2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Wisconsin

[lfromnj]

COI wise the worst thing about Wisconsin is always the Fox River Valley, The main counties in the FRV actually do form a decent district size but the problem is its super ugly and you have create a wrap around district if you want to keep the region whole.

[lfromnj]

Regarding the State Assembly and whether or not the GOP can get a supermajority, it doesn't seem realistic to me (State Senate is unfortunately).  

This is the bare minimum seats that I see the Democrats getting after redistricting if municipal and county lines are respected at all by the court map -

1 Iron Range area
1 Eau Claire
1 Portage County
1 La Crosse
1 Appleton
1 Oshkosh
1 Green Bay
1 Green County
2 Rock County
8 Dane County
14 Milwaukee County
1 Racine
1 Kenosha
1 Ozaukee County

That totals 35 seats and 33 or lower would mean the GOP has the supermajority.   Again this is pretty much "bare minimum" seats that can be drawn assuming a bad court map is made.  I'm figuring Ozaukee's trend will continue in 2022 and the suburn seat that flipped there last year will stay Dem in the end.

The Democrats currently only hold two seats that I'd see as vulnerable - a second seat in the Iron Range (74) and a second seat in La Crosse (94).   Everything else they hold is either solid or in an area that should be trending their way going forward (mostly the southeast).

There's a couple seats in the Green Bay area and the southeast that will be swingy going forward in pretty much any map that's drawn (4th district in Green Bay would be borderline Lean D by 2022 with no remap).

No they would not be winning an Ozaukee County seat that doesn't dip into Milwaukee County. It wouldn't even have voted for Biden and local trends will lag presidential there quite heavily. Do probably agree on the rest though.

[lfromnj]

The Fox River Valley as mentioned earlier is much harder to work with. However Chippewa and Eau Claire County should be together. Just switch Chippewa and St.Croix.

[lfromnj]

The Dems' self packing in this state is a Pub wet dream.

I’m not going to pick on you for this, but I bristle at the notion of “self-packing” in states with cities which practiced and continue to practice de facto racial segregation, like Milwaukee. (Dane County is a “self-pack” as much as Cambridge or Berkeley, though.) The Milwaukee ghetto was official policy and having them locked out of governance was a goal.

Not really. Its due to the inner ring white liberals.  There wasn't any self packing in Milwaukee when Waukesha. gave Romney a 80k vote margin.

[lfromnj]

If Dems had any bargaining power here (they don’t) they would be smart to try to make WI-1 closer while triaging WI-3.

Uh, the governor is a Democrat, and the WISC is fairly moderate. Anyways it's pretty easy to make WI-1 closer and WI-3 winnable, the two goals aren't really mutually exclusive

Just to expand on this, to my mind what you should aim for for a competitive WI-01 is to avoid Waukesha. WI-04 gets the northern parts of Milwaukee county, which leaves about 200k in the south for WI-01 (those areas aren't really that blue, but whatever, they're better than the alternative). Those 200k plus Racine, Kenosha, and Walworth mean you can take like 60k from Rock, leaving you with a nice looking WI-01 which is like Trump+3.5. That still leaves plenty of Rock and other counties around Dane for WI-03 to take in to make it like Biden+1 without even splitting Dane.

One way to do it would be to run WI-01 up the shoreline of Lake Michigan to connect to the very blue but also very white NE suburbs of Milwaukee. This isn't totally crazy because the entire shoreline of the city of Milwaukee is very white, and doing so actually increases the minority population in WI-04 (which then takes the conservative SW parts of Milwaukee County). If you do it really completely, you can then take in the southern, rapidly D-trending parts of Ozaukee County in WI-01 instead of going west of Racine/Kenosha and run WI-04 a bit into Waukesha and bam you've drawn two Biden districts just in the Milwaukee metro while still increasing the black and overall minority percentages in WI-04.

Edit: Here's an example:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7153e0c7-3365-4f25-aa19-b50172d0728a

What court would even accept this?

Actually I could see the 3 Dem justices accepting it but still lol.(The Wisconsin supreme court is an awful institution overall) And no it does not increase the minority percentage anyway.

[lfromnj]

https://mobile.twitter.com/PollsAndVotes/status/1446575436616683521
Interesting read.

[lfromnj]

If Dems had any bargaining power here (they don’t) they would be smart to try to make WI-1 closer while triaging WI-3.

Uh, the governor is a Democrat, and the WISC is fairly moderate. Anyways it's pretty easy to make WI-1 closer and WI-3 winnable, the two goals aren't really mutually exclusive

Technically the Wisconsin supreme court is fairly batsh**t partisan besides Hagedorn.
https://www.npr.org/2012/05/11/152520957/wis-justices-deadlocked-over-chokehold-allegation#:~:text=Justices%20on%20the%20Wisconsin%20Supreme%20Court%20are%20deadlocked,chokehold%20during%20an%20argument%20over%20a%20controversial%20ruling.

GILMAN HALSTED, BYLINE: What exactly happened in Justice Anne Walsh Bradley's office last year on June 13th depends on which of the six justices who were present you talk to. Justice Bradley and two of her colleagues say Justice David Prosser put his hands around Bradley's neck in a chokehold. Prosser and the other three justices on the court say Prosser was just defending himself when Bradley rushed at him with her fist in the air. Leading up to the incident, tensions in the Capitol building had been high for months.

Basically what happens when you put a bunch of Dane party activists against WOW party activists.

[lfromnj]

If Dems had any bargaining power here (they don’t) they would be smart to try to make WI-1 closer while triaging WI-3.

Uh, the governor is a Democrat, and the WISC is fairly moderate. Anyways it's pretty easy to make WI-1 closer and WI-3 winnable, the two goals aren't really mutually exclusive

Technically the Wisconsin supreme court is fairly batsh**t partisan besides Hagedorn.
https://www.npr.org/2012/05/11/152520957/wis-justices-deadlocked-over-chokehold-allegation#:~:text=Justices%20on%20the%20Wisconsin%20Supreme%20Court%20are%20deadlocked,chokehold%20during%20an%20argument%20over%20a%20controversial%20ruling.

GILMAN HALSTED, BYLINE: What exactly happened in Justice Anne Walsh Bradley's office last year on June 13th depends on which of the six justices who were present you talk to. Justice Bradley and two of her colleagues say Justice David Prosser put his hands around Bradley's neck in a chokehold. Prosser and the other three justices on the court say Prosser was just defending himself when Bradley rushed at him with her fist in the air. Leading up to the incident, tensions in the Capitol building had been high for months.

Basically what happens when you put a bunch of Dane party activists against WOW party activists.

Yes, it's like 3 Alito's, 3 Sotomayor's and then 1 Roberts deciding everything 4/3.  Pretty wild.  

I don't think Hagedorn is ruling like Roberts for the sake of the opinion of the court or whatever though. I think he just rules how he wants to. He clearly doesn't care about how many liberal cocktail parties he gets invited to.

[lfromnj]

I had a go at drawing a fair map of the Wisconsin State Assembly. I prioritised minimising splits of counties or municipalities together (not helped by the precinct and city lines being incredibly ugly in places) as well as trying to draw neat, relatively compact districts. There are six African American districts in Milwaukee and two Hispanic ones.

Whole State





Milwaukee-Madison





Fox River Valley





In this attempt at a sensibly drawn map of the Assembly, Trump still won 58 districts to Biden's 41, which is still pretty grim for the Democrats. Democratic voters in this state are so naturally packed that the GOP doesn't even need to draw anything that egregious e.g. slicing up Wisconsin's smaller cities (Sheboygan, Oshkosh, Wausau, Neenah-Menasha) to all but guarantee themselves control outside of a meltdown. Unless you make an deliberate effort to draw many city-suburb districts (which is not the most natural way of drawing them and doesn't respect communities of interest or municipal lines) you'll always end up with a map that decidedly leans Republican in Wisconsin.

There are marginal Trump seats though, the tipping point seat being District 58 in the Green Bay suburbs (De Pere, Ashwaubenon, Hobart, Lawrence, part of Ledgeview) at Trump+7.6. But unfortunately for Democrats of the top 20 most marginal seats, Biden actually still won half of them meaning Republicans could still win in quite a number of districts that went blue in 2020 making the challenge to take the chamber all that more challenging. The upside for Democrats is the 10th most marginal Republican seat is the Waukesha County based District 16 (Brookfield) and this may be the area where they break the Republican's hold on the Assembly.

Only 4 districts flipped between 2016 and 2020:

3 from R to D:
-District 23 (Greenfield)
-District 49 (Neenah-Menasha)
-District 67 (Wausau)

1 from D to R:
-District 98 (Green County, Lafayette County, City & Town of Mineral Point)

If you post the DRA link someone else can make a copy and just place the senate districts as well. Your assembly seats seem fine but with nesting they might not be.

Your assembly map seems decent at first glance but I don't think your senate map based by 1-3 nesting would be that good.

I think you definitely screwed Democrats out of a logical tossup seat senate seat  based in Eau Claire county.

[lfromnj]

If you mean the Assembly map it's just because the counties of: Eau Claire, Trempealeau, Clark, Jackson and Monroe form a group for four seats (Eau Claire unlike La Crosse is too small to support 2 on its own) and that was the best arrangement I could find for that area. Assembly district 80 (Trempealeau County - Altoona) is only Trump+5.6 and is a seat the Dems would need to take the chamber.

The thing is Chippewa + Eau Claire is only 4k short of 3 assembly seats and is a good COI.

Turns out you didn't screw Democrats there much.

[lfromnj]

I actually wonder what the WI GOP will submit. I mean they can't be idiotic enough to submit their map so I don't know why they are even drawing it.



Then again LOL Ever's 21.

[lfromnj]

By the way is there is anyway to use Wisconsin's line item veto on a redistricting bill?  If for example Ever's vetoes certain precincts and some of the map is empty would a judge start all over or would they keep what was not vetoed?

[lfromnj]

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/wisconsin/articles/2021-11-11/wisconsin-gop-oks-redistricting-plans-while-dems-cant-agree

Lol half the dem members in the state assembly voted against the dem proposal because it just cracked Milwaukee to Washington county with the black seats.

[lfromnj]

Kind of silly to have Dodge and Jefferson with Madison as they're culturally a lot more connected to WOW, but it's what necessary to maintain some level of partisan fairness.

Maps shouldn't aim for partisan fairness, IMO, especially if it results a worse map. It makes more sense to put Dane with Rock, Columbia, or Iowa, for example, than with Jefferson and Dodge--particularly since we have no idea of what political coalitions will be like in 10 years. If say, Western Wisconsin trends hard R and Eastern Wisconsin trends hard D, it could end up having the opposite effect (Obviously that's not likely but similar things are possible in other parts of the country).

Drawing reasonable maps is the best safeguard for partisan fairness in the aggregate and over time even if it has some disproportionate results on the micro level resulting from geographic biases.

Except it seems like nobody agrees as to what is reasonable, much less "fair." We certainly almost never do.  

But then I think the whole concept of COI's outside of hewing to metro areas and political subdivisions is largely partisan spin city and crap, and now there is this concept of gerrymandering to make a map "fair," which is going on in Michigan with the state House maps. That's crap too along with efficiency gaps and all kinds of other shiny new gleaming toys that are in vogue, which are not merely  attractive nuisances, but toxic waste dumps. Humans frankly are not up to this task, and it all needs to be turned over to bots.

You must love the NC County cluster rules for legislative districts right ?

[lfromnj]

https://commonsensewisconsin.com/redistricting/

Honestly thought Hagedorn would sign off on something like this.

[lfromnj]

So with regards to the legislature, the Rs get a fairly brutal gerrymander of the FRV, get to keep chopping at the bits in Eastern Dane, and keep Kenosha/Racine together instead of giving each a seat. Eau Claire seems gerrymandered and it definetely is awful on COI grounds but it actually doesn't help the GOP much. Population changes will make an exurban Dane/Driftless seat more competitve.

However the test for "least change" will be most seen if the GOP court decides to fix the dummymander in Milwaukee for the GOP or keeps it least change. 8 and 5 both voted for Biden. However 4 and 6 have a lot of population loss and they could theoretically eat at the most dem parts of 5 and 8 and let them both become more GOP.

[lfromnj]

So with regards to the legislature, the Rs get a fairly brutal gerrymander of the FRV, get to keep chopping at the bits in Eastern Dane, and keep Kenosha/Racine together instead of giving each a seat. Eau Claire seems gerrymandered and it definetely is awful on COI grounds but it actually doesn't help the GOP much. Population changes will make an exurban Dane/Driftless seat more competitve.

However the test for "least change" will be most seen if the GOP court decides to fix the dummymander in Milwaukee for the GOP or keeps it least change. 8 and 5 both voted for Biden. However 4 and 6 have a lot of population loss and they could theoretically eat at the most dem parts of 5 and 8 and let them both become more GOP.

To grow 4 and 6, I would think they would go where the could at least try gain the most African American voters possible, which would probably mean grabbing the rest of Glendale and taking Brown Deer, maybe also a piece of 7 or a bit of northwest 3. Only piece of 5 I could see 4/6 taking is that sliver north of Wauwatosa that's in Milwaukee. The rest of the district is pretty white.

The other question is population equality as well. Is the goal to get it back to sub 500 deviation or will anything within 5% work?  If its back to sub 500 then that could help the GOP there.(One district has 600 deviation but the rest are very close) Going for strict population deviation will help Democrats in Dane with senate district 13 but hurt in Milwaukee. Vice versa for 5% rule.

Also about "pure least change" the "best" way to do that is to probably push into the 5th senate so it can push West and push 33 West so 13 gets pushed further into Dane as the Dane senate districts shrink.

Other than that the legislative districts shouldn't change too much. The Appleton district is currently Trump +1.9 but has to lose around 6k people moving it to Trump +0.5  if it takes the R parts of the district.  25 might eat into 10 along with 12 eating a Dem leaning reservation from 25 which hurts a bit but the district was flipping anyway.

[lfromnj]

So with regards to the legislature, the Rs get a fairly brutal gerrymander of the FRV, get to keep chopping at the bits in Eastern Dane, and keep Kenosha/Racine together instead of giving each a seat. Eau Claire seems gerrymandered and it definetely is awful on COI grounds but it actually doesn't help the GOP much. Population changes will make an exurban Dane/Driftless seat more competitve.

However the test for "least change" will be most seen if the GOP court decides to fix the dummymander in Milwaukee for the GOP or keeps it least change. 8 and 5 both voted for Biden. However 4 and 6 have a lot of population loss and they could theoretically eat at the most dem parts of 5 and 8 and let them both become more GOP.

To grow 4 and 6, I would think they would go where the could at least try gain the most African American voters possible, which would probably mean grabbing the rest of Glendale and taking Brown Deer, maybe also a piece of 7 or a bit of northwest 3. Only piece of 5 I could see 4/6 taking is that sliver north of Wauwatosa that's in Milwaukee. The rest of the district is pretty white.

The other question is population equality as well. Is the goal to get it back to sub 500 deviation or will anything within 5% work?  If its back to sub 500 then that could help the GOP there.(One district has 600 deviation but the rest are very close) Going for strict population deviation will help Democrats in Dane with senate district 13 but hurt in Milwaukee. Vice versa for 5% rule.

Also about "pure least change" the "best" way to do that is to probably push into the 5th senate so it can push West and push 33 West so 13 gets pushed further into Dane as the Dane senate districts shrink.

Other than that the legislative districts shouldn't change too much. The Appleton district is currently Trump +1.9 but has to lose around 6k people moving it to Trump +0.5  if it takes the R parts of the district.  25 might eat into 10 along with 12 eating a Dem leaning reservation from 25 which hurts a bit but the district was flipping anyway.

Did the existing map have population inequalities when drawn? If not, I don't think the court is going there. If it did, then assuming Wisconsin law is silent on the subject, the Wisconsin court might only change the lines when the existing deviation exceeds the 10% deviation that is the max SCOTUS allows, thus making the existing map illegal.

There is no population inequalities beyond what a precinct would fill. The most deviation from 0 is 600 people. I assume the goal will once again be to target this number or lower.

[lfromnj]

Honestly the most similar district to WI01 is probably CT05, both are mildly gerrymandered to be more partisan then they should be due to leftover demands  from 2000 court redistricting.




This was the pre 2002 map with 9 districts. As Wisconsin lost a district and North Milwaukee had to expand southwards it was obviously the south Milwaukee Waukesha seat that had to be cut. Obviously a large portion of the population could be taken care of due to the milwaukee population loss but WI01 and WI05 still had to eat up the remainder. Dave Obey was the one who worked the compromise with the courts to satisfy all incumbents. The WI GOP did mostly keep the shape of the new map besides shoring up WI07 with WI03 and trading Dodge/Ozaukee county between WI05 and WI06.  Doing the Dodge trade did make WI06 a McCain district although I think the main purpose was less to due with partisanship and maybe just wanting to increase WOW representation.  The WI03 and WI07 now slightly helps Dems although putting back St Croix county wouldn't really matter as previously it used to be very red compared to the surrounding area but now it is merely as red as any surrounding rural.This is actually quite similar to what will likely happen with CT with a least change map as  CT05 should not be taking in Hartford suburbs while the Hartford district takes in random rurals.

[lfromnj]

Yes, and Wisconsin might have some law on the subject.

And voila! What would you people do without me?  

https://law.justia.com/constitution/wisconsin/article-iv/section-3/

Wait a minute! Actually the existing map when passed pushed up close to the 10% deviation limit. So the court is not going to move the lines except where necessary to stay within the 10% parameter, and where the lines move, it will be done in a way to minimize the size of the county or municipal chop. Probably it should be turned over to a black box to do the job. Humans will just F it up.

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::f02103cd-91fa-43f8-91cc-186e4c0cccb7


I lost my frigging mind. Wrong state. What the guy said from the state where the garbage meets the sea, which at this very moment is graced by my presence, was precisely true. I need a conservator ASAP.

Sure just send your Social security and credit card info on atlas dm.

[lfromnj]

So I drew a map ignoring partisanship and focusing only on CoI. (Senate map isn't complete yet but should be pretty easy since it's just combining three Assembly districts each into one Senate map.)

It's still pretty bad for the Democrats. PlanScore gives it a 9.7% R Efficiency Gap and predicts the Democrats would only win 37% of the seats with 49% of the vote.

There are 45 solid Trump districts, 37 solid Biden districts, and 22 "competitive" ones, DRA defines "competitive" as in the 45-55% range so a lot are still pretty solid. It also has 46 solid Walker districts, 32 solid Evers districts and 21 "competitive". I'm a bit shocked because I would've expected Evers' coalition to be better for Democrats.

There are three Evers/Trump districts (24, 27 and 58) and three Walker/Biden districts (47, 53 and 87.) So the three Evers/Trump are in the driftless and two mostly rural seats north of Madison, and the Walker/Biden ones are in a suburban area southeast of Appleton, Sheboygan and the surrounding areas and one right south of Milwaukee.

Redraw Racine and Kenosha . If you give each its own senate seat and draw 3 layering assembly seats you should get 4 biden seats no?

[lfromnj]

Sorta Least change based from 2002 map.

WI03 is Trump +5.5 and WI01 is Trump +5.9.

Everything else is safe.

[lfromnj]

Link to Evers proposed congressional map

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?usp=sharing&mid=10H4O7oyvGSgks0eS2-nppEzh-L4d1Vmk

At a glance, it makes WI-1 more competitive by moving Beloit and more of Milwaukee in and moving it out of Waukesha.

Trump +2 from what I see.

[lfromnj]

Link to Evers proposed congressional map

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?usp=sharing&mid=10H4O7oyvGSgks0eS2-nppEzh-L4d1Vmk

At a glance, it makes WI-1 more competitive by moving Beloit and more of Milwaukee in and moving it out of Waukesha.

Gov Evers seems to have trouble understanding what “least change” means, bless him. No, Mr. Evers, it does not mean that WI-01 snatches three suburbs along the lake in Milwaukee County, so that WI-05 can squeeze WI-01 out of Waukesha County and then some. No, you only have WI-05 take as much as it needs in Waukesha to reach population parity, after WI-04 takes the territory it needs from WI-05, and no more. See below. You don’t grab more than you need in order for WI-01 to shed the population that it should not have acquired from WI-04 (the CD that needed to add population, not lose it, remember?). That is called territory exchange, not least change.   Your little illicit exchange is worth 2 Dem PVI points for WI-01. Naughty, not nice!  Is your map going to fool anybody? I think not. I know Sen Johnson is as dumb as a box of rocks, but he is not the Pub point person here. You get a Trump doll in your Xmas stocking this year.

Pure least change would actually have WI04 take from WI01 which takes from WI02. The other option is WI04 takes from WI05 which would then either cut into WI01 or WI02. But if WI05 is taking the 50k from WI01 then it isn't a least change.

[lfromnj]

Interesting

https://twitter.com/jdjmke/status/1471944047614996485?s=20

Picture of her map?