Michigan Supremes, they will be totally screwed and have no legal case at all. :)

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And this is the population equalizer for Washtenaw for MI-07 (MI-07 can equalize here, or on its west side), that makes the remaining six CD's (MI 13, 14, 11, 12, 08, 09) fit like a glove into Wayne, Macomb, Livingston, and Wayne. From a GOP partisan perspective, it's well - perfect, just perfect - almost magical!

By the way, exurban Washtenaw seems to have had a huge population increase. That most be where some of the Detroit metro folks are moving, to try to escape it all, who can't otherwise just get the heck out of Dodge entirely.  

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And below is what is almost certainly the chop for Macomb (Warren to be precise), following black percentages, and what I know is the heavily Dem town of Eastpointe (57% Kerry).

The black percentage in the chop zone of Warren has increased by about 10% per precinct from a decade ago. Eastpointe has gone up about 20% in black percentage (to close to 30%), which probably largely explains (probably over-explains, since Macomb in general has trended in tandem with the nation) its heavily Dem profile, swing, and trend. I suspect this Macomb chop will be quite efficient, and move MI-12 closer to the still marginal, but now clear lean GOP zone, maybe as much as plus 3% GOP PVI, but in any event, above 2%. But I need to see the partisan numbers for the Warren chop, rather than just racial percentages, for 2008, not 2004, to be a bit more confident. I need in short, to see just how polarized Macomb has become with more recent election returns data. But notice that the chop zone is 16.8% black, and few blacks live outside the chop in Macomb - maybe 4% as a wild guess overall. The partisan trend in other words from 2004 to 2008 has matched the nation in Macomb, but I doubt it matched the nation on the Dem side of the chop zone, which perforce means it did not on the other side of the Macomb chop either - to wit, intra-Macomb polarization, which is the very fuel without which Gerrymanderer's have no gas.

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Here's the map I think Torie has in mind for SE MI. This map has each district within 100 of the ideal population. It's what I've expected for some time with CD 13 (54.2% black VAP) and 14 (56.8% black VAP) each splitting into Oakland and Macomb to allow a district wholly contained in each of those counties. I use CD 8 from Livingston as the balancer per Torie's suggestion. I'll let him check this against his precinct tables for PVI. :)

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Yes, that is the map. It is one I drew at the beginning, but it had the disadvantage of dislodging Rogers from his Livingston base.  He isn't going to dislodge McCotter from his Livonia satrap. But it is by far the safest legally, and the Dem maneuverings on the Michigan Supremes worry me, so I have become very legally cautious, particularly since the vicious Pubbie Gerrymanders are going to be about as amicable as the way the Wisconsin legislature so calmly "debated" the termination of public employee unions (except of course for the Pubbie's public safety pets).  

So it will have to be done. And with all the muni lines up, one can see that the geography of the way Southfield Township, West Farmington and Bloomfield Township unfortunately forces the Dem link up to Pontiac through prime Pubbie territory, rather than West Bloomfield. However, with about another 150,000 folks for the Dem pack to pick up, one can afford a loss of some efficiency. This map, while legally safe, is not as efficient as my former map. But safety first! What is that chop you did in the northweest corner of West Farmington though?  Is that some new town?  Not all those pink lines represent municipalities, and so far as I know, there is no such town that takes a bit out of that NW corner.  If so, that little chop needs to go. In any event, both CD-08 and CD-11 will be pretty safely GOP.

Other than that, the map is perfect with two exceptions. First, the chop of Westland has not picked up the right precincts, so that needs to be revised; in fact, MI-11 needs to pick up Garden City again, and use Westland as a link to get there it looks like. That way, MI-11 will lose most of Dem Westland, rather than take most of it in. That change alone will be worth maybe 40 basis points.

And second, just because I told you that Mt. Clemens in Macomb is a Dem node, does not mean that it is efficient to do a chop of Clinton Township rather than Warren to get there. It isn't. The chop needs to be in Warren. There is a Dem nest down there in Warren that needs to be excised from MI-12, particularly since it appears the nest has been growing both larger and more "blue" (using the Leips partisan color scheme) over time, and that will probably continue, as the escape from Detroit continues. Both races I think are in agreement now that Detroit sucks. It is a place to be from, not in. Plus, the Warren chop cuts down on erosity (which is mentioned in passing in the Michigan statute), plus juice up the black percentage a bit more, so it is all for the public good in carrying out the intent of the VRA anyway. One does well by doing good, in this case. :P


So good job Muon2, and you probably did it in an hour, while I spend days on these things. I hate when that happens!  :)

In that map, what happens to:

• Ingham County?
• MI-7 with Monroe and however many people from Washtenaw? A hard-right rep. like Walberg will not like that map, but perhaps the legislature doesn't care for him and would be ok with a lower-profile Republican trying to win that district.

Below is the map to draw I think, with the dark blue in Washtenaw, the olive green in Westland, and the magenta in the northeast corner of Oakland depicting the two options. The Pubbie numbers in MI-09 and MI-11 should be pretty close, both with Pubbie PVI's of above 6% I suspect.  But we shall have to tote up the partisan numbers to be sure. The issue is what to do with the 28,000 in excess population for the quin county Detroit metro area, after MI-08, MI-09, MI-11, MI-13 and MI-14 hit their required population numbers.

Ideally,  if MI-07 or MI-10 have clean county lines everywhere else, the excess population could go to MI-10 in the quin county area; MI-10 will have to wander around into strange places in Genesee, Saginaw and Bay Counties plus the thumb to get to its population numbers, and could probably use a slug of Pubbies, and that is what it would get out of Oakland. This approach would also avoid MI-7 having to pick up about 28,000 folks in Dem precincts in Washtenaw (not massively Dem, but probably 60-40 Obama stuff). Notice just how close we came to disaster in Washtenaw with MI-07. If MI-07 had to pick up but two more precincts, than it would have had to drop Pittsfield Township, and cut into Ann Arbor itself, and the gerrymander would be massively degraded! Ouch!  But we just avoided that, with one precinct to spare. :P

Anyway, the alternative of helping out MI-07 and MI-10 a bit would result in MI-11 taking in more Dem precincts in Westland, but MI-11 is plenty Pubbie as it is, and can easily absorb them without its PVI heading down to an undesirable number.  It's only Dem area is Westland really (and MI-11 under either version can shed Westland's most Dem precincts to MI-08 in any event), with Garden City modestly Dem, along with Farmington City, and that is about it. The balance is just a sea of Pubbies. So if we can get away with it legally, it should and will be done. If not, it will not. It is that simple.

However, MI-07 will probably have to be part of the Ingham County chop, and if so, that MI-10 magenta chop into Oakland may be too legally dangerous if it creates another county split within the state that could otherwise be avoided. But if we can jiggle things elsewhere in creative and Machiavellian ways (due to MI-10 or MI-07 having clean lines elsewhere for example), this would be a better Gerrymander with a view to helping out MI-07 and MI-10, but if - and only if, we can make it legally copacetic to do it. And just who is more suited to do this task, than moi, I ask you? Who?  :P

In all events, we certainly do not want to take the 28,000 in excess population out of northern Macomb, making it more Dem. That would be way beyond the Pubbie pale. No!  Just no! :)

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Ok, new question. Will Michigan Republicans pair Mike Rogers (Howell) and Thad McCotter (Livonia) in one district in order to create a new Pubbie district in outer Oakland?

The Pubbies will have to, in order to avoid the risk of a successful legal challenge that the Pubbie Gerrymander created an unnecessary county split. That risk just cannot be run. Rogers will have to move to Oakland County. Period. Game over. This puppy is just not subject to debate - at all!

Rogers was a state senator for many years and a majority floor leader (per Wikipedia.) What happens if he tells the legislature that he's not moving, especially if some ambitious Republican from Oakland decides the seat has his name on it? Is there no other way to preserve McCotter (using Oakland), Rogers (using Ingham and points west), and Miller (using 7/8 of Macomb) following Michigan's legal rules? The legislature probably wouldn't care if Walberg was screwed over in the process.

Is this not subject to debate because it's McCotter's only fighting chance to stay in Congress?

Well McCotter and Rogers can chat about it, but McCotter is really tied to his slug of Wayne. No, the Pubbies are not going to lose a seat because Rogers or McCotter will not move. In fact, I am not sure screwing over Walberg would solve the legal problem.

Brittain33, you seem so intent in feeding to the wolves my Pubbie Congresspersons that I work so hard to protect (or in Michigan, quite arguably since Wayne helped us by dropping 170,000 more people, to hatch a brand new Pubbie Congresscritter). It is not going to happen. The Pubbies are going for the max - each and every seat in reach will be Pubbified. Deal with it. The Dems are just not going to control both the presidency and Congress again in the next ten years. We tried that once in recent times, and once is enough!  :)

I genuinely don't understand where your confidence in this outcome comes from--but I do love seeing your maps and talking about possibilities. Some legislature's going to have to come out with a map soon to shut me up!

Clearly! :P

I agree with Brittain33 that the problem with your maps (masterfully made as they are) is that they assume Republicans will always be willing to "take one for the team," as needed.  You've got to ask yourself, if Rogers has really good connections in the legislature and wants a certain district (more or less) what's stopping him from screwing over another pubbie?  If the Ohio Republicans are likely going to give Tiberi, Stivers, and Austria special treatment, is it really that hard to imagine them doing so by throwing someone in another part of the state under the bus (like Johnson or Renacci who don't really have any connections or influence).  I could go on, but I'm sure you get my point.  Stranger things have certainly happened, and I'm not saying this will happen everywhere, but I'd be shocked if all major Republican maps (in states with high gerrymander potential) were anywhere near as aggressive and single-mindedly focused on efficiency as yours are.  On the other hand, who am I to pass judgment on the work of the "gorgeous octopus" ;) 

You seem to have invented an extra Republican who would be screwed over by a failure to eliminate both Peters and Levin. There is a quite neat map that combines Peters and Levin in a safe Dem seat while leaving everyone else (relatively) safe. Not sure Rogers can really be considered all that safe as long as Lansing is in his district, but that's really his only option short of a fight with McCotter. Did make McCotter quite safe, however.

This is what the Michigan GOP will do, more or less (and maybe with a total redesign in NW Michigan; I did heavily rearrange the districts up there).

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I may be completely off here, but wouldn't Walberg be (somewhat) vulnerable, especially since Schauer is considering a rematch?  I don't know if this is still a problem since you removed the Washtenaw part of the district, but Monroe county will probably be pretty opposed to Walberg (though maybe not a different Republican).   

Thanks--that map answers my question and is what the Republicans almost certainly will do, assuming it's legal on counties and such.

@Mr. X, I'm guessing that if they decide to give a Pubbie some more marginal territory, Walberg will be the odd man out.

Yup, Walberg is not in a good position, undoubtedly, but he's surrounded by marginal Republican seats already. Can't make him safer without putting Rogers or Upton in a D-leaning seat. He's also a lot less popular in the state legislature than the well-connected Rogers and Upton, at least in part because, unlike them, he can't hold a marginal seat.

In any case, Monroe County is only 51% Obama, R+2, so I don't see why it's such a problem for Walberg. Plus, he dropped the more Democratic Eaton County.


On further consideration, though, that map might not be safe enough for Rogers, as it loses Republican parts of outer Oakland for more Democratic Eaton County (and also some rural parts of Shiawassee, which are probably GOP). Not sure how to shore him up without creating a lot more county splits, though. Maybe I could run him into outer Oakland and use the extra space in McCotter's seat to get rid of the split of Lapeer.

Well, that solution (splitting Oakland again, removing the split of Lapeer, then reaching MI-04 into Eaton County) does sort of work. It results in an additional county split, but I think I managed to excise the Democratic parts of Eaton County from MI-08, which should leave it around its current partisanship, about the best that can be done within the legal constraints.

Also note that on this map each GOP incumbent is in their own district, as is each Democratic incumbent (but Peters and Levin are together). MI-04 got a major redesign, however, although its core of Midland, where the incumbent resides, is still there.

I think Walberg might actually run somewhat worse than McCain in Monroe (and the district for that matter).  However, I agree that this is more or less what will probably happen (and that if a Republican has to be made uncomfortable, it will be Walberg).  In any event it sounds like Monroe is less Democratic than I thought, so this map should work fine (especially since you seem to have figured out a way to make Rogers safe).

Iteration 1.

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We need to make some kind of bet, because I assure you, the Pubbies will do nothing remotely like the Verily plan. What shall it be?  :)

His maps are not what he wants but what he thinks the drawers want. Notice how he is drawing CA to comply with the guidelines and not to apply any partisan influences in his drawing of it.

Oh I see.  Has he tried his hand at any of the (admittedly few) Democratic gerrymander opportunities like Illinois?  Although I guess there intra-(Democratic) party factional and incumbent-protection (in Democratic primaries) considerations might prevent what would otherwise be the best plan for them.

Illinois will be next, after I get my maps for WI, MI, OH, IN and PA all nicely wrapped with supporting data to the Pubbie influence peddlers in each state. I intend to make a difference; I mean that, and will devote a lot of energy to the task - like a white hot laser beam.  And then I will gut Pubbies in Illinois just as brutally as I gut Dems in my little Great Lakes/PA zone, which I know well, and love so much. And I know Illinois well as part of that package. I went to college and business school in Chicago, and is my want, explored each and every corner of the city; no hood was "too dangerous" for a Tore visitation - none. But no, I won't push my Illinois map on the Dems in Illinois. I will leave that to the "usual suspects" on this very forum.

Cheers. :P

Here are the numbers for the newly drawn MI-12. At 1.6% GOP PVI, MI-12 slips into the "lean GOP" category (which is from 1.5% to 3.0% in GOP PVI). More later, including this adjusted incumbent PVI thingy in the event it is a Miller versus Levin race in 2012.

Getting the most efficient chop of Warren took about two hours, as I played "let's make a deal," where I exchanged precincts between MI-13 and MI-12 (sometimes the exchange deals were package ones, where I had to take or leave two or three precincts at once, and then I totaled the numbers for the package, to see if I was gaining any McCain basis points for the precincts packages available for exchange), until the last exchange deal was consummated that generated any Pubbie basis point profit. (I had the precinct on a spreadsheet ranked by McCain percentages, to speed up the pace of the game, but it still took awhile, as I had to hunt with my mouse to see just where the precincts subject to profitable exchange were located, and whether they were within reach of inclusion or excisement, as the case might have been.) Playing the game for that long gained about 30 basis points or so in Pubbie PVI.  In this PVI range, every basis point has meaning, each and every one, so the game is not over until it's over.  

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The solution that suggests itself, in getting Rogers to move: Make the district both he and McCotter are in losable (but not too losable, obviously - you want to actually hold it). Make the new district that includes a lot of his old territory, but not his home, and no incumbent whatsoever, unlosable. in other words, give him an incentive to move. He's much too influential to just be forced out by McCotter.

Wouldn't MI-13 have to add that last precinct of Grosse Pointe Shores in Macomb County, due to the "minimize township splits" provision of the statute? 

I think it could go either way, but come to think of it, I think it is a good idea to absorb the one town that crosses over into Macomb in to MI12, and in exchange, MI-13 could take a few more Dem precincts in Warren. Doing that much anyway, should be legally safe. That might generate a few basis points. I will try it.

Wait a minute. Gross Pointe Shores does not cross over. The lines on the Bradlee software imply that it does, but the city is wholly within Wayne, and that precinct that looks like it is Macomb, is Lake Township. So no, there is no cross over.

Rogers already had a sizable chunk of Oakland. Geography and Michigan law limits how the pawns can be moved around, particularly with that wall that MI-14 generates via its trip to Pontiac.

It's a very sexy map. 

However, there are some minor issues, many of which have been discussed:

* Rogers has to move. 
* Given that you're getting rid of two Dem districts, McCotter and Rogers have districts that are probably too strong, esp. considering that they're fairly strong incumbents anyway. 
* Miller's district is only lean-GOP and Levin will probably hop over to try to challenge her, given that he has nowhere else to run.  She might not like that.
* Camp has to take the thumb, which means he has to get Bay County, and the leftovers from Genesee (since Kildee is taking Lansing).  That makes his district quite marginal (and he won't even be able to keep all of his home county, much less most of his current district). 
* Walberg has to take Monroe and the Washtenaw leftovers, plus (probably) parts of the Lansing area.  Quite possibly too much for him to handle. 

However, there is a solution - I noticed that the Genesee leftovers from Kildee will almost exactly match Livingston's population.  So swap them for Livingston:

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Rogers doesn't have to move, and he can easily take the rest of Washtenaw as well as the rest of the Lansing area (which he currently represents anyway), now that Lansing proper is out of his district, saving Walberg.  Camp has more room to breathe.  Levin and Peters might fight over the bronze seat, leaving Miller free rein in Macomb, and whoever wins will still have a serious fight on their hands.  I can't run the intra-county numbers and might not have chosen which precincts to put where properly, but might this work just as well?  Or are the Flint suburbs too Democratic to add to northern/eastern Oakland? 

That precinct in Macomb WAS Lake Township until April 1, 2009.  It is now part of the city of the Village of Grosse Pointe Shores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Township,_Macomb_County,_Michigan), along with the former Grosse Point Township in Wayne County.  It was part of the village of Grosse Pointe Shores prior to its incorporation as a city - but still a separate township.  Not any more.

here are my proposed lines. They are fairly similar to the old lines and still compact.

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1st District Dan Benishek (R–Crystal Falls) 92.2% White
Not much different. Basically an upper peninsula district that is swing territory. TOSSUP

2nd District Bill Huizenga (R–Zeeland) 84.4% White. Most ancestrally republican area of Michigan and it includes the Dutch colony in Ottawa County. Probably has a PVI of R+7. Likely Republican

3rd District Justin Amash (R–Cascade Township) 78.9% White. Takes in Grand Rapids (which has long been republican and where Ford used to represent) and some nearby rural counties. Probably an R+3 like district. Lean Republican.

4th District Dave Camp (R-Midland) 91% White. Tossup

5th District Dale Kildee (D-Flint) 76.6% White. Safe Dem.

6th District Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph) 81.1% White Tossup

7th District Tim Wahlberg (R-Tipton) 83.1% White. With Ann Arbor excised out of the old 15th and added to this district, it makes it competitive. Tossup district.

8th Mike Rogers (R-Brighton) 84.9% White. While Lansing is not as strongly democratic as Ann Arbor, it is still very democratic giving Obama 65% of the vote. With Lansing in the district, this is now a tossup district.

9th Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Township) 76.3% White. Takes in the independent minded Detroit suburbs. Peters survived 2010 so he should be okay for the long run. Lean Dem

10th Candice Miller (R-Harrison Township) 88.4% White. Takes in most of Macomb and St Clair counties. The more republican areas to the north have been excised however and put in the 5th district. Lean Republican

11th Thad McCotter (R-Livonia) 80.1% White. Considering this contains Wayne County (which is strongly dem) and Oakland County (which is swing country), this is probably a lean dem district based on PVI. But McCotter seems to run well here despite his R affiliation. I'll say this is a Lean GOP district.

12th Sander Levin (D-Royal Oak) 59.4% White. This guy survived 1994 and 2010 and this district now takes in part of Wayne County. Safe Democrat


13th Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit) vs.
 John Conyers (D-Detroit)
49.6% Black, 36.8% White, 9% Hispanic, 2.2% Other, 2% Asian, .4% Native American
Since Detroit lost a lot of population, the old 13th had to take in most of the 14th. Conyers would win the primary here due to his seniority.

14th John Dingell (D-Dearborn) 59.1% White. If he's been re-elected nearly 30 times, they aren't going to just stop electing him. He is even more safe here as it adds some hyper-dem precincts from the Conyers' district. Dingell may retire soon though.

So you have zero black majority districts in a state that the VRA likely requires there be two?  It's probably a non-starter without adjusting some lines.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish with that map? It's not a GOP gerrymander for sure, and its not a Democratic gerrymander; I'm trying to figure out why you would split Detroit 3 ways and then move Ann Arbor into a GOP district.

None of the maps above are legal. Sorry.

Far too many unnecessary county/community splits, among other things.

OK, after further review my map is not legal; the cycle of the Kildee/Rogers/Dingell/McCotter/bronze districts, each edge of which splits a county, could be rotated in some fashion (since none are VRA protected) so as to eliminate one county split.  Nuts. 

But I think some of Torie's assumptions are incorrect as well.  First off, since the statute's secondary guidelines say that avoiding county splits takes precedence over city/town splits, there is no "nose under the tent" argument - you can't create a county split in order to avoid a town split.  So you can't sneak a Macomb district into the Pointes just for that reason. 

More importantly, I think that you can't argue that the VRA districts demand a double crossing of the Oakland-Wayne border.  Yes, if one of the districts contains the Pointes, then the other district must go into Oakland; this is (probably) true.  But that just argues for using that district to be the sole population equalizer.  For instance, you could have 1 black district (including Pointes) plus one white district entirely within Wayne, use the 2nd black district to split the Oakland Wayne border, put one more district entirely within Oakland, and then go from there.  Unless there's a fortuitous way to somehow avoid yet one more county split by doing the double crossing, I think you have to avoid it. 

Where is the text about county lines taking precedence in the statute?  [Oh, I see, breaking as few county lines as possible is a higher priority. I think you may be right. In any event, I would only break into Wayne to take the two precincts in Gross Pointe Shores on the grounds of avoiding a town split. That might be deemed reasonable. But it is not worth litigating.]

Are you saying Dingell's white CD in Wayne needs to take over McCotter's MI-11 territory in Wayne?  If so, where does MI-11 get its population back?  Won't it have to split another county?

The district containing Washtenaw would definitely be a Democratic district. Washtenaw would be almost half of the district, and the area in it is about the same as the county--69% Obama. The rest is around 51% Obama, so there's no way a Republican could win that seat.

But, yeah, it's illegal. Way too many county splits.

Count your county splits.  You've got 4 districts hence 3 splits in Wayne, 2 splits in Oakland, 1 in Macomb, 1 in Washtenaw already, and 6 districts down.  Each new district you add will add another split (eg, the district that takes the rest of Washtenaw will likely terminate in a partial county somewhere) except for the last one. So that's 7 more splits, for a total of 14. 

You can definitely do it with 13 splits only; what I suggested involved one black district in Wayne, one white district in Wayne, and one black district spanning Wayne/Oakland.  That's 2 splits there.  Add one district entirely in Oakland.  Oakland is now split twice, since there are leftovers, and I have four splits for four districts down.  Each new district adds a new split where it terminates (save the last district) so this ends with 13 splits.   

Here's a map that gets it down to 12, but only because Upton's district fits perfectly in one set of counties.  (There are 2 county splits up north that aren't shown.)

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It's a 5-Dem plan; I'm not sure there's a way to get it down to 4.5 without moving McCotter's district entirely out of Wayne, since if you soak up the Oakland blacks with a Wayne district, McCotter seemingly can't go anywhere other than Washtenaw, and if you don't, then you have to concede a district in Oakland. 

Yes, you have one less split because you excised Wastenaw from the map. Unless there is one county somewhere that has exactly 33,000 people or whatever, there will be another split elsewhere. I will engage in the exercise however, of seeing if another map results in fewer splits than mine. I tend to doubt it however.

Count the splits.  I've got one fewer than you; once you take care of Oakland and Wayne, the remaining county splits needed should be exactly one less than the number of districts you need to draw (at most).  It doesn't matter that Washtenaw isn't drawn yet. 

In fact, I just rejiggered some things so that there are 11 county splits.  If districts 1 and 2 take in everything north of the Clare-Isabella latitude line, plus everything on Lake Michigan from Ottawa north, plus Newaygo, Mecosta and Lake, that's exactly right.  

Would you put up your map again, and explain to me which CD's of yours are 50% black VAP? So many maps are flying around, that I am confused now. It would be nice if each map were attended by some stats on these sorts of things. Thanks.

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Tan is 52.2% VAP black.  Bronze is 50.2% VAP black. 


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Here's the larger picture.  3 county splits in Wayne, 1 each in Oakland, Macomb, Monroe, Ingham, Eaton, Saginaw, Isabella, and one not seen in Traverse between CDs 1 and 2. 

OK, you have a chop in Monroe rather than Washtenaw. Other than that, if you select my plan A where there is no third CD in Oakland, we have the same number of chops in the Livingston, Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Monroe and Macomb package.  The issue is whether my plan B, with has a tri-chop of Oakland, rather than a bi-chop, can be offset by one less chop on the other side of the CD's in play, either directly with MI-07 or MI-10, or indirectly by the generation of clean lines in the next ring of CD's out. At the end of the day, we both have to have an extra chop for that 130,000 in excess population in the five county region (the above mentioned counties sans Monroe); there is no escaping that. You took care of it by cutting out Livingston, which was replaced with Dingell taking the rest of Wastenaw, less the bite out of his CD on the south end by MI-07.  There is no magic wand here - just county lines and numbers.

And I assure you, that the Pubbies will pick one of my chops depending on the final number of county splits dictating which one, rather than yours. Sorry about that. :)

Which is your "plan A" map?  I too am lost amid this flurry of mapmaking.  :) 

It looks like you are relying on the near equality of population for your CD 6. I get a value that is over by 299 persons. That isn't going to be exact enough for MI, so you will need at least one additional county split somewhere.

Plan A

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Plan B

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Torie, I count three CDs in Oakland on that map.  2 splits of Oakland, 1 in Macomb, 3 in Wayne, and 1 in Washtenaw = 7.  On my map I had 1-1-3-0 (plus one in Monroe) for 6. 


Ah, OK.  Didn't realize it needed to be that close.  We'll need 13 splits for my map, then (I had CDs 1 + 2 in a set of whole counties as well, but that was only good to within 100 or so.) 

Oh, I see your point. MI-13 gets black enough from Macomb, that MI-14 does not need to cross into Oakland anymore. In any event, if both my plans are illegal, then the Macomb chop needs to be from the north, as per my old plan, and Dingell takes most of Wastenaw. Your plan of course is totally unacceptable to the Pubbies. You created a Dem CD in Oakland!  That ain't happening. Yes, a north Macomb chop still results in an extra chop in the five county region, but now the Dems are reduced to arguing that yes, one black CD needs to leave Wayne, but the chop has to be into Macomb rather than Oakland, because that results in one less chop, because you get a "twofer" for going into Macomb, at once taking up Macomb's excess population and making both CD's black at the same time. That is a pretty weak argument. The court is really micromanaging the map now.

I guess the "dp" in dpmapper stands for "Democrat Plan" or Democrat Planner" or Democratic Planner" doesn't it?  You are a pretty clever little adversary, I must admit. Well it is better to know now, rather than later. See you in court pal!  :P

In any event, if the law is that strict, then just why was the existing map deemed legal, with its quad chop of Oakland? MI-12 could have been shoved into Macomb, and MI-09 take in the lost territory from MI-12 in Oakland, and then MI-08 takes more territory in Oakland, and MI-08 has its population equalizing chop off to the east somewhere, just like now, but obviously somewhere to the east and south of where it is under the 2000 map.

Indeed, MI-11 could have been also ejected MI-08 from Oakland as well (to get your bichop), and that would result in two less chops assuming that did not result in a second chop by MI-08 elsewhere (which is the question that needs to be resolved with my various alternatives: just how does minimizing the chops in the Detroit area play vis a vis chops elsewhere?  I think entirely into Oakland, taking the territory lost by MI-12 and MI-08. I guess if the 2000 map was litigated, the court decisions should be read, and that needs to be made a priority. Maybe that will give guidance, or maybe not. Or maybe the prior map was not litigated. 

Anyway, excellent caution dmapper, and the pubs will need a plan C I guess, as a backup to its first two plans if they end up biting the legal dust.

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The current map has 4 districts in Wayne and Oakland (3 chops each) plus 1 chop in each of Macomb, Washtenaw, Saginaw, Bay, Shiawasee, Allegan, Calhoun, and Kent, for a total of 14, for 15 districts.  This is normal - in general with x districts, one will need x-1 chops unless a numerical miracle occurs.   So with one fewer district this go-round, the norm should be 13 chops. 

I realize the GOP won't want a Dem district in Oakland, but how do you avoid that, while also protecting McCotter?  If he goes into Oakland, the black district can't, and vice versa.  Would a map like this be at all workable? 

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Livingston+ half of Oakland, and Lapeer + half of Oakland, might be lean GOP districts (assuming you do the division of Oakland correctly which I may not have)... I think?  One of the black districts takes the leftover bits in Southfield.  Together the two black districts take McCotter's worst areas (Redford, Wayne, parts of Westland) and Dingell's best areas (particularly Inkster, Taylor, Romulus, and Dearborn Heights) leaving them together with the whitest parts of Wayne, plus about 100K population from either Washtenaw or Monroe (more likely the latter).  I notice that Dingell only won his Wayne County portion by 12K votes in 2010, and lost Monroe, whereas McCotter won his Wayne County portion by 21K votes in 2010 (granted, it was an easy race this go-around).  I doubt McCotter likes the plan, but is this a toss-up district?  It's hard for me to tell. 

The GOP then concedes the two black districts, plus an Ann Arbor-Lansing district, plus the Flint-Saginaw district (which should ease any burdens on the other districts - Camp will be much happier not having to worry about Saginaw, for instance). 

Oh, one other thought. If the Michigan Supremes do micromanage, and demand the Macomb chop "twofer," the Pubbies are going to change the redistricting law. They simply will not tolerate a Dem CD being drawn in Oakland County - period! Someone might let the Supremes know that in advance. :)

As to the above map, it's interesting, but your Livingston-Oakland CD looks like but lean GOP to me. Pontiac + West Bloomfield + Farmington is just a bit too many Dems. The gerry in short is rather hideously inefficient, with Pubbie points being lost all over the place.

The green CD is lean Dem or soft safe Dem (the only Pubbie areas, and they are soft Pubbie, is the green zone north of Westland, to wit Livonia, and a grab bag of burbs in the northwest corner of Wayne, plus Monroe is soft Pubbie. The balance is heavily Dem (less so in 2010, but that was a GOP wave number, and we don't draw CD's based on wave mathematics). So, you give the  Dems 4 CD's, plus close to a 5th, plus a marginal CD in Macomb, plus another marginal or but lean CD in Livingston-Oakland. That ain't happening. The Dems to get that will have to get it from the Supremes, and somehow prevent the GOP from changing the law. Maybe they can leave the state like the Dems in Wisconsin and Indiana did. Does Michigan have a supra majority quorum law?  :P

Ah this twofer thingy is an evil attempt to deny giving the Pubbies one extra chop under the guise of the  VRA. It's not fair!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ap-mi-ushouse-knollenbe,0,3040370.story


TROY, Mich.— Republican state Rep. Marty Knollenberg says he's running for Congress in a district now held by Gary Peters, who unseated Knollenberg's father.



Sigh, this is not looking that great. It's much safer to try to condense the Democrats to 5 (giving Sander Levin all the Dem trending areas in Macomb/Oakland that don't fit elsewhere), rather than 4 (eliminating Levin and converting Peters's district into a Republican one)

Heh.  Not at all, I'm pretty conservative.  I'm just trying to game out what the scenarios are.  It's been fun arguing with you!  :) 

I got it!  Having a black district taking Southfield cuts off McCotter from Oakland, but Dingell taking Ann Arbor cuts off McCotter from going south to Monroe.  The solution: the black district takes Ann Arbor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Black districts are at 51.4 and 51.5 VAP black.  The green district coming into Oakland from the north has all of the thumb counties as well, except for St. Clair.  Miller should be safe, as should the new 11th.  Only drawback is that Walberg and McCotter are in the same (green) district.  Is this a dealbreaker?  Can't be: Walberg just moves a few miles north into his new seat. 

Wait... does this still fulfill all the other requirements?

7 districts down, 7 splits made.  I'm fine there.  The black percentages are over 50.  You can't see the township lines but I've only split one town between each pair of districts (Detroit between the two black districts and Dingell's, Westland between Dingell and the 11th, one in Macomb, and Farmington Hills and Novi between the bronze district and the other two Oakland districts, respectively. 

The only question is, now that I've used the thumb plus Hillsdale and Lenawee to gain an extra district in the Detroit area, is there enough left to deal with whatever is leftover from the Flint pack?  I'm not sure; I think one of them might have to be swingy.  But I think I'm done for the time being.  Someone can take over from here. 

Yes, I would like to see the northern part of your map please. Great job! You figured out the larger formula first, which is necessary to really know what you are doing. There are still legal arguments to be made (in part because of this from the statute: "(ii) Congressional district lines shall break as few county boundaries as is reasonably possible".), but one part of the game is surely to see what is possible if you meet your # of CD-s - 1 chop formula.

So I lied and decided to finish the job.  Here's the best I can do:

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CD-02 takes Mt. Pleasant from Camp's district in red, which expands into Bay City and part of the thumb.  CD-03 (purple) takes Dem parts of Calhoun County (including Mark Schauer's home) away from Walberg, who otherwise would be in trouble since a finger goes up to Saginaw.  I think Upton should be OK in the southwest; his district is probably about the same in partisan balance.  If not, you could try to swap areas within Kent County with Amash, but there's not a lot of room to maneuver.  

CD-01 (blue) and CD-04 (red) can also swap some territory if it is necessary to balance their strength.  

I tried to put Kildee into Lansing, Flint, and Saginaw simultaneously, but doing so requires his district to be involved in 3 county cuts, which severely hamstrings one's options in designing the rest of the map (eg, a Holland-Saginaw district is then necessary) and in order to be legal some of the districts end up a bit too marginal.  

Here's Detroit:

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I gave Rogers his area around Lansing back, since they love him there.  Also, I figured the light blue district could stand to come in a little bit more from the thumb.  I don't know what the partisan balance is but you can swap towns between the two if Rogers is too strong, for instance.  McCotter has options within Wayne County, depending on whether he'd prefer Westland/Garden City from his old district, or some slightly less Dem towns in SE Wayne County.  ETA: Ah, he definitely wants Grosse Ile!  So swap that in for more of Westland...

Tan district is 51% black VAP, bronze is 52.2%.  Neither of them ventures into Wayne County outside of Detroit (with one small exception of Northville, which might be necessary in order to not split the town; if it's not, McCotter gets a few hundredths of a percent back).  

This has a three-way split of Detroit. That's unnecessary, so it won't work.

I'm not sure if the CD's -1 is the right formula. The redistricting statutes (https://uselectionatlas.org/WIKI/index.php/Michigan_redistricting_statutes) say


That's different than saying split the fewest number of counties.

A district wholly contained within one county does not split a county boundary.


According to the legislation that enacted the 2001 map, there were 11 county splits. Here's the language from within that statute:



Counting county splits in that map according to the above rules I get single splits in Bay, Saginaw, Kent, Allegan, Shiawassee, Calhoun, Washtenaw, and Macomb. That leaves three splits to get to 11, so the interpretation is that the current map counts two splits in Oakland and one in Wayne. Thus the the whole districts in those counties do not count as splits.

More importantly, this all may be moot for the current cycle, as may be the 1999 redistricting rules that are in my earlier link. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled in Leroux v Secretary of State (2002) (http://milawyersweekly.com/fulltext-opinions/2002/03/26/leroux-et-al-v-secretary-of-state-et-al/) that the statutory provisions for congressional districts cannot bind a future legislature.

Following that decision, the current legislature could adopt any interpretation of the Apol standards they wished. They could even replace them with new standards that defined their map. I suspect that tradition would tend to hold them to some interpretation of the Apol standards, but as we see in AR, tradition can go away quickly in the face of political reality.

It is necessary.  First, it's necessary for Dingell to take the Pointes, lest the minority percentages drop too much.  Second, it's necessary because there isn't enough room in the two black districts to take all of Detroit anyhow.  Finally, and probably most importantly, it's necessary because there are 4 districts in Wayne, so there must be 3 splits somewhere.  My map puts two splits in Detroit and one in Westland; does that differ any from having one split in Dearborn, one in Westland, and one in Detroit? 

I'm not saying you're wrong, but this seems like an odd way to count splits.  If there are 3 counties in a state that go in a line, A next to B next to C, with populations 20-110-20 in that order, and there are to be three districts, you can do it two ways:

PLAN 1: 20 from A, 30 from B; 50 from B; 30 from B, 20 from C
PLAN 2: two districts entirely within B, one containing A, C, and a 10-person bridge from B

Are you telling me that PLAN 2 has no splits, whereas PLAN 1 does?  My method of counting splits makes much more sense.  

ETA: I should add that you can put the light blue district entirely within Oakland if you want, and give Rogers the two thumb counties in exchange, with little change in partisan balance (put Pontiac+W. Bloomfield in Rogers's district).  But it makes for an uglier map, in my opinion - a district from Lansing to Lake Huron? 


Heh.  All our work for nothing, if so.  :)  (But if you can get close to optimal without having to litigate this matter, so much the better, right?)  

No, Plan 2 would still have 2 splits.

The difference comes up in the context of somewhere like Macomb County. You could have one district wholly in Macomb County and another district partly in Macomb County, or you could have two districts partly in Macomb County (or more than two, but let's assume those are the only options).

Under the county-splits interpretation, both maps have one county split, as Macomb County is split across two districts on both maps. However, under the county-line-crosses interpretation, as mandated by the statute, the first map has one county line cross while the second map has two county line crosses. (Of course, you might avoid a county line cross elsewhere on the second map, so it's not so simple, but you get the idea.)

The way I read their description and see how it is applied, both plans have one split.

In plan 1 there is a whole district within the county, which is like the current example of Oakland. The wholly contained district doesn't count in their total, and in plan 1 the remainder is split once. That equals one split.

In plan 2 there are two whole districts within the county, which is like the current example of Wayne. The current example of Wayne does have one split of the remainder, so I can't apply it's example too far, but I can note that if the remainder didn't count as one split, the current map could have been improved. For example, there is a split formed between CD 10 and 12 in Macomb. It would have been possible to place a whole district within Macomb and use the remainder for just one district. If that remainder did not count as a split, then the map could have been reduced to 10 county splits. Since this was not done, I conclude that the mappers would have counted Macomb as one split either way. Thus, the single fragment in plan 2 county B counts as one split.

This method of counting favors putting whole districts in counties that need to be split more than once, but does not favor a whole district in a county where the other fragment remains intact. It also does not provide any advantage to a three-way split over two two-way splits which occurs in some methods of counting fragments.

OK, I guess you're saying that
"(i) Breaking a county line means assigning part of the population of a county to 1 or more counties in the formation of a district."
means, putting part of a county with a district that contains other counties.  (I couldn't figure out what it meant to "assign part of a county to other counties"...)

But if that's so, doesn't Oakland currently have 3 breaks, and Wayne 2?  

I still don't know what "including a district from 2 geographically-separate areas" means, though.  

I also don't understand how dividing Wayne into 2 whole districts plus two partial districts can constitute the same number of splits (1) as dividing Wayne into 2 whole districts plus one partial would. 

What I'm saying is that after reading the text that was part of the passed map, I looked at the splits and compared it to the reported number. From that comparison I can deduce the algorithm they used. I'll summarize how it apparently worked in 2001.

A county that is split in two counted as one split.

A county that is split in three would have counted as two splits. Think of the county as having been split twice from its original intact form.

A county split into n pieces would have counted as n-1 splits.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and one other piece attached to other counties would have counted as one split. The lesser part crossed the county line to form that one split.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and two other pieces attached to other districts counted as one split. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, but it compares to the case where a single county is split in two. The remainder fragment is treated as a county for splits, except that it would be one split even by itself.

A county with one or more districts wholly contained and three other pieces attached to other districts counted as two splits. This parallels the three-split case for a single county.

In general a county with N districts wholly contained and n pieces attached to other districts outside the county would have counted as n-1 splits, except when n = 1 and then it counts as 1 split.

Well, I guess I believe you.  But if so, that's a ridiculously stupid way of counting.  

Consider the scenario where one big county A (pop. 63) in the middle is attached to 3 smaller counties B/C/D (20 each) which are not adjacent to one another.  Dividing into three districts of 21-20 seems reasonable, but that has two splits.  

A different plan would have one whole district in A, 21 from A + all of B, and a district of D+C+a bridge via A.  This technically has one split, but I can't see any reason why this is preferable.  

Here's a different scenario.  Consider the following plans:

Plan 1:
51 from A;
10 from A, 20 from B, 21 from C;
10 from A, 20 from D, 21 from C.  

Plan 2:
51 from A;
20 from A, 20 from B, 11 from C;
20 from D, 31 from C.  

Which is superior?  Clearly plan 2 is, but according to the formula you just laid out, both have exactly 2 splits.  

So the counting formula mandates an inferior (or at least, non-superior) plan in my first scenario, and fails to distinguish a superior plan in my second scenario.  Boo!

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Finally, what is the minimum number of splits according to the formula?  Ignoring VRA for a moment, I think the best you can do is the following:
2 whole districts in Wayne
1 whole in Oakland
1 whole in Macomb
1 with the leftovers from Wayne, Macomb, and some of the leftovers from Oakland

... leaving 9 to go, which will split 8 other counties between them.  Add in 1 split in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne, and we're at 11.  Am I missing something?  

Let's say I shove the light blue district entirely into Oakland in my scenario.  Then Oakland has one split, Macomb has 1 split, and Wayne 2.  Washtenaw, Kent, Calhoun, Ingham, Saginaw, Isabella, and one between CD-1 and CD-4 are the others.  That's 11!  Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

I get that the lowest theoretical count comes from putting as many whole districts into counties that one can, and then use at least a two-way split for the remainder of those counties. In this case 4 districts would be entirely within one county, leaving 10 CDs. Those 10 require 9 county splits (n-1) at a minimum so 9 splits is the ideal.

I can see this as making some sense, if, and only if, the two fragments are appended to one other CD. Take Kent County for example (MI-03). Let us say, it can hold one CD, but with 20,000 extra people. If that 20,000 is appended to MI-02, with 10,000 from the NW corner, and 10,000 from the SW corner, then Kent has been split once. But if the NW corner goes to MI-02, while the SE corner goes to MI-04, then to me that is two splits. Why wouldn't it be?  You could avoid an extra chop, just by having the entire 20,000, either in one fragment or two, go to just one one CD as one chop. If it isn't, one then can use different fragments of Kent, or Wayne, to equalize population for other CD's, thereby cutting down on the splits, giving one a chance to chop up some county elsewhere for gerrymandering purposes.

For example, to get down to actual cases, look at my map below. MI-12 and MI-09 are wholly contained in Oakland and Macomb respectively. MI-14 goes into Oakland for one chop, and MI-13 goes into Macomb for a second. Fine - so far so good. Now are you saying that my MI-10 pink dip down does not count as a second chop?  And if it doesn't, then why can't MI-14 also go into Macomb from Oakland or Wayne as a "non-chop" event?  Heck we could send MI-05 from Flint to pick up Pontiac if we want as well.  It suddenly becomes like the Wild West!  :P

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Otherwise, I agree completely with Muon2's analysis. It is the only one that makes sense really.

OK, that seems right.  But it would require two separate districts having their border within the 20K or so extra people left out of the whole-Macomb district... and those two districts couldn't be in Oakland or Wayne!  You'd have to come in from the north.  Ai-yai-yai. 

In any case, do you agree that this method for counting splits is completely whacked? 

[I'd also point out that the theoretical minimum is 10 for the current 15 districts and it is not hit.  So who knows what is actually required?]

I've calculated that the district I've given McCotter gave Bush just over 53% of the 2-party vote in 2004.  He might be able to up that a tad by picking the right precincts to excise from Van Buren Township.  This might be half a point better than his current district, but I'm guessing the blue-collar whites in Monroe and southern Wayne are trending more GOP than the country as a whole is. 

Incidentally, does anyone know if there's a hippie commune in Van Buren Township or something?  One precinct (#3) apparently gave the Green Party 497 votes in 2004 (out of 1367 cast).  Is this just a typo?  (Bush got 349, Kerry 508, so 1367 does at least match the sum, and it is about the same number of votes as other precincts.) 

I'm assuming that's an error or something as Nader had no noticeable area of strength in 2000.

I redid the non-Detroit parts a bit:

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I used CD-03 to give me another county split involving the Flint district, rather than soak up Battle Creek/Albion.  This lets Flint take Saginaw.  So CD-07 no longer looks like a game of Jenga, and no longer has to run into Saginaw, but it does have to move about 20K farther in towards Ann Arbor (there are some 65%+ Kerry precincts on the outskirts) and take back Battle Creek/Albion (and Mark Schauer).  It does get heavily GOP Barry County in the bargain; I haven't totalled everything but I think this makes it almost 55% McCainBush, compared to 53.7% previously.  

I think Camp will be a bit safer as well - his district goes up to southern Grand Traverse County and takes in less of Saginaw's Dem suburbs than it used to.  

The CD-08/CD-09 combo that splits Oakland takes in a bit more of the Lansing area, but is compensated by the black AnnArbor/Oakland/West Detroit district eating up Ferndale and a bit more of Farmington Hills.  One will have to juggle the split of Oakland carefully to make sure both districts are reasonably solid; I haven't done the number crunching yet.  

[In all of this, I'm assuming that the county splits metric is changed to something more sensible.]

In other news, I sweet talked this really nice lady at the Wayne County elections department to fax me all 44 pages of Wayne County precinct returns for 2008 at no charge. She was particular impressed that I could name all 40+ towns in Wayne from memory. She could just sense how much I cared. And I shared with her the story of Inkster just for bonding purposes. I am getting really dangerous out there!  :P

You seem to have a spare Okemos precinct in the Lansing/Flint district.  Have you split it Okemos/East Lansing, then?  That would be... strange, but Okemos would probably like it.

Yeah, I know.  It's a precinct that has two disjoint parts, one of which is part of the East Lansing block.  I don't know what the rule is about those. 

That is a really hideous looking map!  :)

Um... thanks? :)

The rough draft of my Michigan gerrymander:
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I tried to eliminate Levin instead of Peters and I think I did a fairly good job of it. I packed the yuppie/hipster portions of Oakland County into Conyer's district along with Pontiac, which would significantly weaken both Peters and Levin, who would probably try to attempt a kamikaze run against Candice Miller. Unfortunately even with the placement of the Black parts of Macomb County into Clarke's district, Miller's district is only R+1. As for the rest of the map, it's pretty simple. I packed Lansing into MI-5 and tried to strengthen Benishek and Walberg somewhat. Rogers got an ultra-GOP seat thanks to Miller's district being totally dismantled along with Levin's. Everything else is the same. 

The way Oakland County is drawn would definitely be illegal.

I decided to follow up on my earlier observation that two black-majority seats could be drawn in Wayne. To that map I applied the definition of county splits as applied in 2001 to draw a GOP-oriented map that achieves the ideal number of 9 county splits. I did not use incumbent data, and estimated partisan strength based on previous posts and Atlas maps.

Placing two black-majority seats (CD 13, 14) in Wayne leaves 3 fragments: in the Pointes, Livonia, and the south suburbs. To keep Wayne to one split requires that two be joined together. The political goal requires that Ann Arbor and the southern end of Oakland be drawn together in CD 11. These were linked through the Livonia fragment and then across southern Macomb to the Pointes fragment.

Enough population was left to create a whole CD in each of Oakland (9) and Macomb (12). To minimize county splits remainders of those two counties had to be linked to a whole number of counties. In this case CD 10 uses a small part of Macomb to achieve population equality. CD 5 links all of Genesee to Pontiac and Auburn Hills in Oakland.

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The rest of the state is completed with a minimum number of splits. Of note is pulling East Lansing out of CD 8 which is stuck with Ypsilanti. East Lansing and Saginaw are now both in CD 4.

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For those of a mathematical bent, the county minimization was solved with graph theory. Each node is a district and each link is a split county. There are 10 nodes since 4 districts are entirely within one county. The minimum of 9 links occurs when the graph has no loops. The graph for my map is the following.

            [1]                [5]        [10]
            /                             /
           /                             /
        [2]----[4]----[8]----[11]
          |                           |
          |                           |
        [6]         [3]             [7]

Muon, making the graph of county splits a tree is exactly what I was going for with my metric for county splits.  I didn't state it in that language because I wasn't sure anyone would understand me.  :) 

But that's about the only map I've seen that is a plausible gerrymander that nevertheless minimizes county splits both by my (sensible) standard and the 2001 standard simultaneously.  Nicely imagined. 

It seems that districts 12, 7, 8 might be a bit too marginal for the GOP's taste.  I think Rogers's district gaining not only Ypsilanti but also the Ann Arbor outskirts like Pittsfield and Scio Townships will outweigh losing East Lansing.  7 might be fine if not for its northern-most three cities.  And McCotter is kind of screwed. 

MI-07, MI-08 and MI-12 are all marginal, with MI-08 looking even lean Dem in Muon2's map.  If that is what Michigan law dictates, the law is going to be changed. What I am trying to figure out is whether the minimum number of splits were done in 2000.  I don't think that was the case.

I've finished tabulating the numbers on the districts in my latest map.  

McCotter (light green) is still at 53.06% Bush, up slightly from 52.6% currently.  Not much can be done here, the way I have his district set up, but the good news is that voters here have probably been trending GOP the last 6 years.  

The two GOP districts that split Oakland are at a combined 55.5% Bush.  I didn't bother to calculate the intra-Oakland numbers but there must be a way to split it so that both stay at or above 55% Bush.  

Walberg's 7th (in grey) is at 54.67% Bush.  A bit lower than one would like it, and a bit lower than it is currently (54.97%).  Some of the areas outside Ann Arbor really hurt it.  With that area booming (by Michigan standards) this might be cutting it a little close.  Can't do much to help that without upsetting the entire apple cart.  

Upton's 6th (teal) is over 56% Bush.  Some almost-90% GOP townships in eastern Ottawa really work wonders.  

Camp's 4th (red) is at 54.90% Bush.  His part of Saginaw County actually helps matters, as it's at 56.5% Bush.  

Benishek's 1st (blue) is at 55.4% Bush.  

2nd (green) and 3rd (purple) will be quite safe, as even before adding in Kent County numbers, the 2nd is at 55.8% Bush and the 3rd is at 59.6%.  I won't bother with running the intra-Kent numbers; the mapmakers should feel free to split Kent in whatever way is most logical, rather than worrying about partisan numbers, as long as you put all of the minority parts of Grand Rapids into the 3rd (which would be the logical thing anyway).  

Haven't looked at Miller's numbers but she should be comfortable.  Her current district was over-Pubbied to get rid of Bonior.  

The 2000 map has the minimum number of splits given only three districts are wholly inside a single county. I see that the 2000 map did not place a district wholly inside Macomb as I did. If I assume that they did minimize county splits according to some rule, and did not make a Macomb district as I did, then I would have to revise my assessment of their counting rules.

I would now conclude that if two discontiguous parts of a county are attached to other counties, but not to the same district then that counts as two county breaks. That is still consistent with the current map in Oakland where one split is divided between CDs 8 and 11, and a separate split has the piece of CD 12.

With this interpretation, which is the only way to legally justify the 2000 map, my map would now count as 11 splits not 9. To get to 10 splits I need to have the pieces of CDs 10 and 11 adjoin in Macomb. That would require running a thin line of CD 11 across Warren and another thin line up to New Baltimore. Since that would split two towns it fails. I suspect that is why a Macomb-only district didn't appear in 2000. Even so it still leaves my map with the two-split of Wayne that cannot be eliminated if two majority-black districts are both in Wayne.

As I see it, you get one free chop depending on what county you start counting from. That principle derives from the concept that if you have two CD's in 3 counties, with each CD taking one whole county, the split of the third county counts as but one chop. So in your map, either you count the MI-07 salient into Wayne as a chop, or the MI-10 salient into Macomb as one. Per this way of counting,  you have 5 chops for 8 CD's (MI 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 11, 13 and 14). If you choose to count the MI-10 chop into Macomb as a chop, then from Wayne you have one chop into Oakland with MI-11, another chop into Oakland with MI-05, a third chop into Macomb with MI-11, a 4th chop into Macomb with MI-10, and a 5th chop into Wastenaw with MI-05.  Your free chop is MI-07 in to Wayne,. Since you avoid chops on the other side of MI-05, MI-10 and MI-07,  the only population equalizing mechanism out of the geographic area encompassing the 8 CD's is via Washtenaw and MI-05. That is about as efficient as you can get I think. You get 8 CD's covered with only 5 chops, for an efficiency rating of 3.

I am trying to get the same efficiency rating of 3 with a map that might be acceptable to the Pubbies. As I said, your map just isn't acceptable from a Pubbie perspective. (The first and most immediate thing to do is get MI-13 into Macomb, and MI-11 the hell out; another I think is to get MI-05 to suck up both Pontiac and Ann Arbor.) Either there is an alternative map that works from a partisan perspective, or there isn't. If there isn't, then we know that the law will have to be changed.

This is a tough nut to both understand and then crack. It's a nightmare. I also suspect that the 2000 map does have a maximum efficiency rating, but I am still not entirely sure.

Well here is my version of a plus 3 minimum chop map. Yes, MI-11 is short by 3,200 or so folks, offset (deliberately) by an equal excess in MI-05, but that can be equalized by shaving the size of MI-05's two link precincts to Pontiac in far north West Bloomfield, down from 5,500 or so in population down to an equalizing number of around 2,300.  

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No precinct can be switched there, because that would mean that MI-05 is bounced entirely from Pontiac (or mostly), and the whole map collapses. Making the city chops "work" in Wayne was also a rather terrifying exercise, but I found the slot to squeeze between the Scylla and Charybdis legal monsters to make that work too - again just barely.

At least while the strong Pubbie incumbents hang around, this map actually has a lot of potential if, and only if, the Pubbies have guts - a lot of guts. McCotter in MI-11 has but a lean GOP seat I suspect, but can probably hold it, while Dingell is axed. And Candice Miller should be able to hold MI-12 if she has guts. MI-09 is also probably a lean GOP CD (maybe even in the marginal category, albeit on the GOP side, with a PVI as low as +1% GOP PVI potentially), considerably short of "safe" in any event, so that should be a barn burner of a contest for the incumbent Dem Peters, (but the Pubbie should have a edge I would think in 2012 at least, with economic issues dominating the landscape almost totally is my guess). It will be a close contest however. Overall, if all goes well, and assuming the Pubs choose a competent nominee to run not only in MI-09 but also in weak safe to lean GOP MI-10, and assuming further that Walberg can hold a weak safe to strong lean GOP CD in MI-07, that means the Dems will be held to but 3 seats in Michigan. (Rogers should be able to hold his CD from his Livingston base despite having to such up half of Ann Arbor and all of Ypsilianti in Wastenaw County (both 3-1 Obama - I gave Rogers the more GOP half of Ann Arbor -the balance was more like 85-15 Obama :P), with the Dutch via Kent and Ottawa being used to pacify Lansing.) MI-02 and MI-03 will both become considerably weaker "safe" CD's for the GOP.

Everything was just so close in this map, and it threatened to collapse at any moment. Notice how both black CD's are just barely over 50% black VAP. And there was no margin for error at all vis a vis MI-05. I lived in terror of its Pontiac salient collapsing. And then I need to play the county game with MI-10, and MI-07 to get the numbers very close to what was required for a Detroit metro map where there was very little play at all - almost none. I had maybe 20,000 folks to pay with. Yikes! But there was, just barely, an objective function which emerged for the Pubbies, at least for those with some courage.

Will the Pubbies have such guts? I tend to doubt it. They will probably change the law. Among other things, the Pubbie incumbents will perforce be saddled with a lot of new territory, in the case of most of them. But it should be an interesting discussion behind closed doors!  They should hire me as a "consultant" to "help" them with some of this.  :)

By the way, a note of caution to you Michigan cartographers. Some of what look like "cities" in the Michigan map as depicted by the Dave Bradlee software are but villages, and villages under the Michigan law don't count as equal to townships from it comes to intra-county splits - only cities do. So you can't split a township claiming you are just sucking up a village; that dog just won't hunt legally. For example, all those little areas with lines around them in Southfield Township north of the City of Southfield, are but villages, and so they must all be in but one CD, unless your chop is going to be in Southfield Township rather than somewhere else.

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And here is an all Oakland use for MI-05 that might actually be a bit safer, at least for McCotter in MI-11.  He could be made even safer with a more favorable Washtenaw chop, but that would be at the expense of Rogers in MI-08.

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How would that 9th vote? About d+2 or 3?

Yes, I don't think the numbers will look very good. It could be that Dem. It certainly is no better for the Pubbies than marginal. As I said, the Pubbies if they want to ax Peters (and make maybe as many as 4 other Pubbies reasonably safe, rather than on the edge), will need to change the law, or get a friendly Michigan Supreme Court. They should be nervous.

In fact, the numbers really suck for MI-09.

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So the map fails. So it is either Muon2's map, with MI-11 becoming the new Dingell CD, or for some Dem, with McCotter having to move to Oakland, or the law will need to be "clarified,"  with some "helpful" amendments thereto. The problem with Muon2's map however is that extra chop into the Pointes by his wandering MI-11 CD, so it fails the efficiency test, since with one less chop per my map above, we can still have two 50% black VAP CD's. Thus, the Pubbies can't hide behind the VRA as hoped. I don't think there is an objective function here that works for the Pubbies.

Oh wait, we decided that two discontiguous chops by one CD into the same county counted for only one chop, so I guess that Pointes salient does not count as another chop. So we will have to see what we can do, if we clean up Muon2's map a bit. But not today. But it might be something like the map below.

Addendum: In fact my latest iteration of the Muon2 map (with MI-14 taking those Macomb precincts rather than MI-11) should work quite well for the Pubbies actually, with the possible exception of Walberg in MI-07, who may have a marginal seat with all that Wayne territory with which he is saddled in this map. However, his string of counties along the southern border of Michigan are quite heavily Pubbie. I don't think there is another map within existing law that works nearly as well. The advantage of this map, is that the cordon sanitaire in Washtenaw has been extended to about just the right place to keep all those massively Dem precincts in Washtenaw nicely contained on the opposite side of the Pubbie acceptable zone. Livingston County just can't handle Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti at all. The Dems have a 100,000 vote margin there.

Avoiding an illegal double split of townships or cities in Oakland while keeping MI-09 wholly contained in Oakland with just the right population with this map was quite a challenge. But I found a way!  :)

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Here are the stats for the new MI-07 per the new map. The seat was marginal, and remains marginal, but with more of a Dem list. I am more convinced than ever, that if the Pubbies don't try to change the law, this is the map. Walberg's weakness in MI-07 will be the gain for Rogers in MI-08 and Camp in MI-04 in particular, both far more powerful and important Pubbie politicians.

The PVI's in a lot of Pubbie seats in Michigan in any event are going to look rather anemic per 2008 figures (the trend in MI from 2004 to 2008 must have been a couple of points to the Dems), absent doing a full throated Gerrymander. (See my Pennsylvania and Ohio and Indiana maps for what a "just go for it" Gerrymander looks like; I was a bit more restrained with Wisconsin for some reason, probably because more erosity would not change the ultimate outcome much.)

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I added MI-04 to the list of CD's which feed through the Wastenaw MI-11 population equalizing spigot, in an attempt to get the Pubbie numbers up a bit in MI-12, MI-10, and MI-07, all of which per the map above were close to dead even in a PVI sense. I must say, MI-14 looks ever more interesting as a CD; it is getting to be quite a work of art!  I also manged to get Garden City into MI-07 (labeled MI-08 in the map below; I will change the number for next time to the proper one).  :P

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You appear to have cut Center Line off from the rest of MI-12 on that map, Torie.

 

Appearances can be deceiving. I do make mistakes in maps, but that is not one of them. :)  Thanks however for the comment, and anytime you think you see a flaw, I would appreciate your letting me know. I must say, that at this point, I think I know almost every Warren precinct by heart now, as the precincts go into MI-13, and then out again, and then in, and then out, and on and on.

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Here is the tentative map. I think I broke the code about county splits per Michigan law. You start with one clean line, and from the opposite side of the state, limit one CD to just one chop.

In 2000, the clean line was the north end of MI-10, and the one chop CD was MI-01. In my map, the clean line is the east end of MI-07, and either MI-06 or MI-02 will have but one chop. Actually, MI-06 has no chops, but that is an accident. There will be a tiny chop. Whether MI-06 loses its excess of 700 folks by MI-02 dipping down into Allegan, or MI-03 doing the dip, is a choice, and an irrelevant one. So we have the same number of chops as the 2000 maps, less one for one fewer CD, but plus one, because the VRA requires an extra chop involving one of the two black CD's in Wayne, with either MI-12 taking the Pointes in Wayne, or one of the black CD's chopping into Macomb. I am very confident that this map is legal.

That aside, I think the partisan numbers will work pretty well, with a lot of weak safe to lean GOP CD's, with maybe MI-07 slipping into the the marginal category, with a GOP lean.

My main concern is MI-03. It may have been put under too much stress, taking in both Lansing, and losing a lot of Kent County suburbs, although the big one MI-02 took is probably fairly Dem per the demographics. The pawns may have to be shifted around in Kent. It may be that the black precincts in the city of Grand Rapids will have to be split up between MI-02 and MI-03. And maybe MI-04 will have to drop Ionia, and be jiggled around. That is the potential weak spot in the map - the issue being just how to most effectively neutralize Lansing - to the extent it can be.

Oh yes, I know that one CD is off by about 3,000 folks, but I have no intention of playing with the other 13 less than 1,000 in population off CD's to deal with that.

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What's the PVI on that Grand Rapids-Lansing seat? It can't be better for the GOP than marginal.

I don't know; that was the concern that I expressed in my post above.  You may well  be right. But in the end, both MI-02 and MI-03 I suspect can be made weak safe to strong lean GOP CD's - with a PVI of from say 2.5 to 3.5. It just requires the right chop of Kent, and maybe weakening MI-04 a bit. Yes, the map is on the cusp. The GOP may just dump the law. A lot of efficiency is lost by putting all those Pubbie link townships in Oakland in MI-05, and MI-11 sucking up GOP friendly Livonia, and Northville, and Plymouth in Wayne. That is what the law does, if given a tight interpretation, with not much play afforded in what is deemed "reasonable," a term that is used in the law when it comes to chops.

The big winner in playing this legal game, is the Pubbie in MI-01. That dude will be thrilled!  :)  It was due in part to the imperative of MI-10 having clean lines on its north end. MI-01 was drawn almost in its entirely to accommodate other considerations.

Is the goal here to hit the minimum number of county line breaks according to the current counting methods?  I see

2 in Wayne
1 in each of Oakland, Macomb, Kent, Ingham, Washtenaw, Saginaw, Genesee, St. Clair, Grand Traverse, and one TBA involving CD-06

for a total of 12, whereas the theoretical minimum is 9. 

Below is the 2000 map. It has 13 chops for 15 CD's, for an efficiency rating of 2:

Oakland 3
Wayne 2
Bay 1
Saginaw 1
Calhoun 1
Allegan 1
Kent 1
Washtenaw 1
Shiawassee 1
Macomb 1

It has 3 single chop CD's: MI-10, MI-01 and MI-03.

My map also has 13 chops, for an efficiency rating of 1 with 14 CD's:

Wayne 2
Oakland 2
Macomb 1
St. Clair 1
Genessee 1
Saginaw 1
Grand Traverse 1
Calhoun 1 (CD-06)
Kent 1
Ingham 1
Washtenaw 1

I have 4 single chop CD's: MI-07, MI-01, MI-02 and MI-06.  The loss of one point in efficiency is due to 1) the VRA forcing MI-14 into Macomb, which generates an extra chop, since MI-14 is not wholly within Wayne, and 2) a triple chop of MI-05. As to MI-14 chopping into Macomb, it is either that chop, or MI-12 chopping into Wayne to suck up the Pointes. The map should be legal.

Addendum: And now I got rid of the St. Clair chop (pity that, as it slides MI-12 into an almost dead even marginal), so now I have an efficiency rating of 2, just like the 2000 map, with 12 chops for 14 CD's. The thing is, is that without a chop of Genesee, Saginaw, Ingham and Wastenaw, and the Oakland county contortions, the map really falls apart for the Pubbies. So those needed to be preserved at all costs. I don't think the Pubbies are going to like the PVI numbers much however. There will be a lot of marginal CD's. The Michigan law in short, is in trouble. But the map is not DOA; it's not great, but not horrible either. But all those marginals could be made safe, without all of this county split "silliness."  (The township and city chop thing is not that much of an inconvenience; it just makes the map drawing a bit more time consuming, as one plots how to get most of what one wants, and one does usually get it.) :)

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And here is another version that might work out a bit better. In the first version, MI-02 and MI-03 between them had a GOP PVI of around 2.1%, which is hardly inspiring. This version gets Ionia into the MI-02 and MI-03 zone, in exchange for losing  some territory to MI-01 at the north end of MI-02 which has a Dem PVI of about 3 points. I also tried having MI-04 take Lansing, but that generates an extra chop. A Kent based CD needs to take it.

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Torie, you weren't paying attention to how Muon described the current (very dumb) counting procedure.  In the current map, since CD-09 is entirely contained in Oakland, it only counts as having 2 chops.  Wayne has only 1 chop currently.  The total is 11; efficiency 4.  In post #220 Muon describes how to get a chop count of 9 for 14 districts. 

I agree that the method for counting chops is stupid and ought to be changed irrespective of what gerrymanders it allows...

I counted two chops for Oakland. As for Wayne, the 2000 map has one chop for MI-11, and one for MI-15, unless you are going to start counting from Wayne. My maps and Muon's, have an extra chop because MI-14 is no longer contained in Wayne, but that is required by the VRA, or MI-12 dropping into the Pointes.

In any event, the map below should have fewer chops (MI-05 has but one, and indeed that does reduce the chops to 11), and this map I think might actually work for the Pubbies, although MI-10 will be somewhat marginal, but that will be an open seat. The trick was to switch MI-11 for MI-08 in Wayne. And MI-07 will remain marginal, but slightly more GOP than the number I came up when I did the MI-07 calculations before. It is either this map, or change the law. Come to think of it, MI-08 could take MI-07's territory in Wayne perhaps, if there is a way to deal with the township and city chops, while keeping both MI-13 and MI-15 50% black. That might save another chop, but perhaps not, since MI-07 has only the Wayne chop, and clean lines elsewhere.

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OK, you're down to 12 county splits by the current metrics.  That's the same as in my map in post 225, which has 4 Dem districts and every GOP district (save one) over 54.5% Bush.  

And sorry to continue to be a pain, but you have too many township splits in Wayne.  I see Sumpter Twp, Canton, Detroit, Taylor, and Dearborn Heights split, when you really should only need 3 splits between the 4 districts.  

Incidentally, you could improve things by exploiting the loophole that 1 whole district + 2 partials in a county is the same as 1 whole + 1 partial.  Give some parts of Oakland (Farmington, South Lyon) to CD-08 and let CD-11 take more of the Ann Arbor area. 

Does Michigan allow touch-point contiguity between municipalities?

You mean like my precinct link in Dearborn Heights connecting  MI-14 from the east to its salient in western Wayne?  The law does not say no. What it does say, is that if you have a CD connected with but a theoretical point where one corner of two rectangles touch,  that does not constitute contiguousness.

Come to think of it, the Dems might be fairly happy with this map. Dingell retires, Levin gets MI-11, and Peters can move from Bloomfield Hills a couple of miles to the east in Lapeer County and run in marginal MI-10. MI-07 is marginal to boot, and MI-08 will be somewhat vulnerable to marginal, if Rogers retires. Candice Miller in MI-12 has a marginal seat with a GOP PVI of around 1%.Whether the GOP will stand for this map, as opposed to just deep-six the law is another question.

The guy who would  be deliriously happy however is McCotter. He would be moving from Livonia a mile or two north up to Novi or somewhere ASAP per this map, and never have to campaign again. He could use his campaign money to give to others to buy influence; maybe he will be speaker someday. :P  MI-09 might be a serious competitor for the most GOP CD in the state.

I very much appreciate your comments, dpmapper. They are usually spot on. But as to splits, the Detroit split is between MI-13 and MI-14 (and is mandated by the VRA to boot), the Sumpter split is between MI-07 and MI-08, the Canton split between MI-14 and MI-08, and the Taylor split is between MI-07 and MI-13.  I think that is legal. The splits have to be made to equalize population, and to get both MI-14 and MI-13 above 50% black VAP. The language in the law on which I rely reads as follows: "(v) If it is necessary to break city or township lines to achieve equality of population between congressional districts as provided in subdivision (a), the number of people necessary to achieve population equality shall be shifted between the 2 districts affected by the shift." (Emphasis added.)

Of course, I put the splits to dual uses almost always, but well, if one did not do that, what raison d'etre would gerrymanderers have?  :)

By the way, you missed the Dearborn Heights chop between MI-14 and MI-07.  :P One chop is allowed between any two CD's is the rule I think. (Notice how given the Detroit chop, I avoided any other chop between MI-13 and MI-14.)

I don't agree that one CD in a  county plus two partials constitutes but one split, which "loophole" that you presume exists I see that you exploited to the max in your map. I know of no language in the law suggesting such a counter-intuitive interpretation,  and thus am puzzled as to the basis that that inference was drawn.  Counting that way really does not make any sense. As a judge I certainly would not accept that interpretation based on what I know so far. But I would appreciate your sharing with me your reasoning on this issue.

I might note that Muon2 and I had a discussion about this (sort of).  My view was that two partials only count as one split if both partials are but one CD in two non-contiguous chops into a county. If the partial chops into a county are two different CD's, that counts as two chops. Muon2 in a later post came around to agreeing with that method of counting chops, which is the only one that makes any sense really.

Muon laid out his interpretation of the rule in post 218:


He then amended it very slightly in post #237 to deal with the case when the n pieces are not contiguous.  But that's it. 

I agree that if this is indeed the rule, it is stupid.  That is why I ignored the rule in my last map, and just went with the "normal" county fragment count.  But according to this method of counting, your map is at 12, which is the same as what I have. 

Regarding townships, I'd argue it's the same principle as counties.  In other words, splitting at most one between districts is a necessary condition towards satisfying the law, but not sufficient.  If there is a loop then there will be a way to lower the number of splits. 

For instance, there is a CD7-CD-14-CD8 circle of split townships.  This means that CD7 can take the rest of Dearborn Heights; CD 14 takes parts of Livonia rather than Canton (for contiguity purposes), and CD8 takes a little bit more of Sumpter.  That lowers the number of splits.  A similar loop exists between 13/14/7. 



More to the point, I don't see how your map improves on my map at all.  We both have the same number of county splits (by either Muon's (nonsensical) metric, or the "standard" metric) and my map's most marginal GOP district is quite a bit safer than yours. 

I see your point about the chops in Wayne, but  your solution pushes MI-14 below 50% black VAP, and thus cannot be done. Canton is blacker than Livonia. And the three precincts lost to MI-14 in Dearborn Heights are substantially black to boot.

I see that you got you extra chop in Shiawassee (sp) by making the west end of the gray CD have clean lines in the west. That is very creative, and allows the greater efficiency of MI-05 taking out Saginaw City. What is you chop county for MI-01? Your map does not show it. Part of the problem, is that your graphics make your maps hard to read for me. I wish folks would use screen shots. In any event, I will try to rip off that aspect of your map, if I can make it work. But Shiawassee has a Dem PVI in 2008 of about 3%-4%, so it is hardly a home run. But it is certainly a single, and maybe a double.

You MI-07 or MI-08 that pokes into Wayne is a Dem lean CD, maybe weak safe Dem CD. Your gray CD is at most but lean GOP. But you make both MI-12 and MI-10 considerably more GOP than my map in compensation, it looks like. Your map is a lot uglier than mine however, and that is not totally irrelevant. Cosmetics matter, and I pay considerable attention to that. You get ugly only when you really have to. Both our maps are a mess in the Detroit metro area of course. :P

The law does mention compactness by the way, way down the list, after the other imperatives are met. So a really ugly map to get partisan advantage might be vulnerable to the presentation to the court of another map.

I am impressed dpmapper with your talent at this - very impressed. :)

Oh yes, the way Muon2 counts just isn't going to be accepted by any court. I am going to pull legal rank on Muon2 on this one. I know that if I were a judge I certainly would not accept his formula, with open season for everybody to chop into a county after the first bite, if it has one wholly contained CD. That is why I think he abandoned his only the first bite counts concept, sort of the "one bite" rule in reverse; instead of your dog getting one free bite before you are sued for negligence with the second bite, you go to jail for the first bite, and then all the rest are just great. I don't think so!  :P

Muon2 wrote this: "I would now conclude that if two discontiguous parts of a county are attached to other counties, but not to the same district then that counts as two county breaks."  Assuming the word "discontiguous" is used to allow two chops by one CD into another county in different spots as counting as but one chop, fine. If it means that if two chops into a county by two different CD's, where the chops are next to each other, counts as but one chop, that's ludicrous. That cannot possibly be what Muon1 meant. He's a lot smarter than that.

The part-Wayne CD is at 53.06% Bush '04, slightly better than McCotter's current district.  As I mentioned earlier, I suspect that the southern tier of Wayne suburbs and Monroe County are trending GOP.  Monroe's Obama percentage was -1.6 from where he was nationally, whereas for Kerry it was +.4.  Nor did Dingell do well in these places last year.  The grey CD that takes part of Washtenaw is at 54.67% Bush, though it might be trending the other way.  See post #236 for more numbers. 

 I noticed your recent tallying has been using '08 numbers, whereas way back you were working with '04 numbers - why'd you switch?  

The Bush numbers were on the Leips site, and the McCain numbers were not. But now there are all available at the Michigan Secretary of State's office, and I wanted to see the trends. It is also a good way to see what the rather hard core GOP vote is, outside of lower income whites. In the end, determining what is an acceptable PVI is a judgement call, and trends, and demographics, etc., play a part.

As an aside, I suspect the higher income precincts for example in 2012 will trend pretty heavily GOP. I don't meet many folks these days who have much good to say Obama's leadership in that department. The confidence is simply gone. It will be interesting to see how well Obama does in 2012 with the Asian vote as well.

dpmapper, I am still playing with your map (subject to a delay, as I enrich turbotax with a multiplicity of tax returns that I am saddled with generating), but it appears more and more likely that you have drawn the best map that can possibly be drawn in its overall design, if not necessarily the assigning of every precinct, although in general you are spot on there as well. Your clearly know what you are doing, and are one very smart puppy!  The geography between Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor is such, along with county populations, that the options are very limited.

Awww, that's sweet of you.  :) 

Michigan is a nice challenge - the statute makes it almost a topological exercise.  Other states are pretty simple in comparison - just find the bluest precincts and smash them together, more or less.   That's why I found it more interesting in PA to make extra conditions like "Bucks and Lancaster stay in one piece" - it puts concrete limits on the amount of ugliness tolerable. 

There was a group doing a competition here in Michigan.  I based this one roughly off of my original map here, but edited it a bit to make District 8 more competitive, and to make everything more compact, and have less county splits: https://districtbuilder.michiganredistricting.org/districtmapping/plan/313/view/

A draft plan got leaked. (http://www.detnews.com/article/20110528/POLITICS02/105280366/GOP-draft-plan-targets-Peters--Levin)

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Huh, they're going for two Oakland/Wayne districts.  I guess they'll argue that they're forced to do so by VRA considerations. 

But if you can do two such districts, why not go for 9-4-1, rather than 9-5?  Pretty conservative. 

The interesting thing about this map is that they take Battle Creek and Mark Schauer out of Walberg's district.  Smart. 

This one is solid. Other than Lansing not being in the Flint district, and I really wish they could have liberated the Pointes from being represented by some nutter from Detroit.

Which district is Ann Arbor in on that map?

The 12th (Dingell).

I gotta say, that's a solid looking map. Definitely not a dummymander.

Not a bad map. They just threw in the towel on creating a marginal seat, and didn't beef up Rogers in the 8th all that much, while making MI-01 safe. Whether it is "legal" or not is another matter. I am not going to get into that again. That was a nightmare!

Except that they aren't "forced" to by the VRA as we well know. :P  But I think ceding the Dems a seat is going to cause that most interesting law to not be parsed that closely. Who in God's green earth would want to anyway?

Pretty sure the Sander Levin district drops to about 52-53% Kerry or so, and 59% Obama. It dropped its best portions.

It lost Southfield, but picked up Pontiac, and some marginally Dem areas in Macomb. It's Dem PVI is not going to drop that much. 

Doesn't look like it; Pontiac is in the black district. Bloomfield is in the Levin district.

Or am I seeing things?

I calculated the Macomb portion with the Macomb SoS data. Problem is the normally excellent Michigan SoS website is broken.

Look again, Torie - Pontiac is in the 14th.  The parts of Macomb it picked up are in Sterling Heights, so roughly even.  If the goal is to make 9 swingier, I'd tweak the border with MI-11 a bit.  MI-11 was already quite safe and they've made it safer by adding the rest of the thumb, so you could put Mt. Clemens and other parts of SE Macomb into MI-11 quite easily.  

Yes, I was typing a recantation when I lost my work on this laptop that I hate because my computer died. What I thought was Pontiac is part of Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, and Beverly Hills, all lean to solid GOP territory. So it indeed looks like it might be about a 2-3 Dem PVI CD as you suggest. It's lean Dem, and Levin would have lost it in 2010.

The mappy is too small for my tired eyes, but this is one area of the fruited plain where I think I know almost every precinct by heart now. :P

Yes, the Macomb carve up needs some work if the GOP is going for the throat.  They apparently are not worried about all that county split sh*t that so obsessed us, and that only you totally mastered!  :P

Ideally, you jiggle things so that Levin takes the rest of Sterling Heights, and Miller in the thumb CD takes Mt. Clemens, and slices through Clinton to suck up all of Roseville. That might mean Levin needs to pick up something in Oakland, or take all of Macomb Township as well or something (taking all of Shelby would probably be too many people). You do that and you have a lean GOP CD I think.

MI-10 I assume you mean?

I believe that would force Troy into the 9th, which is a nonstarter if Knollenberg Jr. wants the McCotter district. Otherwise, the 9th picks up areas from that new 14th, which would make it more Dem, not less.

I tried drawing it in DRA to show which existing districts the new MI-09 comes from:

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It's not 100% accurate, because the precincts in Macomb County don't match up with the map, but the district is essentially the existing MI-12 less Oak Park and Southfield, plus some more of Sterling Heights from MI-10 and Royal Oak and Bloomfield Hills (plus some linking territory) from MI-09.

One little flaw in the ointment is the area I put X's over in Oakland. The three burbs plus the south end of Royal Oak where Levin actually lives are small, but totally toxic to the GOP. Ferndale for example is where BRTD would live if he lived in the Detroit metro area. Enough said.

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Peters might as well run against McCotter if this map becomes law; more of his existing district is put in McCotter's than in the new MI-09. He can just move to Troy or Birmingham.

It would be controversial for sure, but if I was the GOP, I would put the Pointes in the Levin district and move those 3 suburbs into the black district.

Especially if McCotter is vain enough to run for President. An open seat would be vulnerable with Snyder and the Republican legislature having so low approvals.

Below is the way to do it, putting aside the Ferndale, Huntington Woods, and Pleasant Ridge issue over which I have put two little white boxes to depict my displeasure at the Dem scabs appending this CD. :P

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Oh, I don't think now that I look more carefully (that map is so hard to read!), that the Levin CD has the precincts in Clawson in it, which is inconvenient. We are 8,000 folks short after taking in the last available precinct in Clinton. Oh well, some other stuff has to be moved, which I leave to others!

Ah yes, yet another "illegal" county chop, but as it is, the Pubbie map has a certain noisome aspect to it from a legal aspect, so maybe the law is only intended to apply to Dem maps, or maybe the Pubbies will modify it as necessary, or something. :P

Here we go. We just draw a "spite strip" in the shape of an "L" hugging the northern and NW boundaries of St. Clair Shores containing 1,455 residents, and voila!  Piece of cake. Nobody has written that the existing precinct lines are the way God intended them, now have they?

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And I think I see a way to get Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge and Huntington Woods into the black CD, MI-14, with Levin picking up Clawson and Birmingham, McCotter picking up Rochester, Rogers picking up territory in Oakland in McCotters NW corner, and then McCotter picking up almost all of West Bloomfield, except a spite strip to keep Pontiac hooked to MI-14.

But that means that for every move in PVI towards the Pubbies for the Levin CD, McCotter's goes in precisely the opposite direction.  So that won't happen of course. Levin will keep the terrible town trio.  So what I drew for Macomb, is the only pawn left to move I think to put the Pubbies in a better position against the Dems.

The leaked republican map looks very good.  That's how I think we should do redistricting-- avoid overreaching.  If they wanted to I bet they could have drawn a 10-4 map.

The comments by the Democrat in that article are paper thin.  Who gives a #### if Obama got 57% in Michigan.  9 Republicans were duly elected in that 57% Obama state.  The Dem areas are the areas losing population. It's just that they take the loss.  

9R 5D Michigan is a success

Granted, that is due to a previous R Gerrymander, but the way the state's demographics is also to blame.  Take out Wayne county and the state goes to like 52:47 Obama, and even then the Democrats are heavily concentrated in Flin, Ann Arbor, and Lansing.  Most of the State is like 50-55% Republican outside of the urban areas.

Well I played my favorite Farmington and Garden City tricks, and it's all better now. :)

Ya, I did an extra chop through Westland, but MI-11 had a chop to take from MI-13, and so it was taken. There is no read to be a veritable saint about these things. :P

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I should try drawing a fair Michigan map just to see how it'd go. It'd actually probably be 7:7, (well more like 6:6:2.)

Why wouldn't 6-6-2 be fair (at least from a Republican perspective, not that they would have any interest in that) in a Gore-Kerry-Obama state like Michigan?

Michigan, like much of the rest of the country, has a natural Republican redistricting advantage. The Democrats are concentrated in a few strongholds, such as Detroit, while the vast majority of the people of the state live in areas in which Republican fair better in the typical election than Democrats.

The other reality is that the GOP, currently, won all the swing seats but one, Peters' seat. So, if the current map was something like 5-5-5, the reasonable outcome would be 8-5-toss-up Republican until the next "wave" election.

Uh, the current map is a perfectly disgusting - if deceptively clean-looking, thanks to the legal constraints - gerrymander. (Not saying it's worse than the Illinois map, or the last Illinois map, or this proposed monstrosity here.)

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5 safe Democratic districts (pink, red, brown, sky blue, yellow), 5 safe Republican districts (teal, green, purple, magenta, light green), 4 swing districts (grey, blue, both light purple districts). County splits are minimized, municipalities are kept intact (except for Detroit, obviously). The only district I'm not really happy with is the grey one, but it's hard to put those counties south of Detroit anywhere logical.

It is a decent example of how to make reasonable choices that favor the Democrats [The finger into central Michigan by the UP district seems tortured, for instance].

So I drew these districts in DRA now that there's partisan data, and here's what I came up with:

MI-01 - 50-49 Obama (was 50-48 Obama)
MI-02 - 50-48 McCain (was 51-48 McCain)
MI-03 - 50-49 Obama (was 49-49 McCain)
MI-04 - 50-48 Obama (no change)
MI-05 - 63-36 Obama (was 64-35 Obama)
MI-06 - 53-45 Obama (was 54-45 Obama)
MI-07 - 51-47 Obama (was 52-46 Obama)
MI-08 - 52-46 Obama (was 53-46 Obama)
MI-09 - 58-40 Obama (was 56-43 Obama)
MI-10 - 50-48 McCain (no change)
MI-11 - 50-48 Obama (was 54-45 Obama)
MI-12 - 67-32 Obama (MI-15 was 66-33 Obama)
MI-13 - 85-14 Obama (was 85-15 Obama)
MI-14 - 79-20 Obama (was 86-14 Obama)

Looks like status quo for all the Republican districts except for McCotter's, which gets 3-4 more points Republican.

MI-09, the Levin CD, is more Dem rather than less?  Are you sure Johnny?

That's less Dem than MI-12, which it basically is. Makes sense as it drops blacks.

What is the PVI of a Flint to Lansing Connection?

it would be about 72% Obama (Assuming you also took it up to Saginaw), so D + 18 or D + 19

The previous CD numbers are for MI-09. The old MI-12 was 65-33, which is a drop of about 7%.

I did a Rep gerrymander where I kept Pontiac in CD-9, so it looked much nicer than the proposed maps. I also kept CD-9 down to 56.9-41.3 Obama, as per the DRA numbers. The only main difference is that Mcotter's district becomes 52.1-46.4 Obama. Perhaps Pontiac should have been kept in CD-9.

That makes sense. And with a few simple "fixes," the drop would be about 9% or so, which gets it down close to a somewhat marginal CD, between a 2%-5% Dem PVI CD.

So, here's the proposed map:

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It's almost exactly the same as the draft map:

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Except the 14th doesn't dip back down into Wayne County, and the 11th pulls in Birmingham.

Zoomed in for Wayne/Oakland County is available here: http://download.gannett.edgesuite.net/detnews/2011/pdf/0617congressmap.pdf

I have to admit... that map makes even me cringe, especially with the 14th District.

Got a zoomin for the rape of Grand Rapids? We all know what line Lansing is being raped on.

Here's an alternate universe map where Virg Bernero won in a landslide, sweeping the Democrats into a State Senate majority at the same time:

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MI-01 (blue) - 54-44 Obama
MI-02 (green) - 55-43 McCain
MI-03 (purple) - 49-49 Obama
MI-04 (red) - 49-49 McCain
MI-05 (yellow) - 61-37 Obama
MI-06 (teal) - 55-43 Obama
MI-07 (grey) - 50-48 Obama
MI-08 (light purple Lansing/Ann Arbor) - 61-37 Obama
MI-09 (sky blue) - 57-42 Obama
MI-10 (magenta) - 53-46 McCain
MI-11 (light green) - 62-36 Obama
MI-12 (light purple SE) - 59-39 Obama
MI-13 (pink) - 74-25 Obama, 50.2% black VAP
MI-14 (brown) - 79-20 Obama, 50.1% black VAP

The Detroit News map appears to show the city of Grand Rapids intact in proposed MI-03, with most of its immediate southern and western suburbs in proposed MI-02.

The city of Lansing proper isn't being raped.  The city is divided along county lines - as under the current map.   The overwhelming majority of the city's population and land is in Ingham County, anyway, not Eaton County.  Not dividing a county seems to trump not dividing a municipality under Michigan law.  The city of Grosse Pointe Shores appears to be split into two CDs, too, with the larger portion of that city in with Detroit and proposed MI-14 and the small portion in Macomb County in a Macomb-based district.

He's right about Lansing - that split makes sense, and is probably more legally sound than keeping the city together.  As for Grand Rapids, I don't know city boundaries, but it appears to keep the city all together from my estimation of the city lines.

How does putting Lansing in with Detroit exurbs make sense for any reason beyond purely partisan ones?

Well, it doesn't fit anywhere else.  Grand Rapids to the West, the Tri-cities/Flint to the North East, and South-central MI to the South.  Each of those areas has its own district that is a pretty good COI, so Lansing gets shafted and shoved with the extra Detroit Burbs.  Its of course drawn in a way to make it an R seat, but its not like they're just trying to spite the city.

Ummm... No? You're being a partisan hack? The Lansing metro (Ingham, Eaton, Shiawassee, Clinton) is much, much clearer community of interest than "random small cities plus parts of Lansing and some suburbs" that MI-07 consists of.

Yeah, I'm continually confounded by the tendency to divide Lansing.

Here's a map I drew at an attempt at non-gerrymandering:

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Yes the Lansing district takes in some odd and not all that well-fitting counties, but if an area doesn't have enough full population for a district there will always be some odd counties tacked on. The seat though gets all of Oakland County into two well split seats and Lansing in a clear community of interest instead of just tacking it on with some Detroit exurbs to cancel it out. It's not even an overwhelmingly Dem seat, it's 56.7% for Obama and averaged 46.3% Democratic in those other races tallied which leaned Republican, the average is about 51.5% Democratic.

No---Try it.  The way Michigan is drawn demographically, someone has to get screwed---Republicans draw the map so Republicans screw the easiest (and Safest) section.

Take a look at BRTD's map if you want to see what i mean.  Creating a Lansing-district screws over a bunch of other people by sucking up all the extra central MI population.  Its not like Putting Lansing with Livingston is any less odd than putting Livingston with Flint and Suburban Macomb with Bay City.

Except my map isn't designed to screw any specific party, unlike the Republicans' map.

Livingston may have been screwed in my map, but that's the price of having a nice logical split in Oakland, since the only options for Livingston are Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor or outer Oakland. Of those, outer Oakland is the only one that fits well with it, so it's possible to draw it as such, but it'd make it not as good elsewhere. It IS possible though to combine Lansing with Livingston, but keep the Lansing area intact instead of splitting it and tacking on that slice of Oakland which serves no discernible non-partisan purpose.

And Bay City isn't lumped in with suburban Macomb on my map. It's in the green central Michigan swing district.

And while it might look in anything but the current setup that Livingston County is getting screwed over, it's entirely unfair when you consider that Livingston isn't just Detroit exurbia, there's no doubt plenty of people who commute from there to Lansing, Flint or Ann Arbor. So it's not quite removal of a "community of interest" to put it in with the latter two. In fact probably the main reason it's so Republican is it ends up as a sort of refuge for Republicans who don't want to live in Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor but connected to there and don't want to have to commute from the Detroit suburbs.

So if you want to argue Livingston belongs with Lansing, it's possible to keep that triangle of counties that constitute the Lansing area intact, put on Livingston, and fill the remainder with part of Shiawassee County and get an almost pure toss up swing district.

Or, fill it up with Northern Oakland County with its mix of Detroit, Pontiac[?] and Flint commuters, and, you have a district with a Republican tilt.

...and which would leave Lansing in a Dem-leaning seat.

For what it's worth, here's what I did in an effort to make a community-of-interest-oriented map.

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That would be illegal under Michigan law, but is probably better than any proposed map so far, which probably shows why the obsession with county splitting is overdone. That gray seat for example is very logical, but also blatantly illegal.

You don't have to screw either. Yes, BRTD's map is equally illogical, but that does not mean there are not logical maps that can be drawn.

One Lansing area seat (the four counties plus Jackson and a couple of towns in other counties), one Livingston and outer Oakland seat (plus a bit of suburban Wayne), one Ann Arbor, suburban Wayne and Monroe seat, two Wayne black seats, two suburban Oakland-Macomb seats, one exurban Macomb and mitten-thumb seat, one Flint-Saginaw seat, one Bay City and rural areas seat, one Kalamazoo/Battle Creek/southern tier seat, one Lake Michigan coast seat (Benton Harbor-Holland-Muskegon), one Grand Rapids seat and one north-and-UP seat. It all works out nicely.

I'll finish up the map I'm working on and post it soon.

You know as much as I'd no doubt hate Livingston, it's kind of a nice location for the type of things I like, like punk/hardcore/indie shows. Detroit is one of the few major cities where the scene isn't concentrated in the city proper for obvious reasons, but rather around Ferndale. However since Oakland County still isn't "hip", most bands on tour just prefer to look at Ann Arbor. Lansing has shows too, but big concerts by mainstream bands would prefer metro Detroit for obvious reasons. So Lansing has a scene of mostly local bands, Ann Arbor gets all the small bands passing through, metro Detroit gets the big rock concerts and bigger indie bands, and Flint doesn't have much besides the occasional local show.

But imagine someone opened a venue in Livingston County. Kids from Ann Arbor could still drive to shows there, as could kids from Lansing and Flint easily. Kids from metro Detroit have a bit further drive, but not impossible.

The backfiring though is kids often hate to drive to shows (I do too, I did all the time when I lived in Mankato but I'd walk to local shows, and I almost always walk now.) Kids from Flint would be used to it and would like it, but then again others wouldn't. Kids from Ann Arbor would just rather go to shows in Ann Arbor and would be annoyed at driving as they don't often now, kids from Lansing would prefer it to Ann Arbor or near Detroit but would still prefer that shows just come to Lansing, and kids from Ferndale would rather feel like the kids from Ann Arbor. So it'd only attract a big turnout if it was a bigger band meaning someone would have to bother opening a big club there, not likely. So....well here's a reason why exurbs suck. And why local bands will play in St. Cloud and kids from St. Cloud are willing to drive to Minneapolis, but why no one has shows between Minneapolis and St. Cloud.

There's your mission in life. Turn Livingston County into the kind of place you'd like to live! You can do it!

Why would I, or anyone for that matter move TO Michigan?

But actually what I proposed for Livingston there is kind of what happened with New Brunswick due to it sitting right between NYC and Philly.

...if you are a Democrat. You have split the Democratic areas of Michigan so that Democratic areas are in the sweat spot of neither being packed or cracked [except, of course, the VRA seats in Detroit.] In do so, you are assuring that most of the Republican areas are either cracked or packed.

Don't like it. Saginaw ought to be with Bay City (especially if Bay City is with Flint!) That gray district, while logical from the outside, won't feel like it to locals if Detroit's suburbs are anything like most other similar areas in the world.

There actually is an alternative to either splitting Lansing (self-forbidding if you've got any respect for good governance at all) or drawing an additional Democratic seat. Torie explored it earlier on the incorrect data. Create a Flint-and-Lansing Dem pack. Not saying that's nice, of course, but it's probably preferable to the status quo if you're from Lansing.

Wouldn't it be easier to do a Lansing-Ann Arbor Pack?  Saginaw and Bay City are probably Too Democratic to put both in a Republican district, so the 5th is doing pretty good as is.  The current 15th on the other hand takes in plenty of only slightly D territory south of Detroit, and Washtenew county is what makes it safe D.  Hell, draw an Ann-arbor Lansing Pack and then take the 8th towards the southern 55% Obama parts of Wayne/Monroe county currently in the 15th while the 11th can then take the Republican part of Oakland county currently in the 8th.

That might be possible... but is certainly not nice or justifiable on (even hackishly motivated) CoI grounds or going to be popular in Lansing. Though Lansing is an oddball town, formerly dominated by the car industry but also with the state government and an old uni.

Also, there's the question of what you put those now weak dem areas in South Wayne (and Monroe) with instead. It'd have to be quite Republican areas to break their Dem traditions.

Two solidly Democratic black seats (one majority black VAP, the other plurality black VAP and majority black+Hispanic VAP).

One Democratic seat based on Ann Arbor and the traditionally Democratic southern Wayne suburbs and Monroe County, 62% Obama

One marginal seat containing the southern tier and Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, 52-45 Obama, would probably be Republican

One Republican-leaning seat on Lake Michigan, Benton Harbor-Holland-Muskegon, 49-49 McCain.

One Republican seat in Grand Rapids, contains the entire county plus the suburban spillover in Ottawa County and Ionia County, 47-50 McCain.

One Democratic-leaning seat in Lansing, containing the Lansing metro plus Jackson, 57-41 Obama.

One Republican seat in Livingston and the Oakland suburbs, plus part of Wayne County to balance things out, 45-52 McCain.

One Democratic seat in inner Oakland and Macomb counties, 64-34 Obama.

One Democratic-leaning marginal seat in mid-Oakland and Macomb counties, 55-43 Obama

One Republican seat in outer Macomb and the thumb, 47-50 McCain

One Democratic seat in Flint-Saginaw-Bay City (originally wanted to keep Flint separate, but this proved too unwieldy), 62-35 Obama

One Republican-leaning seat in the small cities of the upper LP (Midland, Isabella, Alpena; Alpena could be exchanged for Traverse City if desired) 51-47 Obama

One Republican-leaning seat in the UP and Traverse City, 50-48 Obama

6D-6R-2 in a state that was more Democratic than the nation is pretty generous to the Republicans, ultimately. Certainly this map does not favor the Democrats.

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That map seems to make a lot of sense, Verily, though I'd want to see the Detroit-area districts a little closer.

It makes sense if you are a Democrat since it restructures the outstate districts to eliminate a Republican seat in Western Michigan and replace it with a Democratic seat in Central Michigan.

It then maintains a 5-1_1/2 seat of seats in metro Detroit by created an outersuburban pack district to dump as many Republicans as possible. That might make sense to a Democrat.

It fails to cross Eightmile right to add Blacks to the two Detroit districts because they are underpopulated. Drawing districts that are 51% Black rather than 54%/56% might make sense if you are Democrat.


Crossing the Macomb/Oakland county line three times might make sense if you are a Democrat, but, it isn't within the rules.

Gee, you mean a non-partisanly drawn map gives more Democrat seats than a Republican gerrymander? What a shocker!


Just like the Detroit districts are Dem pack seat? It does make sense to draw a district reflecting a community of interest in the outer suburbs that contains a lot of Republicans. More so than splitting up this area to create more Republican seats and marginalize Dem ones, that might make sense to a Republican. The alternative to this is either using Livingston to screw over Lansing, or screwing over it with Flint or Ann Arbor.


...and are just as likely to elect blacks. And this would make sense to people of all political stripes when the intention is obvious to preserve county lines.


Which proves the rules aren't exactly as well-written to prevent gerrymandering as they seem to be thought. Not to mention those splits don't really help the Democrats anymore than just drawing districts within the counties do.

Thought it'd be relevant to post here: Inks won the Michigan Citizens Redistricting Competition with this map (http://michiganredistricting.org/?page_id=207).

Just goes to show the competition wasn't great. :P

His original suggestion constituted the best Democratic arrangement of districts given the constraint that the GOP holds all the outstate seats except the Fifth. So yes, the Democratic partisan map yeilds more Democratic seats than the new map.


Certainly, if you follow that logic, it would make even more sense to draw two outersurburban districts that ring the metro area, rather than one outersuburban district in outer Northwestern outskirts of Detroit. The decision to create only one outer suburban [Republican dumping district] can't be justified rationally.



Your theory doesn't make any sense. Either you partition the state along the lines of the current California map, or else, you have districts with a blending of some Republican areas and some Democratic areas. Claiming that Democratic areas are "screwed" if they are outvoted by the Republican areas is claiming that Democrats are entitled to be on the winning side of elections. That entitlement exists only in your imagination.


The basic fact is that Democrats linked Livingston with Lansing, and Pontiac  when the folks in Lansing and Pontiac outvoted ["screwed"] the folks in Livingston. The suburban areas started to grow, and they voted Republican. Now, you are bitching about the justice of linking Lansing with Livingston. Where were you a couple of decades ago?



Lowering the Black percentage is lowering the probabiity that a Black wins the seat, and, certainly the probablity that that Black nominee was the prefered candidate of the majority Blacks in the primary.


Oh, yes they are. For instance, the GOP could have placed the city of Midland in the Fifth, further stengthening the Fourth.

If you are going to cut a black seat, as was done in that map, there is no more logical community of interest district than all the black areas of Detroit put together + the 2 cities inside.

The map doesn't cut a black seat. There are two black seats.

one majority black VAP, the other plurality black VAP and majority black+Hispanic VAP




This is quite clearly retrogressing a black seat.

lolno. Not even the Supreme Court agrees with you.

Here's some pictures of that map (unfortunately their software  doesn't automatically color each district, so it's a bit harder to tell them apart):

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And a zoomed in view of the Metro-Detroit area:

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The definition of the wording is obvious, as are the numbers. But, go on drawing Democratic maps and describing them as 'fair', I won't stop you.

Is anyone else laughing at the idea of a map that crosses Oakland > Macomb 3 times being described as 'preserving county lines'?

What on earth is going on with the 13th?  From Southfield to west Detroit and Inkster, but then bypassing Farmington Hills, Romulus and Westland to drop all the way down to Grosse Ile and northeast Monroe County?!

I'm sure the contest defined the "winner" as the map with the shortest net boundries, or such.

In order to minimize the county splits further west, I had to fiddle with Wayne County from my original design, but this decreased one of my districts to around 40% for African American VAP, so I had to do a little bit of odd-shaping to get 2 majority black VAP districts.

There were several categories: compactness, encouraging competitive districts, not giving one party a huge number of probable districts, minimizing county and municipal splits.  But after those categories, the judgets picked one that they thought evenly excelled at multiple categories.

Okay, 6-6-2 in a lean-D state is totally a Democratic map.

All this Lansing talk gave me an idea.
 
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If the GOP gets super ambitious, and still feels they can get away with one extra county split with a black district going from Wayne to the north, and McCotter is retiring, then here's a 10-4, with all 10 GOP seats between 48.5 and 51.5% Obama.  

Blue Northern Michigan: 49.9-48.3 O-M (Benishek)
Lavender Midland/Bay City: 50.3-47.9 O-M (Camp)
Red Holland/Muskegon: 48.5-49.9 O-M (Huizenga)
Purple Grand Rapids: 51.3-47.0 O-M (Amash)
Teal Kalamazoo: 51.5-46.9 O-M (Upton)
Lime Green southern seat: 49.4-48.8 O-M (Walberg)
Green thumb: 51.2-46.9 O-M (open)
Bluish gray St Clair/Macomb: 51.4-46.8 O-M (Miller)
Pink Oakland County: 50.8-47.6 O-M (Knollenberg to challenge Peters)
Grey Livingston County/Livonia/southern Wayne: 51.3-47.0 O-M (Rogers)

Levin and Dingell are both drawn into the tan district which is 54% black; the brown district is 53.5% black.  The yellow Lansing/Ann Arbor seat is wide open. 

I'd like to see krazen or BigSkyBob draw a map as to what they'd consider "fair", but they'll probably just argue that the current disgusting GOP gerrymander is a fair map.

The notion that there is one objectively "fair" way to redistrict is there with Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and Bigfoot. The key difference is logic can disprove the existence of "fair redistricting," but, science can only note that no specimens of Yeti have ever been discovered. Redistricting is an inherently political process.

To repeat what I wrote dozens of times,  redistricting involves choices some of which are reasonable, and others that are egregious. In redistricting Michigan, given the current set of incumbents, maps can be drawn that make reasonable choices that result in wildly different outcomes. The winner of the contest made reasonable choices that favored the Democrats and resulted in the highest number of expected Democrats to be elected, and the Republican legislature made another series of reasonable choices that will result in the maximum number of Republicans being elected. No doubt there are reasonable maps that have results that are in between.

I haven't insulted anyone intelligence by writing maps that favor my preferred candidates while trying to pass them off as being the One and True Way to "fairly"  redistrict Michigan.

A fair map would give the Democrats 6 districts; 1 in Flint/Saginaw, 1 in Detroit, 1 in Lower Oakland/Macomb, 1 in Wayne County, 1 in Washentaw/remainder of Wayne, and perhaps 1 in central Oakland. There is no other compelling strength of Democratic votes to guarantee them a 7th seat unless you decide to exclude extremely rational choices like attacking Ingram to neighboring Livingston County as was done in Debbie Stabenow's district.

The proposed maps include curious choices to needlessly reconfigure compact districts like the 6th that nicely sit in a corner of the state. Which are of course valid choices that adhere to municipal boundaries, but do not preclude the idea of other valid choices.

A "fair" map doesn't "give" either party seats.  A fair map would make as compact of districts as possible, minimizing county and municipality splits (in that order of importance) and let the chips fall where they do.

This is the sticking point--attaching Ingham and Livingston Counties to one another is not a rational choice. That's not a comment on whether it favors either party. (It would favor the Democrats to do so if the additional population thereafter were acquired from Eaton or Shiawassee County instead of outer Oakland County.) But they are completely and totally different in all ways; the fact that they are neighbors does not make connecting them reasonable or rational or intelligible for any reasons other than partisanship.

The same, of course, is true of connecting Washtenaw and Livingston (which you hypocritically aren't advocating, of course because it always favors the Democrats) or Gennessee to Livingston (again, no more unreasonable than connecting Ingham and Livingston, but also favors the Democrats). Livingston only reasonably connects to its fellow Detroit suburbs in Oakland and/or Wayne and the extreme NE corner of Washtenaw; it shares nothing in common with its other neighbors.

You fail to understand the basic meaning of "community of interest".

so a state that hasn't voted republican since 1988 is entitled to only six democratic seats? What are you smoking?

Which is exactly what Verily did. BSB and krazen then of course nitpicked his map to death ignoring or defending far more blatant gerrymanders in the current map. Hell your map isn't too disimilar to Verily's.

Sort of. Counties are arbitrary entities created in the 19th century that frequently bear little resemblance to actual communities of interest--witness Oakland County or Macomb County or Washtenaw County for areas in the same county that have little or nothing in common. Similar can be true of municipalities, although for the most part municipalities are small enough that they have homogenous characters and it is generally a good idea to respect municipal boundaries as a result.

Demographics should be the first and foremost determinator of communities of interest and fair districts, although county and municipal lines are sometimes useful indicators of demographic transitions (or useful benchmarks where the edge of a certain demographic region is unclear--e.g., the edge of the Saginaw metro is not obvious, but the borders of Saginaw county are a good proxy).

They are also usually - but not always - important to the voters as marks of identity. I'd pretty much strike them from consideration pretty entirely only in fast growing suburban areas.

Of course it is a valid choice. The major highways such as I-96 run east-west, and the historical nature of the link sets precedent for it to be maintained. Partisanship is an obvious excuse as the seat has been held by a Democrat in recent years.

When you attach a county like Washentaw, you come up with the pyramid shaped 7th district as you did that stretches over vast areas, as well as explicitly uncompacting the 6th district to move Kalamazoo into the 7th. That is partisanship, not to mention violating the neutral standards. You simply make choices that favor the Democratic party, and that is your right, but most people don't pretend that their crap smells like perfume.

Who do you think won the Congressional vote in 2010?

No one is entitled to anything, except what you earn by winning elections.   NORTH DAKOTA hasn't voted Democrat since 1964 yet it had an all Democrat congressional delegation for 24 years?  Was that "unfair?"   No

The point is that Livingston County has far more in common with points east than with points west, north, or south. To create a Livingston-based district with the best possible community of interest would require the district to pick up portions of Oakland County.

Ingham County also has far more in common with the rest of its Metropolitan area (Eaton, Clinton Counties, possibly Shiawassee) than it does with Livingston County. To create a Lansing-based district with the best possible community of interest would require Ingham, Eaton, and Clinton to be in the same district, and that Livingston County be excluded from that district.

For the billionth time, this is not a matter of partisanship. The discussion is on creating a map that best preserves communities of interest. The only partisanship involved is when your side hails a blatant Republican gerrymander as God's gift to redistricting, and then denounces a map that preserves communities of interest as a Democratic gerrymander.

You are, um, clearly not from Michigan.

If anybody cares, this press release has a few more details on my plan (how it did compared to the others, and the following demographic breakdowns): http://drawthelinemidwest.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MCRC-competition-winner-release-final.pdf

Dist. Tot Pop Compactness Black VAP His. VAP Dem PI Rep PI
1 706,811 62.53% 1.56% 1.02% 43.66% 56.34%
2 706,217 80.45% 4.67% 4.49% 37.97% 62.03%
3 705,620 77.74% 8.89% 6.93% 38.66% 61.34%
4 706,965 67.13% 6.50% 3.55% 45.91% 54.09%
5 708,837 73.66% 12.13% 2.43% 51.20% 48.80%
6 708,398 84.40% 8.25% 4.10% 44.28% 55.72%
7 704,209 72.64% 8.12% 4.09% 45.78% 54.22%
8 707,807 71.89% 3.54% 2.54% 36.93% 63.07%
9 707,014 67.76% 9.83% 2.86% 45.99% 54.01%
10 703,039 71.38% 7.07% 1.94% 45.75% 54.25%
11 705,564 59.55% 12.53% 2.52% 47.64% 52.36%
12 704,073 56.68% 51.92% 6.85% 73.87% 26.13%
13 705,391 41.23% 53.04% 2.66% 70.94% 29.06%
14 703,695 73.57% 8.93% 3.51% 52.30% 47.70%

Of course, having won an election who wouldn't horribly mess up the map so as to make sure that their opponents won't recover too soon. That's all popular mandates should be used for.

It is a very natural extension of the Michigan transit corridors. The Stabenow district used to extend into Gennessee County. To protect the integrity of the Flint district, Michigan mappers properly removed the 8th from Gennessee altogether and added Clinton County.

Any natural Michigan mapping scheme will begin in the Detroit Region, and after the Detroit 2 and Oakland 2 districts are drawn, only limited population remained in Oakland County, and Livingston County. The natural extension from here based on television and transit corridors is of course west.

Is your map a legit community of interest as it swoops and swerves across numerous counties to rack up far away GOP voters? Of course not! To drive from Howell to Port Huron along the fastest route you would cross through a whopping 4 other Congressional districts before reaching your destination on the far other side of the district.

The other proposed maps have the same types of choices, such as uncompacting the square shaped 6th district to add Battle Creek. The Judge-written Apol standards were written as such knowing that some would tend to abuse curious 'community of interests' ideas and thus instead adhered to defined geographical boundaries. They were not considered 'unfair' until 1 party started losing.

That is a point you wish to make. The question is how much importance should one place on your point. The answer seems to be, "Not much!"

Historically, Democratic legislators linked Livingston County with Lansing. This linking was perfectly acceptable to Democrats when Lansing and Pontiac outvoted Livingston. Population growth in Livingston changed that equation, and, now, Democrats want to reconsider their previous pairing. Too bad!

The reality is that Michigan doesn't consist of fifteen distinct "communities of interest" that are equally populated. Nor, does it consist of fourteen such equally populated districts, today. The reality is that redistricting will create districts that contain districts that include parts of more that one COI and/or cross lines of COI, whatever your alleged COI map of Michigan is.

The reality is that COI is a highly subjective term that is ripe for abuse. The reality is that the county next to yours is more likely to be similiar than a county two away. It isn't a neet little map with well defined lines. It is a gradiate.

It is particularly egregious that you are trying to split a city from a county that includes its suburbs for reasons of "COI." That's outright ridiculous.




The topic is "Michigan Congressional redistricting" no matter how much you may wish to restrict the conversation to a particular topic that you subjectively consider the most favorable to your position.

Geographical boundries are fixed. Notions of "communities of interests" are highly subjective and subject to abuse. Excellent observation!

There is no question Michigan's current map is gerrymandered. Under the 1990s plan, Gore won 9 CD's to Bush's 7. Under the 2000s plan, Gore would have won 5 CD's to Bush's 10.

Anyone have the Kerry-Bush numbers for the new CD's? Obama-McCain isn't really a good measure in Michigan.

Alternately, those same facts suggest that the apportionment in the 1990's was gerrymandered to favor the Democrats, while the current map accurately reflects the fact that most of Michigan leans slightly Republican.

Yes, the Republican-controlled Senate and John Engler gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats...

And until 2010, the state didn't really lean Republican.  We elect Republicans to some offices, but as a whole, the state tends to lean Democratic.  This does change from district to district though.

So, I've done a Republican gerrymander in the past.  I decided to do a Democratic gerrymander:

It would've been easier if I didn't have to obey the VRA - I probably could've made 9 Democratic districts instead of just 8.

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That was a cleaned up version.  Originally, I had District 6 wrapping around District 3, but realized that I could just cut them off near Grand Rapids.  So this one is from my original map:

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District      Obama   McCain   Dem   Rep
1      56.1%   42.2%   50.7%   49.3%
2      49.6%   48.8%   40.9%   59.1%
3      41.5%   56.8%   31.8%   68.2%
4      63.7%   34.8%   52.4%   47.6%
5      51.8%   46.4%   43.0%   56.1%
6      45.6%   52.7%   36.3%   63.7%
7      60.7%   37.7%   50.8%   49.2%
8      48.9%   49.3%   41.5%   58.5%
9      60.6%   37.7%   52.1%   47.9%
10      47.8%   50.6%   38.2%   61.8%
11      61.6%   36.8%   50.9%   49.1%
12      60.8%   37.4%   53.3%   46.7%
13      76.5%   22.6%   65.3%   34.7%   50.1% VAP
14      73.9%   24.9%   64.5%   35.5%   50.6% VAP

*Dem/Rep calcualted as an average of the Gubernatorial, AG, and SoS 2006 results (Dave's Index, not my own).  They're probably slightly Republican biased, as the AG and SoS have been good races for Republicans in recent years.

District 8 is very far from continuous.

All of the districts are contiguous.  Obviously it's not a legal map, but I did obey contiguity and VRA laws.

How is it continuous? It's the non-coastal upper half of the lower peninsula plus a chunk of the thumb which is surrounded by District 5.

Again, my claim isn't that Michigan, as a whole, leans Republican. The claim I made is that Michigan consists of the few areas with heavy concentration of Democrats, and the rest that leans Republican. That is, Democrats are "packed," while Republicans aren't.

That's how most states are though.  Just because the Republican-leaning land mass is greater than the land mass of the Democrat-leaning areas doesn't mean you can gerrymander the crap out of the state to "reflect" this.

Oops!  I was thinking those were 2 separate districts.  I'm surprised the softwre didn't catch that.  Fixing those now!

All fied - although you may have to refresh to get rid of any cached images.  Now that that's fixed, District 5 doesn't look quite so bad wacky either.  Thanks for cathching that, BRTD! :)

LOL at that coastal district. Very creative.

Haha, I love the grey district ;D

What do I see? The Dem map.

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_documents/mich_redistricting.pdf

Livingston County paired with Lansing.

Oakland County cut 5 ways.

Not even 1 district entirely within Wayne County.

Oakland to Macomb double cross.

What map is that?

Ah, I missed the headline. This is the Democratic proposed map for Michigan Congressional redistricting.

That's almost as bad as the Republican map. In fact, in some places, it's worse.

It is a joke map, and appears as illegal as hell. But I guess they wanted to make Levin feel good or something.

Yeah, that's a fail.  They seem to have copied literally all of the outstate regions from the Republican map.  Classy.

Well, hey, underscores why MI Dems are often just as bad as MI Reps.  I'm glad I voted Green for Governor :P

What's going on their in their MI-12 and MI-15?  Did they just decide to use two identical colors next to each other?

There's is at least athsetically better.

No, there is no MI-15.

So they just put the number 15 on the maps for funsies?  Ooookay.

Now that McCotter is definitely going for Pres I revisited this and did a bit of rejiggering (such as finding a way to give the Flint district less of upper Oakland and more of Farmington Hills, and putting the GOP parts of Dearborn into the grey district).  The basic map is still there but the new percentages are

Blue Northern Michigan: 50.1 Obama (Benishek)
Lavender Midland/Bay City: 50.1 Obama (Camp)
Red Holland/Muskegon: 50.2 Obama (Huizenga)
Purple Grand Rapids: 50.6 Obama (Amash)
Teal Kalamazoo: 50.8 Obama (Upton)
Lime Green southern seat: 49.4 Obama (Walberg)
Green thumb: 51.2 Obama (open)
Bluish gray St Clair/Macomb: 51.0 Obama (Miller)
Pink Oakland County: 50.7 Obama (Knollenberg to challenge Peters/Levin)
Grey Livingston County/Livonia/southern Wayne: 50.8 Obama (Rogers, possibly Dingell?)

So they're all +2 or +3 R in PVI, not that ugly, almost-minimal county splits, and, apart from the red district, the lime green district, and (especially) the thumb district, pretty good as far as COIs go.  

Hopefully this might be the end of Conyers.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59589.html

Combine that with a political class starting to tire of having the same representative for decades and a bevy of talent waiting in the wings, Democratic strategists say, and you’ve got the makings of a serious primary challenge.

“He can’t win that seat,” longtime Detroit Democratic consultant Adolph Mongo said.

“The question is still out if he’s even going to run in that new district,” said Democratic strategist Steve Hood.




I suppose he can just take the threatening route.


http://www.freep.com/article/20110622/NEWS06/110622011/With-maps-State-Senate-panel-approves-revamped-Michigan-districts

“The map you submitted is causing warfare in the city of Detroit,” said state Sen. Virgil Smith, D-Detroit.

I don't know... I think I'd rather have Conyers than Fieger.  *shudder*

Conyers isn't going anywhere, he and Clarke will likely switch seats. Not that it matters much anyway, the seat still won't go Republican, so.....

remind me to never hire the pollster who thinks Geoffrey Fieger could win a Congressional seat

Yet another awesome map dpmapper, and I see you have mastered the Garden City trick.  :)  But per my eyes, I don't see any of Dearborn in the gray CD.  Is the county split count as low as your effort before the GOP map came out that seemed to not be as paranoid about it as we were?

That's because I didn't post the updated map.  Here's a pic of it:

()

No touch-point contiguity is needed for the Flint-Pontiac connection, even though it kind of looks that way.  There is one more county split between Wayne and Monroe/Oakland than is necessary, as in the real map. 

Has McCotter committed not to run for his House seat even if his POTUS campaign stalls? 

It surely matters to the people of the ghettos of Detroit to have effective representation.

He has a challenger. Of course if they foreclose his home, Conyers might not even live in the state...

http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/07/john_conyers_to_face_challenge.html

U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit), dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, will face a primary challenge from Sen. Bert Johnson (D-Highland Park), MIRS reports.