US House Redistricting: Michigan

[Verily]

That Detroit area map looks like something the GOP would not be remotely happy with, at first glance. It looks just awful. Am I missing something?

They don't have a lot of choice due to the law requiring minimalization of county splits. And it's not bad for the GOP at all; they get to try to dilute Flint by putting it with ultra-GOP parts of Oakland County, and they drop some of the more Democratic parts of Macomb County into a black-majority seat.

I think the way muon deals with Washtenaw County is too risky for the GOP, though. If the GOP has to separate Dingell from Ann Arbor, they should combine Ann Arbor and Lansing to keep their other seats safe.

[Verily]

Here's what I think is the absolute minimum number of county splits (12), with two black majority seats (might be able to cut it down by a split if that requirement were waived). It also happens to be a relatively fair map (6D, 8R, but some of the R seats are winnable for the Dems).

[Verily]

In that map, the GOP gets 6 seats, with the gray district a toss-up.  

The GOP gets 7 seats on that map, plus the Macomb seat, which would favor them.

The northern seat, the mitt seat, the Ottawa-Muskegon seat, the Grand Rapids seat, the SW seat, the south-center seat and the Livingston seat are all R seats, although the south-center seat and the northern seat in some circumstances are competitive.

The two black seats, the all-Wayne seat, the Ann Arbor-Lansing seat and the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City seats are all D seats. The all-Oakland seat is probably D but is not totally safe.

Eaton County is only 53% Obama. The district overall is R+2 or 3 or so. You're thinking of Ingham County, which is Lansing.

[Verily]

We disagree about the red seat. Oh, my bad. I thought Eaton was Lansing. OK fair enough. This map ain't happening though. It really only has two safe GOP seats, the one with Livingston in it, and the one with Ottawa in it. The rest are somewhat to very marginal.

I wouldn't really consider the Grand Rapids seat or the mitt seat or the SW seat to be at all winnable for the Dems, certainly not with their current incumbents. And generally speaking this is what has to happen anyway; if there are this many "marginal" R seats on a 6D-8R map, imagine how bad it would be if you started trying to crack Lansing or Ann Arbor. The loss of a seat really puts a squeeze on the current gerrymander since so many R seats are already marginal. I think McCotter is going to end up lost in the shuffle even on an R gerrymander. They certainly can't knock the Dems below their current 5 seats without further endangering incumbents.

[Verily]

They've definitely shrunk, and they will try to extend one of the black districts up to take in Pontiac. But that's not going to be enough to make someone like McCotter safe when he ends up in a district with Peters or in a primary with Mike Rogers.

[Verily]

But can you override all of those annoying little requirements via the VRA  in order to get the black districts up to 60% of the population. You have to slice townships and towns to do that, or you are going to fall down to 57% or something, and among VAP, lower still, and among voters?

There are VRA districts out there that are only 52-53% black. You certainly don't need 57%, let alone 60%, of the general population to be of the minority group, at least not for blacks, who are not far from whites in proportion in the VAP (compare to Hispanics, who are disproportionately below voting age).

Anyway, the VRA only applies to Michigan insofar as you need to avoid having districts that intentionally dilute the black vote such that their preferred candidate routinely loses. Even 45% black wouldn't be an intentional dilution.

[Verily]

The Ann Arbor seat could go to Lansing (Ingham County). The Republicans would like to get that problem off their hands.

[Verily]

Detroit's population has fallen to 713,000; Wayne County's to 1.8 million. This means only one VRA district equal to the city of Detroit. How does this change the maps?

Conyers should finally get crunched rather than Peters or Levin. More likely they just keep pushing the Detroit districts further into the suburbs.

I don't see how they justify two Detroit districts. And if you go down to one Detroit district, then Ann Arbor is no longer in with Dingell, and you have a lot of Democrats in Macomb and Oakland who don't really fit into a single district. I am curious what happens.

Well, two districts will have to contain at least part of Detroit. Detroit proper is about one district, but you have to remember Highland Park and Hamtramck are entirely contained within Detroit as well and mean at least around 30,000 Detroiters or so (probably Mexicantown) have to be in a different district.

[Verily]

I seriously doubt the legislation was sufficiently thought-through to account for such municipalities.

[Verily]

I don't see how they justify two Detroit districts. And if you go down to one Detroit district, then Ann Arbor is no longer in with Dingell, and you have a lot of Democrats in Macomb and Oakland who don't really fit into a single district. I am curious what happens.

I'm thinking 1 district for Macomb Democrats, 1 district for Oakland Democrats, 1 district for Ann Arbor, 1 district for Detroit, and 1 district for everything else in Wayne County that McCotter doesn't want.


That Detroit district might displace NY-16 as the new Mordor.

Mordor has a lot of surface. I think you mean the new Rivendell.

Torie, your map's two districts have probably no more than half a million inhabitants each. Sorry to break it, but all your work here is only good for the trash can now. Detroit is gone. Party's over. The city is no more.

Wait a minute. I thought the county numbers were accurate; it was only the intra county numbers that were subject to adjustment. If so, it would be near impossible to have that much of an error factor. Or am I missing something?

No. The estimates were still estimates; they were not actual Census numbers. And apparently the 2009 estimates way, way overestimated Detroit (or, rather, underestimated its decline). Detroit as a whole has almost 200,000 fewer people than your map presupposed. There was huge error.

[Verily]

Macomb actually grew. It's around 802,000 people IIRC (don't recall the exact numbers).

[Verily]

Would it be possible to do an extension into Macomb? Macomb has to be split regardless; it's too big for one seat.

[Verily]

You could do a whole district in Macomb regardless, although the lack of one in 2000 does indicate that they won't bother this time, either. If they do try to leave a whole seat in Macomb, it would contain everything but Eastpointe, Center Line and most of Warren, which either go in a Detroit CD or in a Macomb-Oakland Dem CD.

Strictly speaking, there's no need for a black district to cross into either Macomb or Oakland counties; I managed two districts barely over 50% black VAP in Wayne County alone.

[Verily]

Sure, but no Republican (or Democratic, for that matter) legislature in any state is going to be as aggressive as you are, Torie. There are other considerations than partisanship, after all (however logical or illogical they may be).

[Verily]

You seem to have invented an extra Republican who would be screwed over by a failure to eliminate both Peters and Levin. There is a quite neat map that combines Peters and Levin in a safe Dem seat while leaving everyone else (relatively) safe. Not sure Rogers can really be considered all that safe as long as Lansing is in his district, but that's really his only option short of a fight with McCotter. Did make McCotter quite safe, however.

This is what the Michigan GOP will do, more or less (and maybe with a total redesign in NW Michigan; I did heavily rearrange the districts up there).

[Verily]

Yup, Walberg is not in a good position, undoubtedly, but he's surrounded by marginal Republican seats already. Can't make him safer without putting Rogers or Upton in a D-leaning seat. He's also a lot less popular in the state legislature than the well-connected Rogers and Upton, at least in part because, unlike them, he can't hold a marginal seat.

In any case, Monroe County is only 51% Obama, R+2, so I don't see why it's such a problem for Walberg. Plus, he dropped the more Democratic Eaton County.


On further consideration, though, that map might not be safe enough for Rogers, as it loses Republican parts of outer Oakland for more Democratic Eaton County (and also some rural parts of Shiawassee, which are probably GOP). Not sure how to shore him up without creating a lot more county splits, though. Maybe I could run him into outer Oakland and use the extra space in McCotter's seat to get rid of the split of Lapeer.

[Verily]

Well, that solution (splitting Oakland again, removing the split of Lapeer, then reaching MI-04 into Eaton County) does sort of work. It results in an additional county split, but I think I managed to excise the Democratic parts of Eaton County from MI-08, which should leave it around its current partisanship, about the best that can be done within the legal constraints.

Also note that on this map each GOP incumbent is in their own district, as is each Democratic incumbent (but Peters and Levin are together). MI-04 got a major redesign, however, although its core of Midland, where the incumbent resides, is still there.

[Verily]

here are my proposed lines. They are fairly similar to the old lines and still compact.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish with that map? It's not a GOP gerrymander for sure, and its not a Democratic gerrymander; I'm trying to figure out why you would split Detroit 3 ways and then move Ann Arbor into a GOP district.

The district containing Washtenaw would definitely be a Democratic district. Washtenaw would be almost half of the district, and the area in it is about the same as the county--69% Obama. The rest is around 51% Obama, so there's no way a Republican could win that seat.

But, yeah, it's illegal. Way too many county splits.

[Verily]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but this seems like an odd way to count splits.  If there are 3 counties in a state that go in a line, A next to B next to C, with populations 20-110-20 in that order, and there are to be three districts, you can do it two ways:

PLAN 1: 20 from A, 30 from B; 50 from B; 30 from B, 20 from C
PLAN 2: two districts entirely within B, one containing A, C, and a 10-person bridge from B

Are you telling me that PLAN 2 has no splits, whereas PLAN 1 does?  My method of counting splits makes much more sense.  

No, Plan 2 would still have 2 splits.

The difference comes up in the context of somewhere like Macomb County. You could have one district wholly in Macomb County and another district partly in Macomb County, or you could have two districts partly in Macomb County (or more than two, but let's assume those are the only options).

Under the county-splits interpretation, both maps have one county split, as Macomb County is split across two districts on both maps. However, under the county-line-crosses interpretation, as mandated by the statute, the first map has one county line cross while the second map has two county line crosses. (Of course, you might avoid a county line cross elsewhere on the second map, so it's not so simple, but you get the idea.)

[Verily]

You appear to have cut Center Line off from the rest of MI-12 on that map, Torie.

[Verily]

What's the PVI on that Grand Rapids-Lansing seat? It can't be better for the GOP than marginal.

[Verily]

Does Michigan allow touch-point contiguity between municipalities?

[Verily]

Which district is Ann Arbor in on that map?

[Verily]

How does putting Lansing in with Detroit exurbs make sense for any reason beyond purely partisan ones?

Well, it doesn't fit anywhere else.  Grand Rapids to the West, the Tri-cities/Flint to the North East, and South-central MI to the South.  Each of those areas has its own district that is a pretty good COI, so Lansing gets shafted and shoved with the extra Detroit Burbs.  Its of course drawn in a way to make it an R seat, but its not like they're just trying to spite the city.

Ummm... No? You're being a partisan hack? The Lansing metro (Ingham, Eaton, Shiawassee, Clinton) is much, much clearer community of interest than "random small cities plus parts of Lansing and some suburbs" that MI-07 consists of.

[Verily]

How does putting Lansing in with Detroit exurbs make sense for any reason beyond purely partisan ones?

Well, it doesn't fit anywhere else.  Grand Rapids to the West, the Tri-cities/Flint to the North East, and South-central MI to the South.  Each of those areas has its own district that is a pretty good COI, so Lansing gets shafted and shoved with the extra Detroit Burbs.  Its of course drawn in a way to make it an R seat, but its not like they're just trying to spite the city.

Ummm... No? You're being a partisan hack? The Lansing metro (Ingham, Eaton, Shiawassee, Clinton) is much, much clearer community of interest than "random small cities plus parts of Lansing and some suburbs" that MI-07 consists of.

No---Try it.  The way Michigan is drawn demographically, someone has to get screwed---Republicans draw the map so Republicans screw the easiest (and Safest) section.

Take a look at BRTD's map if you want to see what i mean.  Creating a Lansing-district screws over a bunch of other people by sucking up all the extra central MI population.  Its not like Putting Lansing with Livingston is any less odd than putting Livingston with Flint and Suburban Macomb with Bay City.

You don't have to screw either. Yes, BRTD's map is equally illogical, but that does not mean there are not logical maps that can be drawn.

One Lansing area seat (the four counties plus Jackson and a couple of towns in other counties), one Livingston and outer Oakland seat (plus a bit of suburban Wayne), one Ann Arbor, suburban Wayne and Monroe seat, two Wayne black seats, two suburban Oakland-Macomb seats, one exurban Macomb and mitten-thumb seat, one Flint-Saginaw seat, one Bay City and rural areas seat, one Kalamazoo/Battle Creek/southern tier seat, one Lake Michigan coast seat (Benton Harbor-Holland-Muskegon), one Grand Rapids seat and one north-and-UP seat. It all works out nicely.

I'll finish up the map I'm working on and post it soon.