U.S. House Redistricting: Illinois

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  I've been going through the population estimates and demographic estimates from sampling data released by the Census Bureas.
  I call it:  There will be no second Hispanic district created in Illinois.  The population is too spread out.  I can create one from the south area, but there is no way that I can see that a free standing majority Hispanic District can be created from the northern area--unless the Dems want to run Quigley against Gutierez--and that defeats the purpose of their controlling the remap.
  Get ready for another 10 years of the earmuff district.

Gutierrez lives in the southern half, no? So it would be Quigley alone in the new Hispanic district. Probably not his first choice, but I don't think he'd be in any real danger of a primary challenge.

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That's a weird color scheme... is Illinois turning pink? what are the characteristics of the pink demographic?

The first map is % of the vote for Kerry in 2004; the second is % of the vote for Obama in 2008.

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Not sure why they didn't work DeKalb into a Dem district. Same with Danville, although that one makes a little more sense.

Quigley's district is not nearly as marginal as it looks, at least D+8 or so. Remember it has a bunch of heavily Hispanic areas around Midway, and even Lockport is only around 51% McCain.

Also, the green suburban district is a very impressive gerrymander, around 61% Obama on my calculations using DRA. It will elect a Democrat. There are a couple of places where it's less efficient than it could be; I could squeeze another Obama point or two out without disturbing other Democratic seats. But they did a very impressive job nonetheless.

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Lipinski's district is a little weird; he's down to about D+5, but it definitely could be more; they seem to have marooned some overwhelmingly Hispanic precincts in IL-01 for no discernable reason, precincts that could be used to shore up Lipinski instead (while putting suburban areas in IL-01; we're talking precincts that are 90% Hispanic and 2% black, so it's not like the suburbs are any less black than they are).

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I'm saying it was 58-40 Obama. (That said, Obama didn't overperform in Lipinski's district the way he did elsewhere in Illinois, which is not a huge surprise given how racist the Polish vote often is.)

Obama did 5 points better than Kerry in Lipinski's old seat, so assuming the same here, it's still a 53% Kerry seat, which is more Democratic than all but one or two Republican-held seats. And Lipinski is way more popular than the national Democrats there.

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Aurora-Bolingbrook-Joliet is also 61% Obama.

Also, Johnny, yes, but Lipinski's old seat was D+11 (64% Obama), so I don't see why he would be vulnerable to a primary challenge now but neither he nor his father before. Whatever, probably good for the Dems that he can soak up marginal areas.

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So, 12-5-1 (or 11-5-2 if you don't count Costello making his district safe). Pretty good job by the Illinois Democrats, in the end.

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I doubt the 8th or 11th can be held by the Republicans. Roskam and Hultgren will go for the safe districts (6th and 14th, respectively), leaving, what, Joe Walsh (put into the 14th) for the 8th and Adam Kinzinger (who is either in the 2nd, 13th, or 18th, depending on who you believe) for the 11th? Judy Biggert's put into the 5th, so she'll probably just retire. Bob Dold is also probably screwed, since he barely won in a great Republican year against a terrible Democratic candidate. Making his district any more Democratic is probably going to push him over the edge.

Assuming that the two-point swing from 61% to 63% Obama were repeated congressionally in Dold's seat, he would have lost this new seat in 2010 49-51 (instead of winning 51-49), let alone in 2012 with Obama at the top of the ticket.

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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.

The district may become majority suburban, but the Democratic primary vote in the district would not. Similarly, the district could be 40% black and still have a majority of Democratic primary voters be black.