Illinois Redistricting Megathread

[Oryxslayer]

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.

[Oryxslayer]

Also, no democratic incumbent gets sacrificed under a Madigan map. If IL04 get reoriented all the way to the south, the north will not be used to make a second performing seat. It will be used to shore up IL08/IL06, who then could drop some blue suburbs to help shore up IL14, etc. keeping everyone's base in their seat is perhaps the most important factor. Newman is the only one who could get cut out of her district, since in 2022 she would be a very short term incumbent, but her replacement seat would still be blue. It's just moire likely that the redder suburbs in the SW now end up in the AA seats. There will still be 12ish seats around Chicago, the cut is goinna be forced on the present IL12/13 to help make a downstate democrat.

[Oryxslayer]

This is essentially what would happen if the mappers have a desire to strand Newman:

- Chinatown goes into the 5th if possible, the 7th if not.
- The 4th eats up all available southern Hispanics.
- The ethnic whites get carved up between the five neighboring seats, with the four minority seats taking the Lions share of the intolerable Republicans.
- The old 3rd, now rebranded the new 4th, gets resurrected in the NW side of the city. It would have a good number of Hispanics, but it would be Safer D than the present 3rd and majority white. It's purpose would be to help carve up DuPage so that the 5th/8th/9th/10th can eat the GOP parts of Lake and McHenry.

Remember, Madigan will not remove a blue seat unless it is absolutely necessary. The seat getting lost is from parts of 12/13, that is inevitable.

[Oryxslayer]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/0ed2e9ca-8400-4799-9a61-ed14bdfd5fd3

Obviously I need to clean up my 1 & 2, but this is the overall concept of 14/17 Democrat seats

Nobody would dare propose your version of Bustos's seat...it not only voted for Trump by 3% AND has a lower CPVI that the present seat meaning Romney also was competitive here. She's getting some of the central cities.

You destroy one of the AA seats. This needs to be amended.

Way too many dems are left on the table in the city. Your 5 & 9 need to be unpacked, and every suburban seat needs more dems.

This is before we start talking about how everyone seems to be drawn out of their seat in the city, or has lost their main base of support.

[Oryxslayer]

@Oryxslayer: how were you able to get the Trump/Clinton numbers on my IL-17 so fast? I'm curious what they would be on IL-14 and IL-12 (I know she definitely won them, but not sure by how much).

Also, the point of this thread was to show that a map that leaves Republicans with just 3 seats and a swing seat is definitely doable in a 17-seat map.

Open up a copy of DRA 2010. Copy your districts to that map. Ignore all pop deviation where transposing your districts.

For example, your Underwood seats is R+0 and 48/45 Clinton, your Schneider seat is D+3.5 53/40 Clinton, and your Foster seat is D+2.2 and Clinton 51/41. WAYYYY too weak when all but the underwood seat should be eternally safe democratic.

[Oryxslayer]

For reference, this is how you do a Dem Gerry of Illinois that leave every incumbent who matters with a seat that will be 100% safe for all 10 years. If you think Madigan is above drawing tentacles, I suggest you check out the legislative level maps for Illinois. For the record, I'm just experimenting with the orientation of IL14/16 between these maps, which is why they differ.



Keep current IL03

IL01: 67.5/28 Clinton, D+21.1 CPVI. 48% AA. South Side Base in District.
IL02: 70/26 Clinton, D+22.6 CPVI. 48.3% AA. South Cook suburb Base in District.
IL03: 57.5/37 Clinton, D+8.6 CPVI. Base in LaGrange and SW suburbs in District. Strongest White ethnic precincts removed from district.
IL04: 74/21 Clinton, D+23.6 CPVI. 64.7% Hispanic. SW Hispanic base in district and expands from 2010.
Il05: 63/30 Clinton, D+11.9 CPVI. North Side base dominates district.
IL06: 55.5/37 Clinton, D+5.9 CPVI. Downers Grove and DuPage dominate the seat.
IL07: 81.5/14.5 Clinton, D+33 CPVI. 48.3% AA. Western Chicago AA Base in seat.
IL08: 63/30.5 Clinton, D+13.6 CPVI. Schaumburg suburban base in seat.
IL09: 69/25 Clinton, D+18.6 CPVI. Evanstown base and Northern suburbs control seat.
IL10: 60/33 Clinton, D+8.75 CPVI. Democratic Lake townships control the seat.
IL11: 57.5/35 Clinton, D+7.85 CPVI. Naperville/Aurora/Bolingbrook base remains in Seat.
IL12: 71/23.5 Trump, R+21.3 CPVI. Bost’s home of Murphysboro outside seat. Davis’s home in Christian county in said seat. Miller’s home in Oakland county outside seat.
IL13: 46.7/46.5 Clinton, D+1.15 CPVI. BDL’s base of Springfield in Seat. Main GOP opponent familiar with the district outside the seat.
IL14: 49.5/43 Clinton, D+1.9 CPVI. Underwood home of Naperville in seat. Suburban base remains in seat.
IL15: 57/36 Trump, R+11.6 CPVI. Kinzinger drawn out of seat. LaHood now in unfamiliar seat.
IL16: 51.5/40.5 Clinton, D+5.1 CPVI. Base in Quad cities remains in seat. Seat reinforced from GOP trends with D-trending Bloomington and Champaign.
IL17: 66/27.5 Trump, R+18.8 CPVI. Lahood drawn out of the forgottonia based seat. Miller in a new unfamiliar seat.




Destroy current IL03

IL01: 71/24 Clinton, D+24.6 CPVI. 48.5% AA. South Side Base in District. Destroys SW White ethnics.
IL02: 71/25 Clinton, D+23.1 CPVI. 48% AA. South Cook suburb Base in District. Destroys SW White ethnics.
IL03: 69/26 Clinton, D+19.7 CPVI. 60.8% Hispanic. SW Hispanic base dominates district, with most whites of the GOP persuasion. Newman home in LaGrange removed from seat.
IL04: 68.5/25 Clinton, D+18.3 CPVI. 39.5% Hispanic. Hispanics are a large minority in this new, open seat. GOP parts of DuPage carved up using the district.
Il05: 64.5/28.5 Clinton, D+13.4 CPVI. North Side base dominates district.
IL06: 56/36 Clinton, D+5.95 CPVI. Downers Grove and DuPage dominate the seat, though with a new Aurora addition.
IL07: 82/13 Clinton, D+33.35 CPVI. 48% AA. Western Chicago AA Base in seat.
IL08: 56/38 Clinton, D+7 CPVI. Schaumburg suburban base in seat.
IL09: 67/27 Clinton, D+16.95 CPVI. Evanstown base and Northern suburbs control seat.
IL10: 58/35 Clinton, D+7.2 CPVI. Democratic Lake townships control the seat.
IL11: 57/36 Clinton, D+7.9 CPVI. Naperville/Aurora/Bolingbrook base remains in Seat. Takes in Newman’s home in exchange for Aurora.
IL12: 71/23.5 Trump, R+21.4 CPVI. Bost’s home of Murphysboro outside seat. Davis’s home in Christian county in said seat. Miller’s home in Oakland county outside seat.
IL13: 46.7/46.5 Clinton, D+1.2 CPVI. BDL’s base of Springfield in Seat. Main GOP opponent familiar with the district outside the seat.
IL14: 49/43 Clinton, D+1 CPVI. Underwood home of Naperville in seat. Suburban base remains in seat.
IL15: 59/34 Trump, R+12.9 CPVI. Kinzinger drawn out of seat. LaHood now in unfamiliar seat.
IL16: 50/42 Clinton, D+4.7 CPVI. Base in Quad cities remains in seat. Seat reinforced from GOP trends with D-trending Champaign.
IL17: 66.5/27 Trump, R+18.5 CPVI. Lahood drawn out of the forgottonia based seat. and Miller in a new unfamiliar seat.

[Oryxslayer]

I hope if Madigan draws something that nasty anyway that he can at least shore up IL-13 more than that. The trends in that seat are horrible

Yep, it's not to hard to throw Champaign in IL-13, often chucking the southern arm and some redder suburbs. The trade-off though is you are now putting Bustos in the hot seat (she's the most important Dem on the map), unless of course she takes Rockford+Bloomington. Then it's Underwood's turn to sweat, and she's fighting against 12 other incumbents who want their Blue bases of support to deny opportunity to any primary challenger, and want enough Blue voters to make GE's snoozefests. I got another map that does exactly this, making Underwood's seat the near tie, and making IL13 structurally more blue. So a lot in that regard depends upon how many new Dem voters there are in the suburbs in 2020. If there's a significant trend than you have a lot more voters to reinforce the 12 others with, leaving more leftovers for Underwood and then allowing you to do the downstate trade as detailed above.

[Oryxslayer]

Yep.  This is basically what they need to do.  

Kinda hope they don't actually.   I want to see those long tentacle districts become extinct.    You don't see them in newer maps anymore.    I hope public pressure will be enough to discourage them from drawing that stuff.

Yeah they are kinda going extinct in most places. The trend is now favoring the concession of a pack, whereas in the past you would somehow find a way to crack said hypothetical group. However, Madigan  has no shame and is quite literally a teacher in the old school. It's very likely IL ends up with the worst visual lines in the nation, with only potential rivals being MD if a 3rd AA seat is desired, MO if KC is carved up, SC if they really want to reshuffle the coast, and TX if the GOP learns the wrong lessons from 2018/20.

[Oryxslayer]

Sounds like the legislative maps will be dropping within the hour.

I wonder how drastically these ACS-based lines will differ from the current outlook. Madigan's legislative maps at time gerrymadered in favor of the GOP, since he didn't need more seats, and those areas that would elect Democrats opposed to him personally.

EDIT: wow I'm surprised this continued to some capacity.

[Oryxslayer]

Main takeaway I feel is Dems deciding to utilize their new gains in the suburbs to try and eliminate any vestigial GOP seats Madigan had to draw in 2010, but downstate was drawn with the senate in mind and therefore continues to dilute the influence of some of Democratic areas.

[Oryxslayer]

Peoria to Bloomington and Springfield to Decatur makes sense for the IL-Dems to draw, but Champaign could've just been drawn by itself without Danville.  I know they tried to do the same gerrymander in 2011.   Seems pointless, you can draw a Senate district in the county and get two D house seats out of it.

Looks like a pretty brutal map overall I gotta say.

Definitely feels like downstate prioritized incumbents first, which included senate ones. Why not split Champaign and Urbania - they would both remain safe D and Madigan only packed the cities to prevent two university radicals from getting elected. Why sink stirling and go for less Democratic towns to the south of Galesburg? Why cut less Republican areas out of Jackson and add redder areas to Carbondale's east? House seat 95 makes sense in conext of the senate and incumbency, but why not have one seat in Sangamon and one with a tail? Dekalb now is in a Blue seat, but to preserve the previous LaSalle seat we get Sycamore and other dem areas left outside of blue seats.

The Collar however is brutally efficient. Woodstock in McHenry is outside a blue seat, unless 63 is meant to be a future gain, but everything else is utilized. It looks like D+1 in each suburban county at minimum from just comparing with the NYT map, maybe D+2 in DeKalb.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/brendenmoore13/status/1396583212520968195?s=20

Interactive map of the proposal. The guy also includes a bit of analysis in his tweet chain. Apparently incumbent 4 GOP reps are now in one House district.

[Oryxslayer]

This only makes it further obvious that Downstate could have been made more democratic for little effort or effect on the map. Champaign and Urbania remaining in the same seat it the most apparent example. But The suburban lines make an concentrated effort to utilize Democratic growth in the region.

https://twitter.com/Missouri_Mapper/status/1401926409153622019?s=20

[Oryxslayer]

Keep in mind that there is no deadline in IL for the congressional redistricting other than what is needed to meet federal law. Talk about alternative data sets are most important for legislative redistricting which has a Jun 30 deadline before a bipartisan back-up commission is formed to draw the maps. Congressional maps can be drawn and passed in late Aug using real 2020 Census data in the "legacy" format, and it won't affect the primary date or Dem control over the process.

I thought that the Illinois Supreme Court had construed the state constitution to require strict equality among legislative districts.

What data did they use? The legislative redistricting sites showed maps but no data?

The house districts in Chicago are horrible. Can an equal protection case be made for extending districts out for 40 miles in order to pick up population but retain effective control in Chicago?

This is a trick that several states like Illinois, Oklahoma, and maybe Colorado next are using to compromise their legal deadlines with the lack of official data. They are using other census data, like the ACS. Then when final data comes out they expect the maps to go to the courts. The maps will be struck down and the legislature will have first dibs to make the marginal changes to restore equity. So theses maps are something very close to their final plan.


I can't comment on the tentacles, but I'm sure someone out there would argue in their favor. Such lines, while unwieldy, do avoid racially packing Chicago minority groups into their voluntarily segregated city, and therefore increases community representation.

[Oryxslayer]

All I'll say right now is that Champaign and Urbana under the census numbers are now way too large for just a single state house district for the two of them. If the state legislature doesn't separate the two between 103 and 104 during the special session on Tuesday then they are throwing away a Safe Democratic district in favor of a swingy one.

[Oryxslayer]

The most notable changes from the ACS maps I spot are: the Woodstock House seat is probably a Biden District now, and there's now a Kewanee-Outer Peoria seat that will be less R than it's surroundings.  

[Oryxslayer]

I’m looking through these proposed downstate House districts in Gass’s link above, and it appears that IL legislative Dems are “fixing” a lot of the current failed “cracking” attempts which resulted in two Republicans.  This is particularly true in a lot of the college towns.

Examples:

-DeKalb, which they lumped in with the surprisingly Democratic LaSalle-Peru area.
-Bloomington and Normal, which are currently in separate districts but would be consolidated in the new map.
-Carbondale, which as a whole would be together with Cairo (heavily African American) and Marion (a relatively large city in a pretty rural area).
-They’re also attempting to create a blue district from Macomb to the Quad Cities.

A lot of those examples can be explained by one of three things: Dems in 2010 could or did hold the cracked districts but the alignment changed, two Illinois house districts must be nested within 1 senate district, and Madigan in 2010 cracked or packed University areas to prevent reformists from getting elected and building a force to oppose him. The Cairo situation was drawn in 2010 cause Dems held seats down there, DeKalb was linked because they have an incumbent in the Peru area who no longer Reps a blue district and Madigan previous sank the university, Bloomington could have its own seat to undo to university crack but is linked with Peoria to shore up the senate seat, and the Quad cities extension is to make the secondary seat attached to Moline bluer so to draw out the unexpected Republican incumbent.

The real places where the GOP incumbents were drawn out were in the suburbs, since Democrats improved there compared to 2010, and there is no Madigan to desire complacent Republicans get elected rather than reformist Democrats.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/lynnsweet/status/1448795048057921545?s=20

Shocking, I know.

[Oryxslayer]

I feel like vomiting.

How do you think Dems feel when looking at the NC maps Republicans look likely to draw?

Difference ofc is that the NC maps are unlikely to stick, whereas this one sadly will.


Anyway, here's some good pics courtesy of #electiontwitter and dra:





Most interesting I think is the IL-06 sucessor which resembles it's current iteration, but now gets some of Naperville and Palatine to get safer, and IL-03 which became more marginal.

[Oryxslayer]

Newman got a pretty crappy district. Wonder if they want Lipinski to come back?

I feel that Newman's demand for the mappers was to remove the Hispanic parts of her seat, since those were the areas that backed Lipinski in the primaries. Which they did, but didn't get give her some more white Liberal suburbs from the seats to her north. Maybe she'll demand revisions after seeing the overall topline.

[Oryxslayer]

Lipinski says he's thinking of running

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg-hinz-politics/former-illinois-us-rep-dan-lipinski-considers-running-house-again

Lmao, drama already. Who said Illinois politics are stiff and boring?

He will get crushed without incumbency advantage lol

He’s probably considered a quasi-incumbent like David Valadao or Rick Scott.

There seems to be this fallacious assumption that "more marginal seat = better for Lipinski." This is wrong because the areas Lipinski enjoyed crossover support did not vote for him in the primaries. Those ethnic white suburbs backed Newman. The crossover voters are Republicans, and the voters who participate in the Dem primary are analogous to suburban whites in more Liberal parts of the collar. Lipinski won the madigan machine neighborhoods and Hispanics. Exhuming the Hispanic areas and adding in areas he never represented hurts Lipinski's odds at a comeback.

Which was likely her goal. Apparently she leveled a lot of demands and the commission could only follow a handful, especially since she's a freshman. We saw this before in Maryland, where Donna Edwards demanded a lot of the mappers, and they ignored almost all of her wishes in favor of the senior members of the delegation. She likely wanted to remove the Hispanics and add in as much white suburbs the Lipinski never repped as possible. Unable to follow this in full, she gets a weaker seat.

The resulting product though appears to have "taught some sense" as it were, since she criticized the map for removing Hispanic areas from her seat. Probably will change, ironically in a way that makes it more possible for primary battle round 3.

[Oryxslayer]

By the way all of Macoupin being added to IL 13th?

Did Andy Manar ask Pritkzer to push for that? There's no other reason to add such a county.

Maybe a desire to ensure every district outside the suburbs has at least 1 whole county. Macoupin used to have a decent D tint, and there are no other obvious candidates for a whole county while maintaining CD15's continuity. OTOH, if they went narrow, it would just be getting a different set of Trump precincts, just ones he won by less. I can only spot a handful of precincts outside CD13 Biden won that could reasonably be added, mainly in St. Clair.

[Oryxslayer]

By the way all of Macoupin being added to IL 13th?

Did Andy Manar ask Pritkzer to push for that? There's no other reason to add such a county.

Maybe a desire to ensure every district outside the suburbs has at least 1 whole county. Macoupin used to have a decent D tint, and there are no other obvious candidates for a whole county while maintaining CD15's continuity. OTOH, if they went narrow, it would just be getting a different set of Trump precincts, just ones he won by less. I can only spot a handful of precincts outside CD13 Biden won that could reasonably be added, mainly in St. Clair.

That sounds like an unnecessarily contrived rule to explain a powerful Senator's home base being added to a district. The simpler explanation is more likely to be correct.

Except said Senator is no longer a Senator (with these maps drawn by the Leg), and his appointed successor got a reinforced senate seat in Springfield. He'd also be starting at a primary disadvantage simply based of Registered voter numbers compared to a Champaign-Urbana or East St. Louis candidate.


Another point: it's clear the first map drawers had no affinity for Lipinski, just found Newman truly uncooperative.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/RedistrictNet/status/1453875546643968021?s=20

Map 4? I need to see a "change" comparison to map 3, cause these look similar. Must have been minute adjustments demanded.