Multi-member US House Constituencies

[Antonio the Sixth]

500,000 people per member. +/-10% deviation. Districts will vary in size from 3 to 5, unless states are smaller than that. County splits/chops are to be used only when necessary.
This is for you Antonio!

Much appreciated!

Will you have a map of them with partisan breakdown at the end?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wonderful!

[Antonio the Sixth]

That strikes me as an excellent map! All your choices seem good to me so far.

In Maryland, ideally I'd rather keep Prince George and Montgomery together if that's at all possible, but if that's not fair enough.

For Virginia, I'd have the blue district extend a little further North to Fredericksburg and compensate by having the green district run further East, but both work afaik.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Antonio, what do you think the impact of race would be like in the South under this? In regards to how elections would turn out...

Of my proposed changes? I don't think it will alter Blacks' ability to elect Black representatives, if that's what you means. The VA change is probably too inconsequential to change anything in this respect, and in Maryland I don't think it would matter either. Right now MD-1 would probably be able to elect 2 Black representatives and MD-3 1, but if you had a district anchored around Montgomery and Prince George it could easily elect 3 of them on it's own.

Side note: How would one go about gerrymandering a multi member map?

You'd have to get really sneaky, and even then it would be far less effective. One technique would be to systematically underrepresent opposition areas. For example, you can put the equivalent of 4.4 seats' worth of opposition-friendly territory in a 4-seat district while putting 4.6 seats' worth of favorable territory in a 5-seat district (kind of the equivalent of what the NY Senate does with SMDs). An even subtler technique (since the former can easily be outlawed), is to make sure all your party's areas fall in odd-numbered districts while the opposition's fall into even-numbered ones. I think Japan's LDP did that for a long time. Still, that only works with constituencies that are still pretty small, and in bipolarized party systems.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I wasn't talking about your proposed changes. I mean in general. How do you think things like race will play out...what factors might govern who wins...

Oh, I see, my bad. Well, this would depend a lot on what the voting system is exactly. If it's closed-list PR, then it's still all in the parties' hand, and they might choose to make their lists "whiter" than the demographics of the constituency would warrant. That seems to be the tendency in most European countries I'm familiar with. However, America having more experience with multiculturalism, I don't think it would be as pronounced. Especially since, in a PR system, if Blacks or Hispanics feel too alienated from the existing parties, they could easily create their own and be viable. We could easily see a Black party and a Hispanic party together winning a fifth to a quarter of the seats, with the remaining parties realigning to appeal to different political sensibilities of White Americans specifically.

If it's STV or open-list PR, then parties would have less control over who runs in their name, and it's likely that Democrats at least would have many Black and Hispanic candidates running (and winning) among their lists. In general you could see these candidates develop ties to their constituents similar to those that exist IRL among representatives from the Black Belt or the Southwest (except that would be the case even in Whiter geographic areas).

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That's exactly what I said in my second point.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'd recommend switching Citrus to the purple district if you can without creating too big population discrepancies. Otherwise, you can put Citrus in the grey one, Seminole in the red one, and Marion in the brown one.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's kind of a shame you split the Black Belt in Alabama, but I guess there was no other way.

Fair enough on FL.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's kind of a shame you split the Black Belt in Alabama, but I guess there was no other way.

Fair enough on FL.

It actually helps blacks to split the Black Belt, because under an preferential MMD district system, blacks can still be in the minority in every single seat and still get elected. And their chances would increase if their presence in a certain seat is big enough to get one of their own elected.
Three (even four) black Democrats can get elected to the House under these lines - that manages to be more than their proportion in the state.

I'm guessing the number would probably similar with a united Black Belt (which could easily elect two Black representatives alone, with one more from each other seat), but either way, no big deal.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is great! Keep it up.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Great job! This was very interesting.

I have a few issues, but it's not a very big deal. With multi-member constituencies it's not as important to respect COIs as it is for SMDs.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What do the acronyms mean?

[Antonio the Sixth]

T-R-M-B is Trump-Romney-McCain-Bush
C-O-O-K is Clinton-Obama ('12)-Obama ('08)-Kerry
T-O-M-K is Trump-Obama ('12)-McCain-Kerry
etc.

ooh, I see, thanks!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh, wow, Bush really did well in Central and Southern California!