MT Congressional Redistricting

[Sol]

I'm skeptical that Butte will flip long-term. It's a city, historically the largest in the state, and post-industrial cities haven't flipped by and large, unlike towns and rural areas.

[Sol]

Yes and the current MT-AL absolutely blows for campaigning. The NW and SE corners of Montana are about the same distance apart as driving from SE Montana to Texas, no joke.

I want straight up East-West divide like last time. 2 winnable districts for both sides. No need to get cute.

is it just me or does 2018 population estimates make a 2-CD whole-county, good-looking, and CoI-respecting arrangement extremely difficult?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/1a02d090-0cdd-4c35-87ad-e830652079bc
this is the best I could come up with.

Gallatin, Madison, Beaverhead, Jefferson, Silver Bow, Deer Lodge, Powell, Granite, Ravalli, Missoula, Mineral, Sanders, Lake, Lincoln, Flathead, Glacier in the Western CD.

the rest of the state in the other.

The Western CD has 519,040 people, and the Eastern CD has 522,692.

Unfortunately your map splits the Blackfoot Reservation.

When given the choice between communities of interest and counties, one ought to obviously pick the former.

[Sol]

How feasible is it to have the Western District contain both Park and Cascade counties, presumably after dumping Flathead County? For example, could a couple of the rural Republican counties south of Helena and Great Falls he carved out into the eastern district to even out the population closely enough? Open to any suggestions here.

Although Glacier County does provide a substantial vote margin for Democrats despite its relatively small population, it's just not worth it to Democrats keeping it in the Western District as that also means keeping Flathead, which is the major Republican vote sink in Western Montana.

Here are the (present) facts:

-Using the natural 'fall line' between east and west that goes from Flathead to Gallatin leaves the eastern district ~61K pop short under 2018 data.
-Any of the three major 'cities' can be taken to correct for the deviation. In this scenario, we take Flathead and now the western district needs to balance out the pop between the seats.
-Cascade is only 10K less than Flathead. Adding it and Glacier would in effect bring us back to where we started, since the two are approximately equal to Glacier. We are once again left with an overpopulated western seat.
-Since this is looking like a Dem seat, we will start removing GOP rurals to correct for the pop. Lincoln, Sanders, and Mineral are connected by road to Flathead, and then to the rest of the east - removing them brings us to a 26K imbalance. Removing Jefferson and Broadwater in the south brings us to 8K imbalance. Those two are connected to the east by road, though removing them from the west makes the road situation a bit more complicated.
-We have now carved out everything that can be done at the county level. The remaining 8K needs to come from a cut into Cascade or Lake. What we are left with is a district that voted Trump by 6% but supported the statewide Dems by over 15%. A clear map that benefits the democrats.

That's interesting.  That would be within +/- 10% population variation between the 2 CDs.  Could the commission just draw that map and defend it to the courts on COI grounds.  SCOTUS allowed a +/- 1% variation on the WV 2011 map and are trending away from strict numerical rules in redistricting cases anyway. 

COI is a bullsh**t standard used to dilute political power and weaken OMOV standards. Sounds fitting for the current Court, absolutely.

I take it you support PR then?

[Sol]

Yeah any fair map worth its salt has to have Kalispell in the Western district, it's a bad map otherwise.

[Sol]

7 seems like the best choice imo. Keeps together the mountain communities--and communities should always be prioritized over competitiveness.