Illinois Redistricting Megathread

[Tintrlvr]

Four problems with Chicago hispanics:

1) There were not enough of them for two districts in 2010 when the state had 18 seats. The only way to get it to work was to head out into the suburb and tentacle to Aurora and stuff.

2) Undervoting in the primary. 50% or even 55% is not enough for a performing seat. One needs to go higher. Undervoting actually helps the AAs, since the three AA seats are destined to drop to 48-46% AA by VAP, so sticking undervoting Hispanics along with the current GOP whites helps keep AAs >50% in the dem primary.

3) Chuy García is from the south part of IL04, whereas the seat was previously repp'ed by the northern side of the earmuff. Chuy is going to demand more of the Hispanics in the south side and drop off more of the north, which helps other Reps when it comes to partisan moves in the suburbs.

4) Madigan's personal base is in the 3rd, and includes some Hispanics. He will decide who represents him personally, and that may not be a minority Rep.

It is, however, entirely possible to draw a performing Hispanic district solely on the South side, even with only 17 districts. I drew one in 5 minutes that is 63% Hispanic, 25% white, 6% black, 5% Asian. You might see the map done this way, then redistributing the North side Hispanics among other districts (or concentrating them in one district that isn't necessarily performing but is at least an opportunity seat).

Edit: Doing this results in a relatively neat seat on the North side that is 47% Hispanic, 42% white, 5% Asian, 3% black. So not a performing Hispanic district but a solid opportunity seat. From a fairness perspective, this seems like the right approach.

[Tintrlvr]

Bustos retiring should make this interesting!

Does it really? The Dems don't really benefit for trying a new combination than the combination already used. Underwood can be shored up easily without using Rockford, and none of the other Chicago area Dems need to take in land half-way across the state. The Dems still largely have the incentive to draw a Rock Island/Rockford/Peoria district, just like they have right now. Otherwise, the Dems are losing out, since instead of a tossup/tilt D district, an R sink is made when there does not need to be.

Agreed. The only change that's likely to be made is possibly extending the district out to Bloomington/Normal to shore it up a bit further.

[Tintrlvr]

Bustos retiring should make this interesting!

Indeed. I'd like to play with putting Rockford in IL-14 and creating a new Dem district along I-74 from the Quad Cities south.

Once you are past Peoria and Bloomington, what makes more sense? East to Champaign or south to Springfield?

Champaign probably makes more sense for a Peoria-Bloomington-Davenport seat b/c it lets you run your East St. Louis district up to Springfield.

You can run an ESL district all the way to Champaign, no problem.

[Tintrlvr]

They should’ve just gone for an ugly-ish 13-2-1 (with the tossup as a D-leaning district).  This is a dumb map.  They should’ve just redrawn Bustos’ old district from scratch.  This version will likely flip before the decade is out even if we hold it in 2022.


As far as 13-3 maps go, Brittain33’s is much better b/c at least it would hold through the decade:

Light blue voted 8.6% Dem in 2012/16 composite. Purple voted 7.1% Dem.
For 2016 only, light blue was 0.6% Republican, purple was 7.9% Dem (so actually swung D.)

Ignore Cook County. I'm not done yet. Khaki is Lauren Underwood's district. Turquoise is closest to Sean Casten but he lives south of it.  

I don't know, that East St. Louis district is not going to elect a Dem Congressman if it voted for Trump in 2016. It's true that that map shores up the Rock Island-centered district, but there's a trade-off there if you want to try to make a winnable district in the southern half of the state.

[Tintrlvr]

They seem to have followed an odd rule of keeping at least one whole county in each district outside of Chicagoland. Not sure exactly why; maybe as a fig leaf of not-gerrymandering? But it does seem a little bit non-ideal for the two outstate D districts. In particular, if they didn't insist on putting all of Macoupin County in IL-13, they might be able to extend it further down to take in Carbondale as well. IL-17 might be able to be optimized a bit more with Rockford suburbs instead of rural areas in Knox and Whiteside Counties, too.

[Tintrlvr]

They seem to have followed an odd rule of keeping at least one whole county in each district outside of Chicagoland. Not sure exactly why; maybe as a fig leaf of not-gerrymandering? But it does seem a little bit non-ideal for the two outstate D districts. In particular, if they didn't insist on putting all of Macoupin County in IL-13, they might be able to extend it further down to take in Carbondale as well. IL-17 might be able to be optimized a bit more with Rockford suburbs instead of rural areas in Knox and Whiteside Counties, too.

You don't even need to drag the seat down to carbondale. There's a handful of marginal precincts to the east of East St. Louis that can be thrown into the seat in exchange for red Macoupin. I now Shimkus used to live in these precincts, but he's gone now. Also a handful around the edges of the various IL-17 cities can be traded for parts of Knox or Fulton.

I also saw on DRA that they left out some 60% Biden areas on the west side of Decatur for some reason.