What new congressional districts might we see if districts could cross state lines?

[patzer]

Imagine congressional redistricting was done on a nationwide rather than statewide level, with districts being perfectly able to cross state boundaries. What new districts do you think would be likely to crop up?

I’ll start...

Two black districts in the South Carolina/SE Georgia area. One from Augusta to Columbia, one from Savannah to Charleston.
A Native American opportunity district covering NE Arizona and NW New Mexico, including all the reservations in the area.
Colorado’s eastern plains could be combined with western Nebraska and Kansas into a large rural district.
The bits of Tallahassee currently included in Florida’s 5th could be moved to Sanford Bishop’s VRA district.
Michigan’s UP may fit best in a primarily Wisconsin-based district.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This would not be so great for GOPers in Upstate New York. Some GOP-friendly areas are inevitably going to be added to Vermont.

[Pink Panther]

That LA-NYC mega pack would be the stuff of legends

[lfromnj]

MI UP goes with Duluth for a Scandanvian VRA seat.



Trump +4, might still Tilt D at the congressional level.

[Boss_Rahm]

Delmarva jumps to mind.

[Drew]

-There would probably be a Kansas City district that straddles the border.

-Matt Gaetz may represent part of Alabama.

-There may be one or two “Driftless” districts that run along the Mississippi straddling parts of IL, IA, WI, and MN without respect to the state lines.

-Similarly, there may be some “Appalachian” districts that run across 2 or 3 different states.

-A MA district may take in some NH suburbs.

-A DC area district may contain both MD and VA suburbs, or, if DC were made a state, we could see a tri-state district centered on our nation’s Capital.

-A SW Ohio district could take in some of Cincinnati’s KY suburbs.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The apportionment population of the US after 2020 was 331,108,434. Divide that by 435 and you get 761,168.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

MI UP goes with Duluth for a Scandanvian VRA seat.



Trump +4, might still Tilt D at the congressional level.

Funny how we independently drew CDs that were almost identical.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I’d much rather have a Border region district of SC’s PeeDee (Dillon, Florence, Marion, Marlboro etc.) with Robeson, Scotland, Columbus, Anson, etc. then have the PeeDee with Horry & Georgetown.

Also Union, Carrabus with the other Charlotte suburbs in York, Chester, Lancaster. Both would be interesting swing districts

[Brittain33]

It would be interesting if a district spanned Bristol County, MA and adjacent parts of RI (Bristol, Newport). In this scenario, RI would only support 1.5 districts and the .5 would go well with this underrepresented part of MA.

Similarly, since Delaware is overpopulated for 1 district, lower Delaware + MD eastern shore + VA eastern shore might equal 1 district.

[cvparty]

I've always wanted to try trans-state districts but it seems pretty hard without any integration on apps like DRA. Main ones to come to mind:

El Paso and Las Cruces
Reno and Carson City with the west side of Tahoe
Spokane and Coeur d'Alene
Yuma and Imperial possibly
Native American areas around AZ/NM/UT

Racine-Kenosha-Waukegan
Michiana

Heavily black areas along the Mississippi
Chattanooga-GA
Myrtle Beach-Wilmington
Augusta-Aiken
Beaufort-Savannah
Coastal areas in LA, MS, AL and FL

Something fixing the weird MD/WV/VA tristate area
Easton-Phillipsburg
Bristol MA with RI

And some cursed Hawaii-Alaska-Washington district
*Upon checking again it would actually result in a HI-AK and an AK-WA district, not one containing all three

[thebeloitmoderate]

Also a Staten Island/North Central Jersey district would make sense for Italian American VRA district

[Aurelius]

I've always wanted to try trans-state districts but it seems pretty hard without any integration on apps like DRA. Main ones to come to mind:

El Paso and Las Cruces
Reno and Carson City with the west side of Tahoe
Spokane and Coeur d'Alene
Yuma and Imperial possibly
Native American areas around AZ/NM/UT

Racine-Kenosha-Waukegan
Michiana

Heavily black areas along the Mississippi
Chattanooga-GA
Myrtle Beach-Wilmington
Augusta-Aiken
Beaufort-Savannah
Coastal areas in LA, MS, AL and FL

Something fixing the weird MD/WV/VA tristate area
Easton-Phillipsburg
Bristol MA with RI

And some cursed Hawaii-Alaska-Washington district

Tahoe-Truckee is only ~80k people. Would Reno-Carson-Tahoe(+Douglas(+Lyon?)) be enough for a whole district without taking in a ton of rural NV?

Alaska would probably threaten secession if any part of it was lumped with any part of Washington state. Alaska has been a resource colony of Seattle for much of its history.

[cvparty]

I've always wanted to try trans-state districts but it seems pretty hard without any integration on apps like DRA. Main ones to come to mind:

El Paso and Las Cruces
Reno and Carson City with the west side of Tahoe
Spokane and Coeur d'Alene
Yuma and Imperial possibly
Native American areas around AZ/NM/UT

Racine-Kenosha-Waukegan
Michiana

Heavily black areas along the Mississippi
Chattanooga-GA
Myrtle Beach-Wilmington
Augusta-Aiken
Beaufort-Savannah
Coastal areas in LA, MS, AL and FL

Something fixing the weird MD/WV/VA tristate area
Easton-Phillipsburg
Bristol MA with RI

And some cursed Hawaii-Alaska-Washington district

Tahoe-Truckee is only ~80k people. Would Reno-Carson-Tahoe(+Douglas(+Lyon?)) be enough for a whole district without taking in a ton of rural NV?

Alaska would probably threaten secession if any part of it was lumped with any part of Washington state. Alaska has been a resource colony of Seattle for much of its history.

Yeah one would have to run the numbers for each of these to see if it would actually work in the context of surrounding districts, assuming equal population. I tried running the two you mentioned:

Washoe+Carson City+Douglas+Storey+Lyon is 87% of the population. CA has enough for the remainder, you just have to extend to Nevada City (which is still closer than the NV portion's farthest extent from Tahoe). Trump +3 to Biden +1


FWIW, an AK-WA district would be 87% AK, and the most logical WA portion at the border with BC would comprise 13% and would actually be slightly more Republican than AK itself, so it definitely wouldn't dominate. Not nearly as horrible as one might expect, but yeah implementing single-member districts in this fashion would neither be popular nor relatively logical lmao

[Aurelius]

I've always wanted to try trans-state districts but it seems pretty hard without any integration on apps like DRA. Main ones to come to mind:

El Paso and Las Cruces
Reno and Carson City with the west side of Tahoe
Spokane and Coeur d'Alene
Yuma and Imperial possibly
Native American areas around AZ/NM/UT

Racine-Kenosha-Waukegan
Michiana

Heavily black areas along the Mississippi
Chattanooga-GA
Myrtle Beach-Wilmington
Augusta-Aiken
Beaufort-Savannah
Coastal areas in LA, MS, AL and FL

Something fixing the weird MD/WV/VA tristate area
Easton-Phillipsburg
Bristol MA with RI

And some cursed Hawaii-Alaska-Washington district

Tahoe-Truckee is only ~80k people. Would Reno-Carson-Tahoe(+Douglas(+Lyon?)) be enough for a whole district without taking in a ton of rural NV?

Alaska would probably threaten secession if any part of it was lumped with any part of Washington state. Alaska has been a resource colony of Seattle for much of its history.

Yeah one would have to run the numbers for each of these to see if it would actually work in the context of surrounding districts, assuming equal population. I tried running the two you mentioned:

Washoe+Carson City+Douglas+Storey+Lyon is 87% of the population. CA has enough for the remainder, you just have to extend to Nevada City (which is still closer than the NV portion's farthest extent from Tahoe). Trump +3 to Biden +1


FWIW, an AK-WA district would be 87% AK, and the most logical WA portion at the border with BC would comprise 13% and would actually be slightly more Republican than AK itself, so it definitely wouldn't dominate. Not nearly as horrible as one might expect, but yeah implementing single-member districts in this fashion would neither be popular nor relatively logical lmao

How did you get DRA to do this?

[cvparty]

I've always wanted to try trans-state districts but it seems pretty hard without any integration on apps like DRA. Main ones to come to mind:

El Paso and Las Cruces
Reno and Carson City with the west side of Tahoe
Spokane and Coeur d'Alene
Yuma and Imperial possibly
Native American areas around AZ/NM/UT

Racine-Kenosha-Waukegan
Michiana

Heavily black areas along the Mississippi
Chattanooga-GA
Myrtle Beach-Wilmington
Augusta-Aiken
Beaufort-Savannah
Coastal areas in LA, MS, AL and FL

Something fixing the weird MD/WV/VA tristate area
Easton-Phillipsburg
Bristol MA with RI

And some cursed Hawaii-Alaska-Washington district

Tahoe-Truckee is only ~80k people. Would Reno-Carson-Tahoe(+Douglas(+Lyon?)) be enough for a whole district without taking in a ton of rural NV?

Alaska would probably threaten secession if any part of it was lumped with any part of Washington state. Alaska has been a resource colony of Seattle for much of its history.

Yeah one would have to run the numbers for each of these to see if it would actually work in the context of surrounding districts, assuming equal population. I tried running the two you mentioned:

Washoe+Carson City+Douglas+Storey+Lyon is 87% of the population. CA has enough for the remainder, you just have to extend to Nevada City (which is still closer than the NV portion's farthest extent from Tahoe). Trump +3 to Biden +1


FWIW, an AK-WA district would be 87% AK, and the most logical WA portion at the border with BC would comprise 13% and would actually be slightly more Republican than AK itself, so it definitely wouldn't dominate. Not nearly as horrible as one might expect, but yeah implementing single-member districts in this fashion would neither be popular nor relatively logical lmao

How did you get DRA to do this?

There’s no multi-state integration like I said, so you have to draw each portion in its respective state and make sure they all add up to 760,367 (=50 states’ pop./435). To visualize them together you just make another map and then add overlays of each state portion’s map

[Schiff for Senate]

MI UP goes with Duluth for a Scandanvian VRA seat.



Trump +4, might still Tilt D at the congressional level.

Funny how we independently drew CDs that were almost identical.

Yeah...except I'm not sure your map was made independently.

I'm just kidding of course, though it is remarkable how similar they are...at first I thought you were just analyzing his map without crediting him for making it, but then read your comment and realized the truth.

[Schiff for Senate]

Similarly, since Delaware is overpopulated for 1 district, lower Delaware + MD eastern shore + VA eastern shore might equal 1 district.

Depends on how much of the VA eastern shore you're talking about. MD's eastern shore already has a good number of people; adding Sussex County would make it even more - and coastal VA is pretty populated, so you'd probably only be able to add a few more counties.

[Sol]

Similarly, since Delaware is overpopulated for 1 district, lower Delaware + MD eastern shore + VA eastern shore might equal 1 district.

Depends on how much of the VA eastern shore you're talking about. MD's eastern shore already has a good number of people; adding Sussex County would make it even more - and coastal VA is pretty populated, so you'd probably only be able to add a few more counties.

Accomack and Northampton aren't that big!

[Schiff for Senate]

Similarly, since Delaware is overpopulated for 1 district, lower Delaware + MD eastern shore + VA eastern shore might equal 1 district.

Depends on how much of the VA eastern shore you're talking about. MD's eastern shore already has a good number of people; adding Sussex County would make it even more - and coastal VA is pretty populated, so you'd probably only be able to add a few more counties.

Accomack and Northampton aren't that big!

Oh...my mistake; I guess I'm unaware of VA's geographic terminology, but I assumed Brittan33 meant the entire VA coast, or at least parts of it. If it is just those two counties that are separate from the rest of the state (located south of MD's Eastern Shore) when he says 'Eastern Shore', then yeah, I guess that'd be about a district.

[patzer]

FWIW, an AK-WA district would be 87% AK, and the most logical WA portion at the border with BC would comprise 13% and would actually be slightly more Republican than AK itself, so it definitely wouldn't dominate. Not nearly as horrible as one might expect, but yeah implementing single-member districts in this fashion would neither be popular nor relatively logical lmao

I’d guess that if something like the thread’s premise were to possibly happen (unlikely though), Alaska and Hawaii would be granted exemptions and continue drawing districts like at present. Similarly to the UK’s dedicated island-based parliamentary constituencies.

[Unelectable Bystander]

I would actually like this idea as you guys have mentioned there’s a bunch of COI’s that would make sense but aren’t large enough on their own

[Builder Refused]

MI UP goes with Duluth for a Scandanvian VRA seat.



Trump +4, might still Tilt D at the congressional level.

How did you isolate the counties like that? I know the website but AFAIK it's just swapping counties between states but it looks like you made a new one entirely (violating closure)

[lfromnj]

MI UP goes with Duluth for a Scandanvian VRA seat.



Trump +4, might still Tilt D at the congressional level.

How did you isolate the counties like that? I know the website but AFAIK it's just swapping counties between states but it looks like you made a new one entirely (violating closure)

I add it all to Delaware and then remove Deleware

[morgieb]

The apportionment population of the US after 2020 was 331,108,434. Divide that by 435 and you get 761,168.

Be interesting to see the previous numbers here. Reckon the likes of Obama and Bill Clinton cracked 60% here (or at least high-50's).