Utah: 2 Obama Districts ??

I was inspired by Alizarin’s diary “Republican Gerrymander of New York”: http://www.swingstateproject.c…  as well as abgin’s “finding limits” series of diaries to try to make a Utah map with two Obama districts.  The resulting map actually has both districts at McCain under 50% — in the green district, Obama has a plurality, while in the blue one McCain is slightly ahead, though still under 50%.  

The partisan data was not in the Application.  The major problem I had was lack of precinct data from the various counties.  I did this map purely for fun so I used a variety of data sources and estimation techniques here – some of which may come with caveats.  Therefore, I cannot guarantee that my end result is exactly accurate.  The point, nevertheless, is not whether one can actually have 2 Obama districts BUT that one can certainly draw 2 districts in Utah that at least come very close to being Obama plurality or majority. (In all likelihood, though, it would probably be technically possible to draw 2 Obama districts in Utah if certain precincts could be split and the map was a little more gerrymandered than the one here.  I also played with this using the “old” population numbers, and in that case I can guarantee that two Obama districts could be drawn.)

For Salt Lake County, I used city data provided by sysm29 in the diary “Let’s Redistrict Utah !”: http://www.swingstateproject.c… (I estimated/extrapolated the numbers for a couple of precincts in unincorporated areas).  For Davis, Tooele and Utah Counties good precinct data was available, although I had to use maps provided on the county sites to match existing precincts to those in the Application, as the borders and numbers have changed in many cases over the last decade.  For San Juan and Uintah counties I estimated the percentages based on some information I had re. how Native American areas voted.  (In San Juan, for example, the total county vote was 51 McCain – 47 Obama, but that hides the fact that the Navajo areas voted overwhelmingly for Obama, while the white areas were overwhelmingly for McCain).

For many counties, like Weber and Wasatch I couldn’t find precinct breakdowns; thus I was very limited in how to create the districts.  I decided to include the whole county in both cases in my green Obama plurality district as the Obama percentages were relatively high for the state.  I feel that if I had precinct data, especially for Weber, I could redo this map so that 2 districts would result with Obama pluralities.  Nevertheless, here is the map in its imperfect form.  The population deviation, using the “new” population estimates was 266 to 388 persons above an ideal district size for the blue, green and purple districts, and 967 persons under the ideal size for the red district:

Here’s a breakdown of each district (please NOTE that the partisan data comes with a caveat explained above, so may not be completely accurate):

Green: Obama 48.4 – McCain 48.3

Blue: Obama 47.2 – McCain 49.9

Purple: Obama 23.1 – McCain 74.1

Red: Obama 21.0 – McCain 75.7

One interesting fact: to show you just how Republican much of Utah still is, it turns out that the most Democratic part of Davis Co. is Hill Air Force Base !

I should also note that approximately 27% of the population of the green district would be current constituents of Jim Matheson, while about 49% of the population of the blue district would be Matheson’s current constituents.  If there’s a parallel universe somewhere out there where the Democrats control their version of Utah, they should definitely go with this map.