A challenge: What's the closest district you can draw in each state?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Feel free to use state legislative districts for At-Large states.

I'll start with Minnesota:

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Illinois:

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Texas:

[Roll Roons]

NJ: I think you could do a very close district that takes parts of Morris/Hunterdon/Warren.

[Aurelius]

This is not particularly interesting in large and/or politically diverse states, especially now that you can split precincts in DRA.

In Rhode Island I was able to get 51.7% Biden, 46.3% Trump without doing anything crazy.

[Sol]

You can probably make it a perfect 50-50 but this version of NC-08 is both a pretty logical district and manages to be a Trump win over Biden of just 387 votes.

[Hope For A New Era]

I made an Idaho map with a horrible shoestrings-to-everywhere district months ago to make it as un-R as possible. I'll try to find it.

[Roll Roons]

I tried it for NJ: https://davesredistricting.org/join/67d88518-89b7-436d-b972-aaa640d7696a

This district has all of Morris County, most of Sussex and Warren and Livingston and Millburn in Essex. Biden won it by 109 votes and I was actually able to make this district without splitting any towns.

As an aside, this would be my home district!

[Meatball Ron]

In Rhode Island I was able to get 51.7% Biden, 46.3% Trump without doing anything crazy.

Link? Very curious to see

[GregTheGreat657]

I tried it for NJ: https://davesredistricting.org/join/67d88518-89b7-436d-b972-aaa640d7696a

This district has all of Morris County, most of Sussex and Warren and Livingston and Millburn in Essex. Biden won it by 109 votes and I was actually able to make this district without splitting any towns.

As an aside, this would be my home district!

I was able to draw a district that included the entirety of the three counties you mentioned, plus very close surrounding areas, to get a district Biden won by 4 votes

Link: https://davesredistricting.org/join/63be3965-9050-45c3-84b6-ca7f3e2c73f1

[GregTheGreat657]

I was able to get an exact tie in PA

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I was able to get a district that Trump won by 39 votes in TN with:

-All of Williamson and Marshall counties
-Virtually all of Maury County (one precinct with few voters in the far Southeast excluded)
-One random precinct in Southwestern Rutherford County
-A little over half of Davidson County

If you swap the one precinct of Maury for the one of Rutherford (which is probably more logical than two county splits by one precinct), it's still really close (Trump +188).

[Roll Roons]

You could probably do a very close Waukesha-Milwaukee district in WI and a very close Kent-Ottawa district in MI. I’ll try those when I’m back at my computer.

Another NJ one (Monmouth, Mercer, Ocean): https://davesredistricting.org/join/67d88518-89b7-436d-b972-aaa640d7696a

This one went to Trump by 86 votes. Despite being a Trump district, it manages to includes all of Princeton.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Virginia. Someone can probably top this though:



Voted 56.18%-43.27% for Youngkin.

[Roll Roons]

This is what I got for WI: https://davesredistricting.org/join/d1587433-8e21-4e52-8b6e-f46386750a7b

It has all of Waukesha, Wauwatosa/West Allis, some black and Hispanic parts of Milwaukee proper and the southwest corner of Washington.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I'm so close to getting five districts in TN that are tied (within 50 votes), but I can only get the fifth (a hideous Murfreesboro-Chattanooga-Knoxville snake) to about Trump +2.  Maybe if I went all in on extreme levels of split precincts along the connection portions of the snake?

(I only split precincts right at the end of a district to get the population just right, and even then, it was just one or two precincts.  Just taking empty interstate blocks feels like cheating.)

[Roll Roons]

In a state renowned for close elections, it's no surprise that I could get at least two very close districts in Florida. https://davesredistricting.org/join/43a33bce-33a5-4e79-8a7c-ee94544ec70d

There's a seat entirely within Pinellas County that voted for Biden by 820 votes and there's a seat in Central Florida that has all of Seminole, part of Volusia (Deltona and DeLand) and the UCF campus in Orange that would have gone for Trump by 157.

You could probably also make very close districts entirely within Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Duval.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A very close district could probably be drawn in Texas, taking in parts of Collin, Richardson (both Dallas and Collin parts), and then parts of Dallas.