Most deceptive gerrymander?

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Michigan works.

Georgia doesn't look too bad, as long as you don't know that Savannah is split between the southern tip of GA-12 and northeastern tip of GA-01. GA-08 is the only egregious one, from a size and shape standpoint.

Ohio looks pretty bad to me at first glance; look at OH-05, OH-06, OH-07, and OH-18, they're all long, thin districts that stretch across the state. Virginia and Indiana have the same problem.

Pennsylvania also looks bad to me -- PA-12 and PA-18? Seriously? Also, the ridiculous squiggles that are PA-06 and PA-13.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

That doesn't actually change Donnelly's district much. Makes it a point or two more Republican at most.

Four districts that stretch into the Indianapolis suburbs, though, is ridiculous.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Add up the totals from the seven counties entirely in the district and it's 54-46 Obama. 147,201 votes for Obama, 125,850 for McCain.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

They're not really reasonable, though. They're drawn to dilute Democratic strength.

- MI-03 puts Grand Rapids in the very western corner. A fair district would have Grand Rapids as the center of population.

- MI-04 is specifically drawn to exclude Saginaw, and stretches 2/3rds of the way across the state.

- MI-07 and MI-08 each stretch from the middle of the state to the suburbs of Detroit. Battle Creek and Lansing would more logically be put in the same district, but they're split between the two.

- MI-11 is a bizarre L-shaped district that also attempts to dilute Dem strength as much as possible.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I wasn't looking at electability for MI-03 (for the Dems to be able to win a Grand Rapids-based district, they'd have to connect it to Muskegon County) so much as the fact that it doesn't make any sense from a "communities of interest" standpoint.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

There's also Idaho. Yes, Idaho. You may wonder how you can gerrymander a super-Republican state with only two districts, but they basically did this by splitting Boise right down the middle, clearly to prevent the possibility of any strong Boise-based Democrat taking a seat on their own merits. Succeeded in that sense but failed in preventing district 1 Republicans from nominating Bill Sali. However it does make me wonder if all of Boise will be removed from ID-01 in redistricting. This will put pretty much all the areas with a notable number of Democrats in Idaho in one district, but also plenty of Mormons and probably enough to cancel them out.

Idaho's redistricting is actually done by a bipartisan commission, if you can believe it.