Illinois Redistricting Megathread

[S019]

Thank you, king! No independent maps in Illinois until we have them nationwide.

At best Congress can mandate them for congressional districts, but not for state legislative districts. Since Pubs in their supermajority states say the same thing, your statement is equivalent of saying no independent maps for the state ever. The irony is that in states like IL an independent map is unlikely to affect the Dem control of the state, but would probably put a number of incumbents at risk in primaries or general elections with ungerrymandered districts.

Democrats have a bill and almost unanimous support for legislation mandating fair maps(there's an argument that under the 14th amendment congress does have the right to mandate them for state legislative districts or at least allow them to be challenged if they are gerrymandered in courts). Republicans can support it or propose their own standalone bill banning gerrymandering if they wanted.

This is moot since Joe Manchin has said he won't support that bill.

[S019]

14-3 strikes me as pretty risky, but I might be wrong? I think even under the new map, Republicans might win 5 districts on a good night (so not much change from the current partisan make-up of the state's House delegation), but who knows.

Anyway, hopefully OH, FL, and TX Republicans are taking notice.

The thing with OH is while the commission is weak there are lot of protections in place to create a somewhat fair map, and it is quite easy to sue to send the ballot to the state court (while while R leaning will definitely draw something more favorable to Dems then a legislative map) or the ballot box. Likewise, FL has the fair maps rule and while the state Supreme Court is once again R favored, the Republicans would be well advised to not overplay their hand. TX in theory could be brutal, but disastrous trends for the GOP in DFW, Austin and North Bexar are going to force them to cede at least a new Austin sink and probably more, and you can probably only draw out one RGV seat, more than 1 is not doable due to the mess it turns the I-35 corridor into. Honestly at least one of Gonzalez/Roy/Van Taylor/McCaul is not making it to 2030, and I'm willing to bet on this. The metros in TX are so bad for the GOP and you can only go out into rurals so much, before the rural incumbents complain. The smartest play is to give both new seats to Democrats (one Dallas and one Austin) and cede one of Gonzalez/Roy while ofc ceding Fletcher and Allred, even this though might not be enough if Austin and DFW keep bluing at the rate that they are. 14-3 isn't too risky, yes the 17th wouldn't be safe, but other than the 14th every other Chicagoland seat and the new downstate STL to Champaign sink would be safe.

[S019]

As a fun thought exercise, I sought to draw a fair map to see how many seats Democrats would gain from gerrymandering. The result was pretty surprising, despite Democrats' issue of being packed into Chicago, their strength in the Collars has increased enough to the point where you can draw 5 Dem seats in the Collars in a pretty clean way and also draw 7 seats nested entirely in Cook County. Perhaps I took some D leaning decisions downstate, but I do think any fair map creates some form of competitive seat down there. The end result seems to be roughly 12-4-1, sure some of these Dem seats are vulnerable (Biden+3), but geography is much better for Democrats than meets the eye. You can cleanly draw all current Dems except Bustos as Biden seats, which perhaps makes the lack of Democratic aggression, all the more surprising, needless to say, I wouldn't be surprised if the draft D plan that we've seen undergoes numerous changes before being finalized.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a50b73aa-d510-4b90-abcb-758e016a91aa


Also this should put to the rest the idea that Democrats benefit from gerrymandering more than Republicans do, a fair map in IL could very well be 13-4 at this point (which would only be a net loss of 1(!) seat over an aggressive Dem gerrymander), on the other hand, in a state like TX, Democrats would probably win a majority of congressional seats on a fair map.

[S019]

Illinois Democrats are psychopaths.

Are Florida and Texas Republicans also psychopaths? Illinois Democrats are working in Congress to pass the For the People Act, what have Florida or Texas Republicans done? The Democrats are forced to do this, because of what the Republicans are doing in states like Texas and Florida.

[S019]

Illinois Democrats are psychopaths.

Are Florida and Texas Republicans also psychopaths? Illinois Democrats are working in Congress to pass the For the People Act, what have Florida or Texas Republicans done? The Democrats are forced to do this, because of what the Republicans are doing in states like Texas and Florida.

Gerrymandering is bad, no matter which side does it.

I agree, and while these maps are unfortunate, I sadly have to tolerate them until whenever we can get fair redistricting in every state.