US House Redistricting: Michigan

[Torie]

It is a joke map, and appears as illegal as hell. But I guess they wanted to make Levin feel good or something.

[Torie]

Yet another awesome map dpmapper, and I see you have mastered the Garden City trick.    But per my eyes, I don't see any of Dearborn in the gray CD.  Is the county split count as low as your effort before the GOP map came out that seemed to not be as paranoid about it as we were?

[Torie]

Has McCotter committed not to run for his House seat even if his POTUS campaign stalls? 

[Torie]

The map has already been passed, but just for kicks I "improved" MI-09 a bit, slashing the Obama percentage down 1.3% from 58.1% to 56.8%.  MI-11 stays the same at 50.2% Obama. The Obama percentage in MI-10 goes up about close to 1% or so, which might be why it didn't happen. Candice Miller is one powerful lady, and if it is her doing, rather selfish to boot. Oh well. The games I played in Oakland, which do not affect MI-10 of course, are worth about 40-50 basis points. I guess the Pubbies decided doing just that was simply not worth their time.

The only changes were to give MI-09 all of Sterling Township, and Mt Clemens, while losing the most heavily Dem parts of Clinton Township, and in Oakland, MI-09 gets all of Clawson, while dropping Mt. Pleasant and Huntington Woods (which two little towns are 70%+ Obama country). MI-11 makes up what it lost in Clawson with a couple of tiny towns added next to Waterford Township, and two more precincts added in West Bloomfield township.

I was unable to excise Ferndale from MI-09 alas, without weakening MI-11, which is not acceptable. It could have been done if it were legal to cherry pick precincts to put in MI-11 from both Farmington and West Bloomfield townships, but alas it is not.

To excise Ferndale from MI-09 would require jiggling precincts around between the two black CD's, with MI-11 taking in Garden City in Wayne County, and losing some precincts in West Bloomfield. It would probably weaken MI-11 a little bit because some more GOP precincts in it in Oakland would need to be ceded to MI-09.

Map passed into law:



Torie's "improved" map:

[Torie]

For the record, and future reference, here is the Michigan map all prettied up, Torie style.
The Pubs dropped 80 Pub basis points that could easily have been shoved into MI-09 without changing the partisan balance of MI-11, but whatever (MI-09 drops Ferndale, Huntington Woods and Mt. Pleasant to PA-14, picks up the rest of Clawson, and some of Troy from MI-11, and MI 11 picks up from PA-14 Garden City in Wayne County, with a two precinct cut into Westland to get there (one more town split, but only one between MI-14 and MI-11, so it should be legal).

There are no "red" CD's.  The Pubs could lose everything in Michigan in a Dem wave.  Michigan is not Ohio or Pennsylvania.

[Torie]

OK, now that I have finally figured out how to draw a legal map in Michigan (something dpmapper mastered long ago (and probably he came up with the map below on his own to boot), but not yours truly), I have concluded that while the OH Pubs get an "A" for their map (the one flaw with OH-10 is explained by the Turner v. Austria issue), the MI Pubs don't get a passing grade.

Can anyone explain to me why the map below was not adopted?  Did the MI Pubs not really want to endanger Levin in MI-09 too much because of his seniority (and yes, draw him out of his home, but hey Mr. Levin, Clair Shores is a nice place to live, and your CD is now almost all in Macomb anyway)? Did Candice Miller (MI-10) not want to lose as much of northern Macomb as the map below, and/or not lose a Pub point (which she could afford to lose), because she's self centered?  Why, or why, I ask? I am sure the Pubs considered this map. I think we now know that in general, partisan gerrymanderers tend to be devilishly clever.

The map as I said is legal. I finally figured out how to make it legal for MI-09 to break into Wayne County and grab the Pointes suburbs (plus one precinct in Detroit itself ).  There is one less cut in Oakland County, and one more in Wayne, and the cut in Tuscola was switched out in favor of Inghram County (of course Inghram County!).  So the number of county splits is unchanged from the map that was enacted. And a nice little bonus, is that the map actually looks better in Oakland, and MI-05 is less erose as well come to think of it. Sad.

Anyway, here is the map. The numbers speak for themselves as to why to the Pubs in Michigan porked the pooch.



 

[Torie]

C'mon, Torie, where's the killer instinct?  Use water contiguity to take in Grosse Ile rather than Harper Woods!  

(Nice map.  I guess Mike Rogers must be really attached to Lansing, huh?)  

It's inexplicable really. I don't get it. If Rogers moves on, his CD will be at risk, particularly since Ingham no doubt will continue to steady trend Dem (government and higher education will remain growth industries, and Dem, until the sun uses up its hydrogen, and fries the earth in its death throws).  Yes, Muon2, I know some physics-like things, or is that more about chemistry?  

Oh, I forgot to append Orchard Lake Village to MI-11, leaving maybe 5 Pub basis points on the table. My bad. I think I will let that one go for now however.

[Torie]

You seem to have one too many city/township splits in Oakland Co, though - three split between three districts.  I think you need to only use two.  

Really?  I only see two myself. Where is the third?  

God you're good at this dpmapper. You should hire yourself out as a consultant! This irritating little muni/township split law thing cost the Pubs 20 basis points. Heck, it is no longer even worth it for MI-11 to grab Orchard Lake now, since one has to suck up Pub unfriendly Keeoo Harbor to get there now.

[Torie]

Yeah, they probably figured they didn't need to split Lansing so why bother?
The way 14, 11 and 8 wrap around each other is pretty, in a way. Not that the real map doesn't include similarly obvious gerries.

Hi Lewis. Off topic, but in other news, just watch Mathis F the Pubs yet again in AZ. Stertz wanted to drop 20 Pub basis points from the Gifford's CD in Tuscon (AZ-02), and Pub up AZ-01 by 80 basis points. McNulty wanted to Pub up AZ-02 by 20 basis points, and Pub down AZ-01 by 20 basis points. Mathis said she is "thinking" of "merging" the two changes, meaning I suspect that yes, AZ-02 will be Pubbed up by 20 basis points, or a bit more, but instead of AZ-01 taking in highly Pub territory for what it loses in Pinal County, it will instead suck up more of the Sedona area where McNulty of course wanted to expand it, meaning that AZ-01 will be Pubbed down by maybe 50 basis points or more. Since if Giffords runs, AZ-02 will probably not be in play, while AZ-01 most certainly is given the map, you can see where she is going with this. You just watch. No rage hath a woman scorned, the Great Bard once wrote. So true.

[Torie]

How did you split Ingham up, exactly?  I'm curious what district I'd've ended up in.

Your wish is my command - of course!  I did the map zoom in aerial format, the better to assist you. Cheers.

[Torie]

...so it's not continuous.

Nah BRTD, just empty county land is what you see with those little blue islands, so the precinct itself is not contiguous. If it is a problem, then the precincts need to be redrawn, and in fact do anyway, since some precincts don't hew to municipal lines,  and for CD's, that is a legal requirement.

If you study the Columbus, OH zoom, you will see more of these little islands, than exist in Indonesia, seemingly. The precincts there are a bigger mess than anywhere I have seen in the nation - they are just awful!

[Torie]

Does anyone have the Kerry-Bush results for the adopted new map? That would be a better measure in Michigan.

I did the 2004 numbers "by hand" for different maps way back when above. As you can see from the trend map below, the reader's digest version is that outside the Wayne County dominated CD's, and MI-01 and MI-04, and to a far lessor extent MI-10 (the trend in Macomb was flat), the GOP PVI numbers look considerably more robust using 2004 numbers, particularly for the CD's in SW Michigan. The 2004 numbers going forward are probably closer to "the truth"  for SW Michigan (that is snapback country), but I doubt Inghram has much snapback potential, and parts of MI-11 in Oakland probably don't either. MI-08 is probably not as sick as it looks however, because its exurban portion of Oakland is better snapback county, and Livingston trended 3% to the Dems in 2008, and it probably will trend back in 2012. So MI-08 is a mixed bag. Going forward, MI-08 is the big issue really. It will be fine however as long as Rogers hangs around.

[Torie]

Regarding what the Pubs actually did, as opposed to what they "should" have done, MI local politics experts at Red Racing Horses, say it was because of a Dem State Senator, Barcia, who lives in Bay County, and used to represent much of what is in MI-10 the way that I drew it, but then his CD disappeared in the 2001 redraw, but he really liked Washington DC, and wants to go back. In a word, the Pubs are scared sh*tless of him. So Barcia was "quarantined" into MI-05, and since he is pretty conservative on social issues, the Pubs kind of hope he will take MI-05, and that can't happen with Lansing in it anyway (the Dem's there don't like pro-life, gun-rack type Dems).  So thus the map. They figured Rogers can handle Lansing (yes he can, admittedly), and left MI-09 tantalizingly close to competitive, but just out of reach.

And there you have it!