Redistricting Colorado

I found this site a few months ago and have really enjoyed the content, so I decided I would try and contribute something. If you have any questions, comments, constructive criticism, feel free to let me know.

Background: I decided to start with Colorado, since it’s my home state. Colorado has both a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature, allowing the Democrats to do as they please when it comes to redistricting. My first priority was to protect Markey, and my second priority was to put Salazar into a more favorable district that we’ll have a good chance of holding if he ever decides to retire.

District 1 – Diana DeGette – I didn’t change this district too much. This district includes Denver and Arvada, in Jefferson county. It is still very heavily Democratic; Obama got about 73% of the vote here.

District 2 – Jared Polis – This is the district I am least happy with. I tried to give Salazar a more favorable district by removing Mesa County (Grand Junction), which is a deep shade of blood red, and giving him all of the ski resort counties, most of which are insanely Democratic. However, that means that Polis’s district now contains Grand Junction, as well as some other conservative areas like Delta County. It’s still anchored by Boulder, though, and Obama got 57-58 percent of the vote here, but I’m still worried I might have diluted the district too much.

District 3 – John Salazar – John Salazar is as safe as can be in his current district, but I wanted to create a district that we’d have a good chance of holding if and when Salazar retires. To do that, I removed a whole section of his district stretching from Wyoming to Grand Junction. In its place, he got some heavily Democratic territory currently represented by Jared Polis, some swing areas to the west of Colorado Springs that are currently being wasted in Doug Lamborn’s district. Unfortunately, I also had to give him part of Douglas County, and a few of the counties on the eastern plains, but they are more than offset by Pueblo and the San Luis Valley. Obama got about 51-52 percent of the vote here, making it a swing district in presidential races.

District 4 – Betsy Markey – One of my main goals was making Markey safer. This is the district that I live in, and after six years of having Marilyn Musgrave be my voice in Washington, Markey is a nice change. I didn’t have to work too hard to make her safer, since the rapid growth in Weld and Larimer counties allowed me to move most of the Eastern Plains to a different district while adding hardly any new territory. This is another swing district where Obama won 51-52 percent of the vote, but I think it’s enough to make Markey safe.

District 5 – Doug Lamborn – I wanted to do something to get rid of Doug Lamborn; his two biggest backers are the Christian Coalition and the Club for Growth; that should tell you all you need to know. However, for the forseeable future, there is going to be a heavily Republican district based in Colorado Springs, so I stripped the district of the swing areas in the western section, and added most of the counties in the Eastern Plains that Markey was relieved of, as well as part of heavily Republican Douglas County. McCain got about 61 percent of the vote here.

District 6 – Mike Coffman – I thought about trying to come up with a gerrymander that would make Coffman’s district too Democratic for him to be re-elected, but I decided against it. However, don’t lose hope yet. Because of explosive growth in the district, it is dramatically reduced in size, and it is anchored by Democratic leaning Arapahoe County, as well as about 60 percent of the population of Douglas County. In the new, more compact district, Obama got 52-53 percent of the vote, and it’s still trending our way. Coffman, like most Colorado Republicans, is very conservative, and thus is a poor fit for a classic swing district like this one. He’ll have the fight of his life in 2012, and if he survives that, we’ll get him eventually just because of the long term trends in the district.

District 7 – Ed Perlmutter – Perlmutter’s new district is sort of gerrymandered, and looks like a pair of nunchucks. It contains all of Jefferson County except Aurora, and the parts of Adams County that aren’t in Polis’s district. It leans Democratic. Obama got about 56% of the vote in this district.