Most deceptive gerrymander?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

We can all complain about the hideous ones like Florida and Maryland, but what's the one that doesn't look so bad yet really is?

I vote for Virginia. It's a Republican gerrymander designed to limit Democrats to only the inner Beltway seat, the black majority one based around Richmond, and Boucher's with his personal vote. It was quite successful at first though it folded under conditions and some demographic changes, but is pretty bad even though it looks kind of logical.

Michigan is another one, the districts are mostly squarish and not that ugly, but it is a nasty Republican map. Lansing being in a Republican-leaning district is evidence enough. At least that one probably won't be repeated.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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It only looks that way on the map, it's mostly a Detroit suburban district. With another bit of the Bay City area thrown in if I remember correctly.

Yep, Milk and Cereal's home for anyone who remembers him. But nowhere near Bay City.

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Ann Arbor/Dingell is merely hilarious. (Though might have happened even with a commission.)

The idea was to make one of the lost seats the old Rep for the Ann Arbor area, some very liberal and generic female Democrat who had very little seniority and the GOP had no reason to preserve. She ran anyway and lost to Dingell. Oddly enough a lot of the NARAL puppets among the Dem caucus in the House tried to get Dingell to actually stand down to her, even though she was only a 4-termer. One offer was that if Dingell stood down the Dem caucus would agree to make him the first Speaker of the House who wasn't a sitting member if the Dems won the House.

Lansing is plain disgusting.

Beyond words.

Nah, sorry, it's the safe R 4th district that includes a bizarre spike into Saginaw.

It's hardly a safe R seat, it's only R+3. If it had been open in 2006 or 2008 it would've flipped, and would've be holdable even this year. And I don't think it contains any portion of Saginaw proper. A fairly drawn map probably would include Saginaw in a different seat than Flint, thus making this one far more winnable yes. The GOP are also very lucky that Upton didn't retire in either of those years. Also the GOP better pray that Upton who is now something like the 5th most liberal Republican in the House (granted this says a lot more about the current GOP House caucus than it does about Upton) doesn't become one of the Tea Party's targets in 2012.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Admittedly though one area where JLT is wrong is MI-03. It's true the district does just out to the east instead of having Grand Rapids proper at the dead center but by doing so ignores Ottawa County to the west. Which would make it a hell of a lot more Republican. Granted this is mostly to get Ottawa County into MI-02 and prevent the election of a Stupak-esque Dem from MI-02.

I'll have a more fairly drawn MI map coming up.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

OK here goes. I guess JLT had a bit of a point about Grand Rapids though the seat isn't that winnable regardless. And I know it's far from perfect for a lot of reasons but anyway here is Michigan redrawn with 2002 Census data:



MI-01 is still a Dem district in almost all cases.
MI-02 is more winnable but still clearly a GOP-leaning seat.
MI-03, well same really.
MI-04 doesn't change much. Turns out adding Saginaw is kind of tricky with the other seats drawn better.
MI-05 is basically the same.
MI-06 is more winnable, probably the same situation as now. Turns out Battle Creek wasn't as Democratic as I thought.
MI-07 is the biggest change. It goes now to a Lansing-based and dominated seat. Would be Dem.
MI-08 would be pretty safe GOP.
MI-09 is a bit more black and a bit more winnable. Probably the same situation that happened in reality though with this seat.
MI-10 is a bit less suburban but also a bit more conservative.
MI-11, OK I'm not exactly comfortable putting Ann Arbor with the Detroit outer suburbs, but it doesn't belong anywhere pretty well. Anyway this would be a Dem seat and not McCotter (who is annoying but moreso for being a dumb than an ideologue.)
MI-12 is maybe a bit less Dem, but would be won by one.
MI-13 and MI-14, nothing to say really. Barely changed them.
MI-15 is a seat that Dingell would probably win, but would far more winnable without him.

So basically you get Dems winning under most circumstances 1, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13 and 14, the GOP winning under most circumstances 2, 3, 4, 8 and 10 and 6, 9 and 15 as swing seats. So not much of a natural GOP advantage.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So more like this?



Even less happy with where Ann Arbor went. Maybe putting it in Dingell's seat wasn't so bad after all (despite it being part of a blatant attempt to remove incumbents and Dem-voting areas so McCotter could be elected.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That seat would be a tossup though. No Ann Arbor seat should be. BTW it appears that Ypsilanti is actually even more Dem than Ann Arbor.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The 1st doesn't change much, so no way that would be a safe Republican district. And otherwise that does prove my point that under a fair map the Republicans wouldn't have such a slanted advantage.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There's also Idaho. Yes, Idaho. You may wonder how you can gerrymander a super-Republican state with only two districts, but they basically did this by splitting Boise right down the middle, clearly to prevent the possibility of any strong Boise-based Democrat taking a seat on their own merits. Succeeded in that sense but failed in preventing district 1 Republicans from nominating Bill Sali. However it does make me wonder if all of Boise will be removed from ID-01 in redistricting. This will put pretty much all the areas with a notable number of Democrats in Idaho in one district, but also plenty of Mormons and probably enough to cancel them out.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No. Don't get yourself confused by the 2008 map, take a look at 1996 or 2000 instead. Noone was going to consider Boise the Dems' strongest area in 2000.
Boise also happens to be slap bang in the middle of the state and it's difficult to get from the one end to the other except via Boise - there isn't actually a sensible alternative to splitting it (though the exact split might have been done better.)

Not that I know much of the state legislature at the time, but I got the idea from that Boise has a majority of Idaho Democrats in the legislature. There are 35 legislative seats (State House uses the same districts, just elects two reps instead of one Senator), and there are 7 Democrats. Four are from Boise, the remaining ones are from Blaine County, Pocatello and I think the area around Moscow.

If redistricting is non-partisan in Idaho...odd, but I guess shoots down my theory of all of Boise being removed from ID-01 in 2012.