Tag: Census 2010

The partisan data is still not in the Application.  Nevertheless, I wanted to post this DRAFT map now that the Census numbers are out.

I feel that my first attempt 15-3 map was perhaps too ambitious, but I feel confident that 14-4 is VERY doable in Illinois — ofcourse, the lines will have to be ugly like this “Texas-style” map.

I had several goals:

1.) Keep all 3 black seats intact; not easy considering hundreds of thousands of blacks have left Chicago over the last decade.

2.) Create two Hispanic seats — ones that would be guaranteed to elect Hispanic representatives.

3.) Keep all currently Democratic-held seats at very high Democratic levels (this includes the minority-majority seats, ofcourse, as well as IL-3, IL-5, IL-9, and IL-12).

4.) Create seats where the incumbent Democrat would keep as much of his or her current constituents as possible.

5.) Create a map whereby there are only 4 Republican seats, the newly created Democratic seats must be at relatively high Democratic levels – ideally around 65% Obama or higher in the Chicago area and around 60% Obama or higher in downstate and/or 5 points more Democratic than the existing seat.

6.) As a finishing touch, create a map whereby Aaron Schock and Adam Kinzinger will basically not have a seat to run in.

Here’s the map:

Goal 1:  Preserving African-American seats – under this map, virtually all black-majority precincts in the Chicago area become parts of the 3 black-majority districts.  The reason the black percentage goes down in all 3 seats is because hundreds of thousands of blacks have left the area over the last decade.

New IL-1 is 51.3 black, 38.7 white (18+ pop. is 51.5 black, 40.1 white) – Rush gets to keep 53% of his current constituents, including 75% of his current black constituents.

New IL-2 is 51.8 black, 37.2 white (18+ pop. is 50.1 black, 40.5 white) – Jackson gets to keep 80% of his current constituents, including 83% of his current black constituents.

New IL-7 is 51.8 black, 34.8 white (18+ pop. is 50.1 black, 37.5 white) – Davis gets to keep 59% of his current constituents, including 90% of his current black constituents.

Goal 2:  Two Effective Hispanic seats

New IL-4 is 56.0 hispanic, 33.2 white (18+ pop. is 50.4 hispanic, 38.9 white) – these percentages are enough to elect a Hispanic Representative as IL-4 encompasses the mostly Puerto Rican-descent areas on the north side of Chicago where the Hispanics are all citizens.  It makes sense to me that Gutierrez would run here.

New IL-6 is 64.1 hispanic, 25.1 white (18+ pop. is 58.5 hispanic, 30.1 white) – this area encompasses the mostly Mexican-descent areas on the south side of Chicago where there’s a higher proportion of non-citizens, so I made the Hispanic percentage here noticeably higher in order to make sure that a Hispanic Representative is elected.

Goal 3:  Make sure all currently Democratic-held seats are safely Democratic.

My estimate is that the 3 new black-majority seats and the 2 new hispanic seats above are all in the 75-79 Obama range (ofcourse, there’s currently only one hispanic seat but I’m classifying IL-4 and IL-6 as “Dem-held” as Gutierrez currently represents roughly half of each district) …

For the other currently Democratic-held seats the partisan numbers (ESTIMATED Obama as a percentage of the 2-party vote) are as follows:

New IL-3 is 62.3 Obama (current district is 64.4 Obama)

New IL-5 is 68.3 Obama (current district is 73.9 Obama)

New IL-9 is 70.2 Obama (current district is 73.2 Obama)

New IL-12 is 60.9 Obama (current district is 56.4 Obama)

Goal 4:  Incumbent-protection

I already discussed above what percentage of their constituents the Democrats in the minority-majority seats would keep.  For the other Democratic incumbents the numbers are as follows:

New IL-3: Lipinski gets to keep 33% of his current constituents (that’s the lowest percentage of all incumbent Democrats but a good chunk of the new Hispanic-majority IL-6 comes out of territory that’s currently a part of IL-3).

New IL-5: Quigley gets to keep 70% of his current constituents

New IL-9: Schakowsky gets to keep 75% of her current constituents

New IL-12: Costello gets to keep 63% of his current constituents

Goal 5:  Get rid of 7 of the current 11 GOP members through re-drawing of lines.

– As already mentioned, IL-6 goes from a suburban GOP district to a Hispanic-majority Democratic district based in Chicago (ofcourse, Roskam can run in the new IL-16 which becomes sort of a Chicago-area GOP vote sink).

– New IL-8 is 65.1 Obama (current district is 56.5 Obama), so Walsh is history (or he can run in the new IL-16).  The new IL-8 should be friendly to Bean if she wants to make a comeback.

– New IL-10 is 65.3 Obama (current district is 61.5 Obama), plus the district has a lot of new territory, including the entire Lake Michigan shoreline — so Dold is history.

– New IL-11 is 59.2 Obama (current district is 54.2 Obama).  Only 19% of Kinzinger’s current constituents remain in IL-11 under the new lines, so his base basically disappears with this map.  Also, the new IL-11 includes 3 major university towns.  It’s likely that this district would flip back to the Democratic side in 2012.

– New IL-14 is 62.4 Obama (current district is 55.6 Obama).  Hultgren won here over Foster by 51-45 (with the Green candidate at 4%) in a major GOP year, so the 7-point Democratic increase should more than do the job.  (Hultgren can run in the new IL-16 ofcourse.)

– New IL-17 is 60.8 Obama (current district is 57.2 Obama).  The lines are scrambled here considerably (less than half of the population of the new IL-17 comes out of Schilling’s current constituency) and most of Rockford is now included.  I really believe that almost any Democrat other than Hare would have no trouble here in 2012.

– IL-19 no longer exists, so that’s also one less Republican (although Shimkus may want to run in the new IL-18 — see below).

By my estimate, John Kerry would have won all of the 14 Democratic seats created by this map.

The four GOP seats that remain:

– IL-13: now transferred to the southern reaches of the state but without an incumbent.  Although Republican, less so than the other 3 GOP seats, so perhaps a possibility that a moderate to conservative Democrat could win here.

– IL-15: Johnson gets to keep 67% of his current constituents under the new lines.

– IL-16: The most likely Republicans to run here include Manzullo, Walsh, Hultgren, Roskam and Biggert (not necessarily in that order) — yes, the map packs these 5 into one district, with a few Dold precincts also included !

– IL-18: designed more for Shimkus than for Schock — 29% of the new district’s population comes out of Shimkus’ current district, while only 20% comes out of Schock’s … which brings me to the last goal …

Goal 6:  Make it hard for Kinzinger and Schock

I already discussed Kinzinger a bit above.  Basically, the current IL-11 gets split as follows: 19% of Kinzinger’s constituents remain in IL-11; 30% go into the new IL-2; 22% into IL-1; 18% into IL-3; 6% into IL-15; and 5% into IL-18.

As far as Schock, his current district is likewise torn apart; the highest proportion of his current constituents (30%) goes to IL-15; the rest is divided among IL-11 (27%); IL-18 (20%); IL-13 (15%); IL-12 (7%); with a sliver going to IL-17.

To briefly sum up my map:

1.) Democratic; black-majority; Rush

2.) Democratic; black-majority; Jackson

3.) Democratic; 62.3 Obama; Lipinski

4.) Democratic; hispanic-majority; Gutierrez

5.) Democratic; 68.3 Obama; Quigley

6.) Democratic; hispanic-majority; new Hispanic representative (?)

7.) Democratic; black-majority; Davis

8.) Democratic; 65.1 Obama; Bean (?)

9.) Democratic; 70.2 Obama; Schakowsky

10.) Democratic; 65.3 Obama; new Dem. representative (?)

11.) Democratic; 59.2 Obama; new Dem. representative (?)

12.) Democratic; 60.9 Obama; Costello

14.) Democratic; 62.4 Obama; Foster (?)

17.) Democratic; 60.8 Obama; new Dem. representative (?)

13.) Republican; new GOP Rep. (?)

15.) Republican; Johnson

16.) Republican; Manzullo, Hultgren or Walsh most likely to win here

18.) Republican; Shimkus

So yeah, lately in my few spare moments I’ve been working on the perfect Maryland legislative redistricting map. Before I release that though, I want to talk a little about the thought process that goes into such a map. Today’s diary will show how the population in Maryland has shifted over the past decade, and what this will mean for redistricting in my beloved home state.

To start, I made a map using Census 2010 colors, that shows how the state’s districts have grown over the past decade.

From this map we can make several conclusions:

– Given that the state growth rate was around 9%, it makes sense that most districts would be in the 5-15% range.

– Growth in traditionally high-growth exurbs of Baltimore (Carroll, Harford, northern Baltimore County) slowed to the state average this decade.

– Many of Baltimore’s inner suburbs stagnated (although this is an improvement for Essex/Dundalk, which had been losing population for decades)

– 5 of Baltimore City’s 6 districts lost significant population, guaranteeing the loss of a State Senate district. The one that actually did post a modest gain, District 46, is the one most likely to be abolished given that it’s the only non-majority black district in Baltimore City.

– The only district to lose population outside of Baltimore City was majority-black District 24 in Prince George’s County. Every district in MD that lost population over the past decade was majority-black.

This might be worth exploring in a later diary, but the correlation coefficient between %black and %growth was -.54, while for whites it was .42, Asians .39, and Hispanics .05

– The highest growth area of the state by far is the I-270 corridor in Frederick/Montgomery Counties. District 15 gained an amazing 28%, while District 3 gained 25%.

– Other areas growing significantly faster than the state average include:

     – the western Baltimore suburbs (9 and 11)

     – Gaithersburg/Rockville (17)

     – Southern Maryland (27, 28, and 29)

     – Outer Prince George’s County (21 and 23)

     – the Upper Eastern Shore (36) – mostly from high growth around Elkton and Kent Island

– Although growth stagnated in the inner DC suburbs, the balance of power in the state continues to shift towards DC.

Redistricting Implications

Growth isn’t everything. Another important consideration is the extent to which current districts are over or under population. Under the law, districts must be within 5% deviation of the mean population. The following map shows what districts are over, under, or acceptable.

From this map, one can see that inner Baltimore and DC suburbs districts will need to expand, while the outer suburban and rural districts will need to contract.

Side Note about Deviation

It’s important to note that a lot of the underpopulated districts started out with fewer people in 2000. Here’s a map showing which districts were drawn to be over and under the median (but within 5%) in 2000.

As you can see, the Democratic Party has used acceptable deviation as way to slightly maximize the influence of its most loyal counties – Prince George’s, Montgomery, and Baltimore City. Expect to see deviation put to good use in my map, as well as in the map that eventually gets drawn.

Conclusion

So yeah, that’s it. I hope this gets a few people talking and/or thinking. Before I release my perfect legislative map, I’m thinking about writing a diary on the history of Maryland legislative redistricting, so be on the lookout for that as well.