Neutral map series

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Indiana

Drew this up in fifteen minutes. I sought to draw whole-county CDs and the map pretty much fell in place. I've never drawn a "leftovers from Marion" CD with these exact borders, of course. I also did was not necessarily an unavoidable county split of Hancock County. Nonetheless, I feel satisfied with this. I have six reasonably compact whole-county CDs. In fact, this map has higher compactness ratings than any other map in this series before. Thank you, Indiana!

There's 2 Biden seats and 7 Trump seats. One of each of them is marginal - IN-01 on the Biden side, which was within range of possibly going R this year, and IN-05 on the Trump side, which might have seen Spartz go down in defeat.

IN-01 (Hammond): 61W, 19B, 17H; 51-48 Biden, D+1
IN-02 (South Bend): 74W, 12H, 10B; 57-41 Trump, R+11
IN-03 (Fort Wayne): 80W; 63-35 Trump, R+18
IN-04 (Lafayette): 80W; 62-35 Trump, R+17
IN-05 (Indianapolis): 70W, 17H; 50-49 Trump, R+4
IN-06 (Muncie): 89W; 69-29 Trump, R+23
IN-07 (Indianapolis): 53W, 27B, 13H; 63-35 Biden, D+11
IN-08 (Evansville): 88W; 66-33 Trump, R+19
IN-09 (Bloomington): 85W; 61-37 Trump, R+15

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I'm doing FL at the moment. I've Been Working on the Railroad is playing, with me doing lines in Miami-Dade, an area that developed because of an heiress's enterprising efforts to build a railroad down the coast of Florida.
#historicalfactswithTim #ironic

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Florida

This was surprisingly easy. I drew with compact county clusters when possible and this helped me lower the overall number of county splits from where it otherwise would be.

Starting in the north of Florida, there is FL-01 and FL-02. I was not going to draw the Tallahasee-Jacksonville CD...too incompact, and kind of ugly anyway. Not to mention, kind of unnecessary to begin with. I did not draw an all-in-Duval CD either though, it would make the Duval leftovers CD kind of awkward. I try to draw even the minority seats compact. I put basically all the black areas in Duval in FL-05 already, anyhow...

In Orlando, I was heavily influenced by the discovery that Osceola, Orange, and Seminole counties were a mere ten thousand of people away from being able to form three seats exactly on quota. I previously had leftovers from Saint Johns County combined with Volusia, Flagler, and all but 10k of Putnam forming a CD (this part being in FL-03), and realized I could unify Putnam and take enough people out of Volusia and thus cut out a county split. This in turn locked in something pretty much on par with the post-2015 court map, though I tried hard to have Orlando city mostly within FL-10. One difference was that Indian River and Brevard counties together could make a whole-county CD, meaning that the easternmost parts of Orange County had to go in FL-09.

There was some difficulty working out what to do in North-central FL, but I gave up on having a district crossing the Pasco-Pinellas border when I learned that Polk County could make it its deficit of 55k from quota by taking from Lake County, leaving just enough people, between FL-15 and FL-03 and the Hillsborough-Pinellas border, to have two more seats. Pasco and Hernando were just about 6k or so short and so I ultimately decided to take the needed people mostly from Bushnell, FL (a name I associate binoculars because my Papa gave me one as a gift many years ago).

Hillsborough and Pinellas presented me with my first essentially mandatory municipal big city split in a city that had less people than quota. Tampa is a sprawling municipality that runs all the way to the Pasco County border. About 35-40% of Tampa is in FL-14, and the rest is in FL-16. Both these districts voted for Biden, but the former is way more marginal, and the latter is a minority access seat. The border between FL-16 and FL-17 does not split any municipalities.

The Southwestern coast of FL saw me draw seats centered and limited to coastal counties. Lee County was, unfortunately, too far away from quota to anchor or be counterminous with a whole-county CD. FL-16's population is about a third from the non-coastal Southern Florida counties, a sixth from Collier County, and about half from Lee County. I paired Collier with Miami-Dade, just like the post-2015 court map, to avoid the creation of a 90% Latino district in Western Miami-Dade. (I reserve the right to avoid packing, even if total avoidance of it is not part of the criteria)

FL-20, the successor to 2013-2023 FL-18, avoids municipalities with more Blacks and takes the shape it does to make FL-21 a more compact minority seat. Boynton Beach is the only municipality in Palm Beach County split, and the reason is that FL-21 was already getting rather too White for my taste to begin with. Municipal integrity already forced it to eat up the heavily White precincts along the cost. The leftovers from Palm Beach County were paired with relatively more White parts of Broward.

In Broward, I was able to draw a Black plurality seat in the form of a FL-23 running from Hillsboro Beach to the Sunrise-Weston border. Fort Lauderdale ends up being split for compactness reasons and also because it has many precincts FL-23 absolutely needs. FL-24 takes in all of Broward lest the parts in FL-23 and FL-22, except for some 79k that have to go in another district. I detached heavily Black precincts from FL-24 and put it in Miami-Dade-based FL-25. In the process, I created a Latino-plurality CD entirely within Broward.

In Miami-Dade, only two municipalities are split: The Crossings, and Miami. There are 3 71-73% Latino CDs. Miami was split to give FL-25 the heavily Black precincts, because it felt difficult to draw without creating a municipal split somewhere and because I wanted to avoid having Miami Beach being an uncompact appendage in the district. The map in Miami-Dade pretty much drew itself.

All in all, there are 13 Biden seats and 15 Trump seats. DeSants probably would have won more seats here than in his own gerrymander, but that is hard to say without 2022 data being added for FL. In 2018, this map tied 14-14 in both the Governor and Senate races.

FL-01 (Pensacola): 70W, 15B; 65-33 Trump, R+20
FL-02 (Tallahassee): 63W, 25B; 55-44 Trump, R+7
FL-03 (Gainesville): 66W, 17B, 11H; 58-41 Trump, R+10
FL-04 (Jacksonville): 70W, 11B, 10H; 62-37 Trump, R+16
FL-05 (Jacksonville): 47W, 37B, 11H; 52-47 Biden, EVEN
FL-06 (Palm Coast): 70W, 14H, 12B; 59-40 Trump, R+12
FL-07 (Alafaya): 54W, 25H, 14B; 53-46 Biden, D+2
FL-08 (Deltona): 72W, 12H, 11B; 58-41 Trump, R+11
FL-09 (Kissimmee): 53H, 28W, 14B; 59-40 Biden, D+11
FL-10 (Orlando): 38W, 28B, 26H; 62-37 Biden, D+11
FL-11 (The Villages): 74W, 12H, 10B; 64-35 Trump, R+17
FL-12 (Spring Hill): 71W, 16H; 61-38 Trump, R+14
FL-13 (St. Petersburg): 69W, 13H, 11H; 51-48 Biden, EVEN
FL-14 (Tampa): 54W, 26H, 12B; 50-48 Biden, EVEN
FL-15 (Lakeland): 54W, 26H, 17B; 56-43 Trump, R+8
FL-16 (Tampa): 45W, 28H, 23B; 54-45 Biden, D+3
FL-17 (Brandonton): 69W, 17H; 55-44 Trump, R+7
FL-18 (Cape Coral): 74W, 15H; 61-38 Trump, R+13
FL-19 (Lehigh Acres): 61W, 27H; 62-37 Trump, R+14
FL-20 (Port St. Lucie): 63W, 18H, 14B; 55-45 Trump, R+7
FL-21 (West Palm Beach): 37W, 31H, 28B; 61-38 Biden, D+11
FL-22 (Boca Raton): 57W, 19H, 16B; 58-41 Biden, D+8
FL-23 (Pampano Beach): 43B, 30W, 24H; 70-29 Biden, D+20
FL-24 (Pembroke Pines): 41H, 36W, 17B; 59-41 Biden, D+10
FL-25 (Miami Gardens): 44B, 39H, 17W; 74-25 Biden, D+27
FL-26 (Homestead): 71H, 16W, 12B; 52-47 Trump, D+2
FL-27 (Hialeah): 72W, 22H; 61-39 Trump, R+8
FL-28 (Miami): 73H, 17W; 51-49 Biden, D+4

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Massachusetts

This was pretty simple. I had Brookline placed in with Boston because, between a hit to compactness or splitting a town, I'd rather choose neither. Brookline is part of Lincoln County, but since it is disconnected, I place it with any of its neighbors as I want without it counting as a split. I do the same with the town of Cohasset, also disconnected from the rest of Lincoln County; it went with MA-09, despite most of Lincoln County being in MA-04.

The leftovers from the non-disconnected part of Lincoln were thrown in with all of Bristol County and the towns of Lakeville, Rochester, Mattapoisett in Plymouth County. In turn, this informed the shape of MA-09.

Every district on the map is safely Democratic in anything but the biggest Atlas blue tsunami.

MA-01 (Springfield): 69W, 18H; 64-34 Biden, D+14
MA-02 (Worcester): 71W, 14H; 57-40 Biden, D+6
MA-03 (Lowell): 69W, 12A; 65-33 Biden, D+13
MA-04 (Quincy): 67W, 16A; 72-26 Biden, D+20
MA-05 (Cambridge): 64W, 13A, 11H; 72-26 Biden, D+21
MA-06 (Lynn): 66W, 23H; 64-34 Biden, D+12
MA-07 (Boston): 45W, 23B, 20H, 13A; 83-15 Biden, D+33
MA-08 (New Bedford): 79W; 56-41 Biden, D+6
MA-09 (Brockton): 79W, 10B; 60-38 Biden, D+7

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Amazing how bad even the nicest-looking MD map scores in DRA for compactness. The current MD map gets a score of 35, my compactness-mindful map gets a score of 50. How bad did the 2013-2023 one get? 10? 20? 25?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maryland

This was not too hard. I took what steps I felt I had to do to reduce county splits and form compact districts. Montgomery County is the only jurisdiction to have one district entirely within its borders. While I could have done the same in Prince George's, I opted against it to avoid packing Blacks. In general, all but one district on this map voted for Joe Biden. This is quite close to the map MD actually got.

MD-01 (Bel Air South): 71W, 18B; 56-42 Trump, R+11
MD-02 (Towson): 58W, 28B; 60-38 Biden, D+7
MD-03 (Columbia): 54W, 22H, 14A; 63-35 Biden, D+10
MD-04 (Bowie): 41B, 29W, 24H; 77-21 Biden, D+27
MD-05 (Suitland): 57B, 30W; 74-24 Biden, D+20
MD-06 (Germantown): 62W, 14B, 12H, 11A; 54-44 Biden, D+1
MD-07 (Baltimore): 53B, 34W; 78-20 Biden, D+24
MD-08 (Silver Spring): 41W, 22H, 21B, 16A; 82-16 Biden, D+32

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Tennessee

There are two whole-county CDs and six county nesting groups I ended up with. Nashville was the most undecided area for me, and I split it up in a compactness-minded way. The lines in Shelby County reflect my interest in municipal integrity; all of Memphis sits in TN-09. There are 7 Trump seats and 2 Biden ones. TN-05 and TN-04 are perhaps marginal, but no other seats on the map have any real chance of flipping whatsoever.

TN-01 (Johnson City): 89W; 77-22 Trump, R+30
TN-02 (Knoxville): 81W; 62-37 Trump, R+17
TN-03 (Chattanooga): 79W, 11B; 66-32 Trump, R+20
TN-04 (Nashville): 64W, 16B, 12H; 54-44 Trump, R+9
TN-05 (Nashville): 66W, 20B; 53-44 Biden, D+2
TN-06 (Gallatin): 86W; 75-24 Trump, R+28
TN-07 (Clarkville): 77W, 12B; 70-28 Trump, R+23
TN-08 (Jackson): 69W, 23B; 67-32 Trump, R+20
TN-09 (Memphis): 58B, 29W; 70-28 Biden, D+20

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Running count of states done and Biden-Trump seat totals.
Midwest: 5/10 (14/32)
Northeast: 6/8 (41/17)
South: 10/15 (39/56)
West: 4/11 (11/12)
Nationwide: 25/44 (105/117)

With TN being done, the number of seats done nationwide has passed into majority territory.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Tennessee

There are two whole-county CDs and six county nesting groups I ended up with. Nashville was the most undecided area for me, and I split it up in a compactness-minded way. The lines in Shelby County reflect my interest in municipal integrity; all of Memphis sits in TN-09. There are 7 Trump seats and 2 Biden ones. TN-05 and TN-04 are perhaps marginal, but no other seats on the map have any real chance of flipping whatsoever.

TN-01 (Johnson City): 89W; 77-22 Trump, R+30
TN-02 (Knoxville): 81W; 62-37 Trump, R+17
TN-03 (Chattanooga): 79W, 11B; 66-32 Trump, R+20
TN-04 (Nashville): 64W, 16B, 12H; 54-44 Trump, R+9
TN-05 (Nashville): 66W, 20B; 53-44 Biden, D+2
TN-06 (Gallatin): 86W; 75-24 Trump, R+28
TN-07 (Clarkville): 77W, 12B; 70-28 Trump, R+23
TN-08 (Jackson): 69W, 23B; 67-32 Trump, R+20
TN-09 (Memphis): 58B, 29W; 70-28 Biden, D+20

DRA link

The Nashville configuration is a bit awkward.  The most "neutral" idea would probably be leaving Davidson County whole.  Since it's just under 1 CD, then you would add purple La Vergne from Northwestern Rutherford County.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No state east of Mississippi thus far uncompleted borders each other (on land). The next states will all be west of the Mississippi until this is also true to the western half of the country as well.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Tennessee

There are two whole-county CDs and six county nesting groups I ended up with. Nashville was the most undecided area for me, and I split it up in a compactness-minded way. The lines in Shelby County reflect my interest in municipal integrity; all of Memphis sits in TN-09. There are 7 Trump seats and 2 Biden ones. TN-05 and TN-04 are perhaps marginal, but no other seats on the map have any real chance of flipping whatsoever.

TN-01 (Johnson City): 89W; 77-22 Trump, R+30
TN-02 (Knoxville): 81W; 62-37 Trump, R+17
TN-03 (Chattanooga): 79W, 11B; 66-32 Trump, R+20
TN-04 (Nashville): 64W, 16B, 12H; 54-44 Trump, R+9
TN-05 (Nashville): 66W, 20B; 53-44 Biden, D+2
TN-06 (Gallatin): 86W; 75-24 Trump, R+28
TN-07 (Clarkville): 77W, 12B; 70-28 Trump, R+23
TN-08 (Jackson): 69W, 23B; 67-32 Trump, R+20
TN-09 (Memphis): 58B, 29W; 70-28 Biden, D+20

DRA link

The Nashville configuration is a bit awkward.  The most "neutral" idea would probably be leaving Davidson County whole.  Since it's just under 1 CD, then you would add purple La Vergne from Northwestern Rutherford County.

Would it be possible to do this without increasing county splits in the overall map? I did try to keep Davidson County whole, but I found it hard to draw compact CDs in suburban Nashville more generally.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Update: I have found a new way to draw Middle TN that even gets rid of a county split on net and improves both splitting and compactness. The TN map is changing.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Tennessee (redone)

There are now three whole-county CDs, up from two, and they now cover almost half of the state's area. Every CD based in Middle Tennessee has changed, and the unifying of Sumner County has made Hendersonville the largest municipality within TN-06.

TN-01* (Johnson City): 89W; 77-22 Trump, R+30
TN-02* (Knoxville): 81W; 62-37 Trump, R+17
TN-03* (Chattanooga): 79W, 11B; 66-32 Trump, R+20
TN-04 (Murfreesboro): 76W, 11B; 68-30 Trump, R+22
TN-05 (Nashville): 54W, 26B, 14H; 64-33 Biden, D+13
TN-06 (Hendersonville): 85W; 75-24 Trump, R+28
TN-07 (Clarkville): 77W, 10B; 65-33 Trump, R+20
TN-08* (Jackson): 69W, 23B; 67-32 Trump, R+20
TN-09* (Memphis): 58B, 29W; 70-28 Biden, D+20
*=unchanged

Thanks to ExtremeRepublican for bringing the potential for improvement to my attention.

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Louisiana

A lot of the districts in the current LA map are so incompact and split so many parishes as to inherently guarantee a map of LA under this criteria practically unrecognizable. There are only two county splits. The new map does get rid of the AA-majority LA-02 in its current form. The closest equivalent is the compact LA-02 centered on New Orleans and confined to Orleans and Jefferson parishes. This district is barely plurality black, but the black candidate of choice should prevail here extremely easily.

Flanking the small, urban LA-02 on the north is the whole-county LA-01, retaining a majority of its population though it still no longer crosses the Pontcharian into the New Orleans suburbs. Flanking it on the south is LA-03, which runs along almost the entire Gulf Coast. It is very much an Acadiana district, but takes on a shape designed to suit other districts first and foremost. It takes the disconnected southern chunk of St. Martin County, a case of me taking advantage of the rules to suit my purposes.

There are no black majority seats on the map. To compensate, I redrew LA-06 as a second black seat, though I did not seriously compromise overall compactness and create more splits, just to raise its black %. As a Biden-plurality, white-plurality CD, it would pretty likely not be solid D, but it would help make up for the loss of the absolute certainty that the old swiggly LA-02 provided. The city of Lafayette is pretty much whole in LA-06, though not entirely in practice, given the city's rather awkward municipal boundaries. Over half of the new LA-06's population comes from either the city of Lafayette or the city of Baton Rouge.

LA-05 retains a tail protruding east, but it is now whole-county and stops at the Tangipahoa-St. Helena border. Both LA-05 and LA-04 are composed of whole parishes only, an arrangement that is somewhat incompact but very helpful for parish integrity.

There are 4 Trump and 2 Biden seats, but one of the Biden seats are very marginal and their status as a Biden district at all comes from an effort on my part to not diminish minority representation.

LA-01 (Prairieville): 67W, 22B; 69-30 Trump, R+22
LA-02 (New Orleans): 42B, 40W, 14H; 63-35 Biden, D+12
LA-03 (Houma): 64W, 24B; 71-27 Trump, R+24
LA-04 (Shreveport): 57W, 34B; 62-37 Trump, R+14
LA-05 (Monroe): 59W, 34B; 65-33 Trump, R+18
LA-06 (Baton Rouge): 48W, 43B; 50-49 Biden, R+2

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nebraska

I decided to not split any counties. NE-02 now extends north and west. NE-01 is a boxlike creation taking in most of the state's power centers. NE-03, like as before, is the rural, bombproof R stronghold. Not a lot to say here. Apologies for the fumble in the district numbering - I only discovered it in the time of posting and the taking of the picture.

NE-01 (Lincoln): 81W; 53-44 Trump, R+8
NE-02 (Omaha): 67W, 14B, 12H; 52-46 Biden, R+1
NE-03 (Grand Island): 80W, 14H; 76-22 Trump, R+30

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

New Mexico

Goals here were simple: split zero counties and hopefully no reservations and municipalities, and have compact districts. Not too much to dwell on here, except that I previously drew NM-01 to go north from Bernalillo instead of east and south, leaving it enveloped by NM-03 on all sides. I discarded this because it created hard-to-avoid municipal splits. Just like the pre-2023 map, there is one Biden and one Trump seat. NM-03 was drawn as something of a "Native influence" seat and it checks out...25.3% of its population is Native American/American Indian, giving it likely the highest such percentage in the country. Every district has a Latino plurality.

NM-01 (Albuquerque): 49H, 39W; 60-37 Biden, D+9
NM-02 (Las Cruces): 56H, 37W; 56-42 Trump, R+8
NM-03 (Rio Rancho): 38H, 35W, 25N; 58-40 Biden, D+8

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Colorado

It would have been easy to draw a whole-county CD in Denver, and it is exactly what is needed for a district if you include all the disconnected chunks of other counties there as well. But this whole-county CD would have been horridly uncompact and I had problems with what to do with the counties directly around Denver. Ultimately Denver is split in 3, with CO-06 taking SW Denver, a new CO-08 taking all of Arapahoe County and Latino parts of Denver County, and CO-01 moving much farther into Jefferson County. To reach quota, the Jefferson leftovers CD (CO-07) took in Broomfield County and Boulder County as well. The area encompassed by these four seats has exactly half of the state's population and roughly 5-6% of its land area.

A large CO-03 has been drawn, sprawling across the Rocky Mountain. High share of the state's land area in this seat - maybe even a majority. Boebert very likely loses this in 2022. It borders three states (four if you count Arizona), and almost borders another (Oklahoma).  CO-05 has the inevitable El Paso CD, enveloped on all sides by CO-04. CO-04, in turn, takes in a whole host of areas in the eastern half of the state, including Denver suburbs. Unfortunately, a county split in NW Colorado is inevitable.

There are 4 Trump and 4 Biden seats. However, all 4 Biden seats are rock-solid, while half of the Trump seats are extremely marginal. In a year like 2022, Ds probably nab 6-2.

CO-01 (Denver): 64W, 23H; 71-27 Biden, D+19
CO-02 (Fort Collins): 71W, 21H; 49-48 Trump, R+4
CO-03 (Grand Junction): 74W, 19H; 51-47 Trump, R+6
CO-04 (Pueblo): 70W, 20H; 56-41 Trump, R+11
CO-05 (Colorado Springs):66W, 18H; 53-43 Trump, R+10
CO-06 (Aurora): 57W, 20H, 13B; 62-35 Biden, D+10
CO-07 (Arvada): 76W, 14H; 67-31 Biden, D+15
CO-08 (Denver): 44W, 40H; 64-33 Biden, D+13

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No unfinished states have any land border with each other now.

Midwest: 6/10 (15/34)
Northeast: 6/8 (41/17)
South: 11/15 (41/60)
West: 6/11 (17/17)
Nationwide: 29/44 (114/128)

The more states are done, a larger and larger share of the thus-far-undone seats are in CA, which biases the total in the favor of Republicans.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

North Carolina (redone)
This was based off a map from Palandio that I toyed with a lot. In recognition of this, I've attached his name to the DRA map title.

Mecklenburg is now split in three as opposed to two. However, Charlotte itself is not split in three. One huge change is that now there is a dedicated Sandhills seat. There is a raft of inevitable county splits in the Research Triangle area, but they are done in compact ways, and no major cities in the area are split. Not all the seats in Eastern NC are particularly compact, but NC-07, the least compact seat there, is whole-county and in fact makes almost all the seats in the region better either directly or indirectly. "For the benefit of the overall map" is why I tolerated NC-09 in its incompactness and awkwardness in the previous map, and that's also why I kept NC-07 in its form here.

There are 3 whole-county CDs, curiously all in corners of the state. There are 6 Biden and 8 Trump seats, but in effect, this is not a huge change; a marginal Biden seat turned into a marginal Trump seat, which does not actually change much in the grand scheme of things.

Every seat in the state is changed, even NC-01, which trades Gates County to NC-03 in return for Washington County.

NC-01 (Greenville): 47W, 42B; 53-46 Biden, D+3
NC-02 (Raleigh): 55W, 26B, 13H; 63-35 Biden, D+12
NC-03 (Goldsboro): 61W, 24B, 12H; 60-39 Trump, R+12
NC-04 (Durham): 53W, 27B, 13H; 66-32 Biden, D+16
NC-05 (Winston-Salem): 64W, 20B, 12H; 56-43 Trump, R+9
NC-06 (Greensboro): 55W, 29B, 10H; 51-48 Biden, EVEN
NC-07 (Wilmington): 72W, 14B; 59-40 Trump, R+12
NC-08 (Charlotte): 65W, 15B, 11H; 55-44 Trump, R+10
NC-09 (Fayetteville): 44W, 34B, 11N, 10H; 50-49 Trump, R+1
NC-10 (Mooresville): 81W; 70-29 Trump, R+23
NC-11 (Asheville): 82W; 54-44 Trump, R+8
NC-12 (Charlotte): 41B, 34W, 18H; 75-24 Biden, D+24
NC-13 (Cary): 61W, 14B, 12H, 11A; 53-45 Biden, EVEN
NC-14 (Gastonia): 71W, 15B; 63-36 Trump, R+16
NC-17 (Movie Theather): N/A

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

New Jersey

The geography of the population in NJ does not seem to lend itself to county split reduction. The best that I felt could be done was drawing compact seats and having zero mathematically unnecessary county splits. I also sought to keep towns whole whenever practical and even tolerated some incompactness to this end.

This led me to draw NJ-02 more into Gloucester and less into Ocean and Burlington, as I did not want to split Ocean and Burlington twice and felt that it would be compact if the CD avoided those two counties altogether. NJ-01 was drawn in a way to suit NJ-02 and the overall map's needs. I know some will probably disagree with how I drew the Pine Barrens, but I'm not open to reorienting the CDs to keep Ocean and Burlington separate here, at least on the grounds that it's inherently more box-like to pair them than to keep them separate.

I originally had NJ-07 as just Somerset County and as much of Middlesex County as needed, but I decided against this because it was hard to draw full towns under this arrangement. This also had an additional benefit of forcing the northern half of Passaic County in with Morris. It was obvious to then draw NJ-05 as a full-Bergen CD and then draw a Latino CD from the leftovers of Passaic and Bergen and parts of Hudson County.

The leftovers from Hudson were used to draw a minority coalition seat in the form of the new NJ-09. It split Newark as a matter of avoiding horridly uncompact lines. This in turn dictated the shape of NJ-10, which splits no towns except Newark. The leftovers from Union County and Middlesex County formed the new NJ-12.

There are 8 Biden seats and 4 Trump seats. However, two of the Trump seats are within single digits, while none of the Biden seats are. Only two municipalities are split - Union City and Newark. In both cases, they served to either increase compactness or avert a county split, or both. Despite two-thirds of its population sitting within NJ-09, Newark continues to be the most populous municipality within NJ-10.

NJ-01 (Camden): 59W, 19B, 15H; 63-36 Biden, D+12
NJ-02 (Vineland): 62W, 17H, 15B; 50-49 Trump, R+2
NJ-03 (Toms River): 74W, 12B, 10H; 53-46 Trump, R+7
NJ-04 (Hamilton Township): 50W, 19A, 16H, 14B; 61-38 Biden, D+9
NJ-05 (Hackensack): 55W, 20H, 17A; 58-41 Biden, D+6
NJ-06 (Lakewood Township): 73W, 13H; 54-45 Trump, R+7
NJ-07 (Franklin Township): 54W, 18H, 17A, 10B; 56-43 Biden, D+3
NJ-08 (Paterson): 50H, 30W, 11B, 11A; 62-37 Biden, D+13
NJ-09 (Jersey City): 37H, 27W, 21B, 16A; 75-24 Biden, D+26
NJ-10 (Newark): 42B, 34H, 16H; 76-23 Biden, D+25
NJ-11 (Parsippany-Troy Hills Township): 71W, 14H, 10A; 50-48 Trump, R+5
NJ-12 (Elizabeth): 34H, 33W, 17B, 16A; 64-35 Biden, D+14

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

South Carolina

I had to redo this three times before I finally got something I liked. Ultimately, I have a mix of whole-county CDs in the far north and compactness-driven ones elsewhere. The municipality of North Charleston is split, but I decided to take this over an additional county split and/or more incompact borders. There are 3 Biden seats and 4 Trump seats, but one of the Biden seats serves as the state's only real swing district.

SC-01 (Charleston): 60W, 27B; 51-47 Biden, R+1
SC-02 (Columbia): 53W, 37B; 53-45 Biden, D+2
SC-03 (Anderson): 69W, 21B; 65-33 Trump, R+19
SC-04 (Greenville): 70W, 16B; 63-36 Trump, R+17
SC-05 (Spartanburg): 66W, 21B; 62-37 Trump, R+15
SC-06 (Sumter): 50B, 44W; 54-44 Biden, D+4
SC-07 (Mount Pleasant): 71W, 17B; 60-39 Trump, R+14

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

 
Illinois

Outside of Chicagoland, I drew four whole-county CDs, generally trying to get box-like districts. I revived the old IL-16, running it as far east as McHenry. It holds all of this county except for Nunda Township, which was paired with Lake County in order to bring its district to quota (I ended up being able to have no districts cross the border of Cook County). Nunda Township being removed also is necessary as if IL-16 had all of McHenry, it would be over quota.

To compensate for Nunda Township being placed in IL-10, IL-16 gets Franklin, Genoa, and Kingston townships instead. Becoming more compact is IL-16, the CD that wrapped around the entire Chicagoland in the 2013-2023 map. Here, it no longer borders Wisconsin and it instead gravitates more to the west and south, picking up places like McLean County (Bloomington). It takes the bulk of DeKalb County, as well as Fox Township and Little Rock Township in Kendall County, as well as 13 whole counties.

In the collar counties, Lake County and Nunda Township in McHenry County form IL-10, and all parts of Naperville Township east of Illinois Route 59 in combination with Will County forms IL-11. Big Grove, Bristol, Kendall, Lisbon, Na-au-say, Oswego, and Seward townships in Kendall County are combined with all of Kane County and all of Winfield and Wayne townships and a small part of Bloomingdale Township in DuPage to form IL-06. The rest of DuPage county forms IL-08.

I used townships as my main sub-county working unit, not towns, and tried to keep them whole whenever practical. Municipal borders in Illinois are a nightmare in many areas outside of Chicago and going by them instead would have harmed compactness and made things just generally confusing overall. When I did have to split a township however, I did try to make the split be along municipal lines.

Within Cook County is nested seven congressional districts. They were also drawn with townships in mind, but I concerned myself most with making sure I was not harming minority representation in a compactness-driven framework. Orland, Bremen, Rich, Bloom, Calumet, and Thornton townships are paired with a huge chunk of the South Side to form one of the black seats, and the other black seat goes north from there up to the Loop. Lamont, Palos, Worth, Stickney, and Cicero townships are paired with a lot of the West Side to form the Latino seat. Finally, a mixed Black/Latino seat is made from Oak Park and Berwyn townships, and the rest of the West Side.

The heavily White North Side anchors IL-05, and it takes Evanston to get closer to quota. Lincolnwood, located within Niles Township, provides the rest. Kennedy Expressway provides the bulk of its border with non-white seats to the south. Though Niles Township is split, I don't consider this in any real way a loss; it even makes the district more compact. Lyons, Proviso, River Forest, Riverside, Leyden, Norwood Park, and Maine townships all fall within IL-07, as does almost all of the part of Des Plaines within Elk Grove Township and leftovers from the city of Chicago. The most of the north and all of the western part of the county lies in IL-09.

There are twelve seats anchored in Chicagoland, and they all voted for Biden by double margins. There are five seats not anchored in Chicagoland, and they all voted for Trump by at least five points. There are only three completely safe GOP seats, a clear sign of the GOP's bad electoral geography in the Land of Lincoln. The most marginal seat is IL-16, which should be somewhat competitive in a neutral year.

IL-01 (Chicago): 50B, 24W, 15H; 87-11 Biden, D+38
IL-02 (Chicago): 56B, 26W, 16H; 79-20 Biden, D+29
IL-03 (Chicago): 54H, 32W, 11B; 64-30 Biden, D+16
IL-04 (Chicago): 39H, 29W, 28B; 85-14 Biden, D+36
IL-05 (Chicago): 56W, 18H, 14A, 11B; 82-16 Biden, D+33
IL-06 (Aurora): 57W, 29H; 55-43 Biden, D+4
IL-07 (Chicago): 54W, 24H, 11A, 10B; 63-36 Biden, D+13
IL-08 (Naperville): 66W, 14H, 13A; 58-40 Biden, D+7
IL-09 (Schaumburg): 61W, 17A, 17H; 61-37 Biden, D+11
IL-10 (Waukegan): 58W, 23H; 60-38 Biden, D+9
IL-11 (Joliet): 59W, 18H, 13B; 54-44 Biden, D+3
IL-12 (Belleville): 77W, 15B; 62-37 Trump, R+15
IL-13 (Springfield): 75W, 14B; 54-44 Trump, R+7
IL-14 (Bloomington): 79W; 56-42 Trump, R+9
IL-15 (Quincy): 88W; 67-31 Trump, R+21
IL-16 (Rockford): 73W, 14B; 52-46 Trump, R+5
IL-17 (Peoria): 78W, 10B; 53-44 Trump, R+6

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is a map of all the states done so far. The districts are colored based on how I assume they would have voted in the 2022 midterms. In Florida, I assume a lot of close holds for Ds, while Rs win by huge margins in their strongholds. Rs win Biden-voting FL-14, in what would be the most marginal Biden seat in the state.

I count 138D, 141R, and 156 thus far undone.

EDIT: I was not aware of how badly Ds did in Nassau. I thought R candidates won by narrow margins and felt a CD 1/4 in NYC would be unlikely to elect a Republican. I guess you can flip both the red Nassau seats to Republicans...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Minnesota

There are zero municipality splits (unless you count Saint Anthony, which rests in both Hennepin and Ramsey counties), three county splits (at least one of them unavoidable), and three whole-county CDs.

The overall layout was clear from the beginning. MN-05 entirely within Hennepin, box-like MN-01, big northern MN-08, et cetera. I fine-tuned it however; MN-02 previously followed the Minnesota River and Dakota County was once split in two and Washington County in three. I ultimately rotated MN-02, MN-07, and MN-06 to get what I had now. I also appreciate how  Hennepin and Wright counties together have just enough for 2 CDs between them.

There are 4 Biden seats and 4 Trump seats. 4 seats voted for the winning party by double digits - two each for both Trump and Biden. This map would probably break 4-4 most years, but Rs and Ds could win as much as 6 seats. My MN-01 took inspiration from ProgressiveModerate's one...ironically, though, I started off with it before changing it in later edits, adding it back after seeing his nationwide map.

MN-01 (Rochester): 83W; 52-45 Trump, R+7
MN-02 (Eagan): 76W; 52-46 Biden, R+1
MN-03 (Bloomington): 75W, 10B; 55-43 Biden, D+2
MN-04 (Saint Paul): 61W, 15A, 15B; 68-30 Biden, D+18
MN-05 (Minneapolis): 61W, 19B, 10H; 80-18 Biden, D+30
MN-06 (Coon Rapids): 83W; 55-43 Trump, R+9
MN-07 (St. Cloud): 86W; 65-33 Trump, R+19
MN-08 (Duluth): 86W, 53-44 Trump, R+7

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Next three states will be TX, UT, and WA.