NEW HAMPSHIRE
The plan: one district encompassing the Boston suburbs, Nashua, Portsmouth, Manchester. One district for the rest. This separates the high population density Bostonian south from the rural, maverick north. It's a logical boundary to separate the urban/suburban from the rural. It also keeps the major metro areas together. It favors a linear boundary over a county boundary, but the line is somewhat near the county boundary anyway.
The map:
District 1 is a rectangle encompassing Portsmouth, Manchester, and Nashua. It has most of Rockingham and Hillsborough Counties. Rating: Lean R
District 2 is much more rural, has a much lower population density, and has parts of all ten counties. Rating: Likely D
Improvements: I have combined Manchester and Nashua, which is a designated metro area. The current districts do not. In addition, I've done a better job of keeping counties whole, keeping cultural boundaries, and keeping geometric shapes.
Executive Council districts.(PDF)
The executive council districts are hideous. District 2 snakes from Keene all the way over to Dover. It also throws Manchester in with a bunch of townships to the Northeast...which makes no demographic sense if you know the area.
District 1 is the only one that's okay. But really Carroll county is quite isolated from both Coos and Belknap, there is a geographic reason it's part of NH-1 in the congressional districts.
