Neutral map series

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Here is TimTurner with yet another map series.

My biggest goals this time are to emphasize county (and municipality) split reduction and compactness. This is similar to past projects, but those were with 2010s allotments and populations, not post-2020 ones. This time around, I will try to reach max neatness and non-partisanness with 2020 populations.
The order in which I do states will be more unpredictable and there will not be the clear east-west pattern I have most often adhered to.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Oregon

It is logical to have all of Eastern Oregon in one seat. If one has to grab more, then Jackson County is the best place to look. It makes sense to then place all of the rest in Southern Oregon with Lane, as much as can be done while also keeping Eugene in one CD. North of OR-04 is the new OR-06, which is extremely swingy and winnable for both parties (just like OR-04). Finally, OR-01 is made more compact with the addition of Tillamook County, and it no longer splits Multnomah. OR-05 moves closer to its pre-2002 form and now Portland is practically unified in one congressional district. OR-05 takes in the leftovers from both Multnomah and the existing OR-01, pushed west as it is both by population growth in Washington County (growing faster than the state), and by its taking of Tillamook.

In a huge D landslide, Ds would have a slim chance at a sweep, but in most iteration of "good D year" they just win all but OR-02. In a good R year, Ds could be limited to 3-3 or even 4R-2D (with Ds only winning OR-01 and OR-03), though Rs winning a House seat with that much of Washington County and Multnomah looks questionable. There are 4 Biden districts and 2 Trump districts.

District number (biggest city): all racial groups at or above 10% (after rounding); 2020 vote (rounded to nearest intreger), 2016/2020 PVI (rounded to nearest intreger)
OR-01 (Hillsboro): 65W, 17H, 11A; 60-37 Biden, D+9
OR-02 (Bend): 75W, 15H; 54-43 Trump; R+9
OR-03 (Portland): 66W, 12H, 11A; 83-15 Biden, D+33
OR-04 (Eugene): 80W; 49-48 Trump, R+4
OR-05 (Gresham): 72W, 14H; 55-42 Biden, D+4
OR-06 (Salem): 73W, 16H; 49-47 Biden, R+2

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Wisconsin

So I had some difficulty here. I decided I wanted to minimize overall number of splits (both counties and municipalities); draw a CD with Appleton, Fond du Lac, and other areas in between; keep all three WoW counties together; and put Dane in with whatever combo of counties would allow me to draw a whole-county CD. Central WI was tricky; I ended up putting Wausau in with Green Bay and Stevens Point in with La Crosse. I was able to attain four districts outside SE WI that were all compact. Rock-Walworth-Racine-Kenosha-part of Milwaukee, Waukesha-Ozaukee-Washington-part of Milwaukee, and the rest of Milwaukee were three seats that then drew themselves.

The new WI-03 is only very marginally more conservative than its predecessor. It likely is still won by Derrick Van Orden, though the fact the seat is now thrown into Madison's orbit might make it a worse fit for him overall. WI-05 gains high-turnout white liberals, but these places will be repeatedly outvoted. I was able to have only two counties with any splits and there are zero municipal splits within a county (thanks to me using a deviation band of 1%). Only 2 districts voted for Joe Biden, but there are two more districts also winnable for Dems.

WI-01 (Kenosha): 75W, 12H; 51-48 Trump, R+3
WI-02 (Madison): 79W; 67-31 Biden, D+16
WI-03 (La Crosse): 90W; 52-46 Trump, R+5
WI-04 (Milwaukee): 41W, 34B, 19H; 73-25 Biden, D+23
WI-05 (Waukesha): 86W; 57-42 Trump, R+11
WI-06 (Appleton): 85W; 56-42 Trump, R+10
WI-07 (Eau Claire): 90W; 56-42 Trump, R+9
WI-08 (Green Bay): 85W; 58-40 Trump, R+11

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Maine is so simple I don't even need an image.

ME-01 is composed of Cumberland, York, Oxford, and Androscoggin counties. 89% White; 59-39 Biden, D+7. Biggest city is Portland.

ME-02 is composed of Franklin, Sagadhoc, Somerset, Kennebec, Lincoln, Piscataquis, Waldo, Knox, Arostook, Penobscot, Hancock, and Washington counties. 92% White; 50-48 Trump, R+4. Biggest city is Bangor.

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

New Hampshire is very easy to do and took literally 45 seconds to draw.

NH-01 is composed of Carroll, Belknap, Strafford, and Rockinham counties, as well as Manchester and Pelham in Hillsborough County. 87% White; 51-47 Biden, R+1. Biggest city is Manchester.

NH-02 is composed of all of Hillsborough County less Manchester and Pelham, as well as Merrimack, Chesire, Sullivan, Grafton, and Coos counties. 87% White; 54-44 Biden, D+2. Biggest city is Nashua.

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

North Carolina

NC is not the easiest state to draw. I placed emphasis on county and municipality integrity and compactness over all other considerations, but within these parameters I was careful to draw NC-01 in a way that protected the black community's ability to return its candidate of choice. I had to draw Wake County east-west to avoid splitting Cary. Charlotte, however, was too large to avoid splitting it, so I drew it north-south, added Gaston County in, and then put as much of Carrabus as was needed to reach quota. The leftover Wake seat was messier, having to run to the SC border.

My commitment to municipal and county integrity meant that I had to give both Greensboro and Winston-Salem their own districts. The lines these districts took effectively decided the borders for the new NC-09 (Wake leftovers). The new NC-09 is divided between two roughly equal halves - Wake and non-Wake. Non-Wake voted 55-43 Trump, but Wake voted 59-39 Biden and is slightly larger (386k vs 361k). The numbers just aren't there and aren't in the right places for the rest-of-Wake CD to also include, for example, Johnston County, without it being awkward. So there are two half-Raleigh suburbs and exurbs seats to the south of NC-13.

NC-03 takes in a lot of turf in Eastern NC that NC-01 cannot. And with NC-07 serving as a dedicated SE NC seat, NC-02 serves as the second leftovers seat, taking what is left from Eastern NC as well as most of Cumberland County. This gives it a strong Dem base, but Johnston is even more R than Cumberland is Dem, and Wayne and Harnett also lean Republican. Together, these counties outvote Fayetteville, a mirror image of what happens in the 9th.

NC-11 and NC-10 are drawn in a way that makes the latter kind of a box rotated sideways. NC-08 is my least favorite district on the map and I toyed with the Charlotte area for a lot of time, but in the end, I felt I could not get anything better.

Overall, there are 7 Biden and 7 Trump seats. Only one or, at best, two of the Trump seats is marginal, however, while three of the Biden seats are. To be expected in a state that marginally voted for Trump and has no obvious huge geographic bias for either party.

NC-01 (Greenville): 48W, 42B; 53-46 Biden, D+3
NC-02 (Fayetteville): 50W, 32B, 13H; 52-47 Trump, R+4
NC-03 (Jacksonville): 66W, 20B; 62-37 Trump, R+14
NC-04 (Durham): 54W, 27B, 13H; 66-33 Biden, D+13
NC-05 (Winston-Salem): 67W, 18B, 12H; 58-40 Trump, R+11
NC-06 (Greensboro): 54W, 29B, 10H; 51-47 Biden, EVEN
NC-07 (Wilmington): 59W, 21B, 10N; 56-43 Trump, R+8
NC-08 (Mooresville): 71W, 14B, 10H; 65-33 Trump, R+19
NC-09 (Cary): 63W, 15B, 11A, 10H; 52-47 Biden, EVEN
NC-10 (Hickory): 79W; 69-30 Trump, R+22
NC-11 (Asheville): 82W; 55-44 Trump, R+8
NC-12 (Charlotte): 47W, 28B, 17H; 66-33 Biden, D+14
NC-13 (Raleigh): 55W, 26B, 13H; 63-34 Biden, D+13
NC-14 (Charlotte): 51W, 31B, 11H; 55-44 Biden, D+2

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Iowa

My main goal was compact districts, regardless of wherever the deviation was (as long as it did not exceed my 1% deviation band limit). I got what I wanted - four largely box-like districts. There is one Biden district and 3 Trump districts, but the geography is a bit favorable for Iowa Ds and that shows here...IA-04 ends up as a rural R pack with 46 of the state's 99 counties. The partisanship of IA-01 and IA-02 are basically unchanged from their 2010s iterations.

IA-01 (Cedar Rapids): 86W; 51-47 Trump, R+4
IA-02 (Davenport): 83W; 51-47 Trump, R+4
IA-03 (Des Moines): 77W; 54-44 Biden, D+2
IA-04 (Sioux City): 85W; 66-32 Trump, R+19

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Rhode Island is another very easy New England draw. Unfortunately, the no-town-split arrangement from the 2010s is out of range now and since it is important to have no town splits, I have to trash it. In its place sits a new 2 CD arrangement. Cranston is separated from Providence and in turn, RI-01 picks up a number of areas along the Connecticut border. This is better for compactness than all other possible alternatives.

RI-01 is composed of Providence County less Cranston and Johnston. 55% White, 26% Hispanic, 13% Black; 63-36 Biden, D+12. Biggest city is Providence.

RI-02 is composed of Bristol, Newport, Washington, and Kent counties, and Cranston and Johnston in Providence County. 82% White; 57-41 Biden, D+5. Biggest city is Cranston.

Fung would have lost by a bigger margin here in 2022 than OTL.

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nice job.

Thanks for the input!
This is the breakdown of states done per region thus far.
Midwest: 2/10 (3/11)
Northeast: 3/8 (5/1)
South: 1/14 (8/7)
West: 1/11 (4/4)
Nationwide: 7/43 (20/23)

In parenthesis, you have Biden seats and Trump seats (at-large districts automatically counted in the total)
7 states done so far: 5 went to Biden and 2 for Trump (7 Biden and 7 Trump if you count at-large districts that I have not posted about yet)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Oklahoma

Considering it is possible to do this in Oklahoma, I decided to draw only whole-county CDs (to the greatest extent possible) The map was done is roughly 60 seconds and was designed on getting compact lines while avoiding county splits whenever possible. In contrast to the 2010s, Oklahoma County is too much for one district; it loses about 6k to the 4th. I tried to put as much of the Little Dixie in the 2nd as possible. It's amazing how the map drew itself.

All 5 CDs are Trump-voting, but OK-05 is very competitive and is increasingly winnable for a Democrat in a neutral map.

OK-01 (Tulsa): 58W, 15N, 14H, 12B; 60-38 Trump, R+15
OK-02 (Broken Arrow): 60W, 29N; 76-23 Trump, R+28
OK-03 (Oklahoma City*): 66W, 13H, 12N; 73-25 Trump, R+27
OK-04 (Norman): 69W, 15N; 69-29 Trump, R+23
OK-05 (Oklahoma City): 51W, 19H, 18B; 49-48 Trump, R+4
*=the parts of Oklahoma  City within OK-03 make it the biggest city within the district. Enid is in second place.

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Ohio

Creating compact districts while reducing county splits was something of a challenge. The Columbus area gave me the most difficulty, as I knew Franklin-Delaware-Morrow was exactly 2 seats, but it made for uncompact and awkward districts else. I could have drawn the area with a simple district taking in northern Delaware and Union, but this was an extra county split and I wanted to be sure I had other options. I quickly found an alternative, though this required me to add a county from outside the "doughnut". In the end, much to my surprise, I found myself separating Delaware and Franklin.

Whole-county districts were formed in the southeastern, northwestern, and northeastern corners of the state. Lorain County was not going to be paired with anything but Cuyahoga. I also did fiddling with the Akron CD; in its initial form, it was with Portage and Medina, and Mahoning with split with Youngstown being with Niles. A whole-county NE OH CD was too good to pass up and so I took Portage out of the Akron CD. This left the question of where the Akron CD would go. In the end, the population distribution of Wayne County made it hard to draw a box-like CD, and I prioritized a box-like OH-05. This left no other option but putting Canton in with Akron. Fortunately, Muskingum was perfect population-wise and I was able to get rid of another county split.

In southwestern Ohio, I decided to have one CD with as much of Hamilton County as possible, and another enveloping it on all sides. This meant that OH-10 had to expand into Warren County. Places like Clark County wound up in a sprawling OH-12 that ran almost all the way to Lake Erie. The whole-county OH-04 goes as far as it can to help keep OH-12 more compact while not intruding too far into the Toledo metro.

There are 8 Trump districts and 7 Biden ones, but the Biden margin in four of them is three points or less. The most marginal Trump district is OH-10, which is fairly hard of a race for Democrats thanks to it losing Springfield and picking up a lot of Warren County.

OH-01 (Cincinnati): 62W, 29B; 58-41 Biden, D+6
OH-02 (Athens): 92W; 71-28 Trump, R+23
OH-03 (Columbus): 53W, 32B; 69-30 Biden, D+17
OH-04 (Findlay): 89W; 74-24 Trump, R+27
OH-05 (Newark): 89W; 66-32 Trump, R+19
OH-06 (Youngstown): 86W; 63-36 Trump, R+15
OH-07 (Parma): 81W; 51-48 Biden; EVEN
OH-08 (Hamilton): 80W; 62-37 Trump; R+16
OH-09 (Toledo): 75W, 15B; 49.3 Biden-49 Trump; R+1
OH-10 (Dayton): 72W, 18B; 54-45 Trump, R+7
OH-11 (Cleveland): 48B, 40W; 77-22 Biden, D+27
OH-12 (Springfield): 85W; 63-35 Trump, R+16
OH-13 (Akron): 75W, 16B; 51-48 Biden, EVEN
OH-14 (Mentor): 86W; 57-42 Trump, R+9
OH-15 (Columbus): 74W, 14B; 50-48 Biden, R+1

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Arizona

The biggest issue I had was balancing compactness with municipal and county integrity and not screwing over minority communities. I cleaned up the border between AZ-01 and AZ-04. In my view, the current AZ-01 does a pretty good job creating a clean Native-influenced seat that doesn't mess up the Tucson area, so I kept it with some alterations. Sticking with it does a good job of making AZ-04 more compact as well. I drew a district completely within Pima County, but ended up having to split Tucson just to make sure AZ-03 could remain a Latino seat. AZ-03 now borders the entire Mexican border. Both AZ-04 and AZ-03 swallow a significant amount of western Pheonix exurbs.

AZ-03 and AZ-04 push AZ-08 and AZ-07 east. AZ-08 now has a significant share of Northern Pheonix, and AZ-07 is kept as a Latino district. I redraw the lines in Maricopa once, mostly from scratch, because I was uncomfortable with a district with both all of Tempe and Canyon Creek. This redraw led to AZ-07 moving in a northwest direction. There is one dedicated Pheonix seat (AZ-07) and three districts that take from Pheonix, in a direction that keeps them the most compact. AZ-06 is the most Pheonix-heavy of them all. Pinal leftovers ended up in a district with Gilbert and most of Mesa. This pushed AZ-09 mostly out of Mesa.

There are 5 Trump districts and 4 Biden districts. The Biden seats, though, are all solid or at the very least extremely likely D holds. There are two Trump districts that he won by four points or less, and another that was within single digits.

AZ-01 (San Tan Valley): 49W, 24N, 22H; 51-47 Trump, R+4
AZ-02 (Tucson): 58W, 28H; 58-41 Biden, D+6
AZ-03 (Yuma): 56H, 34W; 53-46 Biden, D+2
AZ-04 (Surprise): 70W, 20H; 65-34 Trump, R+19
AZ-05 (Mesa): 67W, 21H; 58-41 Trump, R+12
AZ-06 (Pheonix): 73W, 14H; 51-48 Trump, R+5
AZ-07 (Pheonix): 60H, 22W, 12B; 73-26 Biden, D+22
AZ-08 (Glendale): 57W, 28H; 53-45 Trump, R+7
AZ-09 (Chandler): 51W, 27H; 58-40 Biden, D+6

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Mississippi

I took an agnostic view towards making another black seat and decided to rule out any county splits. Race was secondary to keeping counties whole and having compact districts (with the exception being that there had be one black district somewhere on the map). I experimented with having DeSoto County in MS-02 in a district running the entire length of the Mississippi River, but decided to drop the idea, in part because then it is hard to have Hinds in there and that hurts compactness. Maybe in 2030...

MS-01 and MS-04 take on very box-like shapes. Just like OTL, this map is a very solid 3R-1D. I (largely unsuccessfully) tried to unpack MS-02 (I didn't think MS needs a 60% black seat).

MS-01 (Southaven): 65W, 29B; 65-34 Trump, R+18
MS-02 (Jackson): 60B, 36W; 60-39 Biden, D+8
MS-03 (Meridian): 56W, 38B; 60-39 Trump, R+12
MS-04 (Gulfport): 65W, 25B; 67-31 Trump, R+21

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Very nice effort.
Your Arizona map is so much more balanced than the one enacted by the commission.

Thank you for the kind words.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Georgia

This was an easy one. Draw whole county CDs in rural GA, give DeKalb and Cobb their own seats, and make things compact more generally. The math was fortuitous. I did dislike how heavily black GA-05 ended up, but I'm not creating a new county split just to solve that. I did give GA-13 some heavily white counties just to lower the black %. I would have considered a Savannah-Augusta CD (was not necessarily wedded to the idea of having it with Columbia County), but the math didn't work. I ended up with high compactness, proportionality (despite it not being a criteria in which I used to draw the map), minority representation, and county integrity.

There are 7 Biden districts and 7 Trump districts. The only potentially "competitive" seats are GA-02, GA-06, and GA-12. The 2nd is a probably R-trending D seat that voted Biden by almost double digits, the 6th is a Biden-voting seat that voted Biden by 5 but is zooming left, and the 12th is an R-trending Trump district that went for him by high single digits.

GA-01 (Savannah): 58W, 30B; 56-43 Trump, R+9
GA-02 (Columbus): 49B, 42W; 54-46 Biden, D+2
GA-03 (Newnan): 66W, 23B; 65-34 Trump, R+19
GA-04 (Stonecrest): 53B, 28W, 11H; 83-16 Biden, D+32
GA-05 (Atlanta): 64B, 26W; 83-16 Biden, D+32
GA-06 (Sandy Springs): 53W, 19A, 15B, 12H; 52-47 Biden, R+2
GA-07 (Lawrenceville): 32B, 31W, 24H, 13A; 60-39 Biden, D+6
GA-08 (Warner Robins): 56W, 33B; 63-36 Trump, R+16
GA-09 (Gainesville): 76W, 14H; 77-21 Trump, R+31
GA-10 (Athens): 64W, 24B; 61-37 Trump, R+15
GA-11 (Marietta): 48W, 29B, 15H; 56-42 Biden, D+3
GA-12 (Augusta): 51W, 39B; 53-46 Trump, R+6
GA-13 (McDonough): 57B, 29W; 64-35 Biden, D+11
GA-14 (Rome): 74W, 13H; 73-26 Trump, D+27

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

New York

I made a conscious choice to have two districts crossing the Nassau-Suffolk border. I tried to keep towns together, though some towns had such non-compact lines that it was not worth it. In New York proper, I sought to avoid having seats cross boroughs when possible. Alongside this, I sought to maintain districts for certain groups, within the bounds of what compactness would allow. In Southern Brooklyn, I put as much of the Orthodox Jewish areas in NY-09, while still maintaining it as a black seat.

In Westchester County, Harrison is split for compactness reasons. In Upstate NY in general, effort was made to make whole-county CDs, but only one could be made: Oneida-Madison-Onondago. In a last-minute change, I put all of Oneida County in NY-21, rotating Ithaca into NY-23 and a big chunk of the Mohawk Valley into NY-19.

There are 19 Biden seats and 7 Trump seats. In the 2020 presidential vote, the losing party got within 5% in 2 seats - NY-01 and NY-02. Six more seats were won by a margin between 5% and 10% - 4 of them were won by Trump and 2 by Biden.

NY-01 (Brookhaven): 71W, 16H; 51-47 Trump, R+6
NY-02 (Islip): 59W, 26H, 11B; 51-47 Trump, R+5
NY-03 (North Hempstead): 54W, 26A, 15H; 57-42 Biden, D+5
NY-04 (Hempstead): 50W, 22H, 19B; 57-42 Biden, D+6
NY-05 (New York City/Queens): 47B, 20H, 20A, 12W; 81-18 Biden, D+32
NY-06 (New York City/Queens): 43A, 26W, 25H; 62-37 Biden, D+14
NY-07 (New York City/Queens): 45H, 28W, 19A; 78-21 Biden, D+30
NY-08 (New York City/Brooklyn): 49B, 32W, 12H; 68-31 Biden, D+20
NY-09 (New York City/Brooklyn): 50B, 22W, 21H; 89-10 Biden, D+40
NY-10 (New York City/Staten Island): 52W, 21A, 18H; 53-46 Trump, R+5
NY-11 (New York City/Brooklyn): 50W, 21A, 20H; 78-21 Biden, D+30
NY-12 (New York City/Manhattan): 57W, 22A, 14H; 85-14 Biden, D+35
NY-13 (New York City/Manhattan): 42W, 26H, 26B, 10A; 88-10 Biden, D+39
NY-14 (New York City/Bronx): 63H, 31B, 12W; 83-16 Biden, D+36
NY-15 (New York City/Bronx): 51H, 42B; 83-17 Biden, D+35
NY-16 (Yonkers): 39W, 29H, 25B; 72-27 Biden, D+21
NY-17 (Ramapo): 64W, 19H; 55-44 Biden, D+4
NY-18 (Poughkeepsie): 64W, 19H, 13B; 53-46 Biden, EVEN
NY-19 (Binghamton): 82W; 52-46 Trump, R+6
NY-20 (Albany): 72W, 12B; 58-40 Biden, D+6
NY-21 (Saratoga Springs): 87W; 54-44 Trump, R+7
NY-22 (Syracuse): 76W, 12B; 53-45 Biden, D+1
NY-23 (Ithaca): 86W; 52-46 Trump, R+6
NY-24 (Rochester): 67W, 18B, 10H; 59-38 Biden, D+8
NY-25 (Buffalo): 67W, 19B; 61-37 Biden, D+9
NY-26 (Niagara Falls): 86W; 59-38 Trump, R+14

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Missouri

There is one inevitable county split - St. Louis County. In general I sought to make compact whole county CDs. I largely succeeded. There was some last-minute fiddling with MO-03, MO-04, and MO-08, with MO-03 becoming more compact at the price of a county split. MO-02 now takes in all of Jefferson County, with two CDs nested within St. Louis City and County and Jefferson County. The border is a bit wonky, because of my desire to avoid any town splits. Half the districts on the map are whole-county CDs, including the box-like MO-07.

There are 6 Trump seats and 2 Biden seats. MO-02 is the only swingy district, just like in OTL.

MO-01 (Saint Louis): 49B, 40W; 79-20 Biden, D+27
MO-02 (Chesterfield): 85W; 52-46 Trump, R+7
MO-03 (St. Charles): 86W; 65-33 Trump, R+19
MO-04 (Columbia): 83W; 65-33 Trump, R+19
MO-05 (Kansas City): 61W, 23B, 10H; 57-41 Biden, D+6
MO-06 (Kansas City): 83W; 62-36 Trump, R+16
MO-07 (Springfield): 83W; 70-28 Trump, R+24
MO-08 (Cape Girardeau): 86W; 78-21 Trump, R+31

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

West Virginia

From the start I was sure I would have no county splits. I was tempted to copy the actual map, but the compactness scores were utterly dreadful and I balked at placing Pendleton County in the southern district through a narrow connection with Pocahantas County. In light of the math, I decided to place Wood County in the southern district. In the end, I think I got an arrangement that works.

WV-01 (Morgantown): 89W; 68-30 Trump, R+22
WV-02 (Charleston): 90W; 69-29 Trump, R+23

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nevada

This was simple and easy. Whole-county NV-02 and then compact CDs in Clark. Municipal splits were, of course, inevitable. Las Vegas has a seat mostly to itself, while a box-like CD is drawn taking in parts of Henderson and basically all of Enterprise, Spring Valley, and Paradise. The rest of the county went in with most of rural NV.

There are 3 Biden districts and 1 Trump district. However, Rs would have a decent chance at NV-04 in a favorable year, especially if minority turnout drops.

NV-01 (Las Vegas): 40W, 34H, 14B, 10A; 54-45 Biden, D+4
NV-02 (Reno): 63W, 23H; 54-43 Trump, R+8
NV-03 (Enterprise): 42W, 23H, 21A, 13B; 54-45 Biden, D+3
NV-04 (North Las Vegas): 39W, 35H, 17B; 52-46 Biden, D+2

DRA link

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/762f726d-cc79-4357-b034-0cd11f36025d

Updated this map with everything up to Georgia btw.

I rlly like the OH, AZ, and MS maps, they balance minimizing splits (be it city or counties) with making districts that just make logical sense.

In GA though, I wouldn't use Counties as the guiding factor in the Atlanta metro area. The County lines in Atlanta are a bit arbitrary considering they were drawn hundreds of years ago and it's only rlly recently Atlanta has grown to what it is today. As a consequence, you split the city of Atlanta proper 3 ways.

I think the Cobb County nested district is fine, but the DeKalb County district while it may be attractive just doesn't fit into the larger metro very well. The rest of the GA map makes sense and is very good though.

In case of cities crossing county lines, I treat them as distinct entities here (the same is true for disconnected parts of county and city entities). By my parameters, Atlanta is thus only split once - and in a way that is largely unavoidable (either Atlanta or Sandy Springs gets a split). Atlanta (DeKalb portion) is also not split. While counties are not necessarily perfect CoI indicators everywhere, keeping them whole is explicitly an important part of the criteria, placing equal with compactness. "Communities of interest", however they are to be defined, is secondary. Thus, compactness is the only justifiable reason to add an extra county split (as can be seen in my Missouri map, for example). With this sort of criteria, there was no way I could possibly justify splitting either Cobb or DeKalb. Note that there is no mention of communities of interest, as a term, in the OP, but county and town integrity is explicitly mentioned along as compactness.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Running count of states done and Biden-Trump seat totals.
Midwest: 4/10 (12/25)
Northeast: 4/8 (24/8)
South: 5/14 (16/24)
West: 3/11 (11/10)
Nationwide: 16/43 (63/67)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You know I always have to nitpick North Carolina.

First of all, I have to say, perhaps the worst effect of the somewhat slipshod court-drawn NC map is encouraging people to draw ugly slices down the middle of Charlotte. A central Charlotte district and then two suburban districts is basically the only thing that makes sense. Arguments for the current split remind me of cooked-up Republican arguments for splitting up SLC or Austin, except for from a Democratic perspective.

An urban Charlotte district ideally should avoid taking in large non-Mecklenburg chunks as well. It's actually pretty easy to do this, unlike the horrible and obvious sacrifices in the Eastern part of the state.

I've also come around to the opinion that a Sandhills seat and then giving portions of Johnston to NC-03 or NC-07 is probably better than cracking the Sandhills. That then lets you draw something like the current 13th, except going west instead of east and avoiding the odd connection of Richmond and Anson to Cary.

FYI, I'd split Sampson over Pender, which is part of metro Wilmington.

I'm also pro-drawing a Winston-Salem--Greensboro district, though I'm aware your inflexibility on county splits militates against this. On the other hand, you might like that a sensible whole county NC-11 is easy if you drop Avery, McDowell, and Mitchell and add Rutherford.

I was not heavily driven by the 2022 court map. I would argue that this is different from the 2022 court map, which drew two districts based in Mecklenburg and going into a single neighboring county to get to quota; this has a district completely within Mecklenburg, pretty much the 2016 court map. The only real difference is that this way the district runs from the south running north, while the 2016 court map, it ran from the north to the south. I'd stress that Charlotte is going to get split anyway. In fact, splitting it in three in the way you suggest only splits the city of Charlotte between three districts...as opposed to two. You can argue that going with the "inner ring Charlotte" CD would not increase the amount of county splits, and that might be possible, but it definitely increases the number of municipal splits. That explicitly goes against the criteria, even though I weigh city splits a bit less than county ones if the two conflict.

If one removes NC-08's share of Catawba and compensates that with part of Cabarrus, that can be done. But it makes NC-14 less compact, because then it is Gaston+Mecklenburg leftovers+parts of Lincoln+Concord City.

A Sandhills seat is an interesting idea and it would be quite compact, but it would be hard to draw without messing up lines a bit in the Raleigh area. I'm not calling it impossible because there probably is a viable arrangement in some way. Wake has a ton of extra people and since I want to avoid splitting Raleigh, that extra population is almost certainly headed east.

Splitting Sampson over Pender is a non-starter because here, compactness trumps metro boundaries and broad similarities between areas; and splitting Sampson gives NC-03 an awkward, narrow tail. If anything, I'd rather give it Wayne County.

I'll make an alternative arrangement for NC to see what you think of it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/6b19b071-bb75-42b5-8dd4-89e99ceb271c
While I don't think this is a viable replacement because of some issues (such as the lines in Wake County) this is what the NC map would look like if it was prioritizing what Sol was talking about.
Btw, please never change. Your nitpicking is nice to see.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Arizona

The biggest issue I had was balancing compactness with municipal and county integrity and not screwing over minority communities. I cleaned up the border between AZ-01 and AZ-04. In my view, the current AZ-01 does a pretty good job creating a clean Native-influenced seat that doesn't mess up the Tucson area, so I kept it with some alterations. Sticking with it does a good job of making AZ-04 more compact as well. I drew a district completely within Pima County, but ended up having to split Tucson just to make sure AZ-03 could remain a Latino seat. AZ-03 now borders the entire Mexican border. Both AZ-04 and AZ-03 swallow a significant amount of western Pheonix exurbs.

AZ-03 and AZ-04 push AZ-08 and AZ-07 east. AZ-08 now has a significant share of Northern Pheonix, and AZ-07 is kept as a Latino district. I redraw the lines in Maricopa once, mostly from scratch, because I was uncomfortable with a district with both all of Tempe and Canyon Creek. This redraw led to AZ-07 moving in a northwest direction. There is one dedicated Pheonix seat (AZ-07) and three districts that take from Pheonix, in a direction that keeps them the most compact. AZ-06 is the most Pheonix-heavy of them all. Pinal leftovers ended up in a district with Gilbert and most of Mesa. This pushed AZ-09 mostly out of Mesa.

There are 5 Trump districts and 4 Biden districts. The Biden seats, though, are all solid or at the very least extremely likely D holds. There are two Trump districts that he won by four points or less, and another that was within single digits.

AZ-01 (San Tan Valley): 49W, 24N, 22H; 51-47 Trump, R+4
AZ-02 (Tucson): 58W, 28H; 58-41 Biden, D+6
AZ-03 (Yuma): 56H, 34W; 53-46 Biden, D+2
AZ-04 (Surprise): 70W, 20H; 65-34 Trump, R+19
AZ-05 (Mesa): 67W, 21H; 58-41 Trump, R+12
AZ-06 (Pheonix): 73W, 14H; 51-48 Trump, R+5
AZ-07 (Pheonix): 60H, 22W, 12B; 73-26 Biden, D+22
AZ-08 (Glendale): 57W, 28H; 53-45 Trump, R+7
AZ-09 (Chandler): 51W, 27H; 58-40 Biden, D+6

DRA link

I think Dems could have a chance at picking up that AZ-01 if they recruited a Native moderate. I guess Tom O’Halleran could also make his comeback there.

If these were the lines in 2022, it is probably likely O'Halleran would have won.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Kentucky

You would think Kentucky is a place where you could foreswear any county splits, but the location of Bowling Green and Paducah directly undermining compactness. The sprawling KY-05 expands even farther. Not a lot to see here, even if the compactness is kind of disappointing to me.

KY-01 (Owensboro): 84W; 70-28 Trump, R+24
KY-02 (Bowling Green): 85W; 72-27 Trump, R+25
KY-03 (Louisville): 62W, 25B; 60-38 Biden, D+8
KY-04 (Covington): 85W; 63-35 Trump, R+17
KY-05 (Ashland): 94W; 78-21 Trump; R+31
KY-06 (Lexington): 78W, 11B; 55-44 Trump, R+9

DRA link