2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Michigan

[Oryxslayer]

Number of interested applicants has risen to 6K.

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1233773797377007616?s=19

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/rbeggin/status/1295417327849177093?s=20

Commissioners have been chosen.

[Oryxslayer]

Here's where the draft state maps stand:

https://twitter.com/iansandlerbowen/status/1429910545734438912
https://twitter.com/iansandlerbowen/status/1429898956960669705

Those maps are oddly satisfying

They had actual ok maps* and then they remade into these. They split up Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor and East Lansing and Lansing.
Somehow Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor have "different" values according to Dem hack public comments but Monroe County and Ypsilanti make perfect sense to place together.
This districting process is equally as bad as the 2010 process but at least the 2010 process faced media criticism.
I now 100% oppose independent commissions because at least partisan gerrymandering is in the public light instead of all this stuff.

Nah the real reason the college towns were split was because that proposed map had only 2 Dem districts, both safe, and 5 GOP ones. Then as few people noted that Biden won the region overall and the commission as a whole couldn't justify giving R's a supermajority of seats in this region with that data.

Note that I don't exactly think drawing a map one region at a time is all that good cause it leads to situations like this, when you look at one region without its impact on the whole. The Commission is going to find it rather hard to get more than 1 R seat out of Wayne for instance.

[Oryxslayer]

Today was mainly state house districts in the Upper Peninsula and north of the state. No real surprises, most decisions were made off population when it comes to this region, though I think the pop shifts made the Marquette seat bluer. There also is this potential swing district:

https://twitter.com/im_sorry_wtf/status/1431022646376996869?s=20

Seems like a gift for the Dems, though given that Grand Traverse must be cut maybe this works out best with the county pop totals of the region. Or maybe a forward thinking GOP expects the lakefront vacation area to become Dem before the end of the decade and wants a future pack. Or maybe people want competitive seats in regions that are safe for one party or the other.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/umichvoter/status/1432800446423478273?s=20

Work from today in Western MI. There additionally is a Holland seat and Muskegon planned out. However, the outer Muskegon competitive seat looks to be scrapped for the future, with the outer bits of the county going with other rural areas.

[Oryxslayer]

The Detroit district is only 51.2% black from my rough calculations.

Yeah it looks like less a case of the Detroit seat getting overpacked - the bit of Macomb sees to that - more a case that Detroit doesn't have enough AAs for a second seat on its own. You gotta go into Oakland and get Southfield or a bit more if two seats with 50% AA, or close to it, is the preferred outcome. If you only want say two 40ish seats then Wayne has enough to work with, though reducing it is sketchy since there is an argument MI-13 failed to elect the preferred candidate of African Americans in 2018.

[Oryxslayer]

Eid proposes an all-around better map, though I personally never like Ottawa-Grand Rapids.

[Oryxslayer]

Eid proposes an all-around better map, though I personally never like Ottawa-Grand Rapids.

What's the partisan breakdown of this map? I'm pretty sure that would be 8-5 Biden-Trump in 2020; would it be 8-5 Trump-Clinton in 2016?

Dems win the two Detroit seats and the Ann Arbor seat obviously, his version of 9 appears concise and safe, others have already shown that this mid-cities seat goes blue, 4 should be tight and marginal Biden just looking at numbers, and I ran the dra on 3 and its essentially a tie, I think with Biden up.

So 6-1-6, but the Macomb seat lacks some of the very red areas so that seat is probably marginal, along with 6. So more 4-2-1-2-4 between safe/competitive seats for either party.

Trump definitely won 3 and 4 in 2016 here, so 5-8 for the topline under that election.

[Oryxslayer]

Eid proposes an all-around better map, though I personally never like Ottawa-Grand Rapids.

Seems to be a vocal contingent in the committee that is not a fan of this map, which is concerning. Saying that Eid's map doesn't respect the Bangladeshi COI.

What is even the "Bangladeshi CoI"?

A seat winnable by Tlaib that gets Muslins from the Dearborns, Hamtramck, and a few suburbs to their west all together.

[Oryxslayer]

They are discussing right now combining Grand Rapids with either Kalamazoo or Muskegon in the Congressional map.

https://twitter.com/umichvoter/status/1443279923477684230?s=20

I personally always like the "lakeshore" version of 9 (CD02) in this proposal, mainly cause Ottawa is so culturally distinct from Grand Rapids, despite their commuter ties. Not sure about the rest, there are more compact ways to do the Kent County Seat and make it swing.

[Oryxslayer]

A Republican commissioner just released this:

Dems should consider taking this one, it has trendymander potential with what's happened in Kent, Oakland.

I don't expect this map to go anywhere cause of the Lansing split - keeping the three counties together was I believe one of the red lines agreed to at the start.

[Oryxslayer]

The latest NC state senate map is literally better than this insanity.(obviously the NC congressional map is a pretty brutal gerrymander)

Bad comparison, half the NC senate map is decided by multi-county groupings and everything is nested. Of course it looks nice at a glace.

[Oryxslayer]

Andy Levin's re-election hopes are very much still alive. And so are Meijer's.
I could see them both hold on in 2022.

Levin's new seat is Trump +0.9, down from Trump +5.3 in 2016. Possibly winnable, but unlikely for 2022. He could try to win it back in 2024.

MI-09 was 52-44 Clinton in 2016 and 56-43 Biden in 2020. Obviously most of the D votes strongholds were in Oakland and this was drawn to be a suburban D pack in 2010, so a compact seat was never to his benefit. If we are looking purely at residency then he would run in the D Oakland seat, but so will Stevens.

[Oryxslayer]

Also what do we think about Tlaib's position in the new seat? On one hand, she gets all the Arab areas west of Detroit and the BVAP goes down in MI-12 compared to the old MI-13. On the other hand the African American areas are now more geographically unified, some of these areas are new, and one of them is the comparatively more politically engaged Southfield. Also Tlaib is technically outside the seat, but every incumbent really is and movement is expected.

Also Brenda Lawrence technically lives in Southfield and could run in MI-12 if she has a vendetta against Tlaib for any reason, but she will most likely go for the open successor seat of MI-13.

[Oryxslayer]

There's also a chance  Levin goes for the Oakland seat. Incumbents always run to the safe seat. I think Joe Walsh is one of the few in 2010 who didn't.

Stevens already in the past minutes announced their intention to run for the Oakland seat and Slotkin for the Lansing one, so Levin would be announcing a primary campaign.

[Oryxslayer]

According to this report, there are now quite a few GOP names looking at the Macomb seat, including John James. That said, the majority are from Oakland. Now they have greater incentives.

[Oryxslayer]

I placed a new district on DRA, taking into account the boundaries of the former districts. That's what I got as a result

The new 11th district includes
349,572 people from the former 11th district (Stevens)
233,676 people from the former 14th district (Lawrence)
192,254 people from the former 9th district (Levin)

One thing to note is that other than Levin's home the parts from Levin's district is the Dem primary base .

Yes, but you can't exactly outmath a 2:3 ratio, roughly.

https://twitter.com/MassJumbo/status/1475977221521252353?s=20

[Oryxslayer]

What are the odds Meijer runs in the Grand Rapids districts and becomes a Katko like figure

Well he is running in Grand Rapids. To get to the latter position he would first have to survive a GOP primary base eager for his scalp, and then a overall electorate that has consistently favored the Dems for all of the past decade, a lot of which is new as noted. The district is also more Blue than PA-01 or NY-24 were when the D's made attempts for them - and getting Bluer - so one would still expect a competitive race even if he gets more crossover support in future cycles.

[Oryxslayer]

He had gold tier name recognition. Its pretty clear he's a fairly meh candidate and I don't see how impeaching Trump is going to make him god tier with moderates.

If anything, it makes him 50-50 at best in the GOP primary - all those new D voters are choosing the D ballot of course and most of the R areas are new - and if he loses to the type of candidate who would appeal to the base then goodbye to any hope of a R hold.

[Oryxslayer]

The new Congressional map is facing a lawsuit and I'd wager it will be struck down on VRA grounds. There is not a single minority-majority district in the new map because they played Tetris in Detroit. Minority vote dilution is also a significant concern in the state legislative maps, where inner city neighborhoods were deliberately balanced by the white suburbs. While the House will likely stay Republican under the new map, the Senate could very plausibly yield a 20-18 majority for Democrats if the maps were to actually go into effect.

The commission and the minority interest groups that spoke before it quite literally had racially polarized voting data showing that 50% districts were unnecessary packs and lowering the percentages a bit below 50% - necessitating strips sadly cause the whites are north of Wayne - would expand minority access without damaging minority opportunity.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00/status/1489388862174601219?s=20&t=Zcm5GPJQ...

The legislative suit, alleging that the commissions RPV analysts had it wrong and African American seats need to by >50% by VAP, is over. One D judge dissented, one R concurred with the three other majority Ds. There remains a GOP OMOV suit on the congressional map.

[Oryxslayer]

Interesting to see if this succeeds.

I really do not like the way the Commission tried to "unpack" black voters - however a very good handful of said seats failed in 2022. The commission argues it's what their VRA lawyers told them to do, but there def seemed to be some level of underlying partisan incentives.

The thing is in MI, you don't even have to excessively "unpack" black voters to make a partisan equitable map so that argument is weak as well. A lot of the map just "unpacks" black voters into already D-leaning suburbs.

Really hope these issues are fixed.

Yes, I think to be consistent with the principles laid out in the AL, LA, and now GA section 2 cases, the MI state senate map has to go.

Yeah especially the when it comes to the Senate districts. The thing to remember with this case is it effects the inner Detroit region, and therefore has nothing to do with partisanship. All the adjacent areas are varying hues of Blue. It instead has everything to do with the Dem Primary, and I would not be surprised if the commission's VRA analyst just didn't do that side of the equation. Because from a D v R perspective, all the districts they drew should function. But things in some of the seats don't work from a D v D primary RPV perspective.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/yeargain/status/1737964827824312446?t=8gjqgz_b-xUzxQHKhtEckg...

The inevitable outcome given primary outcomes.  Note, as stated here previously,  all districts listed are somewhere between Safe D and will remain reliability D after shifts given their geography. It's the primary demographics that matter.

The only part of this that doesn't make sense is the listing of the Inkster districts which are geographically separate from Detroit,  and not in a position to change without the Dearborn seats, that are not mentioned.

[Oryxslayer]

Today the commission voted today 8 to 1 (2 abstain) to give their lawyers power to appeal, request stays, and generally try to fight against the suit.

Yesterday the two commissioners who resigned rather than potentially revisit their work were replaced with substitutes, 1 Dem 1 Rep.

Lower court has also solicited appeals to the plaintiffs and commission for a list of recommendations for a master and VRA experts to advise/guide the commission in corrective work.

https://twitter.com/DNBethLeBlanc/status/1743269262070849932?t=RTSsj1dk_ztbmsmsu...

In truth though, the commission doesn't have to do much work. On both plans they can just cut one of existing seats with large share of minority voters in Detroit, and that provides enough to bring every other seat well within the performance percentages. That cut seat is then reconstituted in the precincts dropped from the dropped precincts, almost entirely in inner Dem voting suburbs, meaning the initial partisan balance is not adjusted. As long as the commission stay by it's motives from last time, the changes similarly need not dramatically disrupt the partisan balance: some seats may get redder, but the dropping of Blue precincts from the innermost seats mean there is room to easily balance or maintain the existing partisan goals of the plans.

[Oryxslayer]

Supreme Court denies the appeal, no noted dissents. There will be a adjusted House map for 2024, and senate map for 2026.

Again, given the area in question, and the commissions seeming commitment to its previous goals, massive changes to overall chamber partisanship should not be a issue. Instead, it will be the creation of 1-2 White Dem seats to make the rest in the region reliably majority AA, and actually allow Detroit to be represented by more than a handful of her residents.