US House Redistricting: Wisconsin

[Torie]

Well I think I got to my goals, but boy this is one butt ugly gerrymander isn't it?    One feature of the first two plans, is that you can visit 6 of the 8 CD's by car in about 30 minutes.  It's like grand central station down there.

The problem was the northern CD-07.  To my shock it was only about 51.5% Bush 2004 per my first draft. Not good. So, we do the Brown County gerrymander, with the Dem precincts in the City of Green Bay (each and every one of them) removed, and then CD-07 has too many people, and to get up to at least 54.5% Bush, in the end the people I had to remove were 1) way up in very Dem Douglas County on Lake Superior (the City of Superior just had to be removed from CD-07 - there was no escape), and 2) some marginally Dem precincts in the City of Wassau in a gerrymander of Marathon County. With all of these gyrations, I was finally able to get CD-07 up to 54.7% Bush.  The problem is that there is just not much heavily GOP territory in northern Wisconsin, to offset the very Dem precincts on Lake Superior. In addition, we need to neutralize Stevens Point in Portage County. Thus it become erose city.

Just for fun, I am going to insert here, my gerrymander of Green Bay City in Brown County.



And after having done all of that, CD-08 is put under great strain. It lost its suburban GOP precincts in Brown County, and took in some marginally Dem precincts in Wassau, and its core rather heavily populated Counties (Winnebago (Appleton where the incumbent lives), and Outagamie (Oshkosh), are but marginally GOP. So we have what looks like an under-populated rather even district. Ouch! So that leaves no choice but for CD-08 to join the parade of Pubbie CD's marching towards the GOP heartland in suburban and exurban Milwaukee, in Waukesha and Washington Counties, along with Dodge. And to get into that GOP heartland, one must navigate through the rather tight Scylla of Dane County and the Charybdis of Milwaukee County (the “Choke Hole”).  So that means that I needed to bifurcate Petri's home county of Fond du lac (I don't like to split the home counties of Pubbie incumbents, but sh*t happens), while being careful to leave the town of Fond du lac itself (where Petri lives), still in CD-06.

So we now have five, yes five, Pubbie CD's all snaking there way through the Choke Hole to get their  fill of very needed Pubbies. In the case of CD-06,  this is accomplished  from its slice of Fond du lac, plus most of hyper GOP Washington County, while the other four Pubbie CD's all move into Waukesha, and carve it up.

Finally, I looked up Ryan's home address, and appended four precincts to it on its west side so that it juts into downtown Janesville to pick up Ryan's home. Ryan may run for the Senate anyway in 2012. In any event, he is such a comer, that I don't think he will remain in the House for that long. He will either run for the Senate, or if a Pubbie wins POTUS, probably get some high ranking job in the administration.

The final touch was that ridiculous spike I effected for CD-01 in eastern Dane County. I did that to suck of population out of CD-02 so that it had to pick up a couple of marginal counties to the west from CD-03, thereby allowing CD-03 to pick up more population in the hyper GOP zone in Waukesha County and environs. That one little spike in Dane pushes up the Bush 2004 percentage in CD-03 from 53.76% (GOP PVI about plus 2%), to 55.02%.

The two maps, one with the Dane spike, and one without, along with a metro Milwaukee closeup, are below, along with the partisan percentages.

For those who think, with considerable reason, that these maps are just not going to fly, even with a one party GOP gerrymander, because the reaction would be too negative, and GOP incumbents would not stand for it (particularly Petri in CD-06 with his now ridiculous district), below these maps, I have the "throw in the towel" map, which concedes CD-03 to the Democrats. Because of the Choke Hole issue, and the lack of GOP precincts to make CD-07 safe absent the plans I drew, the only real difference is transferring Dems from CD-06 to CD-03, with Pubbies going the opposite way. It does make the map look considerably less erose. CD-03 however goes to about 47.5% Bush (Dem PVI of about 4%, about what CD-03 is now, although this version might be slightly more Dem), while CD-06 becomes by far the most GOP CD in the seat, with the Bush 2004 percentage a bit above 60%.
In short, CD-06 becomes the uber GOP state (the way CD-05 is now under the existing plan). However, that is just the way it has to be, because CD-05 needs to go north to suck up marginal political territory there, to help make CD-08 and CD-07 safe. The geography just dictates that.


  

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The problem is that Wisconsin is prone to such wild swings that you can't even assume based off the 2004 results even though they were almost 50/50. Especially not for someone like Sensenbrenner. Wasn't WI-08 about 55% Bush? If you draw a lot of districts around that range they will fall in a good Dem year. You simply can not draw a map where only Madison and Milwaukee elect Democrats in any half-decent Democratic year.

[Torie]

The problem is that Wisconsin is prone to such wild swings that you can't even assume based off the 2004 results even though they were almost 50/50. Especially not for someone like Sensenbrenner. Wasn't WI-08 about 55% Bush? If you draw a lot of districts around that range they will fall in a good Dem year. You simply can not draw a map where only Madison and Milwaukee elect Democrats in any half-decent Democratic year.

Indeed CD-08 was 55% Bush 2004,  was and currently is. And in 2008, the Dem beat the Pubbie by 54% to 46%, and Obama did about the same. So, sometimes the swings are just too strong. The Dem in CD-08, Kagan, lost by 55% to 45% this year. I am satisfied with 54.5% Bush 2004 districts in general. They are not immune, but will hold in most elections, and even if the Dem wins, he or she will need to watch their back. Sometimes, I want to beef things up a bit for a weak Pubbie incumbent, or because I don't like the trends. Sometimes I will shave down a bit, if I really do like the trends, or at least tolerate a lower percentage. But to cede seat after seat to the Dems, to stop a wave from taking some of the remaining Pubbies down, or to prop up weak Pubbie incumbents, just makes no sense to me. Few Pubbie incumbents lost in 2008 with Bush 2004 54.5% seats or better, very few, in any event. Finally, I might note that Sessenbrenner has a 56.3% Bush 2004 seat under all of my maps. If he can't hold that, he should lose.

[Sam Spade]

Torie has essentially got the right idea. 

The game is realizing that, even in the past 3 elections wild swings, the country is so polarized (1) it is almost impossible to beat an incumbent with greater than D+4 PVI or greater (for Dem) or R+4 PVI or greater (for GOP), unless the incumbent is incompetent; and (2) it is almost impossible to win an open seat with greater than D+6 PVI or greater (for GOP) or R+6 PVI or greater (for Dem) barring special circumstances.

Now we know that in the past 20 or so years, when this game has become really active, Democrats have much more success at achieving the 'almost impossible', and holding on to said seats, for any myriad number of reasons, most importantly that Democratic leaners over the past 20 years or so are more reflexively Democratic, but this is where the action is.  And of course, PVI does evolve. 

But keep at it. 

[Torie]

Addendum: I had not bothered to look up where the new incumbent in CD-07 lived (Sean Duffy), and it turns out he lives on Lake Superior in Ashland County. Darn! So I will need to adjust the map below a bit, but it won't make much difference. Ashland is Dem, but small, unlike Douglas County (the town of Superior), which is Dem and just too large to handle. If Duffy lived in Douglas, he would have to move.

I am keeping at it!  

Anyway, here is my final cede CD-03 to the Dems plan. I cosmeticized the map, and was able to get rid of some of its "erosity," and beefed up CD-07 a bit more. Because of where incumbent Pubbies live, and the geography of the state, this is really the map that has to be drawn; unless the GOP is really willing to suck it up, and draw a hideously erose map (see above), it will have to cede CD-03 in order to keep all the GOP incumbents safe. In  short, I have hit the wall, and explored the outer limits of Pubbie greed. .

Petri (CD-06) has to shed a lot of his existing territory reaching up to the northeast up to Door County, and gain a hunk of Wausheka and then marches off to the southwest corner of the state, but his consolidation prize is that he has the most GOP CD in the state.

[Nhoj]

Actually I think Duffy is still in your 7th as he was the DA of ashland but I am fairly sure he lives in hayward in sawyer county. Not that hed likely be pleased with that much of greenbay.

[Torie]

I can't find anything on the net connecting Duffy to Sawyer. He claims he loves raising his kids in Ashland.  If Duffy in fact lives in Sawyer (it would have been a rather long commute for him everyday to drive to Ashland when he was DA there), then the prior map can be used assuming Duffy does not want to include Ashland in his CD irrespective; if he does that  is a desire that I think could be accommodated. But Duffy lost Ashland in his race this year, by about 15%, so it is not as if they love him up there to the point that those who normally vote Dem, voted for him instead. Almost none did.

In any event, here is the map that puts Ashland in CD-07, and weakens the district a tad for the GOP (by about 65 basis points, down from 55.25% to about 54.6% or so).

[Nhoj]

Ah looks like he was born and raised in hayward. Must have been how I got confused, Though I thought I saw once that he was still living there, guess not.

[dpmapper]

I would definitely keep all of Janesville in Ryan's district, as he always wins the city quite handily even though it went 60-70% for Obama.  There's absolutely no sense in wasting this advantage; you can shuffle a few more Dem precincts from WI-03 to WI-02 and free up a bit more of Waukesha for other Pubbies. 

It does make WI-01 a toss-up if Ryan leaves within the decade, but a) that might not happen, and b) if Ryan does leave for bigger things it's likely that the entire country is in a conservative mood at the moment, so maybe the seat would tilt GOP a bit. 

[Torie]

I would definitely keep all of Janesville in Ryan's district, as he always wins the city quite handily even though it went 60-70% for Obama.  There's absolutely no sense in wasting this advantage; you can shuffle a few more Dem precincts from WI-03 to WI-02 and free up a bit more of Waukesha for other Pubbies.  

It does make WI-01 a toss-up if Ryan leaves within the decade, but a) that might not happen, and b) if Ryan does leave for bigger things it's likely that the entire country is in a conservative mood at the moment, so maybe the seat would tilt GOP a bit.  

I understand, but don't agree. I think the odds are that Ryan will be gone from the House in 2 to 4 years. These maps are to last for a decade. And nothing is accomplished for any other Pubbie goal really by putting all of Janesville into CD-01. One could weaken CD-03 for the Dems a bit perhaps, making the map again more erose, but not enough to change the odds much that Kind in CD-03 can be knocked off. All the incumbent Pubbies that might be helped a tad are perfectly safe with the existing maps. It is not a scheme for example that can end up pumping more Pubbies into CD-07, particularly since Ashland must remain in CD-07 where the incumbent Pubbie lives, and there are no available decidedly GOP precincts left for CD-07 to pick up in the south (I just beat that issue to death, trying different approaches, after Gerrymandering the heck out of Brown County, which did have some pretty heavily GOP suburbs), without cutting into CD-08's core counties for the current Pubbie in Winnebago (Appleton), by doing a Gerrymander of Appleton or something. That just isn't going to happen.

Dumping all of Janesville into CD-01 would just make either CD-06 and/or CD-05 a tad more Pubbie. We are talking about maybe close to 2.5 percentage points here (pushing Ryan down from 56.6% to maybe 54.25%). I don't really want to weaken CD-01 that much given Ryan's expected half life in the House. Janesville is about 3-2 Dem (for Kerry in 2004, and I am using 2004 numbers as the benchmark, for a variety of reasons beyond availability of the numbers just because I consider those numbers a truer partisan benchmark (and Nate Silver at his 538 website as well as Charlie Cook agree with me), particularly given the GOP snap back and then some in Wisconsin this year); and Janesville is fairly large to boot.

In short, it is considerably more than a trivial matter; for every 60% or close it Dem precinct CD-01 picks up in Janesville, it loses a close to 70% Pubbie precinct in Waukesha. Doing that for no purpose other than that Ryan lives in Janesville, and it might be nice if the whole town were in his CD while he is in the House, becomes a very painful exercise. That was what I concluded after actually engaging in this little exercise that you suggest.

I might note that to pump up the Pubbie numbers a bit in CD-01, I switched out a couple of marginally Pubbie southern Milwaukee suburbs from CD-01 into CD-05, in order to give CD-01 some more Waukesha precincts. CD-01 is quite heavily massaged in my maps. It might not look like it, but it is.

Every precinct in the state seemingly got my attention at some point, outside of CD-04 and inner Dane County. And I now really know the geography of Wisconsin, perhaps second only to my home state at this point. And I discovered a county in Wisconsin, which sports my surname, Dunn, of which I was previously unaware. How about that?  

[Torie]

Some better intra county population estimates have come in for Wisconsin, and I have revised my map accordingly.

WI-05 got about 60 basis points more GOP (Sessenbrenner will be happy). Both WI-05 and WI-04 (not surprising for the city of Milwaukee CD) needed quite a bit of population. So WI-04 took the rest of heavily Dem Shorewood plus Glendale on the north shore  from WI-05, and then WI-5 needed close to 30,000 folks. So it picked up heavily GOP Hales Corner's from WI-01, plus about 10 Waukesha precincts from WI-06, and one precinct in uber GOP Washington County from WI-08.. WI-01 probably got a bit more GOP (maybe about 25 basis points), by losing most of its precincts in the marginally GOP City of Waukesha to WI-06, plus a couple of marginal precincts in Rock County to WI-02, along with losing heavily GOP Hales Corners and a couple of heavily GOP precincts in Waukesha to WI-05 , and in exchange got from WI-06 some more heavily GOP precincts in Waukesha.

WI-08 got a bit more Dem unfortunately as it lost about 8 heavily GOP precincts in Fond du lac due to the intra county population shifts in  Brown County as the Green Bay suburbs gained at the expense of the city itself which caused WI-07 to have too many people, so WI-07 dropped some of Wood to WI-08, which required WI-08 to in turn drop some precincts in Fond du Lac to WI-06. WI-06 needed people because for some reason its slice of Waskesha gained relatively fewer people than the balance of the county.  WI-07 however got a bit more GOP by virtue of its losing some marginal precincts in Wood, and also due to needing more people from WI-03 due to some precincts in Superior that I could not see until magnified that were mistakenly in WI-07, so WI-07 ended up picking up all of Clark County from WI-3, and its share of Barron dropping from two thirds to one third of the county.

I will put up the new matrix chart stats when I have recalculated them. In the meantime, I am putting up the pre-existing matrix chart, and will put up the new stats next to it for comparison purposes when calculated.  [Addendum: Now calculated and posted.]

Prior map

New Map

[Nhoj]

Looks like Im stuck in a eastern Wisconsin district well one township west of me is in a west Wisconsin district

[krazen1211]

Has anyone played with the legislative map at all?

At first glance, it looks like the 27th, 15th and 16th can be sort of recombined into 2 Dem districts based on Dane County. Perhaps one of the Dem districts in Milwaukee (3,4,6,7) can be somehow merged.

Other than that it looks like the GOP has hit its ceiling.

[Capitan Zapp Brannigan]

What are the chances that a voter ID law passing in Wisconsin will make all of these districts a few more points GOP?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What are the chances that a voter ID law passing in Wisconsin will make all of these districts a few more points GOP?

All of them? Pretty much nonexistant. It's targeted at the Democratic strongholds in Milwaukee and college towns.

[Brittain33]

Can the legislature ram through gerrymandered maps before the recall process gets underway and Republicans risk losing their senate majority? Recall elections would be in June or July.

[ag]

Can the legislature ram through gerrymandered maps before the recall process gets underway and Republicans risk losing their senate majority? Recall elections would be in June or July.

Probably, yes. They'd need to move fast of course - on everything.

[krazen1211]

Can the legislature ram through gerrymandered maps before the recall process gets underway and Republicans risk losing their senate majority? Recall elections would be in June or July.

Population growth in Wisconsin has been mostly uniform; you're not looking at an Ohio situation where Cleveland dumped population while Columbus picked it up.

The GOP can't count on blue district expansion to swallow up precincts; they're going to have to recombine stuff altogether.

That guy in North Wisconsin (Holperin, I think) is almost certain to lose Menominee County. The Milwaukee districts can I think be packed hard to pick up another seat.

[Torie]

The WSJ claims that only one Pubbie State Senator is vulnerable to a recall. The rest who are subject to a recall (the 8 who have served more than one year), have safe districts. So this little exercise won't matter. I don't know the hit list of Dems, which may serve as an offset. I suspect the whole thing will die.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Good for them, but there are two in Kerry-won districts (Kapanke and Schultz), and there are two others in districts that were close (Leibham and Harsdorf).

[dpmapper]

Good for them, but there are two in Kerry-won districts (Kapanke and Schultz), and there are two others in districts that were close (Leibham and Harsdorf).

Leibham and Schultz were just re-elected in 2010.  They're not subject to recall. 

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Either way, the other two are in vulnerable districts, and there are a couple others, like Darling and Hopper, that are potentially vulnerable. I'd be surprised if it flipped control of the Senate, but it's silly to dismiss it out of hand.

[DrScholl]

Polling suggest that at least two GOP Senators, Kapanke and Hopper are in trouble if a recall makes it to the ballot, a majority favors recalling them.

[ag]

These are going to be off-season elections, with unpredictable turnout. What are the requirements for the recall?

[jimrtex]

These are going to be off-season elections, with unpredictable turnout. What are the requirements for the recall?

You gather a lot of signatures on petitions (25% of the gubernatorial vote in the district) within 60 days, then if there are enough signatures, they have a new election, including the possibility of primaries if there are more than one candidate filing within a party.  The incumbent is presumed to have filed, unless they resign.  So rather than a recall, it might be better characterized as "do overs".

Wisconsin does not have party registration, and independents can run on a slogan of up to five words.  So there is the possibility of all kinds of mischief.  You might get some ultra lefties nominated in a Democratic primary who demand a doubling of taxes.  Or an independent might run on a slogan of "Recall All Legislators", which might draw votes from both parties, so you might not get clear cut results.