Sol's 50-state Redistricting Library

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Looking forward to more of these maps. Do your best!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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A thought: would it make sense to change the Scranton CD by removing Wyoming County and replacing it with more of Luzerne?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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A thought: would it make sense to change the Scranton CD by removing Wyoming County and replacing it with more of Luzerne?

You have to split a county anyway, and Wyoming is also part of the Scranton-Wilkes Barre metro and portions of it are closer to the cities. You can easily do it the way you said but IMO it's basically a washout as far as communities are concerned.

Plus tbh I never see Wyoming in a Wyoming Valley district so I thought I might as well do it.

Fair enough. The main benefit would be compactness, but your criteria emphasizes other things more.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Minnesota (link)





Should be a 4-4 map most years, with Republicans having a decent shot at MN-02 in GOP-friendly years and Democrats having a smaller chance at MN-01 in better years (or if coalitions flop back).

I like this one a fair bit.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Fair Oregon.

I ended up prioritizing county integrity less here and CoIs more, since Oregon has large counties that often cross major topographical boundaries and metro areas.

Also, have I ever mentioned how bad the Oregon numbering scheme is? I followed the current scheme for clarity but if I actually was a special master I would renumber everything.

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OR-02: Your eastern Oregon seat. Keep everything east of the Cascades except Hood River. It also takes in Medford and Ashland in Jackson County. There's actually a surprising high Biden number on account of Bend and Ashland (42%), but still safe R barring a truly deranged Republican incumbent.

OR-04: 49-48% Trump. A very competitive but slightly R leaning seat since 2016. Would still be a tossup due to the tendency of Democrats to overperform here. Sorry about the three-way split of Lane but IMO it has a logic given local topography.

OR-06: 48-48% Biden. A very narrow Biden seat in the middle of the Willamette Valley, and probably a true bellwether district. Splitting both Yamhill and Marion lets me keep the exurban Portland bits in Portland districts.



OR-01: The Washington County district, plus areas along the Columbia estuary and the Oregon coast. I could be persuaded to move the coastal counties to either 6 or to split them between 6 and 1; I don't know Oregon communities too well. I ended up doing this because it meant the split of Lane was very attractive and allowed really clean cuts of Yamhill and Marion. Safe D ofc.

OR-03: Portland seat, gets Milwaukie too. Super super safe D, Biden cleared 80%.

OR-05: 54-43% Biden. The Clackamas seat, plus various Portland hangers on that don't fit in 1 or 3. I put Gresham here because it seems like a similar place to a lot of Clackamas. It's likely D, bordering on
safe.

So that's pretty crummy for Dems, as expected. 3D-1R-2 Tossup most years, with each party having an extremely remote shot at OR-02 and OR-05 in a huge landslide.

It's interesting; Oregon used to be a state that people considered to have a Democratic bias in population distribution. Not much has changed in the broad strokes, but the main shifts since the Obama years in the state -- the weakening of Dem support in southern Oregon and the strengthening of Democratic numbers in Bend -- mean that more of the Democratic gains in recent years have been in safe districts for each party.

In my experience, it's very likely, when working with more-or-less neutral redistricting principles, to end up with a marginal CD in the Central Willamette Valley. Whether it's Trump-won or Biden-won varies depending on choices made elsewhere, but all other things being equal, Biden is likelier.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I don't see how you get a Trump seat from that area. Linn and  Benton will cancel out and Salem will at least match its 2 counties across the river. Usually I do keep the coastal counties there so its a point or 2 more D friendly.

Fair points. I was assuming that given how marginal it is, there were probably some ways in which you might a Trump district there, through differing choices elsewhere.
Playing with it more in DRA, it's surprisingly hard actually getting there. Very hard. I tend not to rule out possibilities unless I know they can't happen. Even going out of the box fails to produce a Trump district.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nevada.

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I took the liberty of renumbering seats, because I could not abide the awful current one.



NV-01: Reno, Carson City, Lake Tahoe, tumbleweeds and Basques. I considered putting Mineral in this district even if it meant a split since it's a better fit, but you'd have to split Elko, which doesn't split well at all. This is safe R for Amodei of course.

IMO the Reno area is kind of underdiscussed, and it actually has a reasonably populous hinterland too, unlike Las Vegas. Demographically it's fairly interesting too; it's much whiter than either Las Vegas or the California metros it's closely tied to. I wonder why that's the case -- is it just a function of the city being less economically vibrant and thus less attractive to immigrants?



NV-02: Northern suburbs and exurbs of Las Vegas+tumbleweeds. This district is a funny one, voting narrowly Trump in 2020 but still very swingy. It has some of the wealthiest and most conservative sections of the Las Vegas areas, with Summerlin and Northwest Las Vegas. I'd say narrowly lean R but very winnable for a Democrat. Probably Horsford loses.

NV-03: The urban core of LV, with downtown, Southern North LV, and the strip. It's safe D ofc for Titus, though with weaker margins than you'd expect for the downtown core of a major city. It's also plurality Latino by a good amount (48%), though remarkably becomes plurality white on CVAP.

NV-04: Southern suburbs and exurbs. The inverse of NV-02, as a narrowly D-leaning tossup. Susie Lee should be capable of winning in most years.

I considered putting the extreme south of Clark County in NV-02, so the remote non-urban areas stayed in just two districts, but topography and road connections suggested otherwise.

Basically sorts out as 1D-1R-2T, with 2D-2R most of the time.

Good map!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Another Southern state for today.

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MD-01: Eastern shore, Eastern Baltimore suburbs. Safe R for Dr. Harris. This district is interesting in that the heart of Republican strength here is in Harford and Cecil counties, not the Eastern shore -- this is the most Republican bit of the area around the Northeast corridor.

MD-02: Northern and Western Baltimore suburbs. I believe Ruppersberger is retiring, but this would be his seat. Safe D, though one of the more conservative spots in Maryland.

MD-03: Columbia, Annapolis, the zone between Baltimore and DC. Safe D for Sarbanes' successor. I have no sense of of where it starts becoming clearly Baltimore suburbs here.

MD-04: Northern PG County and surrounds. Safe D for Ivey ofc, and majority Black on all stats. MD-04 and MD-05 are very similar on total population (around 51%) but this one is significantly more Black on CVAP due to larger immigrant communities here.

MD-05: Southern PG County, southern MD. Majority Black on all stats. Safe D for Hoyer. Sorry about the three-way split of Anne Arundel, though it has a certain logic, since rural southern Anne Arundel is similar to Calvert, St. Mary's, etc. I wish I had put the suburbs below the South River in MD-03 and may revise this to do that.

MD-06: Western Maryland, Frederick, Germantown. A hard district to assess; it was quite close in 2016 but Biden got a commanding margin here in 2020. I'll go with likely D, but that might need a downgrade depending.

MD-07: Baltimore, Dundalk. Majority Black on all stats. I'm pleased to keep the city of Baltimore whole. Mfume is safe here ofc.

MD-08: Southern Montgomery county. Jamie Raskin gets a safe D seat, what a shock. It's minority-majority, though heftily majority white on CVAP. You can really see that Montgomery County has restrictive land use regulations in redistricting around here.

Doesn't MD-02 have a significant black population under these lines? I guess that you might see a black primary challenger here.