US House Redistricting: Iowa

[DINGO Joe]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/8c16c877-a4d8-495d-ad5e-9c8d4c358d22

Looking ahead to 2020.  A metro Des Moines district seems inevitable.  A second "metro" district could be created based on Dubuque-Davenport-Cedar Rapids-Iowa City but that may not be as likely.  The Western farm district would be very R, while the Eastern one would be a Obama-Trump district. 

I guess one negative of these districts is that the metro ones are virtually guaranteed of growing while the farm ones are guaranteed of losing population, but I don't think that's a criteria for redistricting in Iowa

[DINGO Joe]

Full points for necromancy.

Have there been major population shifts in Iowa since 2010?

Polk, Dallas, Story and Warren in the Des Moines metro have added 95,000 people.

Linn, Johnson, Scott and Dubuque have added 46,000 people

The rest of Iowa has lost a little over 30,000 people

[DINGO Joe]

The Des Moines district will be too big by 2020 but the East metro may look like that (again if they did that)

[DINGO Joe]

Here's a potential 2020 map:



IA-01 and IA-02 are tossups pretty much, while IA-03 and IA-04 are safe D and R respectively.

So in terms of net effect it would just be switching the Safe D district from 2 to 3. I guess that's fine. I think Loebsack and Finkenauer would be relatively safe for a while in this map. They both seem to be popular and are pretty good fits for their districts.

Iowa is interesting because it seems to be the only place where the "population tilting" of the Midwest (east is flat or losing population, west is flat or gaining population) is working in reverse. Western Iowa is emptying out fast, Eastern Iowa is doing just fine.

At least based on Census estimates, 3 is still too big, maybe drop Jasper.  As for population growth in the state it's not so much regional as it is Metro Des Moines and Metro Cedar Rapids-Iowa City growing while rural Iowa declines and smaller cities are relatively flat.