2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Wisconsin

[Stuart98]

If you really want to increase the minority percentage of WI-04, put the cities of Kenosha and Racine in it (but not the western parts of the counties). Will post links/screenshots when I get back to my laptop in a few hours.

[Stuart98]

Forgot to post this last night, but fair map:


Pres 2020:


The 4th is 43.1% WVAP, 34.1% BVAP, 17.4% HVAP. The 3rd here doesn't contain any part of Dane county but still shifted left slightly from 2016 to 2020.

DRA link.

[Stuart98]

What a wonderful map this would be -

https://twitter.com/BobbyBigWheel/status/1451182214075531264

Eh, you don't need to split Dane to make WI-03 blue and I'm not sure if that WI-04 is majority minority. My fair map is still the best proposal I've seen.

[Stuart98]

I tried drawing a proportionally partisan WI state legislative map.

State Senate:

Pres 2020:
18-15 Biden, 16-17 Evers, 21-12 Baldwin

State House:
Pres 2020:

51-48 Biden, 47-52 Evers, 60-39 Baldwin.

[Stuart98]

I feel like the most objective position on this case is the Congressional map isn't really a gerrymander, but still leads to an outcome that is heavily skewed. If anything I'd argue that the current WI-01 and WI-03 are relatively favorable to Dems, even though both lean R. To make either lean D you basically have to crack Madison/Milwaukee.

The State Leg maps are clearly gerrymanders. Bigger question is the fix to draw partisan blind maps, or maps aimed at producing a partisan equitable outcome.

The congressional map is essentially the same as the map from last cycle, which was drawn to maximize Republican advantage when the state was a bit bluer and had dramatically different political geography; as it turns out, the way trends worked caused Republicans' advantage on last decade's map to only increase as Dems lost ground in one blue district while the bulk of their gains were in a blood red district. The conservative at the time state Supreme Court chose to use a least change map for this decade because that maintained their partisan advantage. The idea that a map where Trump wins 75% of districts while losing the state is fair is absurd; if Texas had a map where Biden and Democrats won 24/38 seats Republicans would be screaming bloody murder. The map was drawn to maximize Republican advantage and it's not hard to draw a map that follows the state's partisan lean.

[Stuart98]

I feel like the most objective position on this case is the Congressional map isn't really a gerrymander, but still leads to an outcome that is heavily skewed. If anything I'd argue that the current WI-01 and WI-03 are relatively favorable to Dems, even though both lean R. To make either lean D you basically have to crack Madison/Milwaukee.

The State Leg maps are clearly gerrymanders. Bigger question is the fix to draw partisan blind maps, or maps aimed at producing a partisan equitable outcome.

The congressional map is essentially the same as the map from last cycle, which was drawn to maximize Republican advantage when the state was a bit bluer and had dramatically different political geography; as it turns out, the way trends worked caused Republicans' advantage on last decade's map to only increase as Dems lost ground in one blue district while the bulk of their gains were in a blood red district. The conservative at the time state Supreme Court chose to use a least change map for this decade because that maintained their partisan advantage. The idea that a map where Trump wins 75% of districts while losing the state is fair is absurd; if Texas had a map where Biden and Democrats won 24/38 seats Republicans would be screaming bloody murder. The map was drawn to maximize Republican advantage and it's not hard to draw a map that follows the state's partisan lean.

Yes it is? It's been explained multiple times more than 2 Biden districts would require violating neutral redistricting principles. You are correct about Texas, but that's an argument to push a redistricting reform nationwide, not to gerrymander to achieve "proportionality"

County and city split minimizing Wisconsin map that went 4-4 in 2020


Avoiding municipal splits was prioritized over avoiding county splits. 5 counties are split purely to avoid municipal splits along their periphery, with a total population of the split areas of 18,184. An additional 7 counties are then split for population equality. Three cities are split for population equality, with the largest being New Berlin.

This notion that neutral redistricting means rigid adherence to municipal or county boundaries is dumb anyway given how arbitrary they often are, but the claim that following them excludes the possibility of four Biden districts is simply not true; stop carrying water for false Republican arguments.

[Stuart98]

Is the Milwaukee District a VRA one by law or just merely by tradition?

Majority non-white and a VRA district are not the same thing. Current interpretation of the VRA mandates that if a single ethnic or racial minority group votes as a bloc and votes opposite to how the majority group votes, and constitutes a sufficiently large and sufficiently concentrated proportion of the population in an area as to form a majority of a reasonably compact district, then they're entitled to a district where they can elect the candidate of their choice. In Milwaukee drawing such a district is impossible because neither the black nor the hispanic population is large enough on their own to form a majority of a district, and the VRA has no provisions for districts where multiple minority groups collectively form a majority. From what I can tell putting the black and hispanic parts of Milwaukee together was an invention of the 2000s redistricting cycle; prior to that they were separated. There's no legal requirement to keep them together.

[Stuart98]

Reminder that we can have a minimum possible county splits congressional map that's basically completely equal partisanship wise.