About a week ago, I was talking with someone about how the governor’s legislative redistricting plan was rejected in 2002. I began to wonder how different that plan was from that of the 1990s and before, so I did a search. I could not find legislative districts from before the 1990s, but I did find this: http://planning.maryland.gov/M… which shows what the 1990s era districts looked like. The idea then dawned upon me to try to recreate that map using Dave’s redistricting app and then examine how the state has changed since then. First, the map:
Then, here’s the data, which shows whether the 1990 configuration of the district is overpopulated or underpopulated, the %Obama received, the %white in 1990 and 2010, and the %black in 1990 and 2010. Dark blue districts had the white percentage decrease by over 20% or more, while light blue had the white percentage decrease by 10-20%.
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
Conclusions: The past 20 years has brought some sizable population changes to Maryland. Montgomery, Frederick, Charles, St. Marys, Howard, Harford, and Cecil Counties, have all increased relatively in population. Almost all of that has come from the demise of Baltimore City, which has seen uniform decline. Other areas which have seen declines are the Essex/Dundalk area of Eastern Baltimore County, Western Maryland west of Hagerstown, and inner Prince George’s County.
With the notable exception of the lower Eastern Shore, the vast majority of Maryland has been getting more diverse. Large swaths of Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County, Montgomery County, PG County, and Charles County have all seen their white percentage decrease by over 20% in 20 years. The area with the greatest change may have been the Bowie-centered 23rd district, which was majority-white in 1990, but has since seen its white percentage cut in half.
In the traditional white-flight paradigm, areas that became more diverse also decreased in population. This is still visible in Maryland in parts of Baltimore City and PG County. However, recent trends show many areas with strong minority growth also growing rapidly. Areas like this in Maryland include most of Montgomery County, southern Frederick County, Howard County, outer PG County, Charles County, and the Owings Mills area of Baltimore County. While heavily-white and Republican St. Mary’s County and Bel Air (Harford County) did post some of the largest gains statewide, these changes are really offset by the gains elsewhere, and will not likely have much of an effect on Maryland politics.
These changes matter greatly when you consider how much more Republican Maryland was in 1990. Though hard to believe, Maryland did vote for Bush in 1988, with areas like Montgomery County only barely voting for Dukakis. In addition, Prince George’s County was only about 50% black in 1990, versus the 66% that it is now, so Dukakis surely did much worse than Obama did there. Bush even got 57% in Baltimore County, where areas like Randallstown were only about 55% black versus the upwards of 90% that they are now (look at the old 10 stats on that Maryland General Assembly website). Under the old demographics, it would’ve been impossible to draw District 1 so that it voted for Obama, something demonstrated multiple times here on Swing State Project.
Thus, while the Democratic Party’s fortunes nationwide may ebb and sway, there’s very little room for the Republican Party to grow in Maryland. Demographic changes have put Maryland out of reach for the Republicans in the past 20 years, and will likely continue to do so.
I used to live in a MoCo subdivision that was about 30% East Asian (Chinese, Korean), 30% South Asian (Indian, Pakistani) and 40% white–evenly divided between Christians and Jews. I knew that a black friend of mine was looking in a house in our price range so I told him that a house in our neighborhood was on the market. He said later that he liked the house but there wasn’t enough “diversity” in the neighborhood.
Interestingly, Charles County and Orange County, Florida were the only two counties in the nation that voted for Dole in 1996 and Gore in 2000.