US House Redistricting: Iowa

[minionofmidas]

Especially remarkable as Bush won the current 3rd.

[minionofmidas]

That looks fairly hideous. What does it do politically?

[minionofmidas]

Hardly. You have Waterloo (Black Hawk County) in the "western" district, as a strange easternmost appendage no less. Which not only wastes huge amounts of democratic votes but is also the kind of obviously "wrong" design you can easily get some public opinion against.

I've done the figures, btw.

Bush because you used Bush before, though I now notice that you ignored the third party vote.

NEern CD   52.80 Kerry, 46.38 Bush
Southern CD 49.79 Bush, 49.20 Kerry
Central CD    49.65 Kerry, 49.51 Bush
NWern CD     51.33 Bush, 47.87 Kerry

Ie, this kind of map - completely ignore the state's regions, basically - is what it takes to create a "fair" result as far as partisan strength goes - no wholly safe seats, two basically exact ties.
Safe to say discarding this... thing... won't take as long as it took muon to draw it.

Oh, and Braley and King both live in the northern seat while the southern seat is empty.

[minionofmidas]

That looks like a pretty optimal GOP gerrymander, actually, if you assume Latham>Boswell in CD-3.  CD-1 is a fantastic Dem vote sink with Iowa City plus most of the river cities (although Braley lives outside it, I think), King should be OK in CD-4, and CD-2 would be pretty competitive for a Cedar Rapids Republican to take on Loebsack.    

Except that IA-03 has Story County in it. It is probably more Dem than the IA-03 currently in place. And IA-03 is where the rubber meets the road. It should be a barn burner, with super high turnout, since Iowa may end up being the epicenter of the election, if Mittens can't get his Hispanic act together. Obama and Mittens will be flushing out every voter who is breathing.

And a few hundred who aren't.