Illinois Redistricting Megathread

[politicallefty]

The IL Dems, on the other hand, are not especially threatened by partisan interests. In fact, they can go heavily on the offensive. The issue is their own incumbents and their parochial concerns. Everyone has demands, many of which conflict with each other, and the IL Dems are left trying to appease everyone. But that, in turn, appeased no one, and some reps whose demands were increasingly unreasonable (Newman) had to be shown what would happen if they decided to barely cooperate. Still, even if Newman changes her tune, it will still be incredibly difficult to give everyone what they want.

It'll be interesting to see how the IL Dems move on from here, but its clear that they have an extremely difficult task in front of them.

I don't their task to fixing this proposal is that difficult. If Newman is the issue, she needs to get it together and accept a tougher primary in exchange for a safe general election. Put the work in and you'll crush your primary challengers. Steve Cohen, a white Jew, holds the 66% black Memphis seat. He holds that seat because he's an extraordinary Member of Congress that serves his constituents well.

If Democrats cannot hold that downstate snake district at Biden+11, they have some serious troubles. IL-17 should be cleaned up a bit and that can easily be a double-digit Biden district without affecting any incumbents. Those in need of shoring up in Chicagoland are Casten, Underwood, and Newman. Schakowsky and Quigley can afford to give up a few points each. Kelly may also be able to sacrifice a bit, depending on how the VRA districts look (which I haven't looked at yet). There's absolutely no reason why there can't be 14 double-digit Biden districts.

[politicallefty]

As a fun thought exercise, I sought to draw a fair map to see how many seats Democrats would gain from gerrymandering. The result was pretty surprising, despite Democrats' issue of being packed into Chicago, their strength in the Collars has increased enough to the point where you can draw 5 Dem seats in the Collars in a pretty clean way and also draw 7 seats nested entirely in Cook County. Perhaps I took some D leaning decisions downstate, but I do think any fair map creates some form of competitive seat down there. The end result seems to be roughly 12-4-1, sure some of these Dem seats are vulnerable (Biden+3), but geography is much better for Democrats than meets the eye. You can cleanly draw all current Dems except Bustos as Biden seats, which perhaps makes the lack of Democratic aggression, all the more surprising, needless to say, I wouldn't be surprised if the draft D plan that we've seen undergoes numerous changes before being finalized.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a50b73aa-d510-4b90-abcb-758e016a91aa


Also this should put to the rest the idea that Democrats benefit from gerrymandering more than Republicans do, a fair map in IL could very well be 13-4 at this point (which would only be a net loss of 1(!) seat over an aggressive Dem gerrymander), on the other hand, in a state like TX, Democrats would probably win a majority of congressional seats on a fair map.

In a fair map, Illinois Democrats are only as secure as they hold the suburbs. It is true that geography has improved substantially since the Chicago suburbs have started trending strongly Democratic. A compact map a decade ago could've easily left Republicans with a majority of the delegation. That said, Pritzker only won your map 10-7. It does look like trends haven't quite caught up at the gubernatorial level. Pritzker only lost your IL-12 by a little over 1%, while Trump won it both times by double-digits. On the other hand, he only carried your IL-06 by a little less than 1% while Clinton and Biden won it by strong double-digit margins (although Pritzker apparently was the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate to ever win DuPage County). Overall, I'd tend to say the Congressional results would trend closer to the presidential results. It looks more like a 10D-4R map with 3 highly competitive seats.

The issue for Dems is IL is simillar to Rs in Texas; much of the gerrymandering done is just to cancel out their own geography problems. Unless Ds literally bacon strip the entire state (prolly violating VRA), you're always going to have some "hyperpacked" districts in Chicago. Imagine though if Chicago was located more centrally in the state; you could unpack seats like IL-7 and IL-5 to help make a D district and make a 15-2 map that isn't any less safe than a 14-3. It's just the fact Chicago is located in a corner that screws Dems over.

One thing I will say though is while D trending suburbs are definately helping Dems reduce geography issues, seats such as IL-12 and IL-17 that would've "naturally" leaned Dem at the start of the decade are no longer possible at least in a compact form.

One silver lining to gerrymandering this cycle is that Ds and Rs are largely gerrymandering in states where geography is unfavorable to begin (TX, NY, IL, MD, OR just to name a few) or in states that are too small for gerrymandering to really matter, at least on the national level (A lot of southern states, some in the NE, ect). This means many prominent gerrymanders we will see will be 50% just trying to cancel out geography.

It's interesting you note the corner issue for Chicago. I'd argue that's a big part of the reason for the geography disadvantage for Democrats in both Pennsylvania and Michigan as well. On the other hand, I think Ohio actually has (or had, I suppose, prior to Trump) good geography for Democrats. In some ways, it was similar to how Texas is now. For Ohio, look at the Obama maps. A fair Congressional map at that time would've easily given Democrats a majority of the delegation. It's also worth noting that the gerrymander fell apart in 2008, although it might have saved a couple seats for Republicans even then. That geography advantage has mostly eroded with Democratic strength dropping so much in Northeast OH.

[politicallefty]

They really, really hate Newman it seems.

Indeed, it looks like the Madigan machine still has punch even if he is not running it anymore.

I do not think this is the case and certainly would not expect Casten to be favored in that seat.

That's what I noticed as well. They completely obliterated the current IL-06. In the abstract, that would make sense, since that district was originally drawn to be the Republican vote sink for Chicagoland. Obviously, trends have moved us past the need for such a district. But that's in the abstract, as opposed to reality with an actual Democratic incumbent. If I didn't know any better, I would think they're not too fond of Casten. On the other hand, it does like the most Democratic precincts from the current IL-06 are in the proposed new IL-06.

It does look like Schakowsky and Quigley are slightly more unpacked compared with the previous proposal, but only slightly. I'm sort of surprised how much territory is being moved around between IL-11 and IL-14. Foster is definitely taking one for the team to shore up Underwood. This map has IL-11 at Biden+15, compared to the current Biden+25. Underwood benefits from all of that, with her district going from Biden+2 to Biden+12. I'm surprised they're making Foster take such a hit, although the only other place that district can go into looks like IL-10 (and I think that district gives Democrats too much heartburn to consider changing).

[politicallefty]

Why would you expect that Newman would win the D primary in the new IL-06? This does not look like progressive friendly territory and Casten has seniority over Newman.

In any case, combine this with the first draft which had Newman in a district with Kinzinger that she could easily lose to him, and to me it indicates that the IL legislature (a.k.a. machine) has the knives out for Newman.

I didn't say I expected that. I was just noting how they completely shredded the current IL-06. The new district being proposed has a very different character from Casten's current IL-06. Remember, as I mentioned above, the current IL-06 was drawn to be a Republican vote sink chock full of college-educated whites. The massive shift in suburbs such as those was nearly inconceivable when the district was drawn in 2011. But the way they took his district out from under him doesn't make me think those that are drawing this map are thinking of him in any positive regard.

[politicallefty]

Looking at some of the weaker districts (i.e. Biden<20) on this proposed map, it looks like IL Democrats are factoring in trendlines. Biden improved over Clinton in all of these seats, unlike the current map. They're really doing their best to make sure this is a durable map. It's worth remembering that the statewide margin was virtually unchanged between 2016 and 2020.

IL-06: Clinton+8.8 -> Biden+11.7
IL-08: Clinton+15.8 -> Biden+16.1
IL-11: Clinton+10.0 -> Biden+15.1
IL-13: Clinton+8.5 -> Biden+11.5
IL-14: Clinton+9.6 -> Biden+12.2
IL-17: Clinton+7.6 -> Biden+9.1

That compares with the current map, where IL-08 and IL-17 both swung to Trump from 2016 to 2020 (the latter being of far bigger consequence). I didn't notice that Krishnamoorthi is also taking a noticeable hit alongside Foster, although that seems to largely be the consequence of creating a new plurality Hispanic seat. That has definitely scrambled the map more than otherwise would be necessary, but it definitely buys IL Democrats some brownie points.

It's interesting to see how the federal trends haven't fully translated to the state level races yet. Pritzker had some of the ancestral Democratic strength downstate and some of the traditional weakness in the collar counties. He won the proposed IL-13 by almost 16% and only lost the proposed IL-12 by 24%. On the other hand, he only won the proposed IL-06, IL-08, IL-10, and IL-11 by 5%, 8%, 9%, and 2.4% respectively. He carried this IL-14 by double digits. For those keeping count, Pritzker won this map 14-3. In fact, this map is 14-3 for all races shown in DRA since 2016. This really is an aggressive gerrymander.

[politicallefty]

IL-06: Clinton+8.8 -> Biden+11.7
IL-08: Clinton+15.8 -> Biden+16.1
IL-11: Clinton+10.0 -> Biden+15.1
IL-13: Clinton+8.5 -> Biden+11.5
IL-14: Clinton+9.6 -> Biden+12.2
IL-17: Clinton+7.6 -> Biden+9.1

To update this data to the revised map:

IL-06: Clinton+8.5 -> Biden+11.1
IL-08: Clinton+15.5 -> Biden+15.4
IL-11: Clinton+10.8 -> Biden+15.4
IL-13: Clinton+8.3 -> Biden+11.2
IL-14: Clinton+8.6 -> Biden+11.4
IL-17: Clinton+6.6 -> Biden+7.8

This is a step in the wrong direction from the previous map. The least secure seats all took a hit, especially IL-17 (which needs the most help of any district). I have no idea why they reduced the margin in IL-17 by that much when it's sandwiched between two Republican vote sinks.

I'm not worried about IL-13. As mentioned many times already, if Democrats can't hold a double-digit Biden district, they have much bigger worries. Pritzker won it by 16%, although some of that is probably old ancestral Democratic strength in the southern part of the state that still persists in state level politics (just as there's still some down ballot strength for Republicans in the collar counties).

[politicallefty]

Yeah, I don't get the point of this new map. It makes all the marginal D seats a bit closer, while not improving COI representation in any meaningful way. Why the changes?

The reason that changes are made to begin with; an incumbent wanted some neighborhood or a piece of territory for their own (arbitrary) reasons.

It's important to remember that, while we're focused on partisanship and COIs, the folks drawing this map have to take into account their very loud allies and congressmembers. If they have demands, they have to be addressed. We can see this with the IL drafts, where Newman was making such outrageous and unhelpful demands that she had to be threatened in the initial draft (which ironically, her demand of having a white suburban seat that voted D enough were largely met in the end), or how Garcia's demand of a second Hispanic seat was actually met in the current draft.

Yeah, but most of those are just tinkering around the margins. It doesn't explain why they changed IL-17, which doesn't share any Democratic territory with any other district that needs it. All they did was pull IL-16 a bit to the left for some reason.