Neutral map series

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

As a NYer, the only thing I can think of for your map is to do this config for Long Island if you're really trying for compactness and minimizing County/City splits:



From a COI standpoint, they're pretty simillar.

Kind of ironic that 9 is less likely to be performing than 8 despite having a higher black %.
As for LI, I came to the view that single-mindedly focusing on keeping towns whole would unduly be to the detriment of compactness. LI town borders are hard to work with. So instead I prioritized compactness and drew the borders so that no two districts cut two towns (Michigan Rules but for towns, essentially). And I sought to make the LI seats as box-like as possible. I probably could have kept Huntington whole in the 3rd, come to think about it...
Btw, is there some kind of problem with the Oklahoma shapefiles or something?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Arkansas

At first I thought the most compact way to draw the state would be dividing the state into four boxes.

But the concentration of population NW AR has increased since 2010. Now, the most viable whole-county CD in the region is Sebastian-Franklin-Crawford-Madison-Washington-Benton, which effectively means a bunch of counties to the east of this either end up in AR-04 or AR-01. Either way the box arrangement is ruined. It was only somewhat saved by the removing of Sebastian County, which allowed AR-03 to move east to take in these counties. AR-01, while not really a "box", still is compact, and AR-02 covers NW Arkansas.  But this still splits a county, and I was trying to zero out county splits if so possible.

I got back to the drawing board and I decided to draw a compact Little Rock CD and then split the state into three CDs also designed to be as compact as possible, while avoiding any county splits (since that was the main flaw of the previous thing I had worked out). Making a whole-county AR-02 centered on Little Rock was surprisingly easy (though that should not have been surprising in retrospect), and the only really awkward thing was AR-01 bending around AR-02's borders. But that could not be helped. Compactness is inferior but the map's relative weakness on this front was not enough to avoid it being chosen.

In the end, I chose the "alternative" over the original, but had I had different criteria, this could have fairly easily gone differently. Particularly if I was weighing partisanship-related or minority representation-related criteria heavily, I would have very likely chosen the original. This is the difference, the way I see it, between a non-partisan map and a fair map.

AR-01 (Jonesboro): 68W, 25B; 66-32 Trump, R+17
AR-02 (Little Rock): 63W, 25B; 52-45 Trump, R+6
AR-03 (Fayetteville): 73W, 14H; 63-34 Trump, R+18
AR-04 (Fort Smith): 71W, 13B; 70-27 Trump, R+23

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Only two Continental states left bordering only one state done so far (and thus, not at least two) are Maine (which borders only New Hampshire) and Washington.
Next state up will be either Idaho or Washington.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Idaho

In the 2010s a whole county CD taking in all of Ada County and everything north of it and east of Lemhi and Custer counties could be drawn. Now such a district is 17,000 people above quota. Oh well. You could preserve there being no county splits by removing Valley and Boise counties from ID-01, but this looked horridly uncompact and I decided to instead remove as much of Ada County, going from south to north, as was needed for ID-02 to reach quota.

ID-01 (Boise): 83W; 59-38 Trump, R+14
ID-02 (Nampa): 75W, 19H; 70-27 Trump, R+25

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/6b19b071-bb75-42b5-8dd4-89e99ceb271c
While I don't think this is a viable replacement because of some issues (such as the lines in Wake County) this is what the NC map would look like if it was prioritizing what Sol was talking about.
Btw, please never change. Your nitpicking is nice to see.

Interesting solution for a sandhills district. My solution looked like this, there is a district entirely within Wake County that contains Raleigh and Cary and the rest of Wake is headed south/south-east:
https://davesredistricting.org/join/072dde14-c651-43d0-a716-43766faea2a7

That map is really nice, but I think there'd be reason for legal concern around the 1st and the VRA.

It is possible to cut the Rockingham arm and turn the 1st more Black and more Biden than in Tim Turner's maps, but then the 3rd cuts too far into Raleigh exurbia in Johnston County for my personal taste:
https://davesredistricting.org/join/fd7991e8-8885-41ec-a714-fd7a1b708e29

https://davesredistricting.org/join/d4c3a124-1a6a-4e0f-ae6f-943b949bf59c
Thoughts on this?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maine is so simple I don't even need an image.

ME-01 is composed of Cumberland, York, Oxford, and Androscoggin counties. 89% White; 59-39 Biden, D+7. Biggest city is Portland.

ME-02 is composed of Franklin, Sagadhoc, Somerset, Kennebec, Lincoln, Piscataquis, Waldo, Knox, Arostook, Penobscot, Hancock, and Washington counties. 92% White; 50-48 Trump, R+4. Biggest city is Bangor.

DRA link

I honestly much prefer the north south split to this east west one.

The current north-south split is not bad. But it is inferior under this set of criteria to the map I posted here. It not only gets rid of a county split, it makes the border between the two districts more of a straight line and makes both districts marginally more box-like.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Pennsylvania

This was the first map I made. I was able to create many at least somewhat compact districts and keep splits at a medium level. I was, however, not satisfied. I wanted something better. I ended up drawing up the above map. It actually had whole-county CDs and its compactness was equal or slightly better.

In general, the math is just awful when it comes to drawing county nestings. Even York-Lancester-Chester is just outside the 1% deviation band but could support basically 2 seats if the math was slightly different. Thankfully I was able to achieve three whole-county CDs upon redrawing...

There are eight Biden seats and nine Trump ones. I used pre-2018 numberings as opposed to post-2018 ones, so keep that in mind.

PA-01 (Philadelphia): 41W, 27B, 22H, 10A; 68-31 Biden, D+19
PA-02 (Philadelphia): 55B, 31W; 92-8 Biden, D+41
PA-03 (Erie): 88W; 62-37 Trump, R+16
PA-04 (York): 83W; 65-34 Trump, R+18
PA-05 (Harrisburg): 75W, 11B; 56-43 Trump, R+9
PA-06 (Reading): 70W, 17H; 53-46 Biden, EVEN
PA-07 (Philadelphia): 57W, 27B; 66-33 Biden, D+15
PA-08 (Bensalem): 79W; 53-46 Biden, D+1
PA-09 (Altoona): 92W; 73-26 Trump, R+26
PA-10 (State College): 88W; 64-34 Trump, R+17
PA-11 (Scranton): 75W, 13H; 51-48 Trump, R+5
PA-12 (Mount Lebanon): 86W; 52-47 Trump, R+6
PA-13 (Lower Merion Township): 74W; 62-37 Biden, D+9
PA-14 (Pittsburgh): 69W, 22B; 66-33 Biden, D+14
PA-15 (Allentown): 69W, 19H; 50-49 Biden, R+2
PA-16 (Lancaster): 82W, 10H; 60-38 Trump, R+14
PA-17 (Hempfield Township): 90W; 63-36 Trump, R+16

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/6b19b071-bb75-42b5-8dd4-89e99ceb271c
While I don't think this is a viable replacement because of some issues (such as the lines in Wake County) this is what the NC map would look like if it was prioritizing what Sol was talking about.
Btw, please never change. Your nitpicking is nice to see.

Interesting solution for a sandhills district. My solution looked like this, there is a district entirely within Wake County that contains Raleigh and Cary and the rest of Wake is headed south/south-east:
https://davesredistricting.org/join/072dde14-c651-43d0-a716-43766faea2a7

That map is really nice, but I think there'd be reason for legal concern around the 1st and the VRA.

It is possible to cut the Rockingham arm and turn the 1st more Black and more Biden than in Tim Turner's maps, but then the 3rd cuts too far into Raleigh exurbia in Johnston County for my personal taste:
https://davesredistricting.org/join/fd7991e8-8885-41ec-a714-fd7a1b708e29

https://davesredistricting.org/join/d4c3a124-1a6a-4e0f-ae6f-943b949bf59c
Thoughts on this?

Judged by purely geometric compactness (and splits of administrative divisions) this seems like a very good map, better than mine. If you go by geometric compactness you could also rearrange the 3rd and 7th, it's just that personally I like a whole-county almost entirely coastal 7th so much.

It's also superior to my own current NC map too. I think I'm replacing it with that. But of course, that's also to be done down the road. after a few other states are done.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Indiana

Drew this up in fifteen minutes. I sought to draw whole-county CDs and the map pretty much fell in place. I've never drawn a "leftovers from Marion" CD with these exact borders, of course. I also did was not necessarily an unavoidable county split of Hancock County. Nonetheless, I feel satisfied with this. I have six reasonably compact whole-county CDs. In fact, this map has higher compactness ratings than any other map in this series before. Thank you, Indiana!

There's 2 Biden seats and 7 Trump seats. One of each of them is marginal - IN-01 on the Biden side, which was within range of possibly going R this year, and IN-05 on the Trump side, which might have seen Spartz go down in defeat.

IN-01 (Hammond): 61W, 19B, 17H; 51-48 Biden, D+1
IN-02 (South Bend): 74W, 12H, 10B; 57-41 Trump, R+11
IN-03 (Fort Wayne): 80W; 63-35 Trump, R+18
IN-04 (Lafayette): 80W; 62-35 Trump, R+17
IN-05 (Indianapolis): 70W, 17H; 50-49 Trump, R+4
IN-06 (Muncie): 89W; 69-29 Trump, R+23
IN-07 (Indianapolis): 53W, 27B, 13H; 63-35 Biden, D+11
IN-08 (Evansville): 88W; 66-33 Trump, R+19
IN-09 (Bloomington): 85W; 61-37 Trump, R+15

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I'm doing FL at the moment. I've Been Working on the Railroad is playing, with me doing lines in Miami-Dade, an area that developed because of an heiress's enterprising efforts to build a railroad down the coast of Florida.
#historicalfactswithTim #ironic

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Florida

This was surprisingly easy. I drew with compact county clusters when possible and this helped me lower the overall number of county splits from where it otherwise would be.

Starting in the north of Florida, there is FL-01 and FL-02. I was not going to draw the Tallahasee-Jacksonville CD...too incompact, and kind of ugly anyway. Not to mention, kind of unnecessary to begin with. I did not draw an all-in-Duval CD either though, it would make the Duval leftovers CD kind of awkward. I try to draw even the minority seats compact. I put basically all the black areas in Duval in FL-05 already, anyhow...

In Orlando, I was heavily influenced by the discovery that Osceola, Orange, and Seminole counties were a mere ten thousand of people away from being able to form three seats exactly on quota. I previously had leftovers from Saint Johns County combined with Volusia, Flagler, and all but 10k of Putnam forming a CD (this part being in FL-03), and realized I could unify Putnam and take enough people out of Volusia and thus cut out a county split. This in turn locked in something pretty much on par with the post-2015 court map, though I tried hard to have Orlando city mostly within FL-10. One difference was that Indian River and Brevard counties together could make a whole-county CD, meaning that the easternmost parts of Orange County had to go in FL-09.

There was some difficulty working out what to do in North-central FL, but I gave up on having a district crossing the Pasco-Pinellas border when I learned that Polk County could make it its deficit of 55k from quota by taking from Lake County, leaving just enough people, between FL-15 and FL-03 and the Hillsborough-Pinellas border, to have two more seats. Pasco and Hernando were just about 6k or so short and so I ultimately decided to take the needed people mostly from Bushnell, FL (a name I associate binoculars because my Papa gave me one as a gift many years ago).

Hillsborough and Pinellas presented me with my first essentially mandatory municipal big city split in a city that had less people than quota. Tampa is a sprawling municipality that runs all the way to the Pasco County border. About 35-40% of Tampa is in FL-14, and the rest is in FL-16. Both these districts voted for Biden, but the former is way more marginal, and the latter is a minority access seat. The border between FL-16 and FL-17 does not split any municipalities.

The Southwestern coast of FL saw me draw seats centered and limited to coastal counties. Lee County was, unfortunately, too far away from quota to anchor or be counterminous with a whole-county CD. FL-16's population is about a third from the non-coastal Southern Florida counties, a sixth from Collier County, and about half from Lee County. I paired Collier with Miami-Dade, just like the post-2015 court map, to avoid the creation of a 90% Latino district in Western Miami-Dade. (I reserve the right to avoid packing, even if total avoidance of it is not part of the criteria)

FL-20, the successor to 2013-2023 FL-18, avoids municipalities with more Blacks and takes the shape it does to make FL-21 a more compact minority seat. Boynton Beach is the only municipality in Palm Beach County split, and the reason is that FL-21 was already getting rather too White for my taste to begin with. Municipal integrity already forced it to eat up the heavily White precincts along the cost. The leftovers from Palm Beach County were paired with relatively more White parts of Broward.

In Broward, I was able to draw a Black plurality seat in the form of a FL-23 running from Hillsboro Beach to the Sunrise-Weston border. Fort Lauderdale ends up being split for compactness reasons and also because it has many precincts FL-23 absolutely needs. FL-24 takes in all of Broward lest the parts in FL-23 and FL-22, except for some 79k that have to go in another district. I detached heavily Black precincts from FL-24 and put it in Miami-Dade-based FL-25. In the process, I created a Latino-plurality CD entirely within Broward.

In Miami-Dade, only two municipalities are split: The Crossings, and Miami. There are 3 71-73% Latino CDs. Miami was split to give FL-25 the heavily Black precincts, because it felt difficult to draw without creating a municipal split somewhere and because I wanted to avoid having Miami Beach being an uncompact appendage in the district. The map in Miami-Dade pretty much drew itself.

All in all, there are 13 Biden seats and 15 Trump seats. DeSants probably would have won more seats here than in his own gerrymander, but that is hard to say without 2022 data being added for FL. In 2018, this map tied 14-14 in both the Governor and Senate races.

FL-01 (Pensacola): 70W, 15B; 65-33 Trump, R+20
FL-02 (Tallahassee): 63W, 25B; 55-44 Trump, R+7
FL-03 (Gainesville): 66W, 17B, 11H; 58-41 Trump, R+10
FL-04 (Jacksonville): 70W, 11B, 10H; 62-37 Trump, R+16
FL-05 (Jacksonville): 47W, 37B, 11H; 52-47 Biden, EVEN
FL-06 (Palm Coast): 70W, 14H, 12B; 59-40 Trump, R+12
FL-07 (Alafaya): 54W, 25H, 14B; 53-46 Biden, D+2
FL-08 (Deltona): 72W, 12H, 11B; 58-41 Trump, R+11
FL-09 (Kissimmee): 53H, 28W, 14B; 59-40 Biden, D+11
FL-10 (Orlando): 38W, 28B, 26H; 62-37 Biden, D+11
FL-11 (The Villages): 74W, 12H, 10B; 64-35 Trump, R+17
FL-12 (Spring Hill): 71W, 16H; 61-38 Trump, R+14
FL-13 (St. Petersburg): 69W, 13H, 11H; 51-48 Biden, EVEN
FL-14 (Tampa): 54W, 26H, 12B; 50-48 Biden, EVEN
FL-15 (Lakeland): 54W, 26H, 17B; 56-43 Trump, R+8
FL-16 (Tampa): 45W, 28H, 23B; 54-45 Biden, D+3
FL-17 (Brandonton): 69W, 17H; 55-44 Trump, R+7
FL-18 (Cape Coral): 74W, 15H; 61-38 Trump, R+13
FL-19 (Lehigh Acres): 61W, 27H; 62-37 Trump, R+14
FL-20 (Port St. Lucie): 63W, 18H, 14B; 55-45 Trump, R+7
FL-21 (West Palm Beach): 37W, 31H, 28B; 61-38 Biden, D+11
FL-22 (Boca Raton): 57W, 19H, 16B; 58-41 Biden, D+8
FL-23 (Pampano Beach): 43B, 30W, 24H; 70-29 Biden, D+20
FL-24 (Pembroke Pines): 41H, 36W, 17B; 59-41 Biden, D+10
FL-25 (Miami Gardens): 44B, 39H, 17W; 74-25 Biden, D+27
FL-26 (Homestead): 71H, 16W, 12B; 52-47 Trump, D+2
FL-27 (Hialeah): 72W, 22H; 61-39 Trump, R+8
FL-28 (Miami): 73H, 17W; 51-49 Biden, D+4

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Massachusetts

This was pretty simple. I had Brookline placed in with Boston because, between a hit to compactness or splitting a town, I'd rather choose neither. Brookline is part of Lincoln County, but since it is disconnected, I place it with any of its neighbors as I want without it counting as a split. I do the same with the town of Cohasset, also disconnected from the rest of Lincoln County; it went with MA-09, despite most of Lincoln County being in MA-04.

The leftovers from the non-disconnected part of Lincoln were thrown in with all of Bristol County and the towns of Lakeville, Rochester, Mattapoisett in Plymouth County. In turn, this informed the shape of MA-09.

Every district on the map is safely Democratic in anything but the biggest Atlas blue tsunami.

MA-01 (Springfield): 69W, 18H; 64-34 Biden, D+14
MA-02 (Worcester): 71W, 14H; 57-40 Biden, D+6
MA-03 (Lowell): 69W, 12A; 65-33 Biden, D+13
MA-04 (Quincy): 67W, 16A; 72-26 Biden, D+20
MA-05 (Cambridge): 64W, 13A, 11H; 72-26 Biden, D+21
MA-06 (Lynn): 66W, 23H; 64-34 Biden, D+12
MA-07 (Boston): 45W, 23B, 20H, 13A; 83-15 Biden, D+33
MA-08 (New Bedford): 79W; 56-41 Biden, D+6
MA-09 (Brockton): 79W, 10B; 60-38 Biden, D+7

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Amazing how bad even the nicest-looking MD map scores in DRA for compactness. The current MD map gets a score of 35, my compactness-mindful map gets a score of 50. How bad did the 2013-2023 one get? 10? 20? 25?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maryland

This was not too hard. I took what steps I felt I had to do to reduce county splits and form compact districts. Montgomery County is the only jurisdiction to have one district entirely within its borders. While I could have done the same in Prince George's, I opted against it to avoid packing Blacks. In general, all but one district on this map voted for Joe Biden. This is quite close to the map MD actually got.

MD-01 (Bel Air South): 71W, 18B; 56-42 Trump, R+11
MD-02 (Towson): 58W, 28B; 60-38 Biden, D+7
MD-03 (Columbia): 54W, 22H, 14A; 63-35 Biden, D+10
MD-04 (Bowie): 41B, 29W, 24H; 77-21 Biden, D+27
MD-05 (Suitland): 57B, 30W; 74-24 Biden, D+20
MD-06 (Germantown): 62W, 14B, 12H, 11A; 54-44 Biden, D+1
MD-07 (Baltimore): 53B, 34W; 78-20 Biden, D+24
MD-08 (Silver Spring): 41W, 22H, 21B, 16A; 82-16 Biden, D+32

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Tennessee

There are two whole-county CDs and six county nesting groups I ended up with. Nashville was the most undecided area for me, and I split it up in a compactness-minded way. The lines in Shelby County reflect my interest in municipal integrity; all of Memphis sits in TN-09. There are 7 Trump seats and 2 Biden ones. TN-05 and TN-04 are perhaps marginal, but no other seats on the map have any real chance of flipping whatsoever.

TN-01 (Johnson City): 89W; 77-22 Trump, R+30
TN-02 (Knoxville): 81W; 62-37 Trump, R+17
TN-03 (Chattanooga): 79W, 11B; 66-32 Trump, R+20
TN-04 (Nashville): 64W, 16B, 12H; 54-44 Trump, R+9
TN-05 (Nashville): 66W, 20B; 53-44 Biden, D+2
TN-06 (Gallatin): 86W; 75-24 Trump, R+28
TN-07 (Clarkville): 77W, 12B; 70-28 Trump, R+23
TN-08 (Jackson): 69W, 23B; 67-32 Trump, R+20
TN-09 (Memphis): 58B, 29W; 70-28 Biden, D+20

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Running count of states done and Biden-Trump seat totals.
Midwest: 5/10 (14/32)
Northeast: 6/8 (41/17)
South: 10/15 (39/56)
West: 4/11 (11/12)
Nationwide: 25/44 (105/117)

With TN being done, the number of seats done nationwide has passed into majority territory.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No state east of Mississippi thus far uncompleted borders each other (on land). The next states will all be west of the Mississippi until this is also true to the western half of the country as well.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Tennessee

There are two whole-county CDs and six county nesting groups I ended up with. Nashville was the most undecided area for me, and I split it up in a compactness-minded way. The lines in Shelby County reflect my interest in municipal integrity; all of Memphis sits in TN-09. There are 7 Trump seats and 2 Biden ones. TN-05 and TN-04 are perhaps marginal, but no other seats on the map have any real chance of flipping whatsoever.

TN-01 (Johnson City): 89W; 77-22 Trump, R+30
TN-02 (Knoxville): 81W; 62-37 Trump, R+17
TN-03 (Chattanooga): 79W, 11B; 66-32 Trump, R+20
TN-04 (Nashville): 64W, 16B, 12H; 54-44 Trump, R+9
TN-05 (Nashville): 66W, 20B; 53-44 Biden, D+2
TN-06 (Gallatin): 86W; 75-24 Trump, R+28
TN-07 (Clarkville): 77W, 12B; 70-28 Trump, R+23
TN-08 (Jackson): 69W, 23B; 67-32 Trump, R+20
TN-09 (Memphis): 58B, 29W; 70-28 Biden, D+20

DRA link

The Nashville configuration is a bit awkward.  The most "neutral" idea would probably be leaving Davidson County whole.  Since it's just under 1 CD, then you would add purple La Vergne from Northwestern Rutherford County.

Would it be possible to do this without increasing county splits in the overall map? I did try to keep Davidson County whole, but I found it hard to draw compact CDs in suburban Nashville more generally.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Update: I have found a new way to draw Middle TN that even gets rid of a county split on net and improves both splitting and compactness. The TN map is changing.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Tennessee (redone)

There are now three whole-county CDs, up from two, and they now cover almost half of the state's area. Every CD based in Middle Tennessee has changed, and the unifying of Sumner County has made Hendersonville the largest municipality within TN-06.

TN-01* (Johnson City): 89W; 77-22 Trump, R+30
TN-02* (Knoxville): 81W; 62-37 Trump, R+17
TN-03* (Chattanooga): 79W, 11B; 66-32 Trump, R+20
TN-04 (Murfreesboro): 76W, 11B; 68-30 Trump, R+22
TN-05 (Nashville): 54W, 26B, 14H; 64-33 Biden, D+13
TN-06 (Hendersonville): 85W; 75-24 Trump, R+28
TN-07 (Clarkville): 77W, 10B; 65-33 Trump, R+20
TN-08* (Jackson): 69W, 23B; 67-32 Trump, R+20
TN-09* (Memphis): 58B, 29W; 70-28 Biden, D+20
*=unchanged

Thanks to ExtremeRepublican for bringing the potential for improvement to my attention.

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Louisiana

A lot of the districts in the current LA map are so incompact and split so many parishes as to inherently guarantee a map of LA under this criteria practically unrecognizable. There are only two county splits. The new map does get rid of the AA-majority LA-02 in its current form. The closest equivalent is the compact LA-02 centered on New Orleans and confined to Orleans and Jefferson parishes. This district is barely plurality black, but the black candidate of choice should prevail here extremely easily.

Flanking the small, urban LA-02 on the north is the whole-county LA-01, retaining a majority of its population though it still no longer crosses the Pontcharian into the New Orleans suburbs. Flanking it on the south is LA-03, which runs along almost the entire Gulf Coast. It is very much an Acadiana district, but takes on a shape designed to suit other districts first and foremost. It takes the disconnected southern chunk of St. Martin County, a case of me taking advantage of the rules to suit my purposes.

There are no black majority seats on the map. To compensate, I redrew LA-06 as a second black seat, though I did not seriously compromise overall compactness and create more splits, just to raise its black %. As a Biden-plurality, white-plurality CD, it would pretty likely not be solid D, but it would help make up for the loss of the absolute certainty that the old swiggly LA-02 provided. The city of Lafayette is pretty much whole in LA-06, though not entirely in practice, given the city's rather awkward municipal boundaries. Over half of the new LA-06's population comes from either the city of Lafayette or the city of Baton Rouge.

LA-05 retains a tail protruding east, but it is now whole-county and stops at the Tangipahoa-St. Helena border. Both LA-05 and LA-04 are composed of whole parishes only, an arrangement that is somewhat incompact but very helpful for parish integrity.

There are 4 Trump and 2 Biden seats, but one of the Biden seats are very marginal and their status as a Biden district at all comes from an effort on my part to not diminish minority representation.

LA-01 (Prairieville): 67W, 22B; 69-30 Trump, R+22
LA-02 (New Orleans): 42B, 40W, 14H; 63-35 Biden, D+12
LA-03 (Houma): 64W, 24B; 71-27 Trump, R+24
LA-04 (Shreveport): 57W, 34B; 62-37 Trump, R+14
LA-05 (Monroe): 59W, 34B; 65-33 Trump, R+18
LA-06 (Baton Rouge): 48W, 43B; 50-49 Biden, R+2

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nebraska

I decided to not split any counties. NE-02 now extends north and west. NE-01 is a boxlike creation taking in most of the state's power centers. NE-03, like as before, is the rural, bombproof R stronghold. Not a lot to say here. Apologies for the fumble in the district numbering - I only discovered it in the time of posting and the taking of the picture.

NE-01 (Lincoln): 81W; 53-44 Trump, R+8
NE-02 (Omaha): 67W, 14B, 12H; 52-46 Biden, R+1
NE-03 (Grand Island): 80W, 14H; 76-22 Trump, R+30

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

New Mexico

Goals here were simple: split zero counties and hopefully no reservations and municipalities, and have compact districts. Not too much to dwell on here, except that I previously drew NM-01 to go north from Bernalillo instead of east and south, leaving it enveloped by NM-03 on all sides. I discarded this because it created hard-to-avoid municipal splits. Just like the pre-2023 map, there is one Biden and one Trump seat. NM-03 was drawn as something of a "Native influence" seat and it checks out...25.3% of its population is Native American/American Indian, giving it likely the highest such percentage in the country. Every district has a Latino plurality.

NM-01 (Albuquerque): 49H, 39W; 60-37 Biden, D+9
NM-02 (Las Cruces): 56H, 37W; 56-42 Trump, R+8
NM-03 (Rio Rancho): 38H, 35W, 25N; 58-40 Biden, D+8

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Colorado

It would have been easy to draw a whole-county CD in Denver, and it is exactly what is needed for a district if you include all the disconnected chunks of other counties there as well. But this whole-county CD would have been horridly uncompact and I had problems with what to do with the counties directly around Denver. Ultimately Denver is split in 3, with CO-06 taking SW Denver, a new CO-08 taking all of Arapahoe County and Latino parts of Denver County, and CO-01 moving much farther into Jefferson County. To reach quota, the Jefferson leftovers CD (CO-07) took in Broomfield County and Boulder County as well. The area encompassed by these four seats has exactly half of the state's population and roughly 5-6% of its land area.

A large CO-03 has been drawn, sprawling across the Rocky Mountain. High share of the state's land area in this seat - maybe even a majority. Boebert very likely loses this in 2022. It borders three states (four if you count Arizona), and almost borders another (Oklahoma).  CO-05 has the inevitable El Paso CD, enveloped on all sides by CO-04. CO-04, in turn, takes in a whole host of areas in the eastern half of the state, including Denver suburbs. Unfortunately, a county split in NW Colorado is inevitable.

There are 4 Trump and 4 Biden seats. However, all 4 Biden seats are rock-solid, while half of the Trump seats are extremely marginal. In a year like 2022, Ds probably nab 6-2.

CO-01 (Denver): 64W, 23H; 71-27 Biden, D+19
CO-02 (Fort Collins): 71W, 21H; 49-48 Trump, R+4
CO-03 (Grand Junction): 74W, 19H; 51-47 Trump, R+6
CO-04 (Pueblo): 70W, 20H; 56-41 Trump, R+11
CO-05 (Colorado Springs):66W, 18H; 53-43 Trump, R+10
CO-06 (Aurora): 57W, 20H, 13B; 62-35 Biden, D+10
CO-07 (Arvada): 76W, 14H; 67-31 Biden, D+15
CO-08 (Denver): 44W, 40H; 64-33 Biden, D+13

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No unfinished states have any land border with each other now.

Midwest: 6/10 (15/34)
Northeast: 6/8 (41/17)
South: 11/15 (41/60)
West: 6/11 (17/17)
Nationwide: 29/44 (114/128)

The more states are done, a larger and larger share of the thus-far-undone seats are in CA, which biases the total in the favor of Republicans.