FWIW, the current representatives are from:
MS-1 Nunnelee, Tupelo
MS-2 Thompson, Bolton (Hinds County)
MS-3 Harper, Pearl (Rankin County)
MS-4 Palazzo, Gulfport
Is it possible to put all of Madison County in MS-2?
I kind of like going for the Mississippi is just like Iowa solution.
You can, if you really want to, but its split right now along those exact lines. So I left them there.
I'm not sure that it is even particularly that White. I think it could be a case similar to DeKalb Georgia, where you have white suburbanites followed soon by black suburbanites.
Between 2000 and 2010, White population increased 18%, Black population by 29%.
The southern part of Madison County is nothing like DeKalb, Georgia. Its approximately 60,000 residents are 68.5% white, 70.2% by VAP. If you add the fast-growing Gluckstadt precinct currently in MS-2, the population goes up to approximately 70,500 and the white percentage to 70.3%/71.7%. Most of the black residents live immediately adjacent to the county line or in the northern part of the county.
The part of Hinds County that is in MS-3 is 62.1%/66.0% white. That might sound low, but it isn't, really, compared to some Jackson voting districts that are 95%+ black.
Were you to add the missing Madison and Hinds pieces to MS-2, you can draw a very good map that generally respects county lines except to balance population, without the need for MS-2 to drag all the way down to the Louisiana border. Every district on this map has a deviation +/-10 from the ideal CD population. MS-2 happens to be exactly correct:
MS-01 (blue) is 71.5% VAP white and has 9 more residents than ideal;
MS-02 (green) is 58.8% VAP black and is ideal;
MS-03 (purple) is 61.3% VAP white and has 2 more residents than ideal;
MS-04 (red) is 72.9% VAP white and has 10 residents fewer than ideal.
Unfortunately, the Columbus/West Point/Starkville Golden Triangle area ends up split up, as in the current map. Columbus is in MS-01; West Point Starkville and some southern Columbus suburbs are in MS-03. As does Rankin County from the rest of the Jackson metro - but that was a conscious decision made in the past for racial reasons. In a color-blind world, the three major counties of the Jackson metro would be kept together, which would allow the Golden Triangle to stay together in the same CD.