2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Washington

[MAPZZ]

I need to do a lot of work cleaning things up and fixing other spots, but I am happy with my 67% Hispanic (also 7% native) Yakima seat!

Your San Juan-Anacortes-Island County district is non-contiguous. The only way to get to Camano Island is driving through Stanwood in Snohomish county. You either have to split Island county by giving Camano a NW Snohomish county seat or do what the current map does.

[MAPZZ]

Here's my attempt at a least-change map. Not the most D-favorable map possible but all incumbents residencies and personal preferences are considered, and I try not to split counties, cities, or CDPs where possible. The only cities cut on my map are East Wenatchee (Just two precincts for population balance) and Tacoma.







WA-01 (Blue) - Suzan DelBene (D - Medina)

The ugly Lynden-to-Kirkland "swing district" is cleaned up. Moves from D+6 to D+10.

WA-02 (Green) - Rick Larsen (D - Lake Stevens)

Larsen doesn't live within the boundaries of the current WA-02 either so I didn't bother trying to grab his home. As long as Everett and Boeing is in his district I think he's happy. Moves to D+6 from D+10 with the re-addition of rural Whatcom and Skagit counties, but still hard to see a scenario where a Republican picks it up.

WA-03 (Purple) - Jaime Herrea Beutler (R - Camas)

Drops Klickitat county and picks up some more of rural Thurston as well a couple of rural communities around Mount Rainier. No change in partisanship, still R+4.

WA-04 (Red) - Dan Newhouse (R - Sunnyside)

Pretty much exactly the same, just adds Klickitat and drops Adams. No change in partisanship, R+13

WA-05 (Gold) - Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R - Spokane)

The current 5th is underpopulated by roughly 17k people and Adams county is exactly the right size to compensate. Love how this district is nearly identical to the 1983 to 2002 version.

WA-06 (Teal) - Derek Kilmer (D - Gig Harbor)

Almost no change here - adding Shelton is just to make the map cleaner if anything. I know a lot of maps put Olympia with the Olympic Peninsula instead, but I think that's flawed from an incumbency perspective. Kilmer was born and raised in Port Angeles, represented a district in the State Senate that covered most of southern Kitsap county, and gets stronger numbers than other Democrats in ancestral dem areas like Grays Harbor and Mason county. He probably doesn't want to drop all of those areas even if the Tacoma suburbs are bluer.

WA-07 (Light Brown) - Pramila Jayapal (D - Seattle)

Jayapal's home in southwest Seattle is put in her district (She currently lives in the WA-09 portion). Seattle + the possibly soon-to-be-annexed CDP of White Center are the perfect size for a single district and I hope the commission chooses to keep it whole.

WA-08 (Slate Blue) - Kim Schier (D - Sammamish)

Just adding Redmond puts the seat pretty firmly in the Lean D category. Adding Bellevue would make it much more safer but Adam Smith lives in Bellevue and I didn't want to split the city. However, I expect the commission to not be so squeamish - and a very clean cut of Bellevue can be made by dividing the city along I-90. Moves from R+0 to D+4.

WA-09 (Cyan) - Adam Smith (D - Bellevue)

Contains both Smith's residence in Bellevue and his political base in the working class areas between Seattle and Tacoma. In addition, despite dropping it's Seattle arm this district is still majority-minority. It's pretty unlikely to perform as such considering the strong white plurality and the vast differences between ethnic groups here (A Somali immigrant baggage handler in SeaTac probably has different political views than a 2nd-generation Indian-American software developer in Bellevue.) Dropping Seattle also probably lessens Smith's vulnerability to another primary challenge from the left. Moves from D+21 to a still very safe D+15

WA-10 (Pink) - Currently open, assumed incumbent Beth Doglio (D - Olympia)

Basically the same district. Not that D-leaning on paper (Only D+4.5) but probably only ever really contested in the most R-leaning of cycles.