Author: sysm29

It’s time for Iowa!

I’m having problems inserting images into this box so here is the link:

http://i1215.photobucket.com/a…

Old 1st= http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi…

New Iowa 1 (purple) Bruce Braley’s district stays the same for the most part.

Old 2nd=

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi…

New Iowa 2 (red)

Dave Loebsack vs. Steve King.  This district could be better I’ll admit.  I checked the counties and its 56-44 Democratic which is okay for Loebsack and not good at all for King.

Old 3rd=

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi…

New 3rd (blue)

This would be Leonard Boswell’s district.  There’s a bunch of blue counties in the current 4th and they’re being wasted to Tom Latham.  Story County (home of Ames and Iowa State) is here.  Since Latham lives in Ames, he would be running in this unfriendly district.

Old 4th=

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi…

New 4th (green)

The new 4th is now a district that a new Democrat can get elected in or a new Republican, but no incumbent Republican can run in the 4th because none lives there.  This will make a Democratic-leaning swing seat.

Old 5th=

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi…

New 5th= haha, there is no one.  Iowa’s losing it in 2012.

Let’s Redistrict Utah!

 All I know about Utah is that its Mormon and overwhelmingly Republican.  The largest city, Salt Lake, is Democratic but everything else is so Republican that the city does not have enough Democratic votes to overcome the rest of the state.  I think that there is a growing Latino population in Utah and also a growing non-Mormon population.  I also heard a while back that SLC had a surprisingly large gay population.

Utah should have actually got a 4th seat back in 2002 so a 4th seat is guaranteed for 2012.  Right now there are three districts, two are ultra-conservative Republicans and one is a conservative Democrat (Jim Matheson).  The Republicans will control everything in 2012.

There is no partisan information for redistricting on the app so all I could do was create as friendly of a district for Democrats as I could.  I knew that Summit County, to the right of Salt Lake County, for whatever reason votes Democratic.  The President won a third county, Grand County, which is in southeastern Utah.  I guess that both Summit and Grand are skiing counties?  Or perhaps they have Native American reservations.  San Juan County, in the very southeastern corner, was 51-47 McCain.  So what's up here?

Every other county was extremely Republican, often by more than 70%.

What I did was basically just make four districts – three that I knew would be very Republican and one that I made to be Democratic-friendly.  (In my map, this is the blue district.)  I have no idea if it would actually be good for the Democrats but it does put Summit County into this Salt Lake City-based district so I'm thinking this can only help.  Of course, the Republicans know about Summit County and they'll most likely put it into a Republican district.

It looks like that Republicans will succeed in making four districts that went for McCain in 2008 and this will likely help them when the President is up for reelection in 2012.  My prediction is a 3-1 Republican delegation in 2012, with a new Republican 4th district, but Jim Matheson may very well lose in 2012 if he is given a very different district.

It's a rather depressing map for Democrats, but it is one of the states that will gain a seat so I thought it was important to do.

My Map

2008 CNN Statewide County Results for Utah

(Links will open in new window.)

New Mexico Redistricting

This was the first redistricting I did and I chose NM because its only three CDs.   I tried to the best of my ability to make clean districts, keep counties intact, and keep the population of the districts as close to being equal as possible.  Of course, this being a Democratic redistricting I wanted to make sure that President Obama won a substantial majority of votes in each new district.

1st (Blue) : Obama 56-43.  Las Cruces and the southwest, most of the west.  pop: 605,938.  There would be a new congressperson elected from this district.  None of the current reps live here.

2nd (Green): Obama 58-40.  Part of Albuquerque, all of Torrance and Lincoln, and Eddy counties, Roswell, central to southeast. pop: 606,486.  This would be Steve Pearce's new district (right now he represents a district that went 50-49 for McCain but this one would be much 9% more Democratic).  This would create a 2012 matchup between Steve Pearce and Martin Heinrich for this district, which Heinrich would be favored to win.

3rd (Purple): Obama 57-42.  Most of the east, all of the Northeast, the northwest, Santa Fe, part of Albuquerque, and north central.  pop: 606,622.  Ben Lujan would run in this CD.

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc513/sysm29/nm.jpg?t=1291594479