After tweaking this district all evening, I am stumped. Are there any obvious batch of Democrats I am missing? I want to save southern Montgomery and Macoupin Counties for bolstering the 12th. I suppose I could always go into Fulton County, but then I would have to replace those Democrats with other voters for my new 17th. Coles County with Mattoon and Charleston might be another possibility, but if you are going mainly by Kerry 2004 results (which I am – the 2008 Obama results are just too rosy everywhere in the state although not as bad in the central and southern part of the state as in the Chicago metro area), Kerry lost that county quite handily in 2004. Either way you look at it, because both Springfield and Bloomington-Normal in a neutral year (like 2004) are lean-GOP cities, even with the powerhouses of Urbana-Champaign, Decatur, and the lean-Democratic cities of Peoria and Dansville, you still end up no better than 51.41% Kerry (at least at my valiant attempt at it).
Any thoughts of how I should try to bolster this district to 52-53% Kerry. That is my goal for creating 3 downstate lean-Democratic seats. I got Jerry Costello’s district up to 53-46 simply by axing out Williamson, Union, Pulaski, and Alexander and adding in the town of Edwardsville in Madison County and bits of southern Macoupin and Montgomeryt counties. Likewise it is easy to make the 17th into a 53-47 Kerry district by going into Rockford.
This district for what it’s worth, voted 59-40 for Obama in 2008 but only 51-48 for Kerry 4 years prior. I suspect the reason has largely to do with turnout issues among minorities and college students. We won’t have those worries in 2012 but I worry about the remaining 4 election cycles.
I would still advocate drawing this map, even if it is not possible to go higher than 51-48. Other than Dick Durbin (who represented Springfield and Decatur when he was in the House), these cities as far as I know have never been a) brought together; or b) represented by a Democrat. Instead Illinois suffers from decades’ worth of GOP gerrymanders with the result that these cities are always split up.
Still, if Democrats get a bit skittish, I would not be entirely surprised if they sought to bolster the 17th a bit more as well as the 12th at the expense of a new district.
I welcome your thoughts.
also had a dist. in this part of IL (though not exactly the same) that was 59 Obama/51 Kerry … but I did the same thing you did with Peoria — and included the northern part of the city which has some GOP precincts …
in a subsequent diary (which I think you wrote ?) where northern Peoria was also included, roguemapper suggested getting rid of those n. Peoria precincts — which may be the way to increase to 52/53 Kerry ?? and maybe substitute some more Dem. (even maybe some rural areas ??) into the district — in that way, the dist. can be more Dem. and may even look more compact …
Can you gain fewer Republicans? (In some ways this is what silver spring brought up.) Since the partisan data isn’t in Dave’s App yet, I’m not sure exactly what to advise. But in general terms, the only thing I think of is look for ways to drop (for example) 20-80 precincts and replace them with 30-70 ones. (Or better.)
Also, I was under the impression that East Peoria is heavily Republican suburban territory. Is that true?
Your boundaries are close enough to Jacksonville that it’d probably be worth picking up the Democrats there.
If you go from Cass County through Literberry that’d put you next to the Democratic precincts of Jacksonville. It’s not huge, but it would make some difference, especially if you can drop some 70%+ GOP precincts elsewhere.