Talk Elections

With a Republican Governor and Republican legislature, Republicans have an opportunity to create a gerrymandered map. However, several leading Republicans claim they are committed to a bi-partisan map, which isn't sitting too well with some, including myself. 10 years ago, Democrats gave us a terrible map to work with on the state level, and they completely ignored geographic similarities when creating the US House Districts. As long as Republicans return things to normal, we're looking at 6-7 GOP seats. The best possibility for Democrats right now is 3 solid seats, with 2 toss-ups.

It'll be interesting to see how this develops.

Here's my first map of Indiana. I don't have Microsoft Paint, so I have to use another application, in which Indiana doesn't quite fit. Here are my three maps, one of Indianapolis.

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On Southern Indiana, I tried to tie geographically similar regions together, making it similar to before 2000 redistricting. Evansville and Terre Haute are back to being in seperate districts.

Indianapolis is split up into four districts. I can't honestly say how this would play out, but it could hypothetically make 2-3 competitive districts.

The Gary District would be very strong Democrat. Teal, Yellow, Green, bright Blue, and light Purple all could potentially become competitive. Grey, Purple, and Red are Republican districts.

This would make the Indiana composition 5-3-1, Republican-Toss Up-Democratic.

You complain about the Democrats ignoring basic geography when they drew the maps a decade ago, and then you propose that disgusting thing. Hilarious.

I really only know about Southern Indiana. I honestly couldn't tell you about the Northern part, because I've never been up there. I was referring to the South, where I live. Terre Haute and Evansville have little in common. Geographically, at least the grey, bright blue, and soft purple are an improvement.

I posted some maps on the Maps We Need to See! thread I'll repost over here; they're my idea of how one could make the map more Republican, but not necessarily how it would be done. One thing you learn quite quickly is that South Bend can not be thrown into the Gary district, there are just too many people living in that corner of the state. So it's all about making the 2nd more Republican while still having it based in South Bend.

I think his main point was about your ripping apart of the Indianapolis metro, which is a really obvious gerrymander.

Here's my map of Indiana. It destroys Donnelly's district and puts him into a district with Stutzman. It also prevents a Baron Hill comeback by combining Bloomington with Indianapolis exurbs instead of the southern edge of the state. Pence and Young switch district numbers (Pence, who lives in Bartholomew County, is now in IN-09, and Young, who lives in Monroe County, is now in IN-06), and IN-03 is an open but very GOP seat. Ellsworth's district is mostly unchanged, so he maybe could mount a comeback, but otherwise I think this is what the Indiana GOP will do.

I'm assuming the white suburbs in Lake County (in IN-04) are mostly marginal or GOP-leaning; the map might need some modification if they are not.

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I think your division of Lake is fine, but in LaPorte the Westville area tends to go Dem IIRC.

Yes, Lake County south of Mordor on the Lake, actually has some pretty nice towns. I have been to a couple.  I saw a dermatologist down there for some reason, when I lived in Chicago. Along the lake it does really look like Mordor at night, with the flames from the steel mills illuminating the sky. I lost a wallet something, and some good Samaritan picked it up in the parking lot of a steel mill, and gave it to a security guy who called me, and though the cash was gone, the credit cards, and driver's license were still in it, so down I went to pick it up. Oh dear, I will never forget my little journey through the slag heaps. It was a long way from the ivory tower zone where I lived - a very long way, as it were.

Upper Lake County seemed like a great place when I drove through it. I remember billboards with prominent ads for huge adult sex stores and strip clubs. I believe Indiana is horrible for prudish strip club regulation, but Lake also strikes me as the type of place where the clubs just ignore the law and it goes unenforced. I'm sure opebo would dig it greatly as there are probably tons of cheap hookers with the very high priced escorts sticking to Chicago and the suburbs there (then again there is the quality vs. cost issue...)

That first map looks very French with all the rurban districts.

Did you invent that word?

Hashemite's definitely used it before me.

It's a fairly obscure Canadian term, I think. Dates from the early 1990s or so, maybe earlier? I've been using it since I discovered it as it's so perfect.

Ideas I would suggest :
SPLIT INDIANAPOLIS not in two but in four (destroy Carson's district)
Force Donnelly into a primary with Vislowsky (bye bye either one. Most likely Silent Joe)
Create a new district between Stutzman and Vislowsky centered around South Bend in the north and Kokomo in the South (New IN-2 Rep by Jackie Walorski)
Out of the Indy Split Pence, Burton, Rokita, and Young all rep part of Indy

So the delegation would look kinda like this

1.Safe Dem (Vislowsky)
2.Likely GOP (Walorski)
3.Safe GOP (Stutzman)
4.Safe GOP (Rokita)
5.Safe GOP (Burton)
6.Safe GOP (Pence)
7.Toss Up (Scott)
8.Lean GOP (Bucshon)
9.Likely GOP (Young)

Very dangerous and as has been pointed out before it would make IN at risk to be represented by 6 or 7 Dems in the right environment like in 1974 (which followed a similar redistricting plan in 1971).

But how could the GOP stick it to the Dems like they did us in 2000 when they eliminated the old tenth? This may be the best way.  Is there a better way?

If I were the GOP in Indiana, I'd focus all my efforts on getting rid of Donnelly and making IN-8 and IN-9 less problematic during Dem waves.  The former can be done pretty easily, the latter is probably impossible, to a certain extent, given Indiana's characteristic weirdness, but it certainly wouldn't hurt a try.  Playing to try and get rid of Carson and Visclosky is probably a recipe for trouble.

I agree; there is a risk to a greedy map. A wave can then create a set of opposite party incumbents that can't be ousted in a later normal year despite the PVI. Given the sucess this year to get to 6-3 I think anything more than a 7-2 map is overreaching. The GOP is better served to lock in its gains for the decade especially in the south. Making one Dem district in play in the north is then a reasonable move on their part.

Yes, Indiana swings too much for ambitious gerrymandering to be worthwhile. Though wrt IN-9, removing Monroe county ought to solidify the district in all but a catastrophic year.

So my plan to get rid of silent Joe is ok. Kinda like this.... The Dems gerrymander Kokomo. So we undo that and gerrymander Granger into the first. Solidify the new 2nd as a safe GOP seat for Jackie Walorski  and leave it at that.

Sorry you folks don't share my sentiment of knocking 2 Democrats out. But those two are bad representatives and must be reapportioned out of office post haste.

We don't swing that badly. Except 2008 we have been solidly GOP since the 1960's

I'm leaving  Visclosky in a better spot. My targets are Carson and silent Joe and I think you can knock both out without getting greedy.

In 1981, Republicans passed a tough gerrymander to undo the Dems 6-5 advantage.  They eliminated the old 2nd, made the current 5th much more Republican by moving it out of Indy, strengethened the 8th, and made the current 6th more GOP to go after the Dem incumbent (Phil Sharp).  Under those lines, Dem held 7 of 9 seats after 1990, having captured the current 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 8th during the decade while holding the current 6th and 9th.

Here's a map I did of Indiana.

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The Indianapolis district is pretty much the same as it was last time. The blue district takes in South Bend. The other seven districts are intended to be fairly Republican (i.e. around 53-55% for McCain). I split Bloomington between the 8th and 9th districts, and ran both of them up to the uber-Republican Indy suburbs. Aside from the 8th, the map even looks fairly decent.

Yes, taking rural areas that bounce around some, and appending them to reliable GOP suburban and exurban areas is a very good strategy. And that is why Carson's CD needs to be left alone. All those Indianapolis suburbs and exurbs are needed to beef up the GOP districts. The trick as always is to pack as many Dems as possible into the Carson CD.

Create a safe 7-2 GOP map. Between Gary in the north and Indianapolis, It would be very foolish not to create two packed Dem seats. Whatever is Dem and can't be packed into the first or seventh should be peeled like a banana with the most Dem pieces being placed in districts with uber Republican Indy suburbs and exurbs to neutralize them. Similar to what JL did. Going 10 years with a 7-2 delegation, "sticks it to them" in my book. Also, whatever happened in 2000, would hardly count as being "screwed". CA 1981 and TX 2003 is getting screwed. The really ambitious ILL plans that kill 4 or 5 Republicans this time around is getting screwed. Its pretty hard to argue that you guys got screwed when the map produced a 6-3 delegation in 2002, 7-2 in 2004 and 6-3 again (almost 7-2) in 2010. Thats 3/5 elections this past decade. And when you consider that the GOP won 6/10 seats in 2000 and 6/9 in 2002, at face value you would think the Republicans had been in charge. ;)

Also remember neither the first or seventh are VRA protected. When we lost our tenth the Dems also divided Kokomo from it's more Republican historical district mates. So we can carve Indy if we want to. That is if Gov Daniels allows.

I think you may find that a few more people live in Indianapolis than Kokomo.

I am aware of that. That's why it Indy must be split in four

Getting greedy will backfire. It's been mentioned more than once on this thread that dividing Indianapolis did nothing to help Republicans.

You do know that had the GOP had redistricting control in 2001, Indy would've got split up drastically instead of the monstrosity of a map we have now.

Indy needs a packed district not a split. Putting that many Dems into the surronding districts could mean a delegation with 5 or 6 Brad Ellsworths and Joe Donnelly's.

Ok but is there any way to make the "Indy" District to where it could be won by a Republican?

Yes.  Get rid of the black people.

I think there are enough conservative blacks to maybe toss it up.

There are many blacks with conservative views, but they never vote Republican and I know plenty of people like that. Putting areas of Indianapolis that vote reflexively in IN-8 and IN-9 would certainly weaken them.

It turns out that in the existing Indianapolis CD (IN-07), there are some McCain precincts, or some marginal ones. They have been removed to max the Dem pack in Marion County. So that enables IN-07 to pick up Bloomington, which is a very beautiful thing indeed.

IN-01 is of course a max Dem pack too, per Torie SOP. For South Bend, I just picked up all the precincts that had a significant black percentage as a proxy for finding the Dems (along of course with picking up the precincts immediately around Notre Dame University), rather than look each precinct up.

For Marion County (and Lake County along the edges of IN-01, it as another precinct by precinct job. There is no other substitute for doing that, when exploring what are the possibilities are. Indeed, for Marion County, it was only by doing that, and culling out acceptable precincts to put in a Pubbie CD, that I was able to pack in Bloomington, finding of course the lightly populated precincts to get down there. Interestingly, except to the east in Marion County, and one prong to the north (probably the paths of black expansion), the existing map from 10 years ago, is still pretty good as a dividing line between where the Pubbies are, and the Dems - good but far from "perfect."

If this map were adopted, there will be next to zero suspense as to which party will win which CD's in Indiana for the next ten years. And except for the minor exception of the gold and yellow CD's, I made everything less erose, and respected county boundaries, and was just really a good boy and civic minded citizen all around. Perhaps after PA, I got my fill of erosity - for the moment. :P And there you have it.

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Joe Donnelly is playing the only card he has; the "I'm going to run for governor if you don't give me a district" card.

It worked for Sherrod Brown 10 years ago.

It won't work this time. He's done.

Getting rid of Bloomington will remove any problems for the GOP in IN-9.  But what has been done about the bloody eighth?  The rest of the map is obviously very good.

Certainly you could cover your tracks a little better by putting the South Indy precincts in CD6 instead of that green monster?

No, that screws up the map elsewhere, and there is a certain elegance in IN-05 taking in the inner suburbs of Indianapolis, and some of what used to be suburbs in Marion County.  It may be that IN-06 could be bounced out of its few precincts in east Marion County, just to complete the thought. Would that make you happier?

Well Sam old chap, you don't miss much do you?  Are you a lawyer or something?

The stats are below, and yes, IN-08 having now done the estimated calcs, is about a Pubbie point short of my hopes and dreams. Sure, it is a 52.28% McCain CD, up about 30 basis points, and probably around a 56.5% Bush 2004 CD, and that more than meets my standards. But yes, a law and order Tory Dem sheriff from Evansville, might be able to take down an eccentric and ineffectual incumbent with certain odd religious quirks, but surely that is unlikely right?  :P

And IN-04 does have a few Pubbies to spare. But to ship them down south, would require IN-04 having to pick up some carefully selected precincts in Vigo County (Terre Haute - by the way did you know Terre Haute had a higher population in 1900 than now?), with IN-08 getting in exchange some precincts in Morgan County (leaving a strand so CD-04 can get down and pick up some marginal precincts in Monroe County, unless we do a more extension redraw, and CD-08 also picks up west Monroe County).  Whether the Pubbies really want to do that, is a close question I would think. How strong is the new Pubbie in IN-08?  Surely he is better than the H man was back when no?

What do you think the Pubbie preference would be Sam? Incumbents don't like wading into strange new territory, particularly urban territory, unless they are told that they have to, for the good of the "cause." That is one thing of which our mappers here need to take more cognizance, IMO. Try to keep the CD's in general as close as possible to what they were before for incumbents that you are trying to protect, absent more compelling considerations. That is why in my maps now, I use the "Old CD" button, and then get just the right color depth, so one can see in each CD what territory is new, and what is more familiar to it (based on color shading variations). It is an important consideration. And the first thing I do, is have Dave Bradlee's utility map display for me the old CD's, and then I adjust those.

I guess I will put up an alternative map in due course, but it will take looking up precincts in Vigo County. Boo!  :(

By the way, I wonder where the incumbent in IN-04 lives. Does anyone know off hand? That CD moved around enough, that he may have been accidentally excised from his CD.

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Yes.
One of the worst declined cities that rarely if ever gets mentioned anywhere is Saint Joseph, Missouri, by the by.

And I suppose I'll have to do it myself to see what the problem with my suggested amendation is.

Yes, St. Joseph saw its heyday when the Pony Express was in full swing, and has been in decline ever since, basically. :)

Good luck with your map, Lewis. I look forward to reviewing it. If you want me to email to you my data file, I would be happy to do so, so you can work from it, assuming you don't think my map in general is a piece of trash (from the Pubbie perspective obviously; this is not a civics exercise). :)

Or you could just tell me how much rural territory the district would have to take in instead and what that would do to the partisan breakdowns. :P

How much does it screw up the map/PVI to shift some counties south of Ft Wayne to CD5 in exchange for some of the south suburbs of Indy to CD 6?

I will blank out the precincts that are in IN-05 for you in south Marion, and tell you what the population number is for that area. How about that?  My guess is that the precincts are about 55-45 McCain, but that is just a guess. I was focusing on finding Pubbie acceptable  precincts inside IN-07, or unacceptable Dem precincts outside, and not so much just how Pubbie this south sector of IN-05 actually was, after I had completed my handiwork.

Young lives in Bloomington, Torie. You've cut him out of his district and given it to Pence.

CD-06 does not impinge on Monroe County. Did you mean to say something else Verily?

It would make IN-03 more Pubbie, and way over Pubbied, and IN-06 more Dem. Thus I deliberately avoided that. The three counties south of Ft. Wayne (Allen County) are heavily Pubbie, like 62% McCain, while the south Marion County precincts are more like 55% McCain as a guess, although I am not sure. It could be a bit plus or minus from that. So we would be going backwards, and to me that makes no sense because we want a third CD to wander in to Marion County.  IN-06 has a bit of work to do as it is, neutralizing some Dem areas. McCain only got about 53% in the old IN-06, and the areas it lost to IN-09 are pretty heavily Pubbie, and even though it got some Pubbie east Indianapolis exurbs, they are not the prime Pubbie areas, so I don't think IN-06 got any more Pubbie with its new lines.

Can't you throw Vigo into the 4th and compensate by throwing Tippecanoe into the 2nd?

OK, Lewis, the south Marion County salient of IN-05, plus its few connector precincts in Hancock County (IN-06 does not impinge at all into Marion County at present; my bad, I mixed up which row of townships was the boundary of Marion), has 111,976 people in it. Good luck Lewis!  :)

Actually, it's not.  I realize that the 1900 census figure is 103K and it's now at 76K, but there is substantial evidence that city organizers duped the census takers into massively overestimating the 1900 figure.  

Unfortunately the original article that I read this in has disappeared from its original site.  Best copy you can get is here: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-21334536.html

Torie, where did you get precinct data for Indiana?  

I had to go to each county, and look at the precinct data, which in Indiana have all offices listed for each precinct, not in tabular form, so then I need to hit the find button a lot, to get the POTUS race data, and find the precincts or townships that were of interest to me, and then bold the precincts I wanted in or out on a spreadsheet, and then have a triple split screen, and go precinct by precinct, looking at a precinct map, the returns for that precinct, and the Dave Bradlee application all at once. And for Marion, the precinct numbers did not match, and some were combined, so I need to cross match by visual shape.  Sometimes, a whole township or most of it, or city, was mostly good or bad, and then I just shoved the whole darn thing into one CD or the other, unless there was one or two outlier precincts that I wanted in or out, and then I needed to find where they were exactly. Oh, and then I needed to convert my excel data into columns from rows in a couple of counties, after the copy and paste, and it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to do that, using the sort data feature on excel and a couple of other strategic copy and pastes. I don't think you want to do that, do you?  :)

And that is why I try to avoid that if I can, if I have a good proxy, like black percentages in South Bend.

And why did you guys split Howard County? You center a district around Howard County not split it. In a GOP favored map you don't split a major GOP county as mine is. Put Granger in the new 1st but South Bend/Elkhart/Kokomo is the central population centers for a new second.

I do agree Donnelly is stick a fork in him he's done.

OK, here is the map that I think shifts one Pubbie point from IN-04 to IN-08, plus or minus maybe 40 basis points. I can't find any precinct data for Vigo County, other than the 2010 Coats-Ellsworth Senate race, so I had to use that to generate inferential data, and then I decided to not split Morgan County at all, and gave CD-08 close to half of Vigo County, and kind of assumed that the additional chunk was about even between Coats and Ellsworth, as the prior chunk was, and I still have not sorted out the data mess in Monroe County (its website is my next pit stop), and I saw what taking in most of Vigo did to IN-04 before dealing with the cut out of Morgan, and with Monroe at all (a drop of two Pubbie points from 56.5% McCain to 54.5% McCain), and decided that that was too much, so abandoned splitting Morgan, and gave IN-08 a larger chunk of Vigo. (There are more people in the Monroe County handful of precincts than I thought in part.)

Oh, and I also moved tiny but heavily GOP Union County over to IN-06 from IN-09.  It probably beefs up IN-06 by maybe 10-15 basis points or so, and makes the map look prettier. I also shifted two or three other precincts to make things look prettier, and kid rid of a couple of one precinct county splits.

So, I think this map is getting close to being in final form, meaning that it becomes the 4th state of the quartet that I have done so far. I do need to check more thoroughly the stats on IN-06 just to make sure I have not made it more than just a smidgen more Dem, if that. I don't think I have, but in this case an educated guess just won't cut it.

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Would Pence be happy being drawn into the 9th? He lives in Columbus (Bartholomew County).

I vote for this map:

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The yellow district is 51% black. :)

I'm sure the Republicans could win most of the rest of the seats, though I don't have evidence of that. I tried not to split any counties other than the ones the yellow district goes through.

He probably won't care, given the likelihood that he's running for governor...

Nonsense. Your CD9 needs to add a single-precinct-wide connector along the river into half of Evansville ASAP.

In general, I only make Dem seats an erose mess - call them the Torie yellow and gold seats. So far I have two in Indiana, four in Pennsylvania ( ran out of yellow shades for that state), and one that comes close in Michigan (MI-05) :P

And if you really want to get IN-08 (the dark green CD) all Pubbied up, the map below is the way to do it. :P  What do you all think? The tricky part of this map was keeping Young's home in Bloomington still in his IN-09 (the blue) CD.  :)  And yes one huge university precinct (about 6,000 in population) in IN-08 that it now needs to traverse, will have to be redrawn to keep it out of the CD.

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I think this map is now in final form.

In this iteration, I gave IN-08 from IN-09 very marginally GOP Crawford County, in exchange for IN-09 picking up some very marginally Dem territory in Monroe County from IN-08. It only picked up 5 basis points for IN-08, but made the map less erose, so I went for it. IN-07 will need more people when the intra county census figures come in for Marion County, and if IN-08 ends up needing to shed a few from the intra county shifts in Vigo County, IN-08 might pick up another 15 GOP basis points, and if IN-09 needs to pick up a few folks from the intra county figures in Johnson, IN-08 might pick up another few GOP basis points, and get up to perhaps McCain 53.1% or so as a guess.  Meanwhile,  IN-02 will get about 25-50 basis points more GOP, when the intra county census population numbers come in from Lake, LaPorte, Porter and St. Joseph Counties, while IN-05 may get close to a full point more GOP, as IN-07 gets more Dem, all due to Marion County action. We shall see.

Come to think of it, one way to get perhaps that extra Pubbie point, or some of it, in IN-05 (which does not need it), down to IN-08 (which does, along perhaps with IN-04 maybe), is for IN-04 to cut into IN-05 in NW Marion County above the IN-07 zone, to drain IN-05 of excess population, or some of it, IN-08 then cutting into heavily GOP Morgan County to offset what IN-04 gained in NW Marion, and IN-07 then picking up the population it needs from about 5 pretty large and fairly heavily Dem precincts in Monroe County. So this game would be pursued to the extent necessary to excise from IN-08 and into the IN-07 Dem sink its few problem precincts in Monroe County. This exercise would perhaps shove up the numbers I speculated about above, up by another 50-75 basis points or so, with a bit of that going to IN-04 perhaps.

Any comments are welcome.

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That doesn't guarantee Donnelly's defeat, and it does probably guarantee that the 8th will flip back as soon as there's another strong Democratic year. It's still the Bloody Eight after all.

No, it doesn't as to Donnelly (although Donnelly would have lost in 2010 in his newly redrawn CD by about a 57-43 margin, in yes, a GOP wave year, particularly in this part of the country), but the odds I think are pretty heavily against him.  As to the 8th, the 8th only flipped before due to a confluence of a Dem trend year, weak incumbent and ideally situated challenger.  Now the 8th is another point farther into the GOP zone.  So it is going to be tough for another Tory Dem sheriff type from Evansville to take out Larry Buschon (a heart surgeon, and the voters just love MD's, yes they do - unlike what they think of that peculiar species of pond scum commonly referred
to as lawyers :) ).

In any event, this map I think is the absolutely best that can be done for the GOP (every precinct in the critical zones was carefully massaged), without going nutter, and giving folks new districts, and all sorts of other crazy stuff that will no happen.

Is there no way your 9th can swap some Republican territory with the 8th? 56% McCain seems unnecessarily high for the former.

Well you could do the map below, giving IN-09 Perry County, with IN-09 getting most of Washington County in exchange, but the lines become more erose.  IN-08 gets more GOP by about 65 basis points, moving from  McCain 52.87% to McCain 53.52%. Do you think it is worth doing that? Everything in life is a balancing test.

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This map reflects the updated (although not final) intra county population figures for Indiana. The updated figures caused the Dems to lose ground in all of the GOP friendly CD's except for IN-02, which moved 27 basis points towards the Dems primarily due to having to take in about 9,500 evenly divided voters as between Obama and McCain in northern Tippecanoe County, and IN-03, which stayed the same.

The action was mostly generated by the old city of Indianapolis (prior to merging with the county of Marion), suffering rather drastic population losses as compared to the old suburban ring of Marion County. As a consequence, IN-07 now sucks up most of Monroe County, and all those university affiliated Dems - almost all of them.

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Uh, no. That's merely why Hostettler lost by 22 points.
Incidentally, in your map a combination of strong Dem year and geographic polarization might flip the 4th.

Anything can flip, but one can't do much about CD's with a GOP PVI way up there if they turn. IN-04 has a 2008 GOP PVI of over 7, and its 2004 PVI is up there so high, that it is barely in earth's atmosphere. What do you mean by "geographic polarization" in this context Lewis?

As to the H man, well I said that he was flawed, but no, I didn't know that he tanked as badly as he did. If Indianapolis loses more folks in the next 10 years, maybe I will take the IN-07 down to Evansville next time. IN-07 to Evansville, and PA-14 to Sharon is my motto. :P

Your fourth has partisan Republican suburbs where the (one term) Rep is from, and more rural/smalltown areas that are perhaps not as dependable, including the cities of Terre Haute and Lafayette. Terre Haute's probably the most democratic place in there, without being overwhelmingly Democrat, and has no history of being "represented" by the Indy suburbs.

Mind you. I should have given more consideration to how very well Obama did in Indiana before speaking.

Are you going to be updating this with the actual census count numbers? Your first is about 7000 people short (meaning you can screw Donnelly a little further), didn't check anywhere else.

The Bradlee utility now has the actual census numbers?

Addendum: I opened it up with my map, and the numbers did not change. What are you using?

If you have a saved map, it will open up with whatever numbers you were using before. You'd have to redo it to update it with the 2010 census numbers.

I was afraid that you were going to say that. I have already redrawn that map about 10 f'ing times!  Boo!  :(

Here is a new CD map for Indiana, revised to reflect the actual census numbers which became available for Indiana in the past fortnight or so. The Dems won't like it - at all. Among other things, there are very few Dem precincts left for IN-01 to suck up now, and even those not sucked up in the IN-01 sweep are not really very Dem in any event; 55-45 stuff. So IN-02 is now very close to 54% McCain, and might have even hit it [addendum: it did hit it]. Meanwhile, IN-09 becomes one of the most GOP CD's in the nation north of the Mason Dixon line (it got even more GOP, taking in another slug of hyper GOP precincts in Johnson County).  Basically, very little money will be spend on General CD elections in Indiana for the next 10 years if this map is adopted, absent highly unusual circumstances. I will put up the stats in due course. [Now up.] Thanks heavens the Marion County precinct returns are in copy and paste spreadsheet form, so I can do searches, and sorts, and stuff to cherry pick efficiently. I sorted by percent McCain, and went from there. Without the sort function on excel, I would have given up this endeavor long ago.

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Final stats are up for Indiana now.

And here's what the Republicans have proposed:

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Man, they left a lot of points on the table, and left IN-02 and IN-08 rather marginal. And they put Burton in the Indianapolis CD, IN-O7, along with all those Pubbies in south Marion County.  In a word, the map sucks!  :(

Pretty sure Burton lives on the north side of Marion County, although I agree that the split of Marion is odd (isolates some Republican areas in the south while taking in some marginal-to-Democratic areas on the north side).

About what I expected, though. A little less aggressive in going after Donnelly, but that by that much.

And, Torie, this is about what you should be expecting. Legislatures are generally speaking not willing to rip apart cities and counties willy-nilly, and there are strong pressures other than partisanship that usually prevent them from doing so.

I looked up Burton's address via a title company. I know exactly where he lives, unless he moved, or resides in a rental, while owning a home on the south side near the airport (about 3 miles or so to the east).

Yes, I guess they draw in Indiana differently than they do in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and a lot of other states, where it is chop city. Granted, Indiana is so GOP overall, that the Pubbies can afford the point waste, in a way that does not obtain for more marginal states.

Ohio is not extreme. They won't come close to your map. Pennsylvania is pretty extreme but incompetent in their extreme gerrymandering.

Well I am  0 for 1 so far, but Ohio has imperatives that Indiana does not, including a lot of vulnerable incumbent Pubbie butt being on the line.

Pence was bounced from his home as well, in IN-06. I guess he is running for governor. In fact IN-06 looks like a marginal CD now since it has Monroe County in it, with only one and a half heavily GOP suburban Indianapolis counties in it (not enough), before wandering pointlessly to the Ohio River. It just doesn't make any sense at all.

I tried to crunch the numbers for IN-02, 08, and 09, but I couldn't find any precinct-level data, so I had to leave split counties out:

Without LaPorte and Kosciusko, the new IN-02 went 49.7 - 48.9 Obama. I don't know the partisan leanings of the part of LaPorte that was left in, but Kosciusko is heavily Republican, so it probably flips to a McCain district, although barely.

IN-08 actually got improved slightly, it's now 50.5 - 48.0 McCain, where before it was 51-47 McCain.

IN-09, on the other hand, is strengthened for the Republicans. Without the parts of Morgan and Scott, it's 51.8 - 46.8 McCain, and with those two it probably ups the Republican performance by a percent or so.

Yep, it stinks. Maybe they're afraid of the fleebaggers, but they shouldn't be.

Pence lives in Bartholomew County, which is still in IN-06.

This is pretty much would I imagined would be proposed, Daniels didn't want to get crazy with the map.

Yes, when I typed that, I did not realize that his CD had been rather totally transformed, and now went to the Ohio River, and had been made close to marginal. As I said, the map is quite insane really.

It picks up some Republican suburbs of Louisville down at the Ohio River.

A balanced, reasonable map.

The bastards!

This map is to conciliatory to the Dems. Though it does put Indy in play for the GOP.

No it doesn't.

It actually looks like they went sort of wild with the legislative maps (Monroe County is cracked 5 ways?) and went the 'good governance' route with the congressional map.

Really odd choice.

Not really. The legislators may want to produce "good government" bona fides for the districts of other people, but they first and foremost want to protect themselves.

You both seem to be very confused. Pence's seat, IN-06, is the one in the SE corner of the state. It contains neither Bloomington/Monroe County nor any Louisville suburbs and is overall almost certainly the most Republican district on the map. (It's the only one to contain no counties that voted for Obama.)

IN-09 contains both and is Young's seat--and it has to contain Bloomington because Young lives there (and is still around R+6 or so, maybe winnable for Baron Hill if he runs again but probably not).

I couldn't read the numbers on the map, so I assumed we were talking about Young's seat.

OK, my mistake. It's IN-09 (rather than IN-06) that is one rather sick Pubbie puppy - needlessly. I think of IN-09 as taking the SE corner of the state, but it has been dislodged from that position.

It would put Rokita in a race against Carson.
Tea Party for the flip IN-7

Yeah, because Rokita wouldn't just run in his current district.

The proposed map in question would put him in the seventh. So he would have to face Carson if this ends up ad the final map.

Or he could just, you know, move to the district where he has the best chance of winning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edeOEuXdMU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edeOEuXdMU)

Far from it. Indy is trending Dem, and the city is getting a bit less white at that. This map might shift Carson's district a point and a half to the GOP, at most.

EDIT:

Rokita will be in Burton's district, not Carson's. IN-7 is Safe Dem.

http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/politics/new-plan-puts-rokita-in-burtons-area (http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/politics/new-plan-puts-rokita-in-burtons-area)

If that's the case then the GOP might've shot themselves in the foot. Not good

obviously this map has a like 5% chance of passing. But I wanted to show my fantasy map just for kicks. One may think its a democratic gerrymander but under this map A: republicans have five safe seats and B)the districts are fairly contiguous

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Very nice.  They slice up Laporte,  Put Bloomington between the Indy and Louisville suburbs, and split southern Indiana between 3 districts.  They also put 4 districts around Marion County.

This is a very clean map that accurately reflects Indiana.

When calling some of these seats "marginal" by using 2008 Pres numbers, you're all forgetting something:  2012 Obama isn't going to come anywhere close to the 49% he got in Indiana last time.

Those 7 seats are in the bag for Repubs

I think its hard to judge Indiana based on any recent presidential results including those from 2004 and 2000.  Obama was the first Democrat to make an honest effort there in a while but the McCain campaign was also caught off guard by an all-out offensive in a state that had voted reliably for Republicans in the previous 10 presidential elections.  I think it is definitely possible that Obama wins in Indiana again, especially if he increases his share of the national popular vote.  He's not just going to roll over and hand the state to the Republicans even though that sometimes appears to be his governing "strategy."

Considering you're a Democrat, I can see why you're optimistic about it, but don't bet on it.

Obama wont increase his nat'l popular vote, and he's going to get trounced in Indiana. 

Rather Indiana in 2008 was a fluke or not will remain to be seen, we just don't know what those numbers are going to look like. I'd say it leans GOP in 2012, but just how much is the problem.

Regardless of whether Obama wins Indiana or not, local Democrats tend to outperform national Democrats in various parts of the state on a consistent basis. Using national data as a baseline for Congressional races tends to be fairly unrepresentative.

We will be taking back our regular spot as the first state to declare for the GOP.

No you won't. Kentucky will be.

The GOP kinda screwed up on the map here. They should have at least put South Bend in the 1st. The map would have still looked pretty neat and it would have probably made IN-02 several points more Republican.

Well, there's plenty of other things they could have done to get a safe 7-2 map as well, but since they didn't I'm kind of assuming they just decided to go with a least-county-splits map.  I mean, they even drew an incumbent into a Heavily D district in Indianapolis, along with a bunch of Republicans in South indy

I saw a map on Red Racing Horses which also had very few county splits but was a much more efficient gerrymander by putting South Bend in the 1st and putting some Republican parts of southern Lake County into the 2nd. As for the 7th, they screwed up a little as well, but their screwup wasn't that bad (percentage-wise) in comparison to the 1st/2nd. The 1st could have been way more packed with Democrats.

http://www.redracinghorses.com/diary/306/indiana-hybrid-redistricting-maps

Putting both Jackie and Silent Joe into the first is a royal no-no. Because that's what you would do if you put South Ben in the 1st
Also putting Rokita in the 7th and splitting Kokomo aren't things many republicans I know like all that well, but it could lead to an intresting GOP 4th district primary. It looks like I would be moved to that 4th district.

Jackie Walorski can always move. Or they could have just put her house in the 2nd and the rest of South Bend into the 1st. Rokita won't run in the 7th, since it's way too Democratic for him.

The numbers from DKE:

IN-01 - 63.3 Obama, 35.8 McCain
IN-02 - 49.6 Obama, 49.3 McCain
IN-03 - 56.0 McCain, 43.0 Obama
IN-04 - 54.2 McCain, 44.6 Obama
IN-05 - 52.6 McCain, 46.6 Obama
IN-06 - 55.0 McCain, 43.6 Obama
IN-07 - 66.3 Obama, 32.8 McCain
IN-08 - 50.6 McCain, 48.1 Obama
IN-09 - 52.7 McCain, 46.2 Obama

IN-05 is made quite a bit more Democratic (it was 59-40 McCain); I guess they're expecting Dan Burton to get knocked out in the primary next year, since he's so disliked, he could make that seat competitive. And I'm still surprised they didn't do anything to IN-08, since it actually moved a hair to the Democrats.

Why would Indiana Republicans do something like that?  Are they stupid, like the Arkansas Democrats?  Joe Donnely, Baron Hill or Brad Ellsworth or some other moderate Democrat could easily win in at least three of those districts.

Well, the do have to try to create a 7-2 Gerrymander in a state Obama won by about a point, so their margins have to be pretty thin.

Don't forget that Indiana had a 11-point swing towards the Dems from 2004 to 2008; the Obama numbers are a high-water mark for them.  All 7 districts Bush won with probably at least 60%. 

Certainly not the Southeastern one... area didn't actually swing all that much.

For fun, here's a Dem gerrymander:

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Blue - 59-40 Obama
Green - 56-43 Obama
Purple - 62-37 McCain
Red - 55-44 Obama
Yellow - 59-39 McCain
Teal - 58-41 McCain
Grey - 68-31 Obama
Light Purple - 53-46 Obama
Sky Blue - 57-41 McCain

Not one but two "fair" maps of Indiana!

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1 (Chicago suburbs) 64% White, 20% Black, 14% Hispanic, 63.3% Obama / 65% White, 18% Black, 14% Hispanic, 61.6% Obama. Visclosky
Safe with or without Michigan City. It's a fine decision - Michigan City presumably looks to Chicago rather than South Bend, La Porte probably does not. But the two also belong together, no?

2 (South Bend) 82% White, 49.9% McCain / 80% White, 51.0% Obama. Donnelly
Yeah well, we know which design Joe Donnelly is going to prefer.

3 (Fort Wayne) 85% White, 55.1% McCain / 86% White, 55.2% McCain. Stutzman
Wasn't comfortable with the placement of Marion in the first attempt. Now that I look up the locations of congressmen, I see the first map also just barely draws Stutzman into Donnelly's district while the second does not.

4 (smaller towns northwest of Indy) 89% White, 54.3% McCain / 88% White, 53.6% McCain. open
The placing of Martinsville (just southwest of Indianapolis) in this district is really what triggered the extensive redrawing. This and the 6th (and the 5th, but it doesn't matter there) are the areas where Obama's percentage is most exaggerated, neither seat is remotely in danger for Republicans.

5 (Indianapolis suburbs) 85% White, 58.3% McCain. Rokita? Burton?
Not affected by remap - although you obviously could legitimately draw it very differently, either by doing a simpler two way split of the Indy metro or by drawing two partially suburban seats around the 7th. Purely suburban seats like this one are a preference of mine. Do something about it. *shrug*
I don't know where Rokita and Burton live, exactly, but Carson's district is safe anyhow.

6 (smaller towns east of Indy) 91% White, 52.1% McCain / 92% White, 53.6% McCain. Pence
Pence's hometown of Columbus is removed and added to the 8th in the second map, but it still skirts the city boundary. He probably could run here anyhow.

7 (Indianapolis) 55% White, 30% Black, 10% Hispanic, 68.0% Obama. Carson
Not affected by remap.

8 (Evansville - Terre Haute) / (Bloomington - Terre Haute) 92% White, 50.5% McCain / 91% White, 49.5% McCain. Bucshon (map 1), Young (map 2)
Evidently, you could split the 8th and 9th east-west on the second map too. Going to require some odd compromise around Martinsville or Bedford, but heh. I'd advise against introducing the north-south split into the first map, however.

9 (Louisville suburbs - Bloomington) / (Lousville suburbs - Evansville) 92% White, 52.1% McCain / 91% White, 52.2% McCain. Young (map 1) Bucshon (map 2)
This is not really a safe seat, but obviously it's R barring events or massive waves. Not a true marginal like the 2nd and 8th, under either map.

@Lewis your Fourth district would be Kokomo-Lafyette.

Didn't the legislature already pass a fair map?

LOL. :D

Nice job, but it would be more effective if you would give some of Indianapolis's extra Democrats to the red and light purple districts. The resulting map would be messier, but it would get the job done.

The problem there is that, in order to get to the Democrats in Indianapolis, the red and light purple districts will have to pass through some of the most Republican areas of the state, thereby minimizing the potential gain.

I got bored, so spent the last hour or two making this map. Something felt weird as I was nearing the end, since the Walorski district was getting too big, and I realize I only clicked for 8 districts instead of 9. :( But I'll post this anyways. Pretend for a minute Indiana lost a congressional district last cycle!

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Crimson - Obama 62, McCain 37
Creamish White  - McCain 52, Obama 47
Teal - McCain 55, Obama 44
Purple - McCain 53, Obama 46
Yellow - McCain 54, Obama 45
Red - Obama 66, McCain 34
Green - McCain 54, Obama 45
Blue - McCain 53, Obama 46