2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Indiana

[Idaho Conservative]

None of the seats of my gerrymander are competitive.

yeah but IN won't draw a map that ugly. 

What's the weirdest thing I did on my ugly gerrymander?

Isn't it obvious?  Splitting counties so many ways.

[Idaho Conservative]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2d96c7e7-39bd-40d6-833e-bae1c3acbf2d
I drew this map up.

Those R+5 PVIs do not look comfortable for the Republicans at all. Andre Carson of course would be a non-factor, but very risky still. Those seats would have a good chance of voting for Biden this year, e.g.

These are risks inherent in cracking Indianapolis. *If* you split it up, this is the best way to do it.
Also important to note that the R+5 seats will remain R the majority of the time, and there are only 2 of them. Every other R seat is at least mostly safe. So this is a net gain of one for most of the decade - net gain for Rs in my book.

cracking Lake County is a better idea.  It is a less blue district and has favorable trends.

[Idaho Conservative]

IN-1 is D +3.14
IN-2 is R + 10.73

Everything else is safe

My quick attempt to try to gerrymander IN for the GOP. I think it's going to be very hard to make IN-1 red without brining IN-2 too much into play unless the GOP is willing to do something very obscene. Their best bet is to make it a swing district that Democrats actually have to spend time and money in to defend. Cracking Marion would also be very risky since if the gerrymander starts to backfire over the decade depending upon coming political re alignments, it could go very wrong. They are definately going to try to optimize the Marion vote sink though my shifting the district north to prevent IN-5 or it's equivalent from becoming too D-friendly down the road.

You can use Baird's district to crack Lake County rather than Walorski.  It's possible to make IN-1 lean republican (although not safe) while keeping everyone else pretty safe.  And clearly cracking Indi is a non-starter.  in 2010 that would've been the better district to crack but now clearly Lake is the best choice.  It swung towards Trump in 2020.

[Idaho Conservative]

IN-1 is R+5, IN-2 is R+9 and IN-4 is R+10.  IN-5 is now R+15.  I did this by pushing the Indianapolis district into southern Hamilton to remove D trending areas.  The only competitive district should be IN-1, Trump won it by a double digit margin so it will definitely be lean/likely R. 

[Idaho Conservative]

For what is worth, I decided to see if a 9-0 map is possible, even if it was likely to be a dummymander. The answer seems to be yes, and that it is actually less dumb than what I assumed (still not worth it over 8-1 though)

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7e8bc114-85bb-4924-89d7-92b4405d3f1d



IN-01: R+3
IN-02: R+4
IN-03: R+7
IN-04: R+11
IN-05: R+7
IN-06: R+18
IN-07: R+8
IN-08: R+13
IN-09: R+11

So in practice, a map like this is feasable on paper. However it has an extremely serious risk of being a dummymander I imagine.

The 1st and 2nd districts, while leaning Republican, I imagine must not be all that safe?
While on the other hand districts like the 7th I drew here would also not be Safe R at all?

Still, if trends mean that the 1st and 2nd here are (mostly) safe; I wonder if it is worth it for Rs to try a map like this. 8R-0D-1S would be an improvement over the more expected 8R-1D after all.

you could unpack IN-6.  R+18 wastes a lot of votes.  Also, that IN-7 would've been very close this year, it is less red than the current IN-5

[Idaho Conservative]

Here’s one from RRH. It says it’s meant to be a 8-1 but he didn’t have numbers from 2020


https://rrhelections.com/index.php/2020/12/05/indiana-8-1-redistricting/




Also, that red district looks like a Minecraft guy holding a gun

It's 7-1-1  The Lake County seat is D+1 but trending R.  It's Trump+1 or 2 in 2016 but Obama won it by double digits

[Idaho Conservative]

9-0 is definitely doable, everything likely and safe R, though which seats fit into which category might change throughout the decade.  No Republican incumbents are double bunked either. I doubt they'd be this aggressive considering no incumbent would be particularly happy with having a seat that could be in play during a wave election, but I think 8-1 is very doable.