Geographic advantage by state

[ProgressiveModerate]

These are the states I've been able to calculate so far because they have data on DRA. For the most part it makes sense; OH and LA surprise me; I think the Dem advantage is a result of Dem areas generally having lower turnout in both states. Also this is just one method of calculating it's an imperfect science

[Vosem]

What does "geographic advantage" mean here? OH strikes me as a classic example of a Midwestern state where Democrats are at a disadvantage because they're all packed in uber-D cities while a less-R countryside controls most of the seats, which are apportioned geographically. The most triumphant example of this is IL, though.

[ProgressiveModerate]

What does "geographic advantage" mean here? OH strikes me as a classic example of a Midwestern state where Democrats are at a disadvantage because they're all packed in uber-D cities while a less-R countryside controls most of the seats, which are apportioned geographically. The most triumphant example of this is IL, though.

"Geographic advantage" is defined as how far off you'd expect a compact map in a given state to be from a partisanship standpoint from what you'd expect based on the state's overall partisanship.

This is based on 3 things:

- How "packed" voters are (I.e in Illinois Democrats are packed into Chicago)
- How high turnout is (I.e. Dallas and Houston having low turnout means Dems can win safe seats with fewer voters)
- Overall geography

I think the reason why Ohio ended up being a wash is because while Democrats are pretty "packed" compared to most states, a lot of Dem areas had low turnout, and Republicans are also pretty packed at this point. I think OH's R advantage is overstated because of people showing R gerrymanders on congressional districts and the fact that a supermajority in the OH legistlature is 3/5ths (according to my calculations a compact OH map would on average narrowly give Trump a supermajority of seats). 15 seats is quite an unfortunate number of seats for Dems in OH since it allows *just* enough for one Cleveland sink, 1 Columbus sink, and just enough for Cinci to be cracked. Had OH kept it's 16th district, it'd be hard to gerrymander Cinci while complying with the redistricting rules, and Cleveland would get significantly more difficult.

OH is an R+8 state which according to my model should yield maps where the GOP wins 3/5ths if the seats and the DEMS win the other 2/5ths. Under a fair OH redistrocying map, you’d give Cinci a sink, Columbus metro would get 2, Toledo would prolly get a narrow Dem sink, and Ne OH would get 2 Dem seats. That’s 6/15 or 2/5ths of seats that lean D. The marginal Toledo seat is cancelled out by a marginal Dayton seat. I think we sometimes forget just how red OH is now that it skews our perspective a bit of what a “fair map” is.

IL actually wasn't as bad for Dems as I expected, I think in large part because of how extensive the suburbs are and how Cook County turnout is poor.

[Non Swing Voter]

Seems like Democrats should not have a geographic advantage in most places as they are winning massive suburban populations by competitive numbers while Republicans are getting ridiculous margins in a lot of rural places.  The state where that really strikes me to be the case is Nevada where Dems can just win Clark county by 10-15 points and win the entire state even though Republicans are getting absurd margins most everywhere else.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Seems like Democrats should not have a geographic advantage in most places as they are winning massive suburban populations by competitive numbers while Republicans are getting ridiculous margins in a lot of rural places.  The state where that really strikes me to be the case is Nevada where Dems can just win Clark county by 10-15 points and win the entire state even though Republicans are getting absurd margins most everywhere else.

Lol NV geography is absolutely terrible for the GOP. Like a “default” compact map should in theory actually give Joe Biden a supermajority of seats (I believe he narrowly won a supermajority of seats in thin chambers in 2020). I expect Dems will try and draw the maps so they can reliably hold a supermajority of seats.

The other interesting one is Texas. On a GOP gerrymander, it’s really hard to push Republicans below about 65 House seats, with a few marginal seats after that. This likely will be the reason Dems will continue to have a viable chance of flipping the Texas State House this decade. I suspect the GOP will aim to make the tipping point house seat as red as possible, but I suspect the gerrymander will all fall at once sorta like it did in 2018.

[GregTheGreat657]

You should also look into Massachusetts’ political geography. It is awful for the GOP. It’s a deep blue state, but with the amount of seats it has (9) you would think it would be possible to draw a Republican leaning seat without having to gerrymander.

Source: I use DRA frequently.

[ProgressiveModerate]

You should also look into Massachusetts’ political geography. It is awful for the GOP. It’s a deep blue state, but with the amount of seats it has (9) you would think it would be possible to draw a Republican leaning seat without having to gerrymander.

Source: I use DRA frequently.

Surprisingly, according to my calculations, the D advantage in MA in 2016 is only 12.41; this likely grew significantly in 2020 though as there were a ton of Trump-Biden precincts.

I think the fact that Trump precincts only voted Trump + 8 on average pulled the score down

[RI]

Another way to think of natural geographic advantage is to ask what percent of a party's votes come in precincts won by the other party and comparing that against the popular vote margin. Here's what that looks like using the 2020 Presidential vote:

State	R-Waste	D-Waste	Diff Rel. to PV
South Dakota	8.7%	76.9%	R +42.0%
West Virginia	5.8%	73.9%	R +35.0%
North Dakota	8.6%	75.6%	R +33.6%
Kentucky	9.8%	66.6%	R +30.9%
Idaho	9.2%	66.5%	R +26.6%
South Carolina	17.6%	53.1%	R +23.8%
Indiana	15.8%	55.4%	R +23.7%
Oklahoma	9.5%	66.2%	R +23.6%
Wyoming	5.9%	72.0%	R +22.7%
Montana	17.0%	54.4%	R +21.0%
Arkansas	10.5%	58.8%	R +20.7%
Tennessee	11.5%	54.2%	R +19.5%
Utah	15.7%	55.3%	R +19.4%
Missouri	16.0%	48.9%	R +17.5%
Ohio	21.2%	46.3%	R +17.1%
Wisconsin	28.0%	43.3%	R +16.0%
Michigan	28.9%	40.8%	R +14.7%
Alabama	9.6%	49.4%	R +14.3%
Florida	28.3%	45.5%	R +13.8%
Nebraska	19.8%	52.6%	R +13.7%
Arizona	31.7%	42.3%	R +10.9%
Iowa	28.3%	46.6%	R +10.1%
Kansas	23.3%	47.7%	R +9.8%
Mississippi	14.3%	39.9%	R +9.1%
Georgia	24.2%	32.4%	R +8.3%
Louisiana	10.8%	37.3%	R +7.9%
North Carolina	28.6%	36.7%	R +6.8%
Pennsylvania	30.7%	36.2%	R +6.7%
Alaska	30.1%	36.2%	R +3.0%
New York	44.0%	22.0%	R +1.1%
Maryland	48.3%	15.2%	R +0.1%
Texas	29.8%	34.2%	D +1.2%
Virginia	39.3%	25.7%	D +3.5%
Minnesota	40.1%	29.1%	D +3.9%
Oregon	43.9%	23.4%	D +4.4%
New Hampshire	47.8%	35.9%	D +4.5%
Maine	45.3%	31.6%	D +4.6%
Illinois	44.6%	21.6%	D +6.1%
Colorado	48.1%	23.5%	D +11.1%
Washington	51.3%	20.9%	D +11.2%
Nevada	46.8%	31.2%	D +13.2%
District of Columbia	100%	0%	D +13.2%
New Jersey	55.0%	23.3%	D +15.8%
New Mexico	50.2%	20.4%	D +19.1%
Delaware	57.9%	18.4%	D +20.6%
California	67.5%	12.1%	D +26.2%
Rhode Island	72.2%	15.2%	D +36.2%
Connecticut	73.2%	13.9%	D +39.3%
Vermont	86.5%	5.2%	D +45.9%
Massachusetts	86.6%	5.9%	D +47.3%
Hawaii	94.9%	2.5%	D +62.9%

[ProgressiveModerate]

Another way to think of natural geographic advantage is to ask what percent of a party's votes come in precincts won by the other party and comparing that against the popular vote margin. Here's what that looks like using the 2020 Presidential vote:

Good point. My model sorta indirectly accounts for this by seeing how packed voters are in their own precincts which inherently has an inverse relationship with how spread out they are in the other party's territory. Based upon your list, it seems like our methodologies *mostly* agree when using this criteria.