2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Michigan

[EastAnglianLefty]

As it happens, I just finished drawing a similar map based off a district jumping over the Saginaw River:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/38383e2f-7132-4b5e-89b0-7b8c8bdcd477

The major differences to Oryxslayer's map are that Shiawassee goes in the Lansing district and Jackson mostly in the Kalamazoo district and that Grand Rapids district goes west instead of east.

Clinton wins six districts in this map, but two of them only narrowly. Obama carried ten of them in 2008 (though not the Grand Rapids district, which these days is probably the seventh best Democratic prospect.)

I think this map has some positives to it, but overall I think it shows the problem of a Thumb/Huron Shore district, which is that the two areas aren't really big enough for a congressional district. To get the necessary population, you either need to reach into exurban Macomb, or the Tri-Cities area, or well into the interior of northern Michigan, or some combination thereof. And if you're going to do that, why not just go the whole hog and tack the two areas on to separate districts?

How much population is north of Muskegon-Kent-Clinton-Midland-Bay? Can you get two districts, even coming further south without touching those urban counties.

Assuming that you treat Gratiot and Ionia as the rest of the boundary, just under 1.2m people according to the 2016 estimates. So not that much more than a district and a half.

I was wondering whether it is even possible to draw two districts, where the largest L.P. city is Traverse City (but I see even that would exclude Mt.Pleasant). But if we wanted to make those two the largest cities are we still short?

If so, then there may be three acceptable options:

(1) Take Muskegon (the UP district then goes down the Huron shore)
(2) Take Midland and ... (accept that are combining COI)
(3) Sneak across to take the thumb (but I'm not too keen on going down to St.Clair) which will be a significant chunk of the population).

Not-acceptable.
(4) Into Kent
(5) Into Clinton

Option 1 is probably not feasible - if you add Muskegon, Ionia and Gratiot to the northern group then you're still short about 50k from the necessary population for two seats, so you need to reach into the fringes of Ottawa/Kent/Clinton/Midland/Bay or some combination thereof to get the numbers up. And if the 1st district is going right down to Muskegon, then there's only room for the LP part of it to be one county wide (and even then you need to lose 10k people.)

Option 3 is also cutting a COI, because whilst you can draw a map putting Bay City in with Flint and the rest of Tri-Cities, realistically it's probably not going to happen because of the road contiguity issue.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Midland has been in districts with at least part of northern Michigan since at least the 1970s redistricting, so presumably there wouldn't be that much resistance locally.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Obviously violates the VRA but this is my non partisan map of the detroit metro that fits almost perfectly
Creates a nice downriver WWC+arab seat thats Clinton +4 but trending R. Lean D
Ann Arbor College town and upscale Wayne county suburbs. Clinton +25(Safe D)
Titanium D Clinton +90 Detroit seat.
Livingston + exurban oakland and Macomb(Trump +24) Safe R
Inner Oakland(Clinton +25) Safe D
Most of Macomb +7 Trump = lean to Likely R and trending right.

If you combine the Downriver and Detroit districts, what's the black population? Just wondering if there's a viable east-west split there that keeps them both as VRA districts.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's not like Detroit's boundaries (and when they stopped expanding) was a development that grew up entirely separately from class and race-based discrimination.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's not like Detroit's boundaries (and when they stopped expanding) was a development that grew up entirely separately from class and race-based discrimination.

Wayne County is supermajorty Democratic, so wouldn't they be free to redraw municipal boundaries as they saw fit?

If it has to be done by the state government it is harder, but still certainly doable?

Tbh I will say that one problem the US have is that the municipal boundaries in many cases are ridiculous and can and should be ignored in those cases where the municipal lines have tons of enclaves and exclaves and are impossible to follow, but Detroit seems to me like it has fairly clean lines.

I think it's the state government, but that doesn't really signify in any case. Dearborn and Detroit are both hugely Democratic cities and have been for decades. It doesn't mean that racialised animus hasn't been a huge part of the story of the relationship between them.

I'm hard-pressed to see that Detroit's lines match up to any real-world geographic features in any organised way (it has an arm south of the Rouge River; northern and eastern Dearborn fades naturally into Detroit; the boundary with Redford is a straight line rather than following the river), and to the extent they match demographic lines that's simply a consequence of white-flight and redlining.

I would also point out that even if you did change the lines in Wayne County, the northern boundary of Detroit would still be arbitrary - it has nothing to do with the settlement's natural boundaries and everything to do with straight lines drawn by surveyors in the early 19th century.

[EastAnglianLefty]

the boundaries of Detroit itself I don't think have anything to do with race. The racial makeup of Detroit, though, has practically everything to do with race.

The original boundaries aren't. The fact they haven't changed since the 1930s, however, is not disconnected from race. And elements of the boundaries have to do with class - for example, Redford Township still exists as a separate entity because it petitioned for a charter to stop Detroit annexing developed parts of it, which was definitely about more prosperous bits of the county wanting to remain separate from working-class Detroit.

[EastAnglianLefty]

For that 7th, is it possible to swap St. Joseph County for bits of Calhoun outside Battle Creek?

[EastAnglianLefty]

It looks like the 2nd is also open in that map, as I think Huizenga lives in Ottawa County. Eyeballing it, it looks like there's a chance it takes more electors from the current 4th than the current 2nd.

[EastAnglianLefty]

What's the purpose of splitting the UP? It doesn't look like the western district is a particularly realistic Democratic prospect, so it doesn't look worth the effort.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Interesting that Chestnut is the only plan to use Southfield for one of the VRA districts. Also worth noting you could theoretically get a Biden district out of both Oakland and Macomb by swapping Rochester for Royal Oak etc, so it'll be interesting to see if there's a push for that in the consultation.