2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Missouri

[ProgressiveModerate]

My attempt at a relatively clean MO 7-1 map. 5 and 4 are both Trump + 15ish so thy should both hold through the decade.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Oh god.

Don’t think it’d be worth it for the GOP at the end of the day because of the VRA lawsuit

[ProgressiveModerate]

Is that a fair map or some sort of gerrymander?

A fair map that follows MO redistricting rules it seems to me, though geography always makes MO slightly R leaning in a fair map. I think the real question will be whether Dems will have a viable path to break Rs supermajority under the new MO senate map.

[ProgressiveModerate]

There's no reason why the GOP can't safely crack MO-5; if they don't it's purely a matter of politics. Idk if the incumbent saying they think they will or won't be eliminated means much when they could be disproportionately worried or hopeful.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Could the GOP possibly pull a MD-01 where they make district 5 competitive but not a safe R seat while keeping everything else safe?

Also MO-02 will be interesting as Wagner's request could cause a potential problem for the GOP down the road. I wonder if her seat will become more based in heavily suburban R St Charles while a new Southern District takes in the bluer parts of SL County

[ProgressiveModerate]

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.

[ProgressiveModerate]

This really might come down to Dems and whether they join with some Rs to survive the fillibuster. Very interesting redistricting cycle in MO overall

[ProgressiveModerate]

Even if MO-2 becomes safer, the fact KS-05 was kept in tact is really what matters for Dems. Sure, MO-02 could be nice to win down the road but that’s def not a given and would prolly not be part of their core path to a majority

[ProgressiveModerate]

Even if MO-2 becomes safer, the fact KS-05 was kept in tact is really what matters for Dems. Sure, MO-02 could be nice to win down the road but that’s def not a given and would prolly not be part of their core path to a majority

I wonder if Cleaver’s race was a factor in him retaining a politically favorable district - does anyone here think this district would be on shakier grounds if its representative were a White person instead of a person of color?

I think it both has to do in part with his race and the fact he’s relatively inoffensive and well liked. If someone more offensive held MO-05, white or black, and they underperformed Biden, I think the GOP might’ve felt more pressure to go ahead with a crack.

[ProgressiveModerate]

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.

So still not a 7-1 plan?

7-1 seems to be dead unless the GOP wants a last minute plot twist

[ProgressiveModerate]

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 .

Correct, and it's also very White, so you probably don't want to put too much of it in MO-1, otherwise the district will no longer be plurality Black Voting Age Population.

Anyways, swapping the remainder of St. Charles for Southern STL County leaves the 3rd district just a little shy of Kirkwood. Adding another county into MO-2 would allow the 3rd to expand to take Kirkwood, which makes MO-2 from a lean R district to a pretty strong Trump double digit seat.

https://twitter.com/Missouri_Mapper/status/1489241774627467266

If I was the Missouri GOP I would give MO-02 both Warren and Lincoln and strip it of any strongly Democratic City in St Louis County (except for Creve Coeur which I've left for neatness purposes). Then shove the strongly Dem cities south of St Louis that don't fit into MO-01 into MO-03 (Webster Groves, Shrewsbury, Kirkwood etc.)  and drown them out with blood-red rural areas stretching along the Southern Bank of the Missouri River out to Morgan County.



https://davesredistricting.org/join/e598195f-f1ac-4c2e-80ce-4abff963e386

-All incumbents live in their current districts
-MO-02 is dragged up to Trump+15.4%
-The other 5 R districts are kept above 60% Trump, so as not to upset the incumbents
-No counties are split other than the 2 necessary ones (St Louis and Clay)
-No city in St Louis County is split

The only reason that map is unlikely is because Ann Wagner doesn’t want it. Otherwise MO-2 would have been heavily shored up in the first draft.

I really don't get why Wagner is so scared of rurals, especially since they could bring her seat to a place where she doesn't even need to worry about campaigning in the General election. She's a relatively quiet but inoffensive member of the GOP so shouldn't lose her primary, especially as long as the burbs stay a significant chunk of her district but idk why she's so insistant on not going past St. Charles County, especially when it could make her seat a bajillioin times safer.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Not sure if this is just signaling or an honest statement of belief about what type of map they will push for, but nonetheless:
https://twitter.com/MoSenDems/status/1490736991276703745

Shhh stay quiet while your opponents are in the middle of making a mistake.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/Missouri_Mapper/status/1491239026850144258

3 shouldn’t be a problem unless a disaster happens for the GOP, but why not try to make it a point or 2 safer just in case?

[ProgressiveModerate]

The degree to which these "pro-gerrymander" folks are going to is kind of laughable. I know a lot of folks on Atlas often get excited over Hochulmander or whatever, but this is just another level, especially since a lot of these people seem like pretty "ordinary citizens", not special interest groups of experts.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article258220283.html

Republican Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, chairman of the Senate's redistricting committee, said passing a 7-1 GOP map wouldn't reflect the political makeup of the state. He equated it to cheating in baseball, adding: “We're not beating the Democrats with our best pitch, we're taking the bat away from them.”

Lol, as if this is going to convince the Conservative Caucus to stop filibustering.

Republican leadership in MO is so adorable. They're concerned about fairness. Democrats took the bat away in Illinois and New York, gaining at least 5 seats in the process, with no regard for reflecting the political makeup of the state. And no court will strike them down for "partisan fairness" reasons. It seems only Kansas and Tennessee GOPs have the absolute depravity Dem redistricters have. And we'll see if those even survive. So far, the courts have sent a pretty clear message: one party is allowed to gerrymander without consequences, and one isn't.

Uhh… Texas?

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article258220283.html

Republican Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, chairman of the Senate's redistricting committee, said passing a 7-1 GOP map wouldn't reflect the political makeup of the state. He equated it to cheating in baseball, adding: “We're not beating the Democrats with our best pitch, we're taking the bat away from them.”

Lol, as if this is going to convince the Conservative Caucus to stop filibustering.

Republican leadership in MO is so adorable. They're concerned about fairness. Democrats took the bat away in Illinois and New York, gaining at least 5 seats in the process, with no regard for reflecting the political makeup of the state. And no court will strike them down for "partisan fairness" reasons. It seems only Kansas and Tennessee GOPs have the absolute depravity Dem redistricters have. And we'll see if those even survive. So far, the courts have sent a pretty clear message: one party is allowed to gerrymander without consequences, and one isn't.

Frankly, for someone styling themselves as an elections guy, you don't know very much about redistricting if this (the bolded) is what you believe.


KS's gerrymander is tame - all it does is maybe flip KS-03 to the GOP in 2022, and that's 50-50. The seat voted for Biden, and is trending leftwards fast, so the GOP is just buying very little time.

Other GOP gerrymanders exist as well, which you'd know if you weren't in a bubble - GA, NC, OH (OH's more of a dummymander but still), TX (though it's mainly incumbent protection, it reddens up a ton of GOP districts that would very possibly have flipped this decade, especially those in and around Austin, as well as the disgusting configuration of the DFW districts), and LA (4-2, or at least 4-1-1, is fair - not 5-1 where the one Democratic district is a Democratic pack that takes in the blue parts of Baton Rouge and New Orleans instead of creating one blue district for each of the cities). And there are enough states where the GOP shored up competitive seats - TX really falls mainly into this category, as well as AR (completely cracking Little Rock / Pulaski County), KY (moving Frankfort out of the borderline competitive KY-06 to save Barr), NE (reddening up the Omaha district a bit to give Bacon another two years), OK (completely cracking OKC to save Bice), UT (completely cracking SLC to save Owens), IN (moving bluer areas from Spartz's seat into Carson's, and replacing it with rural, ruby red areas to shore up Spartz), and SC (moving parts of Charleston into SC-06 to shore up Mace and keep SC-01 red).

This is pretty much common sense, and if you're counting all the Democratic gerrymanders but only about a seventh of the GOP gerrymanders, it makes sense that the Democratic gerrymanders will outnumber the GOP ones (and even then, you named 2 Republican gerrymanders and 2 Democratic ones, so really there was an equal number of Democratic and Republican gerrymanders).


EDIT: Cope and seethe as much as you want, but do not have the audacity to victimize the GOP as those being punished by gerrymandering. The Democrats have taken blow after blow without punching back till now, and whenever they've offered a universal end to gerrymandering, the GOP has said no. Now that they're finally fighting back, every single blue avatar (and Republican-leaning independents such as yourself) is whimpering about Democratic gerrymanders and how vicious they are, and how the GOP are the ones being victimized here. I don't buy that nonsense.

Also a lot of these "shoring ups" were very mild. The boost Andy Barr got was minimal. French Hill is safe, but he was already pretty safe to begin with.  And Nancy Mace is still in a left-trending Trump+9 seat that is not guaranteed to stay Republican all decade.

 And Don Bacon was not shored up at all.

Just because they could've been even more effective doesn't mean they weren't effective/gerrymanders to begin with.

You are right on Bacon though - at a glance NE02 looks like it was at least made more Republican than it was earlier, but yeah, they changed the margin by just 0.3%, and it's still a Biden+6 seat. So yeah, my mistake, thanks for pointing that out; I'll remove it from my post.

Also Nebraska’s control was technically split as Dems had the filibuster pen

[ProgressiveModerate]

Supposedly, the latest squabble right now is over the placement of Jefferson County. Apparently, some members from SEMO are really pushing back against compromise proposals placing that county in the 8th.

Putting Jefferson inside of MO-8 would make a Trump +48ish district (which unpacks the current district somewhat). If the senators from SEMO have their way, it will pretty much force MO-8 to be something like Trump +58 - which is almost as GOP as MO-1 is Democratic.

I don't get why the GOP is scared of a Trump + 48 seat...

[ProgressiveModerate]

They are literally doing a prayer session for a 7-1 map...?

Dems should hold a prayer for a 7D-0R map, surely god will equalize it and we'll get a 4-4 #fairmap

[ProgressiveModerate]

Just a reminder a court drawn map still prolly keeps MO-02 as a Trump seat, abliet a narrow one because to make it Biden leaning likely means taking out some black voters from MO-01 and/or doing a pretty dramatic reconfig, plus MO-01 has to take in population anyways

[ProgressiveModerate]

The GOP only has 2 days left to get their act together iirc

We may actually get a court drawn MO which would probably be a least change 6-2 map with Dems having a shot at MO-02

[ProgressiveModerate]

The GOP only has 2 days left to get their act together iirc

We may actually get a court drawn MO which would probably be a least change 6-2 map with Dems having a shot at MO-02

Can we quorum bust?

Though I doubt MO Dems are smart enough to do that anyway, seeing the sh*t they've pulled so far.

They literally lack the numbers to do so because the GOP has a supermajority

[ProgressiveModerate]

Least change map that only splits 4 counties (for necessary reasons) and keeps deviation within 1000 for all districts. A court drawn map would likely be very similar to the current map but make the 5th district cleaner, and also eliminate the 3 way split of Jefferson County.

Also, I said this before and I'll say it again; a fair court drawn map least change or not prolly keeps MO-02 as narrow Trump due to teh fact MO-01 needs to expand and generally a fair map would keep as many black voters together as possible, creating a natural D pack of sorts

[ProgressiveModerate]

An 8R-0D map is probably legal.

No MO-01 is pretty objectively protected by VRA and for someone to say it isn’t is on crack

[ProgressiveModerate]

An 8R-0D map is probably legal.

No MO-01 is pretty objectively protected by VRA and for someone to say it isn’t is on crack

At least five SCOTUS justices believe the VRA doesn't apply to redistricting.

Uh that’s not what their ruling said…

MO-1 is objectively a compact district my any metric, this isn’t like Alabama where a 2nd black district is more controversial

[ProgressiveModerate]

So now what?

Today canidates filing begins and we still don’t have CDs. Can the legislature still pass and enact a map or does the court take over?