Ideal State Combinations

[ElectionsGuy]

I wanted to make a thread about this for awhile. Personally, I would love to combine states because I would like to have less states, and its just fun to see the different shapes you make. So this is about sharing your own ideal state combinations, if you have any at all or all (like myself). We all have preferences to cut out states and reshape them (borders wise), but this thread is only for combinations.

For me:

1. ME + NH + VT (Upper New England)
2. CT + MA + RI (Lower New England)
3. MD + DE (Middle Atlantic) (To fix the shape)
4. TN + KY (Middle Ground)
5. SD + ND (Upper Plains)
6. MT + ID + WY (Upper Mountains)
7. TX + OK (Lower Plains) (To fix the shape)
8. MS + LA + AR (Western Deep South)
9. AL + GA (Eastern Deep South)
10. PA + NJ (Upper Atlantic)
11. CA + NV (Pacific Southwest)
12. WA + OR (Pacific Northwest)
13. UT + CO (Lower Mountains) (This is not political, I promise)
14. KS + NE (Middle Plains)
15. MI + WI (Eastern Upper Midwest)
16. NC + SC (Lower Atlantic)
17. VA + WV (Middle Atlantic)
18. OH + IN (Eastern Lower Midwest)
19. IL + MO (Western Lower Midwest)
20. MN + IA (Western Upper Midwest)
21. AZ + NM (Mexican Border States)
22. Leave New York
23. Leave Florida
24..Leave Alaska (obviously)
25. Leave Hawaii (obviously)

So my map would look like this:

Even more interesting is figuring out how these would all vote in the 2012 election. But I might or might not do that later...

[Miles]

2012

[ElectionsGuy]

2012

Thanks Miles!

Do you have your considerations?

[Miles]

Thanks Miles!

Do you have your considerations?

I'm doing 2008 then swing/trend. Eh, I would just have a few nitpicks.

[Miles]

Whoah, the IL/MO state on the 2012 map should be red.

Fixed.

[Nichlemn]

Interesting exercise. It helps emphasise the different sizes of states, for instance I was kind of surprised that Romney won the combined VA + WV, OH + IN and NC + SC states by lower margins than I expected, because the more Republican state was quite a bit less populous.

Another exercise - join states together to make a D or R gerrymander, without abusing the 2EV rule.

[Miles]

2008





Swing



Trend

[Miles]

Democratic 'gerrymander.' It has 25 states like the original map; Obama won 16 plus DC.

[ElectionsGuy]

Republican Gerrymander:

[Miles]

Republican Gerrymander:

For a map with 25 states, your original map is a pretty good deal for Republicans.

[ElectionsGuy]

Republican Gerrymander:

For a map with 25 states, your original map is a pretty good deal for Republicans.

It was, the SC + NC, WV + VA, AZ + NM, CO + UT, and IN + OH were all favorable to republicans, although I did have the MO + IL, and left Florida which were favorable to democrats.

[Skill and Chance]

Here is an idea I had with 14 states, using the population of Texas as a baseline.  I allowed for some substantial variation, as long as the states were all within 20-40 EV.  FL and NY also ended up standing on their own, but mostly by necessity for contiguity of nearby states with reasonable populations.  I tried to avoid splitting metro areas and did this by descending order of population.  NYC unfortunately has to be split because the alternative makes New England even smaller, so I made Philadelphia whole:

CA is split into NorCal and SoCal, using the straight line to the north of San Luis Obispo-Kern-San Bernardino.  This should be roughly a 34-19 split of the CA CDs.  SoCal gets Hawaii and NorCal gets OR, WA and AK.  Is anyone interested in running presidential numbers for these states?  I wonder if Bush might have carried the SoCal state in 2004?
 

[ElectionsGuy]

Here is an idea I had with 14 states, using the population of Texas as a baseline.  I allowed for some substantial variation, as long as the states were all within 20-40 EV.  FL and NY also ended up standing on their own, but mostly by necessity for contiguity of nearby states with reasonable populations.  I tried to avoid splitting metro areas and did this by descending order of population.  NYC unfortunately has to be split because the alternative makes New England even smaller, so I made Philadelphia whole:

CA is split into NorCal and SoCal, using the straight line to the north of San Luis Obispo-Kern-San Bernardino.  This should be roughly a 34-19 split of the CA CDs.  SoCal gets Hawaii and NorCal gets OR, WA and AK.  Is anyone interested in running presidential numbers for these states?  I wonder if Bush might have carried the SoCal state in 2004?
 

Kerry still would've won it. Los Angeles County has too much power.

Interesting map by the way.

[Skill and Chance]

I think it was 9-5 Obama in 2012 and 10-4 Obama in 2008.  2004 looks like a 7-7 tie?  But Bush would still have won because of New England having lower EVs.  2000 looks like it was also 7-7 with Gore winning MI+OH by about 5000 votes.  Not sure about SoCal... 

[ElectionsGuy]

I think it was 9-5 Obama in 2012 and 10-4 Obama in 2008.  2004 looks like a 7-7 tie?  But Bush would still have won because of New England having lower EVs.  2000 looks like it was also 7-7 with Gore winning MI+OH by about 5000 votes.  Not sure about SoCal... 

SoCal: Kerry 51.5% (3,694,489), Bush 47.2% (3,387,291) + Hawaii

[Adam Griffin]

Democratic gerrymander, 17/25 are Obama 2012 states:



I started out wanting population balance (21 states with 18-19 EV + NY, TX, FL & CA), but obviously had to loosen up as I moved from west to east. Ultimately, I decided to divide MA to balance out the bottleneck in the NE. Adjusted EV (4 Senators per state).

Obama - 360 EV
Romney - 178 EV