Illinois Redistricting Megathread

[Oryxslayer]

Sounds like the legislative maps will be dropping within the hour.

I wonder how drastically these ACS-based lines will differ from the current outlook. Madigan's legislative maps at time gerrymadered in favor of the GOP, since he didn't need more seats, and those areas that would elect Democrats opposed to him personally.

EDIT: wow I'm surprised this continued to some capacity.

[Gass3268]

Senate Map!

[lfromnj]

Senate Map!

First major thing I noticed was how they combined Peoria and McClean to keep the Peoria district D. Currently its only Clinton +2.

They also made Neil Anderson's district more D from Clinton +3 to Clinton +7. Previously it didn't need to be gerrymandered because Rock Island was 60% obama.

[Oryxslayer]

Main takeaway I feel is Dems deciding to utilize their new gains in the suburbs to try and eliminate any vestigial GOP seats Madigan had to draw in 2010, but downstate was drawn with the senate in mind and therefore continues to dilute the influence of some of Democratic areas.

[lfromnj]

Interesting Manar's district gets made way more blue to Trump +2 but he himself gets drawn out from his home in Macoupin county. Is he running for Congress?

[Mr.Phips]

The GOP won the state-legislative coinflip after 1990 and, dutifully, drew a map favorable to the GOP. The Democrats appealed the the Supreme Court who ordered a number of districts redrawn. Some of those districts were struck down as "non-compact."  A significant number of the state's current legislative seats are less compact that the ones struck down in the 90's. If the GOP gains control of the IL Supreme Court they need only follow precedent to strike them down.

Thankfully the Democrats could redraw the State Supreme Court districts before the 2022 election.

Issue though is counties can't be split and Cook is the first 3 districts as mandated by the state constitution which would require an amendment to change. You can still draw 2 Collar county districts but at the judicial level the collars are still relatively speaking swingy. It would improve their chances still but I wouldn't call it a slamdunk.  There is a decent excuse to redistrict as the districts have pretty varying population for the non Cook districts.

You can easily draw a district that doesn’t include Cook county that went for Biden by nearly 20 points.   That’s probably too Dem for Republican to win even in a good year.

[lfromnj]

The GOP won the state-legislative coinflip after 1990 and, dutifully, drew a map favorable to the GOP. The Democrats appealed the the Supreme Court who ordered a number of districts redrawn. Some of those districts were struck down as "non-compact."  A significant number of the state's current legislative seats are less compact that the ones struck down in the 90's. If the GOP gains control of the IL Supreme Court they need only follow precedent to strike them down.

Thankfully the Democrats could redraw the State Supreme Court districts before the 2022 election.

Issue though is counties can't be split and Cook is the first 3 districts as mandated by the state constitution which would require an amendment to change. You can still draw 2 Collar county districts but at the judicial level the collars are still relatively speaking swingy. It would improve their chances still but I wouldn't call it a slamdunk.  There is a decent excuse to redistrict as the districts have pretty varying population for the non Cook districts.

You can easily draw a district that doesn’t include Cook county that went for Biden by nearly 20 points.   That’s probably too Dem for Republican to win even in a good year.

I guess maybe they could be bold and just abuse deviation as it isn't required for Supreme court districts, and just create a 2nd district based in Lake County only. Outside of that a Lake district has to include McHenry. The GOP still won the majority of  Judicial races in Dupage in 2020. Again going to judicial races is serious downballot strength . I would say they would still have the advantage but its not Likely D . Probably Lean D IMO .

[Oryxslayer]

Peoria to Bloomington and Springfield to Decatur makes sense for the IL-Dems to draw, but Champaign could've just been drawn by itself without Danville.  I know they tried to do the same gerrymander in 2011.   Seems pointless, you can draw a Senate district in the county and get two D house seats out of it.

Looks like a pretty brutal map overall I gotta say.

Definitely feels like downstate prioritized incumbents first, which included senate ones. Why not split Champaign and Urbania - they would both remain safe D and Madigan only packed the cities to prevent two university radicals from getting elected. Why sink stirling and go for less Democratic towns to the south of Galesburg? Why cut less Republican areas out of Jackson and add redder areas to Carbondale's east? House seat 95 makes sense in conext of the senate and incumbency, but why not have one seat in Sangamon and one with a tail? Dekalb now is in a Blue seat, but to preserve the previous LaSalle seat we get Sycamore and other dem areas left outside of blue seats.

The Collar however is brutally efficient. Woodstock in McHenry is outside a blue seat, unless 63 is meant to be a future gain, but everything else is utilized. It looks like D+1 in each suburban county at minimum from just comparing with the NYT map, maybe D+2 in DeKalb.

[Nyvin]

Peoria to Bloomington and Springfield to Decatur makes sense for the IL-Dems to draw, but Champaign could've just been drawn by itself without Danville.  I know they tried to do the same gerrymander in 2011.   Seems pointless, you can draw a Senate district in the county and get two D house seats out of it.

Looks like a pretty brutal map overall I gotta say.

Definitely feels like downstate prioritized incumbents first, which included senate ones. Why not split Champaign and Urbania - they would both remain safe D and Madigan only packed the cities to prevent two university radicals from getting elected. Why sink stirling and go for less Democratic towns to the south of Galesburg? Why cut less Republican areas out of Jackson and add redder areas to Carbondale's east. House seat 95 makes sense in conext of the senate and incumbency, but why not have one seat in Sangamon and one with a tail? Dekalb now is in a Blue seat, but to preserve the previous LaSalle seat we get Sycamore and other dem areas left outside of blue seats.

The Collar however is brutally efficient. Woodstock in McHenry is outside a blue seat, unless 63 is meant to be a future gain, but everything else is utilized. It looks like D+1 in each suburban county at minimum from just comparing with the NYT map, maybe D+2 in DeKalb.

That Dekalb/Peru/Ottawa seat is...pretty nasty.

[It’s so Joever]

I am glad that Illinois Democrats kept good on their commitment towards maps which represent the voters well and fairly.

[Gracile]

Interesting Manar's district gets made way more blue to Trump +2 but he himself gets drawn out from his home in Macoupin county. Is he running for Congress?

Manar is no longer in the State Senate and works in the Pritzker administration.

[Former President tack50]

The GOP won the state-legislative coinflip after 1990 and, dutifully, drew a map favorable to the GOP. The Democrats appealed the the Supreme Court who ordered a number of districts redrawn. Some of those districts were struck down as "non-compact."  A significant number of the state's current legislative seats are less compact that the ones struck down in the 90's. If the GOP gains control of the IL Supreme Court they need only follow precedent to strike them down.

Thankfully the Democrats could redraw the State Supreme Court districts before the 2022 election.

Issue though is counties can't be split and Cook is the first 3 districts as mandated by the state constitution which would require an amendment to change. You can still draw 2 Collar county districts but at the judicial level the collars are still relatively speaking swingy. It would improve their chances still but I wouldn't call it a slamdunk.  There is a decent excuse to redistrict as the districts have pretty varying population for the non Cook districts.

To be fair, even with a "counties can't be split" requirement gerrymandering the IL Supreme Court is very easy. Here is how a hypothetical gerrymander would look like (the 4 downstate districts have populations of 2.1, 1.9, 2.0 and 1.5 million; which is way closer than they are now but I'll admit, not perfectly equal).



District 1 is the Cook district and obviously you can't change that and it's safe D.
District 2 is meant to be the district that puts Dems over the top (Clinton+11, albeit only D+2)
District 3 is meant to give Dems another possibility of attack and a 5th seat (Clinton+6, D+1)
District 4 is a Republican sink
District 5 is Likely R, but maybe could flip in a wave (Trump+8, R+5)

Alternatively if Dems want to have a "clean" map so they can't be accused of gerrymandering that is also easy to do and has a similar effect (other than the District 5 equivalent which becomes Safe R)

[lfromnj]

The GOP won the state-legislative coinflip after 1990 and, dutifully, drew a map favorable to the GOP. The Democrats appealed the the Supreme Court who ordered a number of districts redrawn. Some of those districts were struck down as "non-compact."  A significant number of the state's current legislative seats are less compact that the ones struck down in the 90's. If the GOP gains control of the IL Supreme Court they need only follow precedent to strike them down.

Thankfully the Democrats could redraw the State Supreme Court districts before the 2022 election.

Issue though is counties can't be split and Cook is the first 3 districts as mandated by the state constitution which would require an amendment to change. You can still draw 2 Collar county districts but at the judicial level the collars are still relatively speaking swingy. It would improve their chances still but I wouldn't call it a slamdunk.  There is a decent excuse to redistrict as the districts have pretty varying population for the non Cook districts.

To be fair, even with a "counties can't be split" requirement gerrymandering the IL Supreme Court is very easy. Here is how a hypothetical gerrymander would look like (the 4 downstate districts have populations of 2.1, 1.9, 2.0 and 1.5 million; which is way closer than they are now but I'll admit, not perfectly equal).



District 1 is the Cook district and obviously you can't change that and it's safe D.
District 2 is meant to be the district that puts Dems over the top (Clinton+11, albeit only D+2)
District 3 is meant to give Dems another possibility of attack and a 5th seat (Clinton+6, D+1)
District 4 is a Republican sink
District 5 is Likely R, but maybe could flip in a wave (Trump+8, R+5)

Alternatively if Dems want to have a "clean" map so they can't be accused of gerrymandering that is also easy to do and has a similar effect (other than the District 5 equivalent which becomes Safe R)

The issue is that at that level of going downballot the races more resemble 2018 illinois gov than 2016 president. Dems are still favored but not even close to certain especially in what may be a good year for the gop.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/brendenmoore13/status/1396583212520968195?s=20

Interactive map of the proposal. The guy also includes a bit of analysis in his tweet chain. Apparently incumbent 4 GOP reps are now in one House district.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/BrianAmos/status/1396634308618637314
See guys
The map is fair

The user here used the 2012>2018 composite on DRA which includes the 2012 presidential and 2016 senate. Generally speaking using just Clinton 2016 or Biden 2020 would increase the gap in favor of D's . Obviously that doesn't really matter using non-partisan criteria but just felt like mentioning.

A fair map would probably have a large R gap with composite numbers but a smaller one with either 2016 or 2020 presidential.

[lfromnj]

Now if IL D's really wanted to go all out on the state Supreme Court



Covers all their bases.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Now if IL D's really wanted to go all out on the state Supreme Court



Covers all their bases.

Judy Cates will have her seat damn it
Nice

[Gass3268]

Illinois will be redistricting their Supreme Court districts:

https://twitter.com/joelebert29/status/1397261473181835272?s=20

[Mr.Phips]

Illinois will be redistricting their Supreme Court districts:

https://twitter.com/joelebert29/status/1397261473181835272?s=20

They’re no dummies.

[lfromnj]

https://mobile.twitter.com/PoliticsWolf/status/1397276455508135936

Considering judicial races are closer to 2018 gov still, this doesn't really lock down the court for Ds. Definitely a major help but not an instant win.  The only way to really lock it down is to do my map above.

[Babeuf]

https://mobile.twitter.com/PoliticsWolf/status/1397276455508135936

Considering judicial races are closer to 2018 gov still, this doesn't really lock down the court for Ds. Definitely a major help but not an instant win.

Agreed. Prevents a likely loss and gives them a decent shot of holding the court though.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Would this map likely cause any retirements?

[lfromnj]

Also if anyone is wondering why District 3 is a bit weird its because they wanted to keep circuit courts together.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Also if anyone is wondering why District 3 is a bit weird its because they wanted to keep circuit courts together.

That makes sense. I imagine that is important from a jurisdictional perspective or something.

[Nyvin]

The district 2 judge is appointed and is up for election in 2022,  is that a retention election?