U.S. House Redistricting: Illinois

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Here's my gerrymander, with (sort of) two Hispanic seats:





IL-01 (blue): 52.2% black, 51.1% black VAP, 78.9% Obama, really nothing to see.

IL-02 (dark green): 51.4% black, 50.1% black VAP, 78.2% Obama, nothing else to see beyond how amusing it'd be to have Jesse Jackson Jr. representing those exurbs (though he's not comparable to his father)

IL-03 (purple): 60.6% Obama. Now goes pretty far into DuPage easy to make this a suburban seat for Biggert and I don't care about Lipinski, but the Democrats won't sacrifice him, so I gave him a large chunk of black precincts and some liberal white neighborhoods to keep it Democratic enough. Actually this seat is likely to vote for a Democrat but primary Lipinski, his voters are carved up and I bet the new white Democrats are more likely to be hipster types and the Democrats in DuPage aren't likely to like Lipinski either.

IL-04 (red): The earmuffs are gone. 62.4% Hispanic, 56.9% Hispanic VAP, 76% Obama.

IL-05 (yellow): 64.3% Obama. This is the prime example of screwing over DuPage county. The seat is still Dem enough for Quigley to be fine as long as he doesn't act like Dan Rostenkowski.

IL-06 (teal): A completely new seat basically. Voted for McCain with 49.4% and is naturally pretty safe Republican, Manuzllo will probably want to run here even though he lives just outside of it (that green strip just north of it), it has most of his territory. Though it looks like it has a lot of territory from the old IL-14 that's just superficial as that long tail in the west isn't very populated and IL-14 is really just another suburban district.

IL-07 (gray): This seat still has a black plurality barely (41.4%), but a strong white VAP plurality (45.5%). Still I doubt Danny Davis would mind, he's not going anywhere and a black Democrat is still his most likely successor. At 86.7% Obama this is now the strongest Dem seat in the state, with that differentiation in VAP and those numbers the whites must really be hipsters. Is Chicago's Williamsburg here?

IL-08 (purplish blue): A bunch of Dem leaning suburbs, the black part of Rockford and Dem town of Freeport make this a 59% Obama seat and likely to elect another Democrat.

IL-09 (cyan): 69.1% Obama. Still safe for Schakowsky. I might've drawn her out of the district (I know she lives in Evanston), but she'd still have no problem running here.

IL-10 (magenta red): It's amazing how easy it is to screw over Dold without making it ugly. 62.6% Obama, mostly done by giving the northern half of Evanston to the seat (as noted above). Just find a different candidate this time please.

IL-11 (olive green): 58.2% Obama which is very good for a mostly downstate district. Once again though, please run a different candidate Democrats.

IL-12 (officially called "cornflower blue"): Didn't change it much, there's still some Dem precincts in the outer St. Louis metro (odd, why isn't this place like the Missouri side with those exurbs?) so those were added in to meet ideal population. 55.4% Obama, if Costello has had no problems so far he won't here.

IL-13 (pink): This district is most comparable to the old IL-06 even though it has Biggert's number, but she lives in IL-03. She'd probably run here anyway, but would likely lose the primary to the more conservative Roskam. It's still 56.3% Obama so Roskam isn't exactly a shoo-in but would likely end up if he lost being held by a faux-moderate Kirk-like Republican. Hultgren might live here too but I don't see how he could win the primary.

IL-14 (that red snake): I made this one reddish too because the brown didn't show up very well in the old map before I removed the voting district lines. This seat is 54.2% Hispanic but only 48.7% Hispanic VAP and 73.1% Obama. There's no requirement to draw a new Hispanic seat though and a Hispanic Democrat is the most likely holder, so I don't see it attracting much controversy. Hultgren obviously won't run here.

IL-15 (orange): Just a giant rural downstate seat now that I removed the cities. 56.8% McCain and his best district in the state, so safe for whoever wins the primary of Johnson and Shimkus (I think Johnson lives in the Champaign area which is now removed, but he won't be running the new IL-11).

IL-16 (light green): Much like the current IL-14, this district is misleading geographically, it's really another suburban district and at only 50.2% Obama the most conservative one. It also includes the surprisingly conservative eastern half of Rockford and some boring rural areas. This is the seat all the suburban Republicans will want to run in, Walsh is probably the most likely winner and he even lives here. Hultgren would also probably run here, I think he'd lose the primary based on geography to Walsh but since both are the epitome of "boring white guy (R)" I don't really care too much.

IL-17 (dark purple): Even more erose! This seat now contains the entirety of only one county (Rock Island). 59.4% Obama, the teabagger nut who slipped in last year isn't winning here, once again though I hope the Democrats find a better candidate than the charisma-less BushOklahoma lookalike.

IL-18 (yellow): Another standard rural seat and 53.9% McCain. I think Schock lives in Peoria proper, which the district no longer contains any part of, but this would be the most logical seat for him to run in and I don't see him having any problems winning.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Ha, I noticed how on the racial map the University of Chicago is a red enclave surrounded by solid blue. Still >90% Obama precincts though, but I never knew that it was deep in the heart of the black neighborhoods of Chicago.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't see how he could get primaried, and he's talking about running for the Cook County Commission anyway.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's no doubt possible to avoid diluting Davis' seat too much, but if you do this you have two options:

1-Push Lipinski's seat deeper into Chicago to the white areas downtown. This will keep the seat Democratic, but give Lipinski the type of voters he wants least of all, liberal hipster-type whites.
2-Push Lipinksi's seat into the suburbs, and make it a more heavily DuPage seat, meaning he gets both lots of ultra-partisan Republicans who won't vote for any Democrat who isn't Obama and white latte liberals who won't support him in a primary.

So you can't really avoid diluting Davis without throwing Lipinski under the bus. Do I care if he gets primaried? No. The Democrats in the legislature probably don't either as long as the seat continues to elect a Democrat. But Lipinski no doubt has supporters and connections and his type of Democrats are represented well in the legislature. Try to specifically draw a seat that is reliably Democratic but will be prone to someone with Lipinski's right wing views does seem pretty silly though.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kinzinger lives in IL-02, LOL. He could move and run in IL-16 but he's going to have primary opposition.

Give Lipinski too Dem of a seat and he likely gets primaried, so I guess his people in the legislature are looking out for him.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I like how IL-17 in a gerrymander became far less erose and all. LOL.

IL-17 is actually a seat that probably could've been left alone, Hare was a weak incumbent, and Schilling is a good pick for the Republican Alan Grayson, someone who got elected in a seat they don't fit ideologically at all by fluke and would go down hard the next election. I don't see Schilling running ahead of Obama's opponent even in Illinois unless the Republican candidate is a crazy in which case he's doomed anyway. But it can't hurt to take the Dem voters in Peoria to prevent another Hare-esque defeat.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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

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

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'm sure the residents of fast-growing exurban areas like New Lenox are going to love being represented by racist nutter Bobby Rush in IL-01.   They have little in common with the inner city Chicago ghetto that makes up about 55% of the district.  The city portion of IL-01 is 86% black.  The suburban and exurban parts of that district are 71% white.   The Will County exurban portion is only 2% black.  The district is about 53% black.

Given rates of exurban growth and black flight from Chicago, it might be possible that the district becomes majority suburban by the end of the decade.  That hasn't hurt Jesse Jackson Junior from getting reelected in IL-02, though - but the suburban areas in his district are more black than those in IL-01.

If they don't like it they can vote against him. We'll see how far that goes.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The current Dold seat is 60% Obama and it was like 52% Kerry.