US House Redistricting: General

[muon2]

This now the general thread to discuss state redistricting of the US House. The goal of this thread and its links is to consider possible scenarios based on the politics of the particular state and who controls the process.

If a particular state gets started up here with enough activity I'll split it into its own thread. I'll also keep a list of links to those separate threads. I'll leave the large Dave's Redistricting App thread for more fanciful redistricting ideas using that tool.

Current threads:
Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
Utah
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The Democrats should give up on the House, and concentrate on other races, including those that affect redistricting.

[Mr.Phips]

The Democrats should give up on the House, and concentrate on other races, including those that affect redistricting.

This was one of the reasons why I didnt want Obama winning in 2008.  2010 was a redistricting year, that shape politics for a decade.  But no, instead Democrats ceded it all to Republicans just so we can have a nominal "D" sitting in the White House.  

[muon2]

Bumped and stickied to highlight the changes to the thread and new links.

[minionofmidas - supplemental forum account]

A state-by-state overview of redistricting rules and partisan control would be super-duper-cool.

[muon2]

A state-by-state overview of redistricting rules and partisan control would be super-duper-cool.

I'm working on that. I hope to create an easy to follow tool for that information.

[True Federalist]

A state-by-state overview of redistricting rules and partisan control would be super-duper-cool.

Rules?  There are rules for redistricting?

The only thing that South Carolina law requires is that the General Assembly must redistrict its Congressional delegation after a census.  What laws we had concerning dividing up the General Assembly after a new Census got thrown out in the 1960's (1 Senator per county, Representatives apportioned to the counties using the Hare quota) except that the size of our State Senate is still set as equal to the number of counties and the State House of Representatives is fixed at 124 Representatives in our constitution.

[minionofmidas - supplemental forum account]

In some states, there are rules. In other states, there are no rules.

[Torie]

Here is Sean Trende's crystal ball on how he thinks redistricting will play out. I don't think he understands the lacuna of state laws well enough however. For example, he chats about doing away with Peters' district, MI-9, and that will be hard to do, because CD's in Michigan can't cross county lines, if there is a way to avoid that that comports with federal law. At least that is my understanding from the 2001 redistricting, and I assume the Michigan law has not changed. So it will be hard to push Oakland and Macomb County Democrats into the black Wayne County CD's. Plus, the Gross Pointe towns, which are GOP, and in Wayne County, will still have to be "trapped" in a black CD.

And if Minnesota loses a seat (Sean seems to think it is still ahead by a nose over Missouri as to which state loses a seat, although I have read on this Forum the opposite), I strongly suspect that what will happen is that the courts will combine MN-7 and MN-8 into one district, and the new Pubbie in MN-8 will go by-by, losing to Peterson who represents MN-7.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

MI-11 and MI-12 cross county lines despite the fact that both could be confined to one county.

[Torie]

MI-11 and MI-12 cross county lines despite the fact that both could be confined to one county.

Yes, that is because in both instances, the CD's ran out of room to expand in a county, or in the case of MI-12, if it expanded further into Macomb, that would force another CD to cross county lines. But the two black districts can expand west in Wayne County, taking territory from McCotter's (sp) district. That is the problem.

Actually, having looked at the Michigan map, I take your point as to MI-12. It could have expanded further into Macomb, rather than hop over into Oakland, and perhaps not have forced the district to the north to cross a county line, but actually not, since I see the district to the north in Macomb and counties further north, does not cross any other county lines. Yes, McCotter's district could take some of Dingell's territory, but then will Dingell's district cross more county lines?  Yes, it is a headache.  

I guess the bottom line is that three CD's in the Detroit metro area need to cross county lines, and right now it is MI-11, MI-12, MI-15, and the GOP will have the opportunity to pick up to three different CD's to cross county lines if it wishes.

End of discursive ramble.

[True Federalist]

The conventional wisdom on this board has been that South Carolina would have to draw two majority-minority districts that would elect Democrats, but there was an article in The State today that indicates that both Clyburn and the GOP are thinking that the General Assembly will be able to draw only one such district and carve things up so that the other six would elect Republicans.

(link)

[ElectionAtlas]

Note - I added this page to the wiki as a possible way of organizing this information.  If it doesn't work, I can see if there are alternate ideas.

Thanks,
Dave

[bgwah]

Note - I added this page to the wiki as a possible way of organizing this information.  If it doesn't work, I can see if there are alternate ideas.

Thanks,
Dave

How did you make that page? I would love to know how to make a county and congressional district version for Washington.

[muon2]

Note - I added this page to the wiki as a possible way of organizing this information.  If it doesn't work, I can see if there are alternate ideas.

Thanks,
Dave

How did you make that page? I would love to know how to make a county and congressional district version for Washington.

If it helps, I've edited the link for WA and included a page for the Redistricting Commission. You can click on the state to see how it's set up. I'm planning to add all the other states in the coming days.

[bgwah]

Note - I added this page to the wiki as a possible way of organizing this information.  If it doesn't work, I can see if there are alternate ideas.

Thanks,
Dave

How did you make that page? I would love to know how to make a county and congressional district version for Washington.

If it helps, I've edited the link for WA and included a page for the Redistricting Commission. You can click on the state to see how it's set up. I'm planning to add all the other states in the coming days.

Well, thanks. I was referring to the clickable map Dave uploaded, though.

[krazen1211]

Georgia...not all that interesting I guess.


1. New Republican district in Atlanta suburbs.
2. Throw Macon and Valdosta into the 2nd.

The only question is, I think, whether they try to use Kingston and Broun's R+15 districts to crack John Barrow's 12th. You can easily knock the black % down to about 32%.

[ElectionAtlas]

Note - I added this page to the wiki as a possible way of organizing this information.  If it doesn't work, I can see if there are alternate ideas.

Thanks,
Dave

How did you make that page? I would love to know how to make a county and congressional district version for Washington.

Hi,
I installed an add-on feature for the wikimedia to support imagemaps.  The coordinates for the polygon shapes are x y x y x y etc. with the link to the desired page at the end.  See code below.  I generated the coordinates with a small image map tool on the mac.  It was still rather manual - essentially drawing lines around each shape.  I have the counties image map for Washington and just added it here.
Enjoy,
Dave
---

Code:

<imagemap>
Image:Usamap.gif|alt=USA Map
poly 337 254 335 240 336 197 360 196 370 227 371 244 345 245 347 253 337 254 [[Alabama Redistricting 2010]]
</imagemap>

[bgwah]

Cool! Thanks.

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

Dave (the Redistricting App Dave) has created a survey about the app, which can be reached from his site. I suggest that you all take it if you haven't already done so.

[JohnnyLongtorso]

A couple tweaks to drawing in the app:

http://swingstateproject.com/postComment.do?diaryId=8212

You can color like the old app now by clicking on "color districts".

And when you're coloring, you can hold down Ctrl and drag to create a box that will fill all the districts in the box. Could be useful.

[krazen1211]

Has anyone tried chopping together a Republican district in Massachusetts?

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/election_results/ma_president/

Based on this list, I came up with the following:



There's a Republican PVI on this; just looking at the numbers its 51-49 one way or another. Amazing how you can't even find a town that's more than 55% McCain

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Hey guys, when you're posting maps that you drew in DRA version 2, can you please edit them in Paint so that they don't have a bunch of white space in the edges? This is only really a problem with statewide maps; they show up bigger when you post them if you eliminate the white space.

[krazen1211]

Is there any point to drawing an Arizona map in DRA, or is the population balance in Maricopa county so out of whack that its pointless?

It looks like 1, 7, and 8 could remain just about the same, while 2 might have to shed some of its portions around Glendale, and then 3-6 split into 5 districts rather than 4.

[minionofmidas - supplemental forum account]

Is there any point to drawing an Arizona map in DRA, or is the population balance in Maricopa county so out of whack that its pointless?

Yeah. Pinal, too - on DRA it looks like the first can/should drop all of Casas Grandes. Not sure that will work in practice, the monster growth is going to have been mostly in the sixth district portion.
Then again... with Arizona's massive overestimate of their growth, it's reasonable to expect the overestimate to be concentrated in the massive growth parts too, ie for Maricopa to have fewer people in relation to the rest of the state than the estimates claim.
Anyways, the biggest growth in Maricopa is on the western and eastern ends. That probably means the 2nd and 6th retreat outwards, and the shed areas plus 3rd and 5th are drawn into three new districts, with the 4th mostly left alone. The 2nd might also pick up La Paz County from the 7th.