Sorry about the corny title. I felt that after the infamous Delaymander of Texas, this needed a similar name, and Steny Hoyer’s name didn’t lend itself to this as much as Chris Van Hollen’s name did. Anyway, this map attempts to defeat Andy Harris and Roscoe Bartlett while keeping all Democratic incumbents safe. And as an added bonus, it draws a new majority-minority district, just for the hell of it. Overall, this map is probably even cleaner looking than the current map of MD (which was always unnecessarily ugly, IMO). The only really ugly looking district is the 3rd, and even that looks better than it did before.
DC Area:
Baltimore:
Starting in the west, the panhandle is now in MD-08. In most of this area, the I-270 serves as the barrier between MD-08 and MD-06, with the area SW of the 270 in the 8th and the area NE of the 270 in MD-06. The 8th is 61%O/38%M and the 6th is 62%O/37%M. Van Hollen should be safe, and Bartlett is toast. MD-05 is the new majority-minority district. The racial stats are 49%W/28%B/15%H/7%A. I actually wasn’t intending to do this, but it just so happened that when I drew MD-05 it turned out 51% white, so I decided to tinker with the borders a little to make it majority-minority. The citizen voting age population is probably still majority-white, but that doesn’t really matter as this wasn’t required anyway. MD-04 takes in Calvert and some GOP parts of Anne Arundel Co. It is 39%W/53%B and 75%O/24%M. The 1st loses all its territory in the Baltimore suburbs and now crosses the water in the south into St. Mary’s, Charles, and a tiny part of PG Co. It is now 50%O/48%M, which would be slightly Republican leaning nationally but should be easy for Kratovil to win, especially now that Andy Harris is drawn out of the district. Interestingly, the PG Co parts of the district make up a tiny 33K people, or 5% of the total population of the district, however without these areas the district goes from 50/48 Obama to 47/51 McCain.
In the Baltimore area, the 2nd and 3rd districts have lost their spagetti-like shape and become much more compact. The 2nd district contains Harford and most of northern Baltimore counties as well as the northern part of Baltimore city. The district is 58%O/40%M, which is slightly less than the previous total of 59%O/39%M, but not significantly enough to affect this district much. The 3rd is now a crescent shaped district that stretches around from John Sarbanes’s home in Towson around Baltimore, Howard, and Anne Arundel counties as well as some liberal white areas of Baltimore around the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. It is now 59%O/39%M, which like the 2nd is slightly less than the 60%O/38%M it was before but not significantly. The 7th composes most of the majority black areas of Baltimore, however it stretches out to grab up Republican areas in Baltimore county from the surrounding districts. It is 42%W/52%B and 70%O/28%M.
I guess this map isn’t technically an 8-0 map, as the 1st still has a slight Republican lean. That could easily be gotten rid of by messing with the borders between the 4th and the 1st some more, however I decided that wasn’t necessary and it would require making the map look a little uglier. This 1st contains Kratovil’s base in the Eastern Shore, where he always did very well, but not the Baltimore suburbs that he consistently lost. I guess it’s theoretically possible that the GOP could pick up the 2nd or 3rd in an open-seat situation (maybe), however I really, really doubt they have much more of a chance than they do under the current map.
Loading ...
Its a tribute to what technology can do. Several misc. comments.
1. I have described the process of what the democrats have to do to maximize their political advantage. This map is a perfect example of it. The three main democratic counties & Baltimore city (Montgomery, Prince Georges, Baltimore county) equal about 56% of the state. Under this map those four counties/city provide the key political drive in all 8 congressional seats.
2. By my reckoning the three minority majority seats in this state (CD4, CD7 & CD8) all appear to be less of a minority seat then before. I read that as retrogression but the seats all appear to be over 50% minority so maybe not. I leave that to others to decide and that includes the DOJ.
3. I really do not know what the incumbents would think of these lines. That would be the main hindrance to lines like this.
I personally see this arrangement but I could be wrong.
I thought referring to highways with “the” was strictly a California thing.
I don’t think he’d be the best person for that. Also you’d either have Edwards against Hoyer in a primary (that is majority African American) or you’d have Edwards trying to represent Carroll County. Either way, she’s not getting out of the primary.
You’re also making Sarbanes represent a lot of Howard and Anne Arundel, while he came from a more Baltimore-area. He should have more of the city.
I suppose a couple incumbents might not be thrilled with having to deal with new constituents, but overall I think this is an efficient way of maximizing Democratic strengths while keeping pretty clean lines.
The cleaner lines are good. Eyeballing it suggests that the partisan numbers are look pretty good and balanced.
But the plan’s not going to look anything like this.
Trying to figure out whose district is whose, for one thing. I suppose if there were a commission drawing these in a vacuum that wouldn’t matter much. But I think you left the Minority Whip without a district. He lives in St. Mary’s County in this map’s 1st district, which favors (albeit far less than the current 1st does) Republicans; the most obvious place for him to run is in this map’s 4th, which is clearly designed to elect an African-American and is where Donna Edwards lives.
Re: the 7th: When you’re a Democrat making a VRA district, it makes sense to pair heavily non-white areas with the most conservative/Republican areas possible. This map attempts to do that with the East Side of Baltimore County…but what the Obama/McCain numbers don’t tell you by themselves is that these voters are not Republicans. And from Eli Cummings’ point of view, they’re actually worse for him than having a bunch of Republicans would be, since that area has a lot of ancestral Democrats with a specific history of not voting for black candidates.
There’s no specific rule I know of against a district jumping the bay via open water, but I can’t imagine Democrats doing that when they have other options.
State Delegate Reznik was just at UMD and one of the questions we asked him, was what will the map look like. his response was that the Comissision would probably seek to knock out Andy Harris (MD-01) and let Bartlett survive, he’s 86 anyway and the other MD representatives somewhat like him.
Really solid map. As previous commentators have said, I think they take out Andy Harris but let Bartlett survive.