Illinois Redistricting Megathread

[lfromnj]

Pretty damn ugly and uses up rockford but more or less the maximum one can get for downstate.

The New Il 12th/13th is now D+5.59 and 52.4 C and 40.4 Trump, its about +15 obama so almost no trend here.


The new Il 17ths PVI barely changes and only goes upto 3.47 but taking in Bloomington Normal makes it way bluer in 2016 but also slightly more red in 2012. It is about Obama +12 and Clinton 49.8 and Trump 42.5.

Overall probably too ugly and Underwood might need Rockford but Bustos gets 1st preference. Anyway these 2 districts both minimize 2016 trends downstate while maximizing how Democrat they get.

[lfromnj]

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.

From reading any Republican website, they seem to think they’ll be fine with a vote sink in Austin and shoring up GOJ when she wins this year. I don’t think that’s sustainable at all, and probably won’t even be for the 2022 map, but who knows. Travis County needs two seats, and when you add to that the suburbs are getting bluer and bluer, a one district vote sink in Austin is a very ballsy gamble.

Travis itself cant even have 2 districts lol even after 2020.

[lfromnj]

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.

From reading any Republican website, they seem to think they’ll be fine with a vote sink in Austin and shoring up GOJ when she wins this year. I don’t think that’s sustainable at all, and probably won’t even be for the 2022 map, but who knows. Travis County needs two seats, and when you add to that the suburbs are getting bluer and bluer, a one district vote sink in Austin is a very ballsy gamble.

Travis itself cant even have 2 districts lol even after 2020.

LOL roflmao lololol (am I doing this right?) it will be right on the border.

I am not trying to be a dick, but I just don’t see how it’s possible for Republicans to draw a map for the 2020’s that will hold up long-term with one Austin sink. Williamson County is also growing rapidly and going the way of Gwinnett County quick, to say nothing of Hays

The question is do you really believe a pie slice after one sink would mean Ds eventually control 3 seats?
Even if 1 seat fails they are back at two which is what you think must be done.

[lfromnj]

Figured we might have one, only things we need to assume is that all incumbents besides maybe Davis survives. Other uncertainty is -2 or -1 seats. If its -2 a D seat needs to be lost in Chicago in which case its probably Marie Newman if Madigan can do it. If its -1 I doubt Madigan sacrifices a D seat.

Anyway Ds have to mainly worry about protecting or gaining 4 possible competetive districts

IL-6th- Obama +3 Romney +7 Clinton +7, trended hard left in 2016 and should only require moderate shoring up in the Dupage area for Sean Casten. Was originally a mega inner suburban R sink.
IL 14th- Originally an R sink but only Trump +4 from Romney +10. Lauren Underwood won in 2018 with a convincing margin. She looks like she will probably win(80% chance) with a perennial R challenger albiet one that atleast one in 2016 in a Romney Clinton senate district. Should still win again.

IL 17th- Originally a D northern downstate sink to take out Bobby Schilling it was a Solid Obama +17 in 2012 but trended hard right in 2016 to Trump +1. Bustos is an entrenched incumbent winning by more each year since 2010 albiet against a conspiracy theorist in 2018. IIRC her opponent has some decent fundraising but she should almost certainly win due to her incumbency and only light Trumpishness of this district not being enough to provide coattails if Trump wins again.

IL 12th/13th. Ds wanted 2 districts in Southern/Central Illinois but got none as of now due to a Dummymander due to IL 12th becoming Trump +15 from Obama +2 but IL 13th only going from Romney +0 to Trump +5 due to college counties that swung hard left in 2016. Ds will try to combine this.

Anyway other concerns include the black VRA districts which will probably have to go down a touch and become around 47% black, they may also need to send this out to eat parts of Adam Kinzingers district to shore up.

Anyway assuming the 6th is easily shored up, Lauren Underwood will need to lose some of the redder exurbs and gain college towns like Dekalb. Also may need to sneak a bit into Lake or Cook itself. Other option is to take in Rockford.

This means that Bustos would need to take in Champaign to really to be safe and this would push the  13th/12th combo to around at best Clinton +1.

So speaking specifically about Bustos assuming they can shore up Underwood without taking Rockford for her, the Ds should basically strip away all the rurals surrounding Rock Island which trended hard R and rather draw to Bloomington which trended Hard D. A simple district made was Clinton +5 but actually shifted the PVI to the right to D+1.86 from D+3. Almost zero 2016 trend is solid for Bustos and should move her to Lean/likely D even in an R wave year

Finally a Metro east to Champaign district can be drawn making a Clinton +8 district which also shouldn't be trending far right either due to Springfield and Champaign and parts of the metro east.



Anyway trying to figure out a way to draw into Chicago for the suburban districts to make all but Underwoods a Tammy Duckworth district(basically the worst Ds should do in suburban Chicago at the Federal level)

The end result assuming 17 districts and a decent year for Ds is 14 D districts(+1) and 3 R districts(-2) for a solid net gain of 3. It is almost now neccesary to draw out the black districts further, this not only depacks them but rather than taking white D leaning burbs in the south this would actually increase black D primary share against 60-70% R rurals. All D incumbents hold a seat and a new challenger can arise in the South to an open seat due to both Bost and Davis being drawn into Lahoods and Skimkus's open seat.

[lfromnj]

Illinois is an incredibly corrupt state and I have no doubts that they will draw a very nasty map but I doubt they'll take a black Chicago district out to Peru.

maybe not that far but even the Chicago districts have to reasonably expand it makes some sense to unpack the black districts and lower the non black primary vote with GOP leaning rurals/far exurbs. The key is if the Black Democrats accept this logic of course. Like the state legislative districts are also going  pretty far out for the state house itself.

[lfromnj]

How many people in this thread will say Illinois will become a GOP state in the 2020s to "compensate" for the GOP losing Texas?

I will predict that three users will.

I've never really understood the argument that parties will just change up their messaging and make a few policy concessions here and there, and the system will balance itself in short order. American politics has never been balanced. Republicans controlled the presidency for all but 8 years between 1860 - 1932. Democrats controlled the presidency for 20 straight years after, and controlled the US House for all but 4 years between 1932 - 1994. Most people who lived a long life post-Civil War died without ever seeing a country in which Republicans didn't dominate the White House and the Senate.

There is no rule in politics saying that a political party must quickly bounce back. Granted, since American's two major political parties are effectively institutions, they are bound to come back eventually, but it could take literally a lifetime for that to happen. Not to mention that at the state level, there are some states that have never been receptive to the opposing political party in practically their entire existence.

16 years or 19.5 years if you include Andrew Johnson.

[lfromnj]

Not going to happen as I expect IL to be gerrymandered to death, but here is my attempt at a "fair" Illinois map. Might not follow the VRA though, given that one of the black districts gets replaced by a district that has almost exactly equal numbers of whites, hispanics and blacks (I would expect it to elect blacks more often than whites or hispanics though, but the racial dynamics would certainly be interesting there, particularly on primaries)





IL-01: Clinton+59, D+29 (55% black)
IL-02: Clinton+58, D+30 (54% black)
IL-03: Clinton+16, D+3
IL-04: Clinton+63, D+31 (62% hispanic)
IL-05: Clinton+64, D+30
IL-06: Clinton+16, D+6
IL-07: Clinton+73, D+35 (35% white, 32% black, 28% hispanic)
IL-08: Clinton+3, EVEN
IL-09: Clinton+34, D+13
IL-10: Clinton+23, D+7
IL-11: Trump+6, R+4
IL-12: Trump+45, R+19
IL-13: Trump+16, R+6
IL-14: Trump+3, R+4
IL-15: Trump+11, R+7
IL-16: Trump+14, R+7
IL-17: Trump+7, R+2

I imagine this should be a map that ends up as 9D-4R-4S (swing districts being 8, 11, 14 and 17). However trends are not looking great for Dems on the 17th, so I assume this could also be considered a 9D-5R-3S map.

Put NE kendall county il IL 08 no reason to keep weird rural counties with Will rather than Kendall. Also try to keep Champaign and Mcclean together as they are basically a COI Imo. Keeping a Mcclean,Champaign,Macon , and Sangamon district is almost a no brainer in any fair map by keeping a competitive seat downstate(+3 Trump +6 Romney!), is very compact and is a good COI with two growing college towns being kept together. Its actually the only area of downstate IL trending D due to college counties which zoomed left in 2016 and springfield's county which holds another 1/4 of the district just about staying even while the rest of the district trended right but was only 1/4 of the district overall so it wasn't enough.

[lfromnj]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but since drawing 3 black-majority districts here this time seems difficult to impossible, which of the districts is likely to become only plurality black? Geography would suggest Davis's 7th, especially since Kelly and Rush will probably nibble more deeply into Republican parts of Will County--but is there someone who the Establishment likes more?

They might just make all of them 46-48% ?
The safest thing for black representatives is being willing to be drawn to central and maybe parts of Southern IL, trends there are awful for D's so fewer D primary voters as the years go on. This would easily keep a majority of the primary electorate black and maybe even bump it up.

[lfromnj]

Sol, meh I don't think Newman will be cut.
You could still do a full sweep in Chicago land with 12 districts by dragging the black VRA districts a bit further south to take up some more land.

You could also just draw the 12th chicago land seat into Rockford and then give Bustos Champaign and just make a tossup seat in the South.

[lfromnj]

There we go. I got all 12 chicago land incumbents with their home(Im not sure where Foster and Underwoods homes are exactly within naperville but they could precinct swap over there, it also depends on black legislators willing to take in central Illinois(which logically is a very smart idea due to IL losing a district and the bleeding of the black pop in South Chicago means its better to have 46-48% black districts with a lower D white primary electorate.

Bustos got shifted to Clinton +7 which much more favorable trends for her.

Meanwhile Rodney Davis or Londrigans seat gets pushed to Clinton +9. Likely D there. The only Chicago land seat under 10 points is Underwood at Clinton +9 and under 15 is only Sean Casten. I guess Krishnamoorti and Schneider might be a little bit unhappy with the Clinton +20 mark but everyone else should be happy. Even duckworth won all the Chicago land districts so I guess its Safe.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/16a05efc-0fcd-49c5-9d73-b2acd00dbf65


Anyway 11 Safe D with 3 Likely D(Bustos,IL-13,Underwood) for a total of 14-3.

[lfromnj]

^Underwood's home is in your IL-11 and Foster's is in your IL-14, IIRC.

Ah my bad but I made sure it was easy to fix. Could you point where or link it?
Also realized I forgot Newmans home but meh she doesn't have very much influence.(I dont think Madigan will try to purposely screw her but just doesn't care)

[lfromnj]

That's a good map lfromnj! Obvs. we have our differences on sending the VRA districts to rural IL, but IMO if you're doing that you should put Danville in the southernmost Dem district instead and take out some of the GOP precincts on the outskirts of Springfield to compensate. Adding Cairo+Carbondale is useful too because it lets you abandon more R turf.

True I took a bit more of Springfield because i just didn't want to deal with the Springfield precints on DRA. Overall Danville has like 20k people that are Clinton +14 which really isn't worth it. FWIW the statate house districts already go all the way to Kanakee county.  I did consider drawing it to Carbondale atleast but it doesn't really help that much.

[lfromnj]

^Underwood's home is in your IL-11 and Foster's is in your IL-14, IIRC.

Ah my bad but I made sure it was easy to fix. Could you point where or link it?
Also realized I forgot Newmans home but meh she doesn't have very much influence.(I dont think Madigan will try to purposely screw her but just doesn't care)

I don't know exactly where they live offhand, but Foster is located in the DuPage part of Naperville and Underwood in the Will County portion (basically the opposite of what you did in this map wrt to Naperville).

Ah whatever, doesn't really matter, Madigan can fix that later. Thanks though.

[lfromnj]

https://www.wbez.org/stories/its-about-one-party-rule-why-illinois-supreme-court-justice-tom-kilbride-is-in-the-fight-of-his-career/0fc55d2d-b4db-4ebd-8152-d17d4fd5577c

He’s on the Nov. 3 ballot in Will County and a swath of north-central Illinois stretching from Rock Island through Peoria through Joliet, where voters in 21 counties will decide whether he should get another 10-year term on the state Supreme Court.


It’s a referendum not only on Kilbride’s deeply textured legal career but also on his relationship with the politically toxic Illinois House speaker, Michael Madigan, a key former financial backer dubbed unflatteringly as “Public Official A” in a massive federal investigation into Springfield lobbying.

Interesting, won't affect redistricting in 2021 itself as the actual election for retention won't happen till 2022. But if the seat flips they can always cook up some excuse to say Illinois districts violate the state constitution and then place a mostly compact map that sweeps downstate and gets 1-2 seats in the burbs+mixture of downstate.

Illinois supreme court districts are 5 districts. 1 is Cook county which gets 3 seats.

There is one suburban seat+ Northern Illinois which Rs control, Obama +1 and Clinton +9.There is one North Central + Will(south suburbs) which was Obama +3 and Trump +5.  If Rs can keep their suburban seat but flip the exurban/rural seat. they can control the State supreme court. The current justice is from the Obama/Trump district.
And then 2 more Safe R central and South IL districts.

[lfromnj]

Torie there are decent chances for cleaner IL maps depending if IL D's redistrict the state supreme court. Even if they redistrict they can't split Cook county and at a downballot level suburban D voters might still vote for an R judge.

[lfromnj]

Torie there are decent chances for cleaner IL maps depending if IL D's redistrict the state supreme court. Even if they redistrict they can't split Cook county and at a downballot level suburban D voters might still vote for an R judge.

Dems can easily redraw the 2nd district so that it takes Will county from the 3rd and gives the 3rd the redder counties Western half of Northern Illinois.  That would be a pretty tough district for a Republican to get 60% in (which is needed for retention).

Easier said than done, Kilbride was the first judge to ever fail retention. I don't really think Suburban D upballot voters are going to kick out a non controversial judge as there wouldn't even be a D on ballot for them to vote for.

[lfromnj]

Torie there are decent chances for cleaner IL maps depending if IL D's redistrict the state supreme court. Even if they redistrict they can't split Cook county and at a downballot level suburban D voters might still vote for an R judge.

Dems can easily redraw the 2nd district so that it takes Will county from the 3rd and gives the 3rd the redder counties Western half of Northern Illinois.  That would be a pretty tough district for a Republican to get 60% in (which is needed for retention).

Easier said than done, Kilbride was the first judge to ever fail retention. I don't really think Suburban D upballot voters are going to kick out a non controversial judge as there wouldn't even be a D on ballot for them to vote for.

If Dems properly ran a non retention campaign like Republicans did against Kilbride, they would have a decent chance.

Of course, can't deny that although IIRC Kilbride was involved with some corruption regarding Madigan which might have been what took him down.

Also northern Illinois rural areas are not ancestrally D unlike Southern IL but that area is too red by now.

[lfromnj]

I'm trying my hand at a fair map presently and have a couple of questions:

1. Should I try to prioritize city lines or township lines, or both? Which should take precedence?

2. Considering the loss of a district and the decline in population in Chicago, you sort of have to lose one of the Black majority districts, and because of geography it seems like the 7th is the obvious choice. The trouble is is that the 1st thus ends up overpacked with the Black community and needs to be unpacked to give Black voters to make the 7th a coalition district. Is it better to send the 1st to SW Cook or to the North Side?

The best option is probably to create a new coalitian hispanic-black district that would still elect a black member of chocie in 2022 but more likely to elect the hispanic option in 2030.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/FrankCalabrese/status/1354523379836071936
Due to the Census Data Delay to July 31st
This would mean its basically 50/50 on who controls IL redistricting as it goes to a coint oss

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/FrankCalabrese/status/1354523379836071936
Due to the Census Data Delay to July 31st
This would mean its basically 50/50 on who controls IL redistricting as it goes to a coint oss

I guess a bipartisan commission probably means something close to the status quo? Maybe throw Underwood to the wolves?

Nope what has happened so far the previous 2 times was a deadlock and it went to a coin toss for the tiebreaker. The GOP won both times and got to mostly  draw a favorable map to them. Although yes thats what I would guess happens with an actual bipartisan map. One Chicagoland D gets cut and Bustos maybe gets shored up with Champaign or something.

[lfromnj]

Nvm, reading through the constitution, seems that it only applies for legislative districts. Sorry about that.

[lfromnj]

Democrats better find a way out of this and fast

Don’t they have the votes to amend the state constitution?

If not, one way out of this would be to use population estimates (and try to stay within the allowable deviation) to draw the districts.

They have supermajorities in both chambers, so theoretically yes, they could amend the state constitution.

Doesn't that require a ballot measure in the end (Fair tax) anyway this is mostly moot.

[lfromnj]

What is the general sense of what will happen to Bustos/IL-17? This seems like the most difficult of the Democratic-held districts to make truly safe for the decade because of its partisan trendline. Making minimal changes like adding in some more Democratic precincts from the Peoria and Rockford areas while cutting off some of the outlying Republican areas (as in Wasserman's map) won't be enough. The mapmakers would have to do something much more dramatic to shore up her seat like drawing a tentacle from the Quad Cities through one of the heavily Democratic downstate cities (like Springfield or Bloomington). This also seems like it might complicate plans to make a potential downstate district that would connect most of the heavily Democratic cities (unless the solution is Bustos running in this district, I suppose).

To be clear, I don't think it is impossible for the mapmakers to make both districts some Democratic in the near future; I'm just skeptical that the new IL-17 wouldn't be anything other than a band-aid to temporarily stall the Republican trendline in parts of Northwestern/rural Central IL or that it wouldn't fall in a particularly bad cycle for Democrats.

Someone more knowledgeable on this subject can feel free to interject.

The additional areas of Peoria and Rockford that can be added are historically Republican and upscale. Clinton actually did better than Obama 08 in this areas IIRC. Removing the furthest right trending rurals and adding Bloomington itself would reduce the worst of the trends.

[lfromnj]

I don't see a full 13-4 happening but I can buy a 13-1-3 if incumbent demands force Underwood to take Rockford. I can also see the usual 14-3 if IL dems are happy with seats in Chicagoland without Underwood taking Rockford.

After that you can draw a 13th Likely D seat downstate from either East St.louis to Champaign or Champaign to Rock Island. Then a swing seat can either come from Champaign to McClean or Carbondale to Decatur.

Also for the East. St louis swing/ Likely D seat, Andy Manar wouldn't be a bad recruit. He's a fairly standard Democrat(voted for the Fair tax stuff) on every issue besides some gun stuff.

[lfromnj]

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 is actually trending 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.  

With the light blue district, I think Dems will be more comfortable with a +5 district or something like that that is a little more compact. I'm not sure the few votes you get down in Carbondale is worth how bad it looks, lol

The votes in Carbondale are necessary to filling up the district. The only other option is 70% R territory.