Misleading Congressional Districts

[ProgressiveModerate]

Basically this thread is about drawing districts that are misleading in some way. I'll start:





These 2 districts map look simillar, or even identical, but one is Biden + 14 and the other is Trump + 23.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Another fun one.



All 4 suburban Houston districts here were Clinton - Trump, while the city center district (district 5) shift left in 2020 Pres

[dpmapper]

All 4 suburban Houston districts here were Clinton - Trump, while the city center district (district 5) shift left in 2020 Pres

This is insane; one suburban Texas Clinton-Trump district, sure, but 4?!  Well done!  Goes to show just how diverse the Houston area is, I suppose (and just how many pockets of non-shifting suburban/exurban whites there are). 

I assume that overall, the set of 5 still shifted left from 2016 to 2020? 

[ProgressiveModerate]

All 4 suburban Houston districts here were Clinton - Trump, while the city center district (district 5) shift left in 2020 Pres

This is insane; one suburban Texas Clinton-Trump district, sure, but 4?!  Well done!  Goes to show just how diverse the Houston area is, I suppose (and just how many pockets of non-shifting suburban/exurban whites there are). 

I assume that overall, the set of 5 still shifted left from 2016 to 2020? 

Collectively, not sure how the set of 5 shifted; it's a very close call.

My strategy in drawing these districts was basically to combine right shifting D-heavy non-white communities with suburban and exurban Houston communities that lean R and may have shifted left from 2016-2020, but saw a huge jump in total votes.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/5fb62fbc-3354-41d8-9515-d41203f08b39

[ProgressiveModerate]

This district voted Gore in 2000 and Obama twice, but then for Trump twice, even though it's fully contained within Tarrant and Denton Counties in TX.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I once created a Warnock-Perdue district, which I would've thouht impossible if I hadn't done so completely by accident. It's not even in the black belt but the north Atlanta suburbs. Granted Perdue won by 700 votes but still.

[Vosem]

Not an observation about drawing districts, but I've always been fascinated by enormous seats where the population is in one corner (the way TX-23 is enormous but most of the voters are in the San Antonio suburbs). Most of the people in MI-1 actually living in the part of the seat that's in the Lower Peninsula, even though it's also mostly rural and geographically much smaller than the Upper Peninsula, is another good wacky population-distribution observation.

I think the huge Canadian northern ridings also often have, like, most of the people in one city.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Not an observation about drawing districts, but I've always been fascinated by enormous seats where the population is in one corner (the way TX-23 is enormous but most of the voters are in the San Antonio suburbs). Most of the people in MI-1 actually living in the part of the seat that's in the Lower Peninsula, even though it's also mostly rural and geographically much smaller than the Upper Peninsula, is another good wacky population-distribution observation.

I think the huge Canadian northern ridings also often have, like, most of the people in one city.

Yeah TX-23 is insane, and it's why relative to the other TX border districts, the rightwards shift has been more muted. Crazy record with the old config going McCain-Romney-Clinton-Biden; only district to do so IIRC on the old lines. If 2020 was truly a one-off and the TX boarder counties don't continue to get notably redder, def a seat Rs should be worried about, I think it prolly stays mostly stagnant for the decade though and Gonzales is a decent incumbent, easily winning the Bexar portion of the district in 2022.

[Sol]

Not congressional, but this seat is surprising in voting patterns:

A 60-38 Biden state house seat in Killeen, TX.

[Atlas Force]

Not an observation about drawing districts, but I've always been fascinated by enormous seats where the population is in one corner (the way TX-23 is enormous but most of the voters are in the San Antonio suburbs). Most of the people in MI-1 actually living in the part of the seat that's in the Lower Peninsula, even though it's also mostly rural and geographically much smaller than the Upper Peninsula, is another good wacky population-distribution observation.

I think the huge Canadian northern ridings also often have, like, most of the people in one city.

NV-4 is another good example of this.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Not congressional, but this seat is surprising in voting patterns:

A 60-38 Biden state house seat in Killeen, TX.

Killeen is def a really interesting place. Sort of the furthest west "rural black town" (even though it's neither truly rural of "black town" given Blacks are only a little over 1/3rd of the population. Killeen is one of those places that tends to suffer big time from poor minority turnout in certain elections, which is why it swung pretty hard right in 2022.

Also, the 2004-2008 Pres swing was insane, with Killeen shifting like 40 points left. Since then it's been relatively stagnant at the Pres level.

I think going forwards seeing to what degree it's pull into Austin's political sphere will be interesting.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Not an observation about drawing districts, but I've always been fascinated by enormous seats where the population is in one corner (the way TX-23 is enormous but most of the voters are in the San Antonio suburbs). Most of the people in MI-1 actually living in the part of the seat that's in the Lower Peninsula, even though it's also mostly rural and geographically much smaller than the Upper Peninsula, is another good wacky population-distribution observation.

I think the huge Canadian northern ridings also often have, like, most of the people in one city.

NV-4 is another good example of this.

CO-04 too. Even though it still leans R, like 80% of the population is concentrated in Douglas, Larimer, and Weld counties. It's basically a left-trending Lean R seat with 20 super R rural plains counties tagged onto it.

Districts like NV-04 and CO-04 were always bound to be awkward just because of how population is distributed in those states. In NV, it's basically impossible to have a truly rural CD; the closest you could get is doing a weird snake from Reno to Vegas which is obviously problematic. In the case of CO-04, all those rural plains counties aren't anywhere near enough to sustain their own CD, so were always going to have to be paired with something a bit awkward.

WA-05 is also underrated imo. Again, leans R but the vast vast majority of the population is concentrated in greater Spokane.

[ProgressiveModerate]

This district swung over 7 points right from 2012 to 2020 Pres, despite Obama doing 10 points worse than Biden in MA statewide

[ProgressiveModerate]

This CD voted for Biden by 4.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

Nevada-4 looks very Republican but actually voted for Biden/Clinton.

[politicallefty]

Another fun one.



All 4 suburban Houston districts here were Clinton - Trump, while the city center district (district 5) shift left in 2020 Pres

I think that's a very strong illustration to show why Democrats haven't broken through in Texas yet. While the DFW and Austin areas are zooming leftward without hesitation, the same is not true of the Houston area. It's moving left much more slowly and Harris County itself barely moved from 2016-2020. If it had just swung as much as Montgomery or Brazoria (in other words, a slightly larger margin than Beto got in 2018), it would've shaved 100k off the 2020 statewide margin.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Another fun one.

All 4 suburban Houston districts here were Clinton - Trump, while the city center district (district 5) shift left in 2020 Pres

I think that's a very strong illustration to show why Democrats haven't broken through in Texas yet. While the DFW and Austin areas are zooming leftward without hesitation, the same is not true of the Houston area. It's moving left much more slowly and Harris County itself barely moved from 2016-2020. If it had just swung as much as Montgomery or Brazoria (in other words, a slightly larger margin than Beto got in 2018), it would've shaved 100k off the 2020 statewide margin.

Tbf this may have been true in 2020, but in 2016 Pres Houston shifted the hardest left of any of the 4 main metros, and if you compare the 2012-2020 swings across the board, Houston is pretty simillar to the others. One could argue that Hillary overshot a little bit in Houston so Biden just had less to gain.

Overall though, I agree there are more Demographic and cultural reasons I'd expect Houston to have less of a shift than the other main TX metros.

[politicallefty]

Another fun one.

All 4 suburban Houston districts here were Clinton - Trump, while the city center district (district 5) shift left in 2020 Pres

I think that's a very strong illustration to show why Democrats haven't broken through in Texas yet. While the DFW and Austin areas are zooming leftward without hesitation, the same is not true of the Houston area. It's moving left much more slowly and Harris County itself barely moved from 2016-2020. If it had just swung as much as Montgomery or Brazoria (in other words, a slightly larger margin than Beto got in 2018), it would've shaved 100k off the 2020 statewide margin.

Tbf this may have been true in 2020, but in 2016 Pres Houston shifted the hardest left of any of the 4 main metros, and if you compare the 2012-2020 swings across the board, Houston is pretty simillar to the others. One could argue that Hillary overshot a little bit in Houston so Biden just had less to gain.

Overall though, I agree there are more Demographic and cultural reasons I'd expect Houston to have less of a shift than the other main TX metros.

I agree with your last point, but as I noted before, the large suburban counties surrounding Harris had notably larger leftward swings (though that wasn't outside the norm across the country in 2020). I was also comparing the result to the 2018 Senate race, which had a margin less than half of 2020. Biden basically matched Beto in the big 4 DFW counties. Beto set high bars in Travis and El Paso that Biden could never reasonably match in 2020. I don't think the same could be said about Harris. Biden pretty much matched Beto in Fort Bend, Brazoria, and Montgomery. While Hillary's performance in Harris was impressive, her performance in the DFW and Austin metros were no less impressive. Those trends show no sign of letting up, unlike the stall in Harris County.

[patzer]

Redrawing the borders of three of Georgia's congressional districts slightly... you might guess the changes upon looking at the location of the cities closely. But given the fact the core of the three districts remains the same as in reality, it's not exactly intuitive that this 2nd district voted for Trump by 14 points in 2020, whereas the 3rd and 10th voted for Biden by 4 points and 6 points respectively!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/215a124e-ff6c-45bb-8ec0-e81432dea0fa
Guess how this district voted in 2020?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Hochul did so bad, one can draw 5 Zeldin districts entirely within NYC. In this map, all these seats except the Staten Island one was over Biden + 20; the Queens-Bronx seat was over Biden + 30! Can really take advantage of poor Dem turnout in many Hispanic and Black communities.

On Biden 2020, pretty sure it's only possible to draw 2 Trump districts entirely within NYC without doing smtg crazy (i.e using Hudson river to connect Jewish communities in Williamsburg to Whitestone).

[Schiff for Senate]

Basically this thread is about drawing districts that are misleading in some way. I'll start:





These 2 districts map look simillar, or even identical, but one is Biden + 14 and the other is Trump + 23.

How??? I see absolutely nothing to explain a 37 point difference, even in Baton Rouge they appear to take in similar areas (although I suppose closer scrutiny would be much more revealing - but still...a 37 point shift is insane).

[Schiff for Senate]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/215a124e-ff6c-45bb-8ec0-e81432dea0fa
Guess how this district voted in 2020?

I've probably spent way too much time making TX maps on DRA but tbh I'm not very surprised. Outside of cities like Abilene, Lubbock, Amarillo, Wichita Falls, Odessa/Midland, all those square counties are very, very low in population. And ofc Travis County is very deep blue, and I'm guessing given how dense it is a majority of the district's population resides there.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Basically this thread is about drawing districts that are misleading in some way. I'll start:





These 2 districts map look simillar, or even identical, but one is Biden + 14 and the other is Trump + 23.

How??? I see absolutely nothing to explain a 37 point difference, even in Baton Rouge they appear to take in similar areas (although I suppose closer scrutiny would be much more revealing - but still...a 37 point shift is insane).

It's by taking advantage of the extreme racial polarization in the southeastern US. The first map takes in all the hyper-Dem black precincts in cities like Alexandria, Monroe, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge, while the second map avoids them.

[Schiff for Senate]

Basically this thread is about drawing districts that are misleading in some way. I'll start:





These 2 districts map look simillar, or even identical, but one is Biden + 14 and the other is Trump + 23.

How??? I see absolutely nothing to explain a 37 point difference, even in Baton Rouge they appear to take in similar areas (although I suppose closer scrutiny would be much more revealing - but still...a 37 point shift is insane).

It's by taking advantage of the extreme racial polarization in the southeastern US. The first map takes in all the hyper-Dem black precincts in cities like Alexandria, Monroe, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge, while the second map avoids them.

Ah. It's still really neat how the districts seem so, so similar - whatever the case might be, a 37 point difference between these two is pretty mind blowing.