From the looks of it there are no easy ways to create a compact CD from only Polk County and eight counties around it that also produces very low deviation.
Interesting how populous that area is now- if you added all eight counties, you’d be 100022 people over target.
The most compact/neat option is Polk, Dallas, Jasper, Marshall, Story, Boone (excluding the three at the bottom), which results in a district 2343 under.
If that’s not close enough to target, there’s a closer option. Polk, Dallas, Jasper, Story, Warren, Madison. This is 212 under, and it’s still a decent shape- the three counties not included are the northwest, northeast, and southeast corners of the eight. Wouldn’t surprise me if they go for that.
