2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Washington

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

IIRC current projections are for WA to stand pat at 10 seats.
What implications do population trends have for the post-2020 map? Will the numbers exist for there to be just one cross-Cascades district? How will WA-08 change?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/b11836d0-9a6f-4614-88a9-8cca4c19e928

I quickly constructed this map with 2018 population estimates. I sought to firm up WA-08 for Dems and get rid of county splits whenever possible while trying to be least-change as much as possible given these two prerequisites.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

My attempt at a fair map



https://davesredistricting.org/join/821d43c3-221e-4e42-9920-03adb99c888c

WA-01: Clinton+36, D+15
WA-02: Clinton+6, D+3
WA-03: Trump+8, R+4
WA-04: Trump+21, R+12
WA-05: Trump+13, R+8
WA-06: Clinton+11, D+6
WA-07: Clinton+16, D+7
WA-08: Clinton+29, D+10
WA-09: Clinton+78, D+37!!!!
WA-10: Clinton+11, D+5

In theory this map should work as a fairly standard 7-3 map, with districts 2 and 3 being swingy but still clearly benefiting one side over the other. Districts 6 and 10 might flip if there is both a scandal and a big R wave but they are unlikely to do so.

Finally district 9 (coverin Seattle) is a Dem landslide that borders on comical

I've never seen an Eastern Washington quite like that. So novelty points there.
More generally, taken as a whole, overall this is a decent map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yes, I am aware of the road contiguity issue with those two precincts in King County. I don't really care too much; it is just two precincts and that would result in an extra county split I don't want.
Big change is the Cascades crossing switching to the south. I tried to keep county splits to the near-minimum and compactness high, pairing urban with urban, unifying Seattle in one CD, and drawing two seats within the suburbs.
I also ended the majority-minority status of the 9th (if 2019 population estimates is anything to go by). It was an utterly useless idea anyway. That being said, the 9th still is likely majority-minority under eventual 2020 census figures and it boasts a very significant Asian minority.
The 8th remains competitive, and the 3rd becomes more winnable for Democrats.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/924c96ba-3681-4252-9b98-ad4c3db9eac8

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yes, I am aware of the road contiguity issue with those two precincts in King County. I don't really care too much; it is just two precincts and that would result in an extra county split I don't want.

The reason to avoid splitting counties is that counties are a proxy for communities, not due to any inherent feature of counties. Considering that the people of Skykomish have no connection to the rest of King County and have attempted to secede in the past, it's downright undemocratic to plop them into a King County district based on a lazy belief in county contiguity. Suck it up and move them into WA-01.

With all due respect, I do not strictly share all respects of your districting philosophy and have some different ideas and I'd appreciate it if you hewed to actual decorum and avoided melodrama.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

What do people think is going to happen to the WA-03.

A lot depends on what they do with the Cascades. If we have something close to the current map, or a map where WA-03 is the only district traversing the Cascades, then it'll probably be pretty much equivalent to the current map. This is probably the best scenario with regards to CoI tbh.

But if they decide to use just Snoqualmie pass, WA-03 will have to go further north which could definitely shake stuff up.

What would the partisan effect of that be ?

My apologies--I somehow thought that WA-03 went into Yakima on the current map.

Either way though, it doesn't seem like there's much of a partisan effect playing it out--the version which goes into the city of Yakima is the most Democratic since Yakima's a good bit more D than Lewis County.

It's best for Dems if WA-08 is wholly within King, forcing a rotation of CDs resulting in the 3rd picking up Yakima.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Here is my 10-3 Dem Washington Congressional map. I roughly based this map from the current boundaries with some modifications.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/f9d0fcd9-7aae-4c4e-9cc8-2e1e7d7cd6e2

I like that 6th quite a bit.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yeah Democrats probably should have pushed for Yakima to be the split just as starting points in negotiations basically by stating to give Hispanics more influence. Main issue though is the 2 current counties are basically perfectly whole with only a few hundred people required to be split. Along with that I think Kittatis county has been rapidly growing as a somewhat super exurban of Seattle with something like 15% of its population now being these trans Cascade commuters. This would atleast make them the area with the most connection to the west if one is forced to do a Cascade split.

This debate happened in the 2010 redistricting. No one commutes from Kittitas County into King County. Someone set up a camera to monitor the Snoqualmie pass through rush hour and it was like 3 cars and 15 trucks over two hours.

It’s obvious right away if you look at a satellite image of, say, Easton or Cle Elum that they aren’t exurbs. There’s no suburban-style development of winding roads and new houses there at all, just a neat midcentury grid of old houses.

The better argument in my eyes is that crossing the cascades at all is always going to be bad, so you have to make the least-bad option. In the past year I have come around to maps that preserve the northern crossing but do it via the Snohomish-King-Chelen and drop Kittitas. The reason for this is media markets: Chelten and Douglas are in the Seattle-Takoma market and Kittitas is not. It's a poor COI, but any linkage across the cascades, north or south, will be bad so there needs to be something to justify your choice.

The other advantage of crossing at the north is that you can reconfigure the eastern seats into a north-south arrangement rather than a east-west. This allows one to keep all the urban ag counties together separate from Spokane. Obviously this overall concept for the map is better in terms of regional identities rather than partisan advantages for any party.

I'm having trouble envisioning what this map would look like. It seems like it would be awkward to get enough population east of the Cascades without at least putting Klickitat into the 3rd.

Like this?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I thought WA does pro-incumbent gerrymanders...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Good lord, that 8th.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Who ever thought crossing the Cascade Range that far North was a good idea?? Admittedly that's a product of the last decade's redistricting, but still, WHY??

Tbf, it's an improvement overall because now only 1 district crosses the Cascades, not 2.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Looks like 6-3-1,  bordering on 6-4

Why the hell are Dems agreeing to a map that doesn’t shore up WA-08?  Schrier is gone in 2022 under this map.

We don't know that. We won't know that for a while.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Looks like 6-3-1,  bordering on 6-4

Why the hell are Dems agreeing to a map that doesn’t shore up WA-08?  Schrier is gone in 2022 under this map.

We don't know that. We won't know that for a while.

She’s gone in anything less than a 54% Biden district, which this almost certainly is.

Are you lowering expectations for 2022 pre-emptively just to ensure there is a 0% chance you're going to be disappointed?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

What a disaster. Dems should either scrap the committee or reform it into something less dysfunctional. The only other commission that just didn't work the way this one didn't is Virginia's, which was designed to fail, so I'm skeptical there aren't serious structural issues with this one.

This one has historically worked well, but Dems got outmaneuvered badly last time, so I guess they picked more partisan appointees which led to the deadlock.

Probably.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This should be fun in a scandalous government committee minutia kind of way.

https://twitter.com/Jim_Brunner/status/1461499930749517826

Someone grab the popcorn.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Ds should very likely hold WA-08 in 2022, given they have the incumbency bonus. The seat has actually gotten slightly more Democratic, so these lines are a net positive for Democrats' hopes of holding on here.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/Jim_Brunner/status/1496622318637903877?cxt=HHwWisCrlbiEicUpA...

120,000+ dollars in legal costs. Ouch.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is this better or worse than the map that WA got in 2022?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/5a380eb4-b852-4a73-9439-e08ae198a671

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is this better or worse than the map that WA got in 2022?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/5a380eb4-b852-4a73-9439-e08ae198a671

So much better. I personally wish they rotated 4 and 5 as well, so 4 could get a higher Hispanic population.

Thanks for the feedback!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is this better or worse than the map that WA got in 2022?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/5a380eb4-b852-4a73-9439-e08ae198a671

The WA-08 equivalent looks like it might be a little more D than in OTL. Pity Seattle can't have a CD all to itself.

WA-08 seems to be about two or three more points D than OTL. As for Seattle forming a CD to itself, imo it would probably be able to achieve that either in 2030 if the city continues to grow faster in population than the state average, or in 2030 or 2040 if the state gains an additional district.