Iowa Redistricting, 2010

[Verily]

Iowa loses a district in 2010, so one of its five congressmen has to go. Poor Tom Latham already represents a marginal district, and it's he who gets the boot. (Although, since Leonard Boswell is a weak incumbent, he might stand a chance at beating Boswell in the new Des Moines district, a D+4 district.)

Haven't calculated the partisanship of the other three districts yet, but they will all be quite safe for their incumbents. I had a slightly better map earlier, but I realized it put Loebsack and Braley in the same district, so I redesigned the map both to keep them in separate districts and to make the new districts more strongly resemble the old districts. King is in green, Loebsack in yellow and Braley in magenta. Boswell and Latham are both in cyan.

Regardless, each district varies from the ideal by less than 0.25%, the sort of precision you can achieve only in a state like Iowa.

Anyway...

[Verily]

The state does non-partisan, judicial based re-districting, right?

Yes. It would definitely be possible to gerrymander Boswell a much safer district even without county-splitting. (Put Dallas County in King's district and send tendrils out to take in the rural Democratic counties in King's district.) Equally, it would be possible to make Boswell, not Latham, the one who likely loses out.

But I wanted to keep the Des Moines metro together, at least as much as possible, something the current map doesn't achieve. And of course the judiciary would frown on gerrymandering, which I think any serious attempt to save Latham or to make Boswell safer would be.

[Verily]

"judiciary" doesn't describe it. It's a mathematical formula IIRC.

You're right, not really judicial. Not quite mathematical, either, though.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=1317