US House Redistricting: Wisconsin

[Torie]

Are you sure that the GOP needs to throw in the towel on WI-03, in order to make all the GOP incumbents reasonably safe? I define reasonably safe as a Bush 2004 percentage of the two party vote of 54.5% or above. The goal of course is to leash the Dems to just two CD's, one taking in the inner city Milwaukee Dems, and the other taking in Madison, and anything else within conceivable reach that has a bunch of Dems in it. Are there any legal restrictions on gerrymandering in Wisconsin?  I assume the GOP has total control of the process here. Is that correct? I might turn my attention to Wisconsin next, now that I have completed my Michigan psephological CD line drawing artistry to my satisfaction.

[Torie]

The Dem votes are too spread out in the western part of the state to pack them all into one district -- Dane County (Madison) alone takes up the lion's share of a district.

Looking at it from a pure numbers perspective, you'd have to shunt about 11-12 points of Republican performance from Sensenbrenner and Petri's districts to make Duffy safe and turn Kind's district into a Republican-leaning one. I don't really know how you'd do that without making a complete and utter mess of the map (and I doubt Sensenbrenner would take kindly to his district being made anything less than rock-solid Republican).

Dane back when in the more exurban and rural areas had a GOP lean at least. So maybe that county is a candidate for a split. I split both the university/government counties of Washtenaw and Inghram in Michigan, just because it was essential to do so. The towns, Lansing, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, were close to 3-1 Dem, while the balance of the two counties were marginal to comfortably GOP. Can't Madison erose around, and gerrymander itself into larger towns elsewhere, to take in the Dem parts of them?  That is the low hanging fruit I look at first, absent legal restrictions, in effecting GOP gerrymanders.

[Torie]

Below is a town map of the lay of the partisan land in the 2004 POTUS election. And yes, it will be a challenge to leash the Dems to two seats, leaving the balance comfortably GOP, or at least for all the GOP incumbents, with CD-03 maybe marginal to tilt GOP. But it can be done. What needs to be done, is to have the GOP heartland outside Milwaukee and farther north on the east side of the state, all join in to chop up the Dem areas outside the Dane and environs red zone per the map (inner city Milwaukee of course having its own CD).  I take your point about Dane. The whole county considers the GOP to be armed and dangerous and nutter, as it were.

[Torie]

This will definitely be my next project. As was the case with Michigan, there is no partisan data on the Leips application, so it will take some work.   And I will need to find good precinct maps for some places.  And a good township map.

[Torie]

Here is my first effort at achieving my goals. I have not cranked the numbers, but I think I am in the hunt. And yes, Sessenbrenner will not be overjoyed with his district, which now goes all  the way to La Cross. We shall see what his numbers look like. I did try to give him very heavily GOP slice of suburban and exurban Milwaukee to cheer him up.

It is hard to see, but not only did I do a a gerrymander of Wausau, but also a 3 way one in Green Bay. Green Bay has some very GOP precincts, which are extremely useful in this neck of the woods.

[Torie]

McCain only won five precincts in Green Bay, one of which only had 15 votes. That gave him 80%, but the next strongest with a significant number of votes gave him less than 58%. Don't see too many GOP stronghold precincts there.

It is the county (Brown County). Most of the city I put in the 6th district.

The numbers need to be crunched, and if a map with 6 CD's with a Bush 2004 percentage of 54.5% or better can be created, or close to it - fine. If not, then the Dems get 3 seats. And then one moves on to a map that deals with incumbent issues and concerns and needs, and "disincumbances" Kind in CD-03. If something almost as good by the partisan numbers can be created, than that is the plan. Otherwise, the Pubbies have a choice to make. But all of the GOP incumbents should be able to hold Bush 2004 54.5% or better CD's I would think.  

I know the population numbers need to be equalized. That will be done when we get close to final drafts.

By the way, I just calculated CD-03. Bush 2004 got 54.35% of the two party vote there (Washington County is very GOP, and without CD-03's two thirds share of it, the Bush percentage drops to 51.9%); so with a bit of massaging, it should be possible fairly easily to get up to 54.5%, and maybe 55%. It depends on what the numbers are in the other 5 GOP CD's, and how much pad is available, or can be generated by massaging the two Dem CD's, and what can be done to move the pad where it is needed. Given that the two Dem CD's are 2-1 Dem, for the other 6 CD's, there is enough collective GOP pad to make them all meet my targets and a bit more, absent roadblocks. We shall see.

And CD-05, before factoring in its slug of hyper GOP precincts in Waukesha
(which will take considerable work to calculate), clocks in at 52.3% for Bush 2004 (it's sliver of Washington County alone bumped it up a full percentage point from 51.3% to 52.3%). That CD should be fine.

So far, my line drawing just based on eyeballing the map, and the percentage numbers for the counties available here on the Leips site, along with some more detailed work in a few counties, seems to be panning out, as a strictly partisan matter anyway.

[Torie]

This map completely ignores communities of interest across the state particularly in WI-5 and 3 in favor of a gerrymander, I have a hard time believing local GOP chairs would find this map acceptable, for instance, would the la crosse GOP really like being represented by a Waukesha area rep or the other way around?

WI-7 which is my district I like for the fact that it covers all of the north woods, but dislike for the fact that it gos into green bay which really has nothing in common with the west part of the district, I really don't like the idea of being represented by someone from green bay. Its also quite possible that the district still voted for obama.

Also I do believe you need to be a lot closer to equal population than you have it [though you may know that]. A pretty good map I guess, though I am not sure it wouldn't backfire badly on the gop in bad year for them.

CD-07 needs a slug of hyper GOP precincts in Brown County where Green Bay is located, precisely in order to take it out of reach for a Dem (and totally neutralize the three counties on Lake Superior that vote Dem 3-2 (that "Finnish" vote that Michael Barone and BRTD like to bitch slap each other about), collectively generating about a 10,000 Dem vote margin). The territory around the Dem Lake Superior three county region is marginal GOP. To render the Lake Superior counties harmless absent a rather large Dem wave, one needs to move to the northeastern part of the state and, to seal the deal, dip down into the part of the GOP heartland that is in the east central part of the state, and take in suburban Green Bay in Brown County. The "community of interest" is the GOP retaining this seat without much struggle. Provincialism is just so yesterday, for this exercise. The end.

[Torie]

I don't think your map would fly in good government Wisconsin, Torie. Much better to solidify the Milwaukee and Madison districts, while making WI-3 more of a swing district. If I was a pubbie assemblyman drawing the map, I would focus on making WI-7 a safe R district, not trying to take out Kind.

Wait until the final map, Sbane. "Everybody" should be happy, except of course the Dems. WI-7 is already secured in this map. And Kind is gone. Yes, the western part of the state needs to be chopped up. Something needs to be chopped up, why not the west?  Isn't that where the wicked witch lives? 

Gerrymandering is just so easy for a Pubbie in most places. You just Dem pack the inner cities and university/government towns, and a few rust belt precincts, and in some places gentry liberal precincts floating around outside the inner cities and university towns, often Jewish or secular WASP (which really don't exist much in Wisconsin), and life is a breeze.

[Torie]

I just noticed WI-8, thats suppose to be a republican gerrymander of that district? because looking at it, it may in fact be just as democratic as before.

OK, I did the cals now for CD-08. CD-08 is about 54% Bush 2004, before being diluted down to perhaps 53.5% (I have not calculated that yet) due to its thrust up into Marathon County to take in much of Wausau. So yes, it does need a bit of a boost to get to my benchmarks. I need to complete the calcs on the rest of the districts, to see what my options are. In its current configuration, Bush got 55.4% of the two party vote, so it will probably be made a tad more Dem on the final map than that, to accomplish the overall objectives of the map.

[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.


  

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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

[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.

[Torie]

Ah the partisan acrimony is just about everywhere isn't it? 

[Torie]

Here's an article about a proposed Congressional map being passed around. PDF of the map is here.

Drops WI-07 down to 53-45 Obama and pushes WI-03 up to 59-39 Obama. All the other districts look to be pretty much unchanged, number-wise.

A competent map, with the innovation that Stevens Point is put in the west Wisconsin Dem CD, while WI-07 picks up GOP St. Croix. But WI-07 and WI-01 are too marginal for my taste. Granted, Ryan while he runs for re-election will do just fine.

[Torie]

Yes, my map was considerably more aggressive (and might I add creative), than this OK but rather pedestrian effort.  The 1st and 7th could have both rather easily been made a couple of PVI points more GOP.

[Torie]

Just for kicks, I drew a Wisconsin map that follows the Michigan rules. I found it a most satisfying endeavor. Thank you.  No, the fat man won't be happy. That is part of its charm.




Here is a more subdued map.



And here is something a little more adventurous.

[Torie]

Here is the enacted map and stats, and my Michigan rule map and stats.  The game with the Michigan rule map of course vis a vis the 2011 enacted map, was to share the Pub wealth of WI-05 with other Pub held CD's that could use some Pub padding. Sesenbrenner was a pig.