App to Redraw the States and Change the Electoral Map

[Dr. MB]

Massive Gerrymander Clinton 463, Trump 64


A few notes:
-Alaska has been added to California
-Southern WV and Eastern Kentucky aren't states, they are part of Virginia, but for some reason the borders were acting weird and making it look like they were states.
-Same thing with DC, it's been added to Virginia but it still looks separate.

Well, I was going to try for a complete gerrymander without hugely changing anything but at least I succeeded in making the West entirely Democratic, even Utah and Wyoming (although it took the elimination of Idaho to do so). The Midwest is also almost all Democratic, except for "North Dakota" (that red part that includes eastern ND and SD and northwestern Iowa), Kansas (which also includes most of Missouri), and a few counties of southern Indiana that were added to Kentucky.

The least populous state by far is "South Dakota", which I created by adding together a few heavily Democratic reservations, total vote for 2016: 17,853; total population 59,859. But it gets 3 electoral votes.

The worst shaped states are Montana, Ohio, Missouri, Nebraska (that area with Lincoln, Omaha, and Kansas City), and Alabama (now including parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and South Carolina), which all look like heavily gerrymandered congressional districts. Under this new map, I'm not gonna calculate exactly but the two largest states by far would be Washington (now including parts of Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa), and California (now including Alaska).

The easiest state to change was Wisconsin, which I did by adding just one county (Lake County, Illinois). The hardest was Montana which took a while (I ended up joining together Democratic counties in four states).

I'll try it with GOP now.

[Dr. MB]

GOP gerrymander Trump 439 Clinton 84



Both the northeast and northwest were hard to do. I had everywhere in the Pacific Northwest Republican except for King County, WA so to add that in I had to create a monstrous new Idaho which extends from the Puget Sound to central Oklahoma.

I was successful in getting rid of the Mid Atlantic, by adding the Washington-Baltimore metro area to the new larger Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia (which I had to expand into Kentucky, NC, Tennessee, and Georgia). I still couldn't get the northeast so there ended up being one state in the NYC metro area, one in part of Connecticut, and one which includes Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. I did manage to create a Republican state out of parts of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

California's counties are so large it's almost impossible to gerrymander a GOP state but I did as best as I could.

[Dr. MB]

And here's a 2012 map. Obama 472, Romney 41. It's the most outrageous in my opinion.

free image hosting websites
This one was a bit easier because Obama won way more counties in 2012 than Clinton in 2016, but still it was impossible to get the Upper South and Texahoma in there.

As you can see, Washington is ridiculous. It goes from the actual state itself through Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and ends up in Kansas.

Los Angeles also is now part of Utah. Missouri is absolutely crazy. And strips of land from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Maryland extend all the way down to Tennessee.

Florida is my favorite. It's tame compared to some of the other gerrymandered states, but when you examine a bit closer...

Obama 4,703,041
Romney 4,703,037

That's a hundred times worse than 2000. And no, it wasn't intentional.

Surprisingly, I managed to get most of the Deep South as Democratic thanks to a larger Tennessee and a Democratic Florida.

[Dr. MB]

The best gerrymander is where democrats only win 3 evs.  This can be done by making the blue counties part of DC.  DC gets 3 evs only, even if it has 100 million people!  2 states, Massachusetts and Hawaii have to be completely placed into DC because all of their counties voted Hillary.  This is the most brutal gerrymander possible.

Top: Democrat Bottom: Republican

[Dr. MB]

how did you upload the photos?

I took screenshots and uploaded them to http://imgbb.com (it's a lot easier than Imgur or any other site because it takes literally 10 seconds, gives you the code right there, and you don't need to register).

[Dr. MB]

It's kind of fun to play around with it and create hypothetical states.


Mexican border counties – 7,301,356 population, 12 EV, 1,271,761 Clinton (58.6%), 784,511 Trump (36.2%), 78,829 Johnson (3.6%), 30,700 Stein (1.4%), 0 McMullin, 3,000 Other (0.1%), 2,168,801 Total


Canadian land/river border counties – 4,669,084 population, 9 EV, 1,061,010 Clinton (52.6%), 852,713 Trump (42.3%), 66,725 Johnson (3.3%), 27,862 Stein (1.4%), 2,075 McMullin (0.1%), 6,420 Other (0.3%), 2,016,805 Total

[Dr. MB]

Gulf coast counties – 14,195,337 population, 22 EV, 3,203,997 Trump (53.0%), 2,623,686 Clinton (43.4%), 157,133 Johnson (2.6%), 46,434 Stein (0.8%), 2,843 McMullin (0.05%), 12,160 Other (0.2%), 6,046,253 Total

Mississippi River counties – 10,841,756 population, 17 EV, 2,609,517 Clinton (49.8%), 2,335,728 Trump (44.5%), 170,222 Johnson (3.2%), 56,496 Stein (1.1%), 40,600 McMullin (0.8%), 30,612 Other (0.6%), 5,243,175 Total

[Dr. MB]

Consolidation into "super states"

Trump very narrowly wins in this scenario.

California – California, Nevada, and Hawaii
Carolina – NC to Florida
Cascadia – Northwest (includes Alaska)
Colorado – Interior West
Mississippi – Deep South
Missouri – Central region
New England – self explanatory
New York – New York, PA, NJ
Ohio – Illinois, Ohio, Indiana
Superior – Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin
Texas – Texas and Oklahoma
Virginia – VA, KY area

The swing states in this scenario would be Colorado, Carolina, Ohio, Superior, and Virginia.

[Dr. MB]

Extending each state so it has either a coastal or Great Lakes boundary

[Dr. MB]

Why did I do this

All you need for Colorado to turn R is to move Denver out.