2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Wisconsin

[patzer]

Here's my attempt at a map of districts as compact as possible. It does however split Madison and Milwaukee.

 

[patzer]

I feel like the court will either draw a disappointingly uncompetitive 6-2 map (i.e 1rst and 3rd become safer for GOP), or they do something really ugly to try and create greater partisan fairness.

My guess is more the former, but the latter would be an interesting twist, especially since NC has shown us that judges don't always know how to draw the best maps from a COI standpoint.

I tried to work out if it's even possible to make a fair map partisanship-wise without splitting Dane County or Milwaukee.

Turns out yes, it is possible to make a 2D-2R-4C map. It would indeed be very ugly though- can't imagine the WI court making changes as big as something like this. https://davesredistricting.org/join/1d950c3a-b710-41cf-a54f-3eacfed31636

[patzer]

It's actually not as hard and ugly as I thought to make 4 Biden districts:



WI-03 is Biden +3.0%

WI-01 is Biden +2.6%

All without splitting Dane.

However 4 safe R, 2 safe D, and 2 lean D really is not a fair map

You need to split milwaukee to get a fair map

[patzer]

If it's considered acceptable to split Detroit down the middle even though the entire city would fit into one district, I see no reason why the same shouldn't be true of Milwaukee.

[patzer]

I have no issue with them splitting the City of Milwaukee. I personally prefer using the Menomonee River as the diving line. It puts the African American and bougie whites in the north with the Hispanics and more working class whites in the south.

Not a fan of splitting Dane County.

Within those constraints here's my best attempt at a fair map.
2nd: Biden +36.1
4th: Biden +26.7
1st: Biden +13.6
3rd: Biden +4.6
8th: Trump +3.5
7th: Trump +18.4
5th: Trump +25.0
6th: Trump +25.2

[patzer]

Yay, *finally*.

While geography definitely favors Rs, I don't think the geography bias is as bad at the State Legislature level because smaller cities like Eau Claire, La Crosse, Appleton, and Green Bay can sustain D-leaning seats on their own. Dems will honestly probably gain most of their seats on the redrawn fair map out of these sorts of places.

The Congressional level, 8 seats is just an unfortunate number for Dems since both metro Madison and Milwaukee Dem sinks are sort of "natural" seats, and there aren't large enough D cities outside of those to sustain other D leaning CDs.

I can be a broken record on this but Milwaukee being a “natural” Dem pack is the result of conservative housing discrimination which created a ghetto, and that this minimizing the political power of the residents was a deliberate goal, not a regrettable natural phenomenon.

I guess the natural solution to that would be merging Waukesha county back into Milwaukee county, and also merging the city of Milwaukee with the county?

[patzer]

My guess is they'll go with something like this:



This WI-01 voted Biden +6 and Clinton +4. Even Russ Feingold won it by less than 1% in 2016.

WI-03 voted for Biden by a little over 5 points and for Hillary by over 3%. Steil might be able to hang on, but Van Orden would be done.

If they redraw the map there's no reason to still keep a major Republican bias.