My Attempt to Make Fair Districts

[Kevinstat]

MAINE

The plan: Combine Portland and Lewiston, and have Augusta and Bangor in the other district. Try for a straight north-south line.

The map:


District 1: Featuring the main urban centers, this district is compact and population-dense. Rating: Safe D

District 2: More conservative than our actual District 2. Much more rural. I suspect many French-Canadians live here, perhaps more than in actual District 2. Rating: Lean D

Improvements: The only county split is in Sagahadoc, giving Brunswick and Bath to Portland, since they are more urban than rural. Fairly straight line border, combines Lewiston and Portland due to them having more similarity than Portland and Augusta do.

Which towns in Sagadahoc County are in each district?  It looks like you might have had District 2 cross the Kennebec south of Bath to take in Phippsburg.  Of course, to get the numbers to come out okay, sometimes you have to do things like that.  Once I know the split in Sagadahoc County by town, I can calculate the deviation as of 2010 (and 2000 also; I have spreadsheets for redistricting based on both censuses).

[Kevinstat]

I always try to get deviation under 1%. And muon, there are no county splits between district 2 and district 3 afaik?

Kevin, I know the Maine deviation was under 1,000 people.

I figured it out from looking closely at the map.  Bath, Topsham and West Bath are in your District 1 (-665.5 or -0.1002%), while Arrowsic, Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Georgetown, Perkins UT (Swan Island), Phippsburg, Richmond and Woolwich are in your District 2 (+665.5 or +0.1002%).  While I recognize individual people can't be divided into congressional districts, I think deviation statistics are more accurate (when comparing situations where there is a remainder to those where there isn't, like if Maine had an even population) when you don't round the average (I guess I shouldn't use the word "ideal") population per district to the nearest integer.  Moving Arrowsic to your District 1 would bring it up to -238.5 (-0.0359%) while moving District 2 down to +238.5 (+0.0359%), but would create a second case of a town "stranded" on its side of the lower Kennebec (the southern-most bridge crossing the Kennebec is between Bath and Woolwich) and would make the boundary quite jagged there.  Figures are as of and according to the 2010 census.