MT Congressional Redistricting

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yes and the current MT-AL absolutely blows for campaigning. The NW and SE corners of Montana are about the same distance apart as driving from SE Montana to Texas, no joke.

I want straight up East-West divide like last time. 2 winnable districts for both sides. No need to get cute.

is it just me or does 2018 population estimates make a 2-CD whole-county, good-looking, and CoI-respecting arrangement extremely difficult?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/1a02d090-0cdd-4c35-87ad-e830652079bc
this is the best I could come up with.

Gallatin, Madison, Beaverhead, Jefferson, Silver Bow, Deer Lodge, Powell, Granite, Ravalli, Missoula, Mineral, Sanders, Lake, Lincoln, Flathead, Glacier in the Western CD.

the rest of the state in the other.

The Western CD has 519,040 people, and the Eastern CD has 522,692.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yes and the current MT-AL absolutely blows for campaigning. The NW and SE corners of Montana are about the same distance apart as driving from SE Montana to Texas, no joke.

I want straight up East-West divide like last time. 2 winnable districts for both sides. No need to get cute.

is it just me or does 2018 population estimates make a 2-CD whole-county, good-looking, and CoI-respecting arrangement extremely difficult?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/1a02d090-0cdd-4c35-87ad-e830652079bc
this is the best I could come up with.

Gallatin, Madison, Beaverhead, Jefferson, Silver Bow, Deer Lodge, Powell, Granite, Ravalli, Missoula, Mineral, Sanders, Lake, Lincoln, Flathead, Glacier in the Western CD.

the rest of the state in the other.

The Western CD has 519,040 people, and the Eastern CD has 522,692.

Unfortunately your map splits the Blackfoot Reservation.

When given the choice between communities of interest and counties, one ought to obviously pick the former.

I would not necessarily go that far (i.e. reservations vs counties) insofar as to the question of whether that is some universal rule or not, and stridently disagree with the idea a county is not a community of interest in itself. But it was enough to justify a newfound look at alternatives.
I placed Pondera and Broadwater in the Western CD in exchange for Jefferson County being placed in the Eastern CD. Western CD's population is 522,792; East is 518,940.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/d87d9714-4f4f-4010-be50-15895982f9dc
bonus map: GOPmander

Southern CD: Big Horn, Yellowstone, Musselshell, Carbon, Stillwater, Golden Valley, Sweet Grass, Park, Meagher, Gallatin, Broadwater, Madison, Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Beaverhead, Silver Bow, Deer Lodge, Powell, Granite, Ravalli (521,521)
Northern CD: the rest of the state (520,211)

https://davesredistricting.org/join/81d77d30-5a89-48c9-9543-495fa0063124
extra bonus map: Dmander
Southwest CD: Wheatland, Park, Meagher, Gallatin, Cascade, Broadwater, Madison, Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark, Beaverhead, Silver Bow, Powell, Granite, Ravalli, Missoula (521,067)
Northeast CD: the rest of the state (520,665)

should be noted that these would both be awful to put in practice, regardless of the wider electoral impact. But it is interesting to see what a map optimized purely for partisan performance would look like here.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Would y'all say a county split is inevitable this time around?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The west Montana seat will probably more often than not vote D due to MT's downballot quirkiness. It's Lean R on the presidential level, but surely not out of reach for PresiDem in a landslide victory..

this, pretty much.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Question, wouldn't the fast pace of the growth in Western MT be enough to make 2018 population estimates not perfect for purpose of 2020 maps?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Now that Republicans swept statewide races this year in MT, does anyone think they will move to change redistricting rules to enable them to make both districts strongly R-leaning in the event that the state regains its second congressional seat?

The commission process is in the state constitution.  They would need a 2/3rds majority, which they won't have, to even put an amendment on the ballot.

Yeah, that seems impossible.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Interesting factoid: If MT-01 and MT-02 were ressurected, with the same lines as they did in the 1980s, the western district would have almost 200,000 more people than the eastern one.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/0d23d928-a398-4074-9f71-18ad3b7098ba

1970s would have even larger population disparity: 220,000
https://davesredistricting.org/join/04ef7c1e-cdf8-426e-8d7f-0c6c24093730

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Has anyone made that in DRA?

As of now, yes.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/9cdaaa2e-83ce-4fde-b527-7058d5745dc5
This map was brought to you by the precinct splitting tool.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Has anyone noticed it is possible, under 2019 figures, to avoid having any county splits by having all of Western Montana sans Gallatin form the 1st and the rest of the state form the 2nd?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yeah any fair map worth its salt has to have Kalispell in the Western district, it's a bad map otherwise.

If this is by a "good=respect CoI" definition, I agree completely. Not only that, it's easy to keep the entire west together except for Gallatin being in the east. No county splits, and one district is wholely contained within Western Montana.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How many state legislative seats will shift from Eastern Montana to Western Montana?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Two things.
One, MT Dems do well downballot (except in 2020, which was practically unprecedented and is probably best treated as a fluke until proven otherwise) and even a Trump+5 district is probably Tossup in neutral conditions. Trump+2 is probably verging on Lean D.

Two, I made maps for both chambers of the state legislature.
MT state house
MT state senate

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If the final map does have a district that only voted for Trump by 2 points, my instinct is think of it as a de-facto Dem district, unless Ds nominate someone who is a really bad fit for it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I drew the map below which nobody else on the planet seemed to replicate. I guess that means I am uniquely perspicacious or uniquely obtuse.

If there's one obvious aspect of the commission maps, it's that Republicans absolutely do not want the entirety of Gallatin County (namely Bozeman) in the western district. The main intention of most of the Democratic maps seems to be to keep all of the reservations together in the eastern district. That alone makes it easier to make the western district more competitive.

This is a map I mentioned above that puts the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in the western district (along with the Flathead Reservation):

hmm, the only difference is part of one precinct.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I hope they choose the Democratic map, but if they choose the Republican map, can I get some sort of prize for possibly coming up with one of the most accurate maps that becomes law? 

You'd deserve one. I could make a map at your request as means of providing an award.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This western district is barely Lean R in a neutral year open seat with equal quality candidates. It should be proper Tossup if we can get a good one in a favorable environment.
I'm fine with this map. Not as good as the D proposal but good enough.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I am just so hurt that nobody congratulated me for decoding visually the split of Pondera County down to the very last census block, most of which have no people. And the more I play with other options for the map, the more I have to admire the Pubs for what they went for. It is very sophisticated. Actually I agreed I in the end it is the best possible map given the metrics I prefer, and obviously tie breaker Smith preferred. Normally the Pubs in these fights are the rubes and the dumbs, the Dems the cognescenti and the smarts, but not in MT. They assumed Smith was a Dem hack. They must have been shocked that she was not. I suspect the Pubs got very expensive legal advice as to how to play the game. The Dems assumed the game was already probably fixed, an AZ redux.

Didn't I post something along the lines of congrulating you in advance in case you were right? IIRC.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Bullock only lost MT-01 by a point. I think it is definitely winnable for Democrats downballot, though probably not in 2022. Likely R for 2022.

How was MT-01 in 2016 and 2012 at the presidential level?  It has a lot of ancestral D mining areas moving right but it also has Bozeman and Missoula which are the 2 largest counties by population and pretty clearly moving left.  Ancestral R Flathead is the 3rd largest and it has basically been stable since the Bush era.

Trump 2016 won MT-01 by 12 points.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/da5dab01-a99c-40bf-9fa0-17cd2d8a212e

Hmmm... so a pretty big Dem swing then, on par with what happened in GA statewide. Dems should seriously compete here, but it probably takes a 2026 or 2030 R president midterm to put them over the line.

It's back to where it was in 2012 FYI.

Yes, but that shows there is still hope for the future.  This isn't a CO-03 situation where it was only close-ish because of fading ancestral strength.

Uh I'd argue CO-3 was close-ish because of ski-resort communities rather than ancestral strength. The big hope for Dems here is really that Missoula continues to grow and blueify, alongside Butte and Bozeman to an extent; rural MT isn't coming back.

With all due respect, there's a lot of ways the 2020s could unfold, for all we know rural MT might swing back (the exact degree to which it will in that scenario is in itself as uncertain). Nobody knows for certain, and anyone who claims otherwise is either deluded or lying.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Again from what I can tell new legislative districts have not passed, is there any reason why it is taking this long?

If I knew, I'd tell you.
Perhaps there's infighting in the local GOP? That's my best guess in the abstract.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/RedistrictNet/status/1598543160921280514?cxt=HHwWhMC-jaKila8sAAAA

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::e89899d3-fc18-4e5b-99a6-9e77d1ac9211

Montana legislative maps just came out, should remove the GOP supermajorities they just picked up. 57 Trump 43 Biden seats.

Wtf happened? Did the tiebreaker have to choose between a D and an R gerrymander? That seems like some very aggressive cracking of Missoula and Bozeman to squeeze out a bunch of D-leaning seats. Gives me vibes of the MI State House map on steroids.

Given downballot results in Western MT, Democrats could plausibly control a chamber after a wave.  Wow!

Continues the theme of Democrats generally getting better legislative maps and Republicans generally getting better congressional maps from officially neutral processes.

But this feels like a pretty clear gerrymander; Dems are very purposefully unpacked. It wasn't like they just got lucky with key decisions in some key seats.

FWIW for the congressional maps, both parties presented drafts to the tiebreaker, she gave feedback which they could incorporate into a final map, and then she made a binding choice between the final maps.  For congress, she chose the Republican map because they were willing to give more ground by proposing a Trump +7 all-Western MT seat in line with state traditions instead of going for an ahistorical north/south split that would have made both districts equally R.  Democrats insisted on splitting more counties than necessary to keep Bozeman, Missoula, and Helena together in a seat Trump barely won. 

I presume the tiebreaker must have picked the Dem map for the legislature. 

It is worth noting that R's can unilaterally put constitutional amendments on the ballot with a 2/3rds majority.  I suppose they could try to abolish the commission and take mapping power back, but I highly doubt it would pass.  Since these are legislative maps, any SCOTUS ruling in the NC ISL case would be irrelevant.

What looks like the likeliest seat #51 for Democrats, in your view?