Blumenauer Congressional Plan

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't like this. It benefits the Republicans here!




District 1: This is now more of a southeast Minnesota district as there's not enough room anymore for the western end. Since that's the most Republican area this is now more D, and the DFL probably would've won that August special election here but Trump still won it by 52-46, I'll call it Likely R. Although worth noting Tina Smith did carry it by a hair in 2018 (Walz won it by a fair margin but that's not really fair comparison because it's his old seat and he won even the old district.)

District 2: Basically the new seat for Angie Craig and she seems to have it locked down pretty well, it's also a Biden+9 seat, at this point can't be anything less than Likely D.

District 3: Safe D. This is the current one minus any Republican areas at all. Biden won it by a 2:1 margin.

District 4: At least districts this size fit Ramsey County almost perfectly. Safe D obviously.

District 5: Safe D, duh.

District 6: This one is a bit odd, it actually feels more like a St. Cloud-based seat that stretches through the northern exurbs rather than a northern metro seat that just includes St. Cloud like the current one. Trump+29, definitely Safe R and Emmer still lives here and would run here. EDIT: No wait, he actually lives in the small part of Wright County I drew into the 9th. He probably still runs here though. This is the only district Amy Klobuchar lost in 2018.

District 7: Safe R, also Trump+29. I actually drew Fischbach narrowly in the 6th, but she'd almost certainly run here. EDIT: A bit ironic though she'd be abandoning the seat she lives in to a guy who now doesn't live there.

District 8: This is actually a less R than the current one due to it shedding so many rural counties and the exurbs. Still Trump+9 but it actually narrowly voted for Walz and Tina Smith by a hair in 2018. So I'm saying Likely R although granted Stauber seems like a solid incumbent.

District 9: Safe R despite trending D fast. It's a Trump+7 seat, and kind of a messy leftovers one although it's effectively an outer ring suburbs/exurbs-based seat with some rural areas tacked on. Definitely would be an interesting R primary for this...actually Scott Jensen lives here come to think of it.

District 10: And now you have the closest. Also a leftovers seat (I guess that's what happens when you try to largely preserve the current numbering scheme), unfortunately Washington County is kind of pinned in a location where it's tough to get it in a true community of interest district, your only choices are to set it up with Ramsey County like now or split it in half and put the halves into a north metro and south metro district which is kind of what happened before. Neither is an option now because Ramsey County almost has enough on its own and only took a few precincts and there's not any room for in the new 2nd. So it gets paired with the leftovers of northern Anoka County. And Trump won it by 0.5. Which is probably still somewhere between Lean and Likely R. Walz actually won it in 2018 and it wouldn't surprise me if he did last year too though. But Tina Smith lost it in 2018 despite winning the 1st and 8th. Odd district actually.

So likely a 6/4 map. Although PlanScore says this is a 55% D map and actually thinks the 10th is D-leaning...probably based on those "Composite results" that are skewed by Klobuchar's landslide.

Edit: Walz definitely did win the 10th by a hair, he won Washington County by 14k votes, and the small part in the 4th isn't super-D and actually small so it probably didn't account for even 1k of that. Meanwhile Jensen only won Anoka County by 2k and while the super D panhandle is now in the 5th, Walz won that by 7k. So that equals a Walz victory by about 6k votes. That actually comes out to about a 2 point victory although I bet Walz was just under 50%. Well it's definitely trending D.

Edit again: Oh wait I forgot, this seat also includes about half of the city of Wyoming (In Chisago County)...which is probably about a 1k R victory. That's how much about how Trump won it by. So Walz actually won it by about 5k, and maybe slightly under 2 points. Everything else still applies though. I'm guessing Steve Simon won it by about 3-4 points and Blaha and Ellison lost it by about that margin.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't like this. It benefits the Republicans here!

snip

In most cases the state's geographic bias should not shift by adding more seats - generally you just got to detach yourself from the existing districts geographic cores and create new pairings that allign better with the new population totals. Here's such a case in MN where you now use Washington as the building block and aim to nest 3 core seats in Hennepin. See my comments above about the framework I tried to draw these maps in, so MN comes to 5. Obviously if you want more competitiveness there are things you can do with districts 1, 8, and 10 like include Fargo in 8.  One other thing about MN is that the Washington - Duluth county linkage is only slightly overpopulated, if one was to desire such a gerrymander.





One state where the geographic bias does shift is Michigan. It all comes down to 3 things: Macomb now being large enough that the south of the county needs to be paired with other blue areas OR you nest the seat in the southern towns and it overall leans Dem, Oakland being a deal larger than two seats so you'll likely end up sinking some GOP voters in 2 dem leaning seats based on how the pop works out, and Kalamazoo now having enough demographic weight to not be drowned out by her neighbors so easily.

Yeah that works better. Although how can Fargo be put in a Minnesota district?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This is actually a quite favorable map for the Democrats and I wasn't even trying to make one...this size fits them well.

IA-01: I usually start Iowa maps by starting here and drawing increasing sized squares because of how well the counties fit. Obviously very Safe R, Trump+36.

IA-02: So here's the first break the Democrats catch: Polk County is by itself just under the size of a district in this configuration so it can't be drowned out with rural Republicans. Jasper is the only neighboring county that fits and it's Republican, but not enough to get this under Biden+12. This is at worst Likely D.

IA-03: Trump+11, basically Safe R now.

IA-04: A collection of rural areas and Des Moines suburbs. Trump+24 so quite Safe R.

IA-05: Yeah this is kind of an ugly shape. That's due to some leftover counties that obviously couldn't go in the Des Moines district and there wasn't enough room for in the 3rd having to go somewhere. Johnson County is now the only remaining Democratic area in this but it's so overwhelming it carries it on its own...imagine if Iowa City was bigger. It's a Biden+7 seat, I'm calling Likely D.

IA-06: I actually like this shape and it's logical despite the random tacking on of Delaware County because there's nowhere else for it to go. The Quad Cities and Cedar Rapids are actually enough to carry it on its own, it's about a Biden+2.5 seat, so Tilt D perhaps?

So Democrats can conceivably win half the districts on this map, as opposed to zero currently and unlikely to be more than one from hereon. This is kind of the perfect size for Iowa Democrats, as noted you can't drown out Polk County anymore, and the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids-based districts also shed rural territory which is also enough so they can't be drowned. This is an interesting variation of the Alabama Paradox, the GOP actually loses a seat if the entire state gains two. Republicans might hope for a vote sink seat combining Johnson and Linn Counties but even if that would work that would be ceding two seats to the Democrats meaning they effectively pick up both new ones.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This is the scenario of combining Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. The 5th is actually marginally more D than the Des Moines-based 2nd. This is basically a locked in 4R-2D map...still much better for Democrats than the status quo, and it's honestly not too bad either despite how the 4th is awkwardly squeezed between the other districts.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I've had a play around with a few states and interestingly the 3 States with 11 congressional districts (MA, IN & TN) would still be brutal for the minority party even as states like WI get a bit more proportional with more districts.


The GOP would still be locked out in MA with their only hope being the Bristol County based 11th (Biden+12) continuing a rightward drift.

As I've noticed before the Massachusetts GOP has a pretty unique problem that no other state Republican Party has with all of their strongest areas being in areas that are basically worthless for them in any map with fewer than something like 25 seats.

The area around Springfield has a lot of Republican suburbs and some rural towns, but you can't put them into a district that also doesn't include Springfield. And in your map also Western Massachusetts. So they'll always be outvoted.

That's also true of the area surrounding Worcester, but again, to get to the size of a district you also have to include Worcester. And also some smaller urban areas like Leominster and Fitchburg. There's a bunch of Republican state legislators from this area but even the State Senate can't get a Republican district in the region.

The southeast is the last such region that you kind of mentioned, but there's too many urban cities in that area for them to not be outvoted. Even places like Fall River and New Bedford are pretty D.

Another big problem for the GOP is that the Boston metro developed in a way that doesn't really result in any notable R suburban areas because of the surrounding smaller urban areas. To the northeast you have Salem (this region actually did use to have some notable pockets of Republicanism but Trump did away with that), northwest is Lawrence and Lowell, direct west is Framingham, southwest is Providence, RI and southeast you have Quincy and Brockton. So the areas that you would normally expect Republican exurbs to develop in don't because instead they're just suburbs of those smaller urban cities. Now there is one notable cluster of Republican exurbs of metro Boston. But it's in New Hampshire, and thus doesn't help out the MAGOP any.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Too lazy to do a write-up now, maybe later, but that's why I colored all the districts by their partisanship. A fair map, and would actually most likely be a 50/50 split in parties shockingly.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Six district Utah is really annoying to draw, something I learned awhile ago when I drew another map of it with that size for some reason I can't even remember. The problem is that the area north of Salt Lake City has enough population at this size for about 1 1/2 districts. That means one district draws pretty well but then you have a chunk that isn't big enough for its own seat, but the easiest place to connect it to is SLC proper, which isn't a good fit at all from a CoI perspective because despite proximity this area is kind of considered its own thing, Davis County is actually part of its own metro area based around it and Weber County instead of in the SLC metro. What's weird is this is called the Ogden-Clearfield Metro, even though Clearfield isn't one of the largest cities and there's the much larger Layton just south of it. It also has only a few roads into Salt Lake City and the parts of SLC these run through look pretty remote and undeveloped (it is close to the airport but airports were historically built on the outskirts of cities for obvious reasons so that's not surprising at all, the development patterns of SLC look like much of the northern part was only developed post-WWII even if it's in the city proper.) You could theoretically go east and draw a sort of district that wraps around the SLC metro core to the south of it, but this would only be continuous if you swam across the lake to the western end. So to avoid that I just went east ended up with a weird district combining rural western Utah with most of Davis County.





1, 2, 5 and 6 are obviously all Safe R. 3 is a Biden+34 seat that's Safe D. And 4...it's a kind of interesting seat combining more Democratic SLC suburbs with the more conservative ones on the south end of the county. It ended up voting about Trump+2 with a large third party vote and would probably be a good fit for Ben McAdams or another sort of conservatish Mormon Democrat. PlanScore even gives it a 48% chance of voting D.

So basically a 4R-1D-1S map. Also shows how if Utah gained even just a 5th district it'd be impossible to continue with an all R delegation, the Republicans would have to cede a D sink around Salt Lake City.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Ohio is actually a state where Democrats do well with this number of districts, although it's more about winnable districts than safe ones:




OH-01: A Cincinnati-based seat Biden won by almost 40 points and clearly Safe D...btw if you want to see just how strong the Cincinnati area has trended check out the 2006 Gubernatorial map where the Democrat won in a landslide. This used to be considered one of the most conservative major cities in the country...that does kind of still show in its suburbs though although those are showing cracks now (see northern Kentucky in recent years.)

OH-02: Safe R suburban Cincy district. It's crazy how many D pockets exist in this district and how it still ends up so Republican and Trump+27.

OH-03: Almost exactly the same as above, even the same margins.

OH-04: It's crazy to think that this seat that was won by Trump by 39 points was won by Democrats in almost every poster on here's lifetime. Absurdly Safe R now though obviously.

OH-05: This is actually a pretty interesting seat...Biden won it by 2 points, but almost every other statewide Republican in recent elections except Sherrod Brown's opponent won it by a narrow margin. It's about as polarized and split as possible, can't be anything but a pure tossup. On a side note, one odd thing about me in high school and college is I actually thought Dayton would be an awesome place to live...yes, seriously, this being due to the high number of bands it had for a city of its size and that it was a frequent tour date...this can possibly be attributed to geography, Ohio after all is a convenient state to tour in, but at the time Cincinnati was also regarded as a pretty lackluster city in terms of its scene, why Dayton was superior despite that it's an economically dead Rust Belt city which unlike places like Detroit, Pittsburgh and of course Cleveland can't even rebound based on being a regional hub and thus able to diversify is a true mystery. Today of course that is not true at all, based on tour dates Cincinnati is totally a better place to be, although not as good as Cleveland or Columbus.

OH-06: Another Trump+40 district that would've been winnable in most poster's lifetimes for Democrats...and those numbers are WITH Athens County. Safe R is also obvious.

OH-07: This is kind of a weird district and basically leftovers although it does kind of makes sense as a community of interest as Columbus exurbia on the south side...Safe R although Trump "only" won it by 18 points, if you used Kerry or even Obama 08 numbers and told people this would be less Republican than the aforementioned Appalachian districts that would be regarded as insane.

OH-08: First of all let me say that Columbus is one of my least favorite places in the country to draw, not so much due to the sheer number of discontinuous precincts but that their shape MAKES NO F[INKS]ING SENSE WHATSOEVER. The weird way the southern portion of this district is squeezed by the 7th is due to this primarily. Regardless this is designed to be a black influence seat in the Columbus metro and is overall just barely majority non-white...obvious Safe D.

OH-09: This is the other Democratic seat in Columbus. What's interesting is even though this is seat is under 10% black (compared to over 37% in the 8th) and about half as non-white as the 8th it only voted 5 points to the right...Biden got 65% here compared to 70% there...whites in this part of Columbus must be pretty damn D and no doubt the most D whites in the state. And Safe D.

OH-10: A hodgepodge of northern Columbus suburbia/exurbia and rural farmland, obvious Safe R, Trump+28.

OH-11: This is hands down the most Republican district in the state, Trump+48...and that's including Springfield, which granted isn't a super D city that Biden only won by high single digits...still it's kind of crazy just how Republican this area is. Obvious Safe R.

OH-12: Another obvious Safe R seat although it has enough Democratic pockets in small cities and of course Bowling Green (although that's notably less D than you'd expect from a city with a college of that size), to be about 6 points to the left of the above...Trump still won it by over 37 points.

OH-13: Toledo still dominates a district at this size! It's about a Biden+7 set, doesn't seem that safe but in this area it's at worst Likely D...and frankly Safe for Kaptur.

OH-14: One thing I've noticed with Ohio is no matter how you draw the state or how many districts there are you always end up with a bunch of leftovers districts. This is an example. Some boring rural areas and some heavily Obama-Trump working class towns by the lake....Safe R won by Trump by over 31 points.

OH-15: So let me say while this district is kind of ugly that was drawn by considerations in the other seats and it's actually not terrible from a CoI standpoint, there's still continuous road connection from Akron to the southern part without crossing into another districts and thus I'll argue that since the Akron area has to be paired with some rural areas southwest isn't really much worse than immediately west. Biden won this by 4 points...so it's not a stronghold but I also can't find any Republican that did carry it, DeWine no doubt did in 2022 but you can't base anything off that. Though it's PVI is close to Even I'm going to call it somewhere between Lean and Likely D.

OH-16: Canton always gets screwed doesn't it? At least Canton Democrats. What's interesting is how overlooked of a city Canton is, I guess it's not that big, but I can only think of two people who have ever mentioned being from it, a guy who once was a guest speaker at my church, and some metalcore band whose name escapes me...also must be a lousy place for shows, why would any big touring band play there instead of Cleveland, and even if it's a regional tour and you want a date before or after Cleveland Akron makes far more sense, I guess at least if you drive you still have decent access to shows...anyway this is a Safe R Trump+26 seat.

OH-17: Yeah this is basically Safe R now at Trump+16. Let me say though that Democrats shouldn't mourn this area too much, the only reason it used to be key to Democratic victories in the past is it had way more population than it does now....believe it or not this area used to have a population that was about 70-80% of Franklin County's in the 60s and 70s.

OH-18: This is kind of a leftovers seat because as I noted Ohio is prone to those, although in this case it's kind of a necessary case because the part of northern Ohio east of Cleveland is always tough to draw from a CoI standpoint, it's not big enough for its own seat even at this size and it's surrounded by other CoI areas that it's always going to be an awkward fit to pair with. In this case I went with suburban which is weird with the Akron district but also not unjustifiable based on road connections in both districts, about Trump+15 so Safe R which is still frustrating with how many D strongholds it contains like Kent.

OH-19: This is another weird tossup district. Biden won it by less than 2 points...I think it's the closest district in the state although both Biden and Trump did better than in the 5th. A strange combo of working class cities, Oberlin and Cleveland suburbs. Although unlike the 5th no Republican recently (other than DeWine 2022) has carried it...I'm actually going to be bold and call this a Lean D seat, at least somewhere between Lean D and tossup.

OH-20: This district has a weird shape yes, but the idea is to take in the white parts of the Cleveland metro and give the black community an influence district, and the black population in Cleveland is kind of disbursed in an odd way. Biden won it by over 20 points, so still Safe D.

OH-21: Over 53% black and Biden+56. And even this district has an odd fit in that realities in others forced almost 20% of it to be that overwhelmingly white and Trump+6 part of Lake County into it. But a clear Safe D seat.

So you basically have 5 truly Safe D seats, one basically Safe D seat, two sort of fool's gold-esque for Republicans seats, 12 Safe R seats and one total toss-up seat...actually pretty good for Democrats.