Incumbent screw maps

[bagelman]

A popular and realistic map idea is incumbent protection. However suppose for some reason your goal is to eliminate as many incumbent congressmen as possible for one or both parties. This can be through drawing a Republican into a Democratic district and vice versa, maybe at the same time, or through double+ bunking. Anyone want to take a crack at this concept?

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This kinda map if fairly easy and fun to make. But I wanted to make a turbo charge one for fun.



The Blue border snake contains the homes of Duncan, Timmons, Norman, Mace, and Rice. The Green is a VRA District which is now the home of Clyburn and Wilson. I could make a more reasonable map with Mace, Rice and maybe Norman in a sane looking one. Another with Wilson, Duncan, and Timmons

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

A Slightly more sensible map as described above.



Red is a Trump +2 district

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Someone please draw a district that would screw over Conor Lamb. And by screw over I mean, make him being returned impossible via dividing his territory among three or more districts.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Someone please draw a district that would screw over Conor Lamb. And by screw over I mean, make him being returned impossible via dividing his territory among three or more districts.

ask and ye shall receive



Lamb's home is now in the Pittsburg district represented by longterm incumbent Doyle. His old district is now split between the purple, red, and blue. The Blue is home to incumbent Guy Reschenthaler. The Red is home to much Mike Kelley's old turf, while the purple is now unclaimed. Lamb could possibly run in it, but It voted for Trump by almost 20 points so it's unlikely he'd win

[Del Tachi]

My hand at MS:



Guest (R, MS-03) and Thompson (D, MS-02) are both cut out of their old districts.  Thompson can run in the new MS-02, but he loses his historical turnout base in the City of Jackson (which now gets paired with Southwest MS and Hattiesburg.)  Guest gets his base of Madison/Rankin sliced in two and paired with long arms into and Kelly's (R, MS-01) and Palazzo's (R, MS-04) home turf.  Kelly and Palazzo don't look so great either, each losing >40% of their old districts' populations.  MS-03 has no incumbent. 

[7,052,770]

My hand at MS:



Guest (R, MS-03) and Thompson (D, MS-02) are both cut out of their old districts.  Thompson can run in the new MS-02, but he loses his historical turnout base in the City of Jackson (which now gets paired with Southwest MS and Hattiesburg.)  Guest gets his base of Madison/Rankin sliced in two and paired with long arms into and Kelly's (R, MS-01) and Palazzo's (R, MS-04) home turf.  Kelly and Palazzo don't look so great either, each losing >40% of their old districts' populations.  MS-03 has no incumbent. 

I recommend taking it even further, sliding Tupelo into district 2 to screw Kelly and sliding Palazzo's home in Gulfport (I think?) Into district 3. Then move Jefferson and Claiborne to district 3 to make it dicey for Palazzo to win his new district.

[OBD]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/5d4ba76c-469c-4a9e-afba-0843b0d2e786

This Oregon map does a lot of incumbent screwage. Here's the highlights:

- DeFazio gets drawn into the red Southern Oregon seat, which is Trump+21. That said, he can carpetbag to the Clinton+12 2nd, but he would still have to take in a significant amount of new territory.
- Bentz gets his seat (the 2nd) drawn from his hometown of Ontario into Eugene. As mentioned earlier, it's Clinton+12, and his 'escape seat' is Clinton+6 so he's in bad shape whichever district he runs in.
- Schrader, Bonamici, and Blumenauer are all drawn into the 3rd district, which is so Democratic that there could be a fourth primary challenger from the far-left. The Clinton+8 1st is a decent 'escape seat' but Bonamici and Schrader would both end up running here if neither wanted to run in the new 3rd. The 6th seat is open but voted Trump in 2016 narrowly.

[Former President tack50]

Here are some for the 2 seat states, which admittedly may be fairly boring.

The modus operandi is the same in all of them. They basically just involve switching them from a North-South to an East-West configuration or viceversa, and making sure the 2 incumbents share a seat. When the 2 incumbents are from the same party, put both their houses in the district that supports the opposite party the most. When the 2 incumbents are from different parties, you can either put their houses on the "wrong" district, or make it so they share a tossup district and the other district is safe for 1 party, depending on the state and its partisanship.

This makes sure that even if they split the seats, they both have to take in a lot of new territory and that either the primary or the general election (or both) will be tough.

Maine



Both Pingree and Golden get to have their houses in the 2nd district, which is the more Republican of the 2, though slightly better than the current 2nd district at Trump+7, R+1

The Safe D 1st district gets to be open. It loses Augusta, but wins the westernmost parts of the modern 2nd.


New Hampshire



This map puts both Dem representatives into the more Republican 2nd district (Trump+3, R+2; but I imagine it voted Biden), that tries to roughly take equally from both of the modern districts.

Meanwhile the 1st district, taking the north of the state, remains open and is the more Democratic of the 2.


West Virginia

West Virginia is a state where it is nearly impossible to draw a Dem district, as well as a state that will lose 1 seat in the 2020 census, so 2 Reps will share a seat no matter what. But why have only 2 representatives sharing a seat when you can have all 3 sharing the same seat?



Because of the location of the districts, it seems to me that McKinley would be the most favoured current representative in the current 1st district.

The 2nd district would be open. It's also the more Republican of the 2, but both are easily safe R


Montana

Montana is gaining a seat and a fairly Republican state, so its representative is harder to screw completely. The current representative also lives in what, in a fair map, would be the more Republican seat; but a tentacle can easily solve that!



This is basically a D gerrymander with extra steps. Start at the house of incumbent Representative Gianforte and then just take the most Dem parts of Billings and keep going until you can take as much Dem territory in the west of the state as you can

Gianforte gets to be in the 1st district, where #populist Tester won by 16 points, and were even noted #elitist Hillary Clinton came close (Trump+7)

The 2nd district is titanium R of course, but Gianforte's home would be in the 1st.


Idaho

Not much you can do here honestly, other than putting the 2 Republicans in the same district and making sure they both have a ton of new ground to cover.



In what is the most pointless gerrymander ever, you just take the houses of both Represenatives, the Idaho panhandle and tie them together. They both share a seat where they both have a roughly even shot

Honestly the only disadvantage here is that the 1st district they both share is clearly the more Republican of the 2; I was unable to make them share a competitive district.

[Hope For A New Era]

Here's the best Missouri incumbent-screw I could come up with. There may be a better possibility, so I may update this post later, but I really think I may have reached the pinnacle here.



Cori Bush has really lucked out here. It seems like everything is working in her favor to make her basically the unscrewable incumbent. Her district is less D and less black than before, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Ann Wagner, meanwhile, seems to be where all of the bad luck that missed Bush went. She's now drawn into Bush's heavily D district, and she has three carpetbag options: one district that is almost as D, and two very Trumpist districts that almost guarantee difficult primaries. It's not looking good for her. Her best option might actually be a party switch, at this point.

Blaine Luetkemeyer's district has been flipped over to the other side of the state. He almost has a completely new constituency, and may have a difficult primary as well depending on what Hartzler does.

Vicky Hartzler is difficult because her exact residence is uncertain. She's sometimes listed as R-Harrisonville and sometimes listed as R-Columbia. Regardless, it's not looking good for her in this map. She's either drawn in with Cleaver into a D-leaning district, or she's stuck in a primary with at least one of Luetkemeyer, Graves, and Wagner.

Emmanuel Cleaver isn't as lucky as Bush, but he's certainly luckier than the rest. Though he's drawn in with two other representatives, his district still leans decisively toward his party, and it still has a similar composition (urban KC + some suburbs + some rurals).

Sam Graves has been drawn in with Cleaver. A new district containing much of his former constituency is not far away, but to go there would be to abandon his hometown, which he seems to be very connected to, and to enter a primary - potentially a three-way Graves-Hartzler-Wagner primary.

Billy Long is probably the safest of the Republicans. Though he has a dramatically altered district, its partisanship is not an issue, and there is no immediately obvious primary challenger. However, he should be watching out for Smith, just in case.

Jason Smith has experienced the same as Luetkemeyer and Hartzler, a near-complete constituency change. There are two potential carpetbag districts that are much better cultural fits, but he seems pretty tied to his hometown. He has a difficult decision ahead of him.