2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Missouri

[lfromnj]

Yeah I don't see a reason to not go for 7-1 if Incumbents remain happy, I guess the GOP might be forced to make MO 4th more safe while making MO 5 a bit more D to make Hartzler happy but I don't see anything worse than 6-2 happening in the decade which is what would have happened with a fair map.

[lfromnj]

Republicans have unified control now so this will likely be a 7-1 map. I think what most Democrats are interested in is how they draw the districts in the KCMO and St. Louis suburbs. Since Clay, Platte, and maybe St Charles are likely to flip this decade.

MUH suburb TRENDING D FOREVER. Platte is incredibly small and barely swung D and Clay/St Charles swung R by a decent amount, along with Jefferson county MO where Trump got 65% of the vote, anyone educated in the Kansas city side will live in Johnson county Kansas.

[lfromnj]

Hmmm KC easier to crack than I expected.

Well I mean its only Clinton +15 and even the suburbs are R leaning.

[lfromnj]

That likely pisses of too many incumbents, and it really isn't worth risking making that map when a clean sink that shifts missouri to Oklahoma levels is possible.

[lfromnj]

I guess here and in several other states there's a basic conflict of interests between the national Republican Party's interest in making it easier to retake the house, and the state Republican Party's interest in not stirring up trouble for little direct benefit to them. The tiebreaker is whether the current incumbents are willing to put up with awkward lines, districts that are harder to represent and slightly more competitive elections, and whether there are sufficient ambitious politicians in the legislature living in the right bits of the state who want to represent new gerrymandered districts.

Pretty sure Tennessee passes that test, whereas I suspect Indiana doesn't. Missouri is somewhere in the middle, I guess?

The state senate leader has a very high interest in pushing this map.

[lfromnj]

Well the trick with gerrymanders as I stated earlier is to mix trends, if you wanted a perfect efficiently gerrymander you would mix the lead belt +Jefferson county with the most left trending parts of the St.louis burbs.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/jmartNYT/status/1390349202853617668?s=20

Obvious redistricting implications

[lfromnj]

Partisan tensions flare on Missouri redistricting panels

Partisan tensions have been flaring on a pair of commissions in charge of redrawing Missouri's state House and Senate districts, with Democrats and Republicans at odds over their interactions with the public.

The disagreements have raised questions about whether the panels will be able to find consensus by a Dec. 23 deadline to adopt tentative maps.

Three months after the Census Bureau released new population data, officials in about half the states already have passed new voting maps for their U.S. House or state legislative districts. In Missouri, however, there's not much to show.

Missouri's eight U.S. House districts will be redrawn by state lawmakers, who can't act until their session starts in January. The separate bipartisan commissions responsible for reshaping the state's 163 House districts and 34 Senate districts have been marred by partisan squabbling over whether to post draft maps online and continue accepting public comment.

So far, Missouri’s redistricting effort appears to be “yet another process that has fallen victim to political polarization,” said Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Missouri.

If Kansas City gets cut I am going to send a sternly worded letter in the mail to every Missouri voter who stopped reading Amendment 3 after seeing the bit about banning gifts from lobbyists.

Amendment 3 only pertained to legislative maps which is what these arguments are about. Bunch of infighting but expect a fair court map in the end. Amendment 3 merely prevented Nicole Galloway from gerrymandering the legislative maps.

[lfromnj]

Partisan tensions flare on Missouri redistricting panels

Partisan tensions have been flaring on a pair of commissions in charge of redrawing Missouri's state House and Senate districts, with Democrats and Republicans at odds over their interactions with the public.

The disagreements have raised questions about whether the panels will be able to find consensus by a Dec. 23 deadline to adopt tentative maps.

Three months after the Census Bureau released new population data, officials in about half the states already have passed new voting maps for their U.S. House or state legislative districts. In Missouri, however, there's not much to show.

Missouri's eight U.S. House districts will be redrawn by state lawmakers, who can't act until their session starts in January. The separate bipartisan commissions responsible for reshaping the state's 163 House districts and 34 Senate districts have been marred by partisan squabbling over whether to post draft maps online and continue accepting public comment.

So far, Missouri’s redistricting effort appears to be “yet another process that has fallen victim to political polarization,” said Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Missouri.

If Kansas City gets cut I am going to send a sternly worded letter in the mail to every Missouri voter who stopped reading Amendment 3 after seeing the bit about banning gifts from lobbyists.

Amendment 3 only pertained to legislative maps which is what these arguments are about. Bunch of infighting but expect a fair court map in the end. Amendment 3 merely prevented Nicole Galloway from gerrymandering the legislative maps.

Couldn’t the Republican supermajority in the legislature have just impeached her?

Well she merely gets to pick who got to gerrymander the maps so much easier to just do this and not worry about the courts as well.

[lfromnj]

Prolly get some sort of Republican "compromise" map which has MO-02 take in all of St. Charles, in turn making it redder while keeping it's suburban character. There's really no reason for Rs including Wagner herself to oppose this. However, seems like there's too many institutional reasons at this point MO-05 won't be cracked, similar to how MD Dems weren't able to make MD-01 into a reliably blue seat even though they "easily" could've with how ugly they were willing to make the map, but instead made it a swing district that half accomplishes the task.

Wagner may not like it actually because a primary challenger would be from St Charles . That would probably be 60% of the GOP primary vote.

[lfromnj]

Prolly get some sort of Republican "compromise" map which has MO-02 take in all of St. Charles, in turn making it redder while keeping it's suburban character. There's really no reason for Rs including Wagner herself to oppose this. However, seems like there's too many institutional reasons at this point MO-05 won't be cracked, similar to how MD Dems weren't able to make MD-01 into a reliably blue seat even though they "easily" could've with how ugly they were willing to make the map, but instead made it a swing district that half accomplishes the task.

Wagner may not like it actually because a primary challenger would be from St Charles . That would probably be 60% of the GOP primary vote.

So it's actually better for her to have a more marginal district; an all-St. Charles CD might fairly easily result in her being primaried.

Probably not actually better but she seems to think so.

[lfromnj]

If Missouri Democrats screw up a guaranteed fair map two cycles in a row I will be very unhappy.

Technically speaking the current map is probably somewhat close to what a Federal court would have drawn atleast in St.Louis .White Democrats wanted to keep splitting St.Louis which was unlikely at this point. Overall very similar to Wisconsin losing its 9th seat in 2000. The biggest city lost its split seat and the white Dem seat was the one that had to go. I guess if you told Democrats they couldn't split St.Louis their map likely would have kept all of JeffCo instead of St Charles.

[lfromnj]

State Rep. Peter Meredith (HD-80; St. Louis)(I've performed with him - singing-wise - and spoken to him in the statehouse) posted the following on Facebook three days ago:

So… the new maps for the House were (amazingly) passed unanimously by the bipartisan commission. Nobody expected that. But here’s the thing: Dems have a LOT to be optimistic about going into the next election.

Under the current maps, 49 districts voted for Biden in 2020 and 50 voted for McCaskill in 2018. Dems currently hold 49 seats.

Under the new maps, 57 districts voted for Biden and 60 for McCaskill. We have every reason to believe we can grow our caucus significantly this year.

But it will take work, candidates and money. More districts than ever before are close and competitive. 14 of these districts were within 5pts last election, and 27 were within 10 pts. And even when we had a slight advantage, it’s usually harder for us to compete down ballot, where the Rs typically outspend us by 2-1 or 3-1 or worse, with a couple billionaires footing the bill, incumbents with name recognition, and institutional donors giving them much more simply because they are in power.

If you’ve thought about running, now is the time to contact us and step up. The new map is below in comments, and our website to find out how to get help running.

If you’ve thought about volunteering, now is the time to connect. Sign up to connect with our field director Alex Johnson on our website linked in the comments.

If you’ve thought about giving money before to support dems running for the MO House, NOW is the time to start. Again, go to our website.

Our Missouri House Dems started this cycle with infrastructure that we’ve never had before - full time staff, a network of volunteers across the state, and a more professional approach to messaging than we’ve ever had. We’ve got candidates already recruited in many districts, and provide every one with free websites, headshots, field plans, campaign plans, access to the voter database and so much more (our “campaign in a box”).

When I came into office, we didn’t even have a campaign committee, while the Rs raised and spent $5mil or more a year from theirs. My first cycle as chair we raised and spent over $500k and the second cycle we reached over a million. We flipped four districts blue, and were one of the only states in the country to manage to pick up a blue seat even in this very difficult last election. This year we’re looking to double that million raised, and we’ll need it if we want to flip a whole bunch more seats this cycle and this decade.

HELP US MAKE 2022 A BLUE WAVE.

Here was the link to the district map: https://redistrictmo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=b30ec69d8b0f46ebaf6e080ca54b8ed1&fbclid=IwAR2Hgz6RT0ddqCzFC96GwTvxzr9CL2T9noo7HgEOPxGIaeuU3xNuQLxqg2w

Here was the link to the Dems' website: https://www.mohousedems.com/?fbclid=IwAR0qo4a6ZtZjWvgLj9ms-EeKdNTt_GCks3ty3xr8gfTZCfz17t01o6Rx2B8

Districts that will be made up of 1 or more whole counties, and no partial counties:
1 - Atchison, Gentry, Holt, Nodaway
2 - Caldwell, Daviess, Grundy, Harrison, Worth
5 - Marion, Ralls
145 - Perry, Ste. Genevieve
148 - Scott
157 - Lawrence

Counties that will be made up of 2 or more whole districts, and no partial districts:
Cole - 2 districts (59-60)
Boone - 5 districts (44-47, 50)
Jefferson - 6 districts (97, 111-115)
Greene - 8 districts (130-137)
St. Louis City - 8 districts (76-82, 84)
St. Charles - 11 districts (63-65, 69, 102-108)
Jackson - 19 districts (19-37)
St. Louis - 27 districts (66-68, 70-75, 83, 85-96, 98-101, 110)
(Combined population of those 8 counties = 3,214,712 -- which is 52.23% of the state's population. Those 8 counites will have 86 seats in the House, which is 52.76% of the 163 seats in the House.)
Three districts in this map have the appearance of being severely gerrymandered districts: #76 (spread out across more than 3/4s of St. Louis's riverfront), #78 (spreading from as far north as Herbert St. in St. Louis to as far south as Gasconade St.), and #88 (Southwest St. Louis County).

Well, this is great news!

Missouri also avoided the  Nicole Galloway gerrymander after trickery by all sides.

[lfromnj]

Missouri also avoided the  Nicole Galloway gerrymander after trickery by all sides.

You mean, a efficiency gap-driven map?

Along with the tendrils that were required with a composite score. The fact the auditor was chosen for this job instead of the SOS clearly shows the original agenda was just a Democratic made agenda to get better maps.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/K_Schallhorn/status/1486512411217649668

It appears the that Senate Leadership is going to try to extend an olive branch to the Conservative Caucus (some of whom were providing an exit ramp to this by saying "we need at least a more solid 6-2")

Not sure what could be changed with CD01. It's pretty optimized as a pack(tbf its a fairly natural pack although some cherry picking was done)

[lfromnj]

I dont know who are dumber, the Republicans thinking a Trump +35 seat is at risk or Democrats refusing to support the mildest gerrymander ever because muh fairness means 3 biden seats is required.

[lfromnj]

Sen. Mike Bernskoetter has confirmed that the Senate draft will differ from the House plan, and that the third district will be changed in a way that alters the second, but has provided no further elaboration.

Based on the language used, and how he has characterized the Conservative Caucus's demands, I think this will just be an intact St. Charles inside of MO-2 fix. Even though it would be really smart for the GOP to add an additional county (because it means MO-3 can take Kirkwood), its unclear if that will happen.

Why Kirkwood?

It's basically the only heavily dem suburb that can't fit into Missouri 1 as its a bit further away and on the southside .

[lfromnj]

I wonder how much of the fuss is due to trying to effect district coherence for MO-02, to avoid having more upscale suburban Pubs with low brow exurban or rural MAGA types that would drive the former to the exits and discommode Ann Wagner?  You certainly don't want the latter to be controlling Pub primaries.

As far as I can tell its actually the suburban legislators who are more conservative than the rural ones.

[lfromnj]

Seems to be Trump +15 but also perhaps a false flag to call out the St.Charles caucus.

[lfromnj]

Seems to be Trump +15 but also perhaps a false flag to call out the St.Charles caucus.

There's no way that district is Trump +15. Given the changes made to MO-1 its probably only a point or two better

Even just a 2 county  Missouri 2nd with all of St. Louis and  JeffCo is Trump +7. This is definetely atleast a few points better although not Trump +15.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/BillEigel/status/1491063737864044545?cxt=HHwWgoDSjbqkqbEpAAA...
lol

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/K_Schallhorn/status/1491183598330081280

[lfromnj]

And so we see that the Dem's are fine voting for these 6-2/5-2-1 maps, they just won't say so publicly and will let the GOP waste ink and time.

So why not just support the original 5-2-1 map?

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/JeanneKuang/status/1491259383992696832

[lfromnj]

GOP Sen. Sandy Crawford, who represents SD 28, said she’s received threatening emails and phone calls from people urging her to support a map with at least seven districts favoring Republicans. One email, she said, suggested she would “go to hell” if she didn’t support such a map.

Dear lord