2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Maryland

[Sol]

According to 538's Atlas of Redistricting, the most pro-D gerrymander would have all 8 districts favor Democrats, while the most pro-R gerrymander would have 4 Republican-leaning districts. If the map were drawn to be proportionally partisan and keep as many counties intact as possible, it would have 5 D-leaning districts and 3 R-leaning districts (with one of them being a swing district).

I personally would take the 5D-3R map in exchange for other states squeezing in more D-leaning districts.

FPTP voting doesn't go with proportional representation. a fair maryland map would be 6-2 not 5-3

Uh what? St Mary's, Calvert, And most of Anne Arrundel gets a very clean Trump +4 district.

To be fair, there's an argument that the panhandle district should go into Montgomery rather than suburban Baltimore in a fair map. Not one I necessarily agree with but it's not an illegitimate opinion.

[Sol]

I mean, Roll Roons was clearly trying to draw a fair map.

That said, I don't like how his 2nd district hops over the water--IMO the 7th kind of overpacks the Black community in Baltimore. IMO the 7th should go east (or north or south) and then the Western suburbs should go in the 2nd.

[Sol]

Behold!




Link here

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what's the logic with linking bmore with Dundalk and Towson? Feel like going West and South is more COI.

Similarly to cvparty, I didn't want to pack Black voters into the Baltimore district. I also figured that the Eastern Baltimore suburbs were probably the best CoI fit with with the 1st district (most like Harford County). The 1st can't take in all of the eastern shore of Baltco, so that area needs to go into either the city or county district; I picked the city since it looks more compact. Plus I believe Dundalk has a fair amount in common with the White eastern neighborhoods.

[Sol]

I think there's a decent shot that Sarbanes might give up his bizarre "I want to be in all media markets" fixation; can't speak to the others. The hardest to ignore will be Steny Hoyer of course.

[Sol]

Here's a Republican court-drawn fair map, in the vein of PA.



link

Is pretty much a 5-3 map, though MD-02 is maybe on the edge of competitiveness, and MD-08 could maybe move Dem considering it has a nonzero chunk of Montgomery.

It has 3 Black majority seats, including CVAP--3, 5, and 6.

I also figured the MDSC might renumber districts too, so I did that.

Don't actually think this is the optimal map--rather it's intended as a hypothetical court map.

[Sol]

Here's a Republican court-drawn fair map, in the vein of PA.



link

Is pretty much a 5-3 map, though MD-02 is maybe on the edge of competitiveness, and MD-08 could maybe move Dem considering it has a nonzero chunk of Montgomery.

Don't actually think this is the optimal map--rather it's intended as a hypothetical court map.

biden would have carried CD2 and come within about a point of CD8, so it's more like a 5-2-1 map

Ah that's good to know--curious where you got your data?

I might post a revised version with that in mind which shores up the 8th.

[Sol]

Here's a redraw, with the 8th and 2nd getting more R (though idk exactly how the 2nd voted in 2020.)



link

The 6th is now only plurality Black, though it could easily be redrawn I figured I'd go with the nicer looking shape since this is supposed to be a fair map. Hoyer's district is now very Black.

[Sol]

That's fine.

I'm doubtful of lasting Dem strength in a lot of the heavily ex-military sections of Anne Arundel in any case.

[Sol]

The commission map is remarkably nice and fair. In an ideal world, it should be approved. Unfortunately, conceding two seats to the GOP is hard to swallow given what they are doing in other states.

There is some VRA issues with this map. I’m going pretty sure I read MD-04 is a African American pack and MD-06 dilutes the African American vote by what it grabs outside of Baltimore City.

Do you have a link? MD-04 is based in the least Black part of PG County--plus it turns MD-05 into a Black-influence seat.

[Sol]

This is my revised nonpartisan map, based on my discussions in this thread and privately:



Four of the eight seats are majority-minority, with two of them (western Baltimore + western BoCo and the SoMD seat that Hoyer would never let through) being Black-majority. The 6th here is becoming quite competitive; Trump 2020 only won it by eight points.

DRA is screaming at me for the quantity of county splits, but COI in this state isn't that simple.

Do you have the DRA link? My first instinct is to argue for keeping Baltimore whole and getting the excess population from white suburbs (allowing for a Black influence district based in the west) but I'd want to take a closer look at your lines.

[Sol]

This is my revised nonpartisan map, based on my discussions in this thread and privately:



Four of the eight seats are majority-minority, with two of them (western Baltimore + western BoCo and the SoMD seat that Hoyer would never let through) being Black-majority. The 6th here is becoming quite competitive; Trump 2020 only won it by eight points.

DRA is screaming at me for the quantity of county splits, but COI in this state isn't that simple.

Do you have the DRA link? My first instinct is to argue for keeping Baltimore whole and getting the excess population from white suburbs (allowing for a Black influence district based in the west) but I'd want to take a closer look at your lines.

My rationale for splitting Baltimore City is explained in my above exchange with Tim.

Here's the DRA link: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::f1738ad6-d3d9-49ac-83d0-c22c0deb46d3

Thanks!

I have no problem with splitting up Baltimore County for the reasons you mentioned (it is a true donut of a county without much a common character) but I do have some qualms about carving up Baltimore City.

I personally default to keeping central cities together in the absence of other considerations, like illogical city lines resulting in weird CoIs, VRA issues, or some other pressing population-based necessity.

None of those are true in the case of Baltimore--the city has logical boundaries and is a pretty logical community (though of course as there always are there are communities across county lines too), it's easy to do a Black-majority seat with Baltimore kept whole, and keeping it whole doesn't mess up with other logical communities.

Baltimore County does seem to divide well into three pieces--but that doesn't necessarily mean that those pieces all need their own seat.

[Sol]

Here's a rough pass at a fair map of Maryland, taking into account some feedback from Discovolante:



link

Would probably shake out to be 5D-2R-1S in most years.

[Sol]

As has been mentioned here, MD-03 is extremely ugly because Sarbanes wanted his district to overlap with the DC and Baltimore media markets so he could be in a good position to run for Senate.

But he had the chance to do so in 2016. Why didn't he take it then? Or he could have run for Governor this year and allowed the district to be substantially cleaned up.

The incentives are for representatives to want as close to their current district as possible in most circumstances. Sarbanes might not want higher office anymore but he's probably made connections to local communities in each tentacle of his octopus.

[Sol]

Reposting this for no particular reason

[Sol]

Reposting this for no particular reason

MD geography rlly is god awful for Dems. 2 likely R Trump seats are natural and rlly only 5 Safe Biden seats.

With that said I’m glad Sarbanes gets what he deserves

That's 7 biden seats in Sols map. 2 being swing.

True, though tbh MD-02 has kind of an insane swing from 2016 (43D-50R) to 2020 (50D-47R), so much so that it's hard to gauge, though I'd probably peg it as lean R.

[Sol]

Reposting this for no particular reason

That blue district seems awfully long and spindly thanks to being divided by the water- to get from one end to another you'd have to drive in a hook shape.

Something like this might be more compact? Eight Biden districts, but the eastern two are only +2 and +3 while the western one is only +11, so it's pretty competitive.

Issue is one could argue that Baltimore seat cracks the black community

That Baltimore seat fwiw is almost certainly majority Black--alternatively one could argue that putting the western burbs in the Baltimore seat is packing

[Sol]

It's surprisingly hard to cancel out Cecil and Harford County's Republican leans with Baltimore without makign something illegal or just really disgusting. If I were Dems, I would put Cecil in MD-01 and attach it to Ann-Arbour likely creating a narrow but still winnable Trump seat.

Then MD-02 could be be safer suburban Baltimore seat and MD-06 as others have shown above becomes Biden + 9ish.

I really don't trust MD Dems though. I rlly feel like they're going to make a fair map from a partisanship standpoint that's still hideous somehow.

IMO the court is probably not going to agree to something without at least a shored up MD-01. I suspect it gets both Harford and Cecil, plus maybe redder bits of Baltco. Andy Harris will never have to worry about reelection, no matter how vile he gets.

[Sol]

Why did they make MD-7 such a dem pack?  It's 56% BVAP and voted 80% Biden.   They could've taken more of the Essex/Middle River area away from MD-2 and moved MD-7 eastward and still have the district in compliance.

Maybe to help out Ruppersberger? He's repped coastal Baltco for years and I suspect him and Sarbanes are going to run in 2 and 3, despite their residences.

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What’re the chances this map holds up? Have Rs signaled anything in terms of a response? This seems like a very fair map from Dems that is reasonably clean, but not sure about VRA compliance.

A third Black majority district is easily drawable but Democrats aren't going to do that unless the courts force them to because Steny Hoyer doesn't want to lose a primary, basically. 🤮

[Sol]

Nice! It's a pity that Andy Harris is the beneficiary of these maps, but frankly 7 Democrats and one absolutely insane Republican is kind of a good representation of the state's politics.

[Sol]

Yeah Trone pretty clearly has decent odds of going down, at least if NJ and VA GOV are a good indication. The current MD-06 nearly flipped in 2014 and that's a far more favorable district.

Of course, it'd probably be a rental.