US House Redistricting: Michigan

[Mr.Phips]

This is my final map for Michigan. I am quite sure that it is legal. I made the districts look as compact as possible, and minimized down to the absolute minimum both county and township and city splits. My former map had too many county splits.

I redesigned the map, so that the 4th and 8th districts could get at heavily GOP Ionia and Barry counties, which were in CD 3 before, and CD 3 does not need them. I also beefed up CD 7, and deliberately made it more GOP than CD 8, because the incumbent there just got elected, and is more vulnerable. Nobody is going to defeat Rodgers in the 8th.

It is not possible to make CD 1 much more GOP, given county population constraints, county line break contraints, and districts needing to go from here to there. In any event CD-1 trended GOP in 2008 from 2004 a bit  - against the tide.  Its swing to Obama was only about 5%, in contrast to the national swing of about 10% (from Bush 2004 up 3% to Obama up 7% or so). I also tried to beef up where I could the CD's that trended the most Dem in 2008 from 2004, except for CD-8, which cannot be made more GOP given the law, and the limits on county splits, and the need to beef up the Pubbie in CD-7. For some reason Pubbies in CD-7 tend to struggle to get re-elected - or lose, as happened in 2008.

Where I did beef up a Pubbie, is in CD-6, which trended heavily to Obama from Kerry in 2008. I did take away quite heavily GOP St. Joseph, to beef up CD-7, but replaced it with even more GOP northern Allegan, and a slice of massively GOP Ottowa, and in the eye of the GOP storm in fact, in and around Holland Township, which is close to 3-1 GOP. What CD-2 lost there, and from its slice of Kent, which is now wholly contained in CD-3, it got back to a large extent with Grand Traverse. CD-4 lost Grand Traverse (the district in 2001 was drawn in a pretty erose manner to wander up to Grand Traverse), and it did suck up Dem Bay City (along with the balance of Bay County, which ex Bay City, is about even), but it also got most of the GOP thumb, along with the bulk of heavily GOP Ionia. The ying and the yang. In that regard, Saginaw County, of which CD-4 has a part, was very carefully gerrymandered. I dumped almost each and every Dem precinct in Saginaw into CD-5.

Oh, and the piece de resistance, is that I manged to make CD-11 a tad more GOP. That took work!    The "solution" was to put Pontiac in CD-5 rather than CD-14. And notice how I avoided CD-13 from touching CD-11. I did that in part to try to make CD-14 more black, but also because if they touched in Wayne, it probably would not be legal to do a split in a township or city between CD-11 and CD-14 in Oakland County. So that was a "two-for" as it were.

I am pretty confident that this is the map the GOP will adopt, with only minor variations. I worked very hard on it, and thought everything through quite carefully - I think. I am going to send this map to whomever in the legislature is in point person for drawing the map, and get his comments, if I can.

Curiously enough, eschewing getting rid of both Peters and Levin, and settling for just one defeated Dem, does not get you very far. First, it is difficult to do that, and still have a legal map, and the territory available, having removed most of the decidedly to heavily Dem territory, is pretty monocromatic, so slice and dice while still having a legal map, just does not accomplish much (unless you want to give a real opening to a Dem if Candice Miller in Macomb retires by making her district about even for Bush 2004). I did try to dump at the margins more Pubbies into CD -9 to defeat Peters, since Candice Miller in Macomb is just not doing to be defeated anytime soon. Peters indeed does have a chance to survive. Oakland has trended Dem since 2004 a bit, even in GOP areas, as a partisan baseline, and Peters demonstrated that this time in Oakland. He ran ahead of Bush 2004 by a couple of percent - not bad for a GOP wave election.

Here are the partisan numbers for the CD's. I did not bother to calculate CD's 10, 13 and 14, which would be a nightmare given they all are heavily in Wayne County. It would be well nigh impossible given the extent to which I have access to the data. Suffice it to say, that all three are massively Dem. Below are my CD numbers, and I will leave in place my splits data for Oakland and Macomb counties.

            Bush %       Kerry         Bush   
1st cd   53.48%   161,693   185,915   347,608
2nd cd   59.34%   144,147   210,352   354,498
3rd cd   59.12%   137,226   198,451   335,677
4th cd   55.24%   160,923   198,592   359,515
5th cd   39.45%   196,768   128,184   324,952
6th cd   55.09%   149,438   183,280   332,719
7th cd   55.19%   143,475   176,692   320,167
8th cd   52.61%   150,156   166,702   316,858
9th cd   55.01%   164,141   200,670   364,811
11th cd   52.83%   181730   203554   385284
12th cd   53.03%   167,775   189,385   357,160

Oh, and here are the Bush 2004 numbers in the old CD's for comparison:

CD                 Bush   %
District 1         53.33%   
District 2         60.11%   
District 3         59.09%   
District 4         54.86%   
District 5         40.46%   
District 6         52.84%   
District 7         54.38%   
District 8         53.70%   
District 9         50.38%   
District 10         56.24%   (now CD 12)
District 11         51.98%   
District 12         38.89%   (CD gone)
District 13         18.93%   
District 14         17.51%   
District 15         38.16%   (now CD 10)




MI-9 (turquoise CD)
  Kerry      Bush   
65,345     55,925    Macomb ex Shelby Township
10,643     16,553     Macomb Shelby Township (portion est 79.1%)
88,153   128,192    Oakland   
164,141   200,670   364,811
44.99%   55.01%   

CD-11 (green CD)
  Kerry       Bush   
  32,180     48,743   Oakland
149,550   154,811   Wayne
181,730   203,554   385,284
47.17%    52.83%

Oakland portion of CD-5 (yellow CD)
  Kerry      Bush   
30,176   20,474   50,650
59.58%  40.42%

Oakland portion of CD-14 (brown CD; black percentage in total CD 56%)
  Kerry      Bush   
141,889   84,025   225,914
62.81%   37.19%


CD-12 (light blue CD - old CD-10)
 Kerry        Bush   
117,363   125,320   Macomb ex Shelby Township
    2,809       4,368   Macomb Shelby Township (portion est 20.9%)
  36,174     42,740   St. Clair
  11,429     16,957    Lapeer (portion in CD-12)    
167,775   189,385   357,160
46.97%   53.03%   

 

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.

[Mr.Phips]

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.