Illinois is one of the few prizes for Democrats going into the 2010 round of redistricting. Republicans currently control the delegation, having swung four sitting Democratic congressmen out of office in 2010. There are only eight Democrats currently to 11 Republicans in the delegation, which must shrink by one. But as luck would have it, Governor Quinn managed to narrowly become elected to a full first term, and Democrats managed to hold onto their majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. Thus, Democrats get to draw the map and it will likely be a savage map toward the GOP.
Okay this much is known, and many people have drawn Democratic gerrymanders; indeed I am currently working on a 12-5-1 map myself that will be posted in a week or two once I tabulate all the precinct data (which is taking forever!).
This, however, is a more focused diary. It argues that Illinois is a land of massive swings between 2004, 2008, and 2010 and that only by drawing a map that survives these three cycles can one be really sure that they are drawing a Democratic map versus a dummymander. Our base got energized in 2008 but did not turn out in 2010, and that was most pronounced in the suburbs where many of us want to draw new Democratic seats. It is not that the GOP vote went up much, but rather that our vote plummeted, and plummeted more than probably elsewhere in the country given the home-state effect in 2008. Kerry’s vote in 2004, although dated, shows us a neutral year and it should be read also as cautionary regarding the vote pluralities a Democratic candidate can expect.
One more thing: although I include Alexi numbers here, Illinois is a state without party registration and a state full of moderates and independents. Really to be truly safe in a 2010 style election, I believe you must look in the weeds and look down-ballot at which lever voters were pulling for Congress rather than which one they were pulling for governor or senator. Certainly I would imagine that politicians who have to win elections are doing just this thing right now as they contemplate how they want to carve up the state.
To make these points, I look into the weeds of one district in my budding map, a new Democratic-leaning 14th to elect Bill Foster back into Congress, connecting Aurora, and Joliet along with Elgin and Dekalb. I imagine that Lake County/northern Cook will show a similar pattern when I get there, as will Rockford, Peoria, Springfield, etc. But for now let’s look at the new 14th that I am hoping will get drawn.
New District 14th (Hultgren is being drawn, along with Roskam and Biggert, into a super Republican vote sink starting in Republican areas of Kane and snaking through Dupage and ending in super Republican areas of Will). Foster lives in Batavia so this would be “his” district unless a Joliet politician primaried him.
Racial data: 49.3% white, 33.5% Hispanic, 11.1% Black, 4.4% Asian, thus technically “majority-minority” which was unintended but fortuitous all the same. Illinois just amended its redistricting statute to emphasize, wherever possible and consistent with the VRA, the creation of coalition districts. Also, the more I think it through, and the politics of it, I find it hard to convince myself that Democrats in Springfield will actually draw a second Hispanic seat, or that doing so would be required. Hispanics still don’t vote in any sizable numbers in Chicago (look at the wards that Gutierrez has now if you doubt this), so would 65% and 57% districts really give Hispanics sufficient VRA protection to be able to select a candidate of their choice? I am increasingly dubious. So, draw a coalition district like this, plus one probably for Lipinski and you have something that is a compromise.
2010 congressional ballot (aggregating Foster, Harper, and Halvorson votes for areas pulled from the current 14th, 13th, and 11th, assuming for the sake of argument that a Democratic vote for congressman/woman in one district is a generic Democratic vote in another).
Generic Dem-Generic Rep: 80,538-67,285 (54.48%)
Some notable areas:
Aurora: 11,932-6,691
Elgin: 10,220-8,767
Dekalb: 5906-4004
Joliet: 12,461-6,331
Alexi does a bit worse but still carries this district slightly 50.74% to 49.26%, so it suggests to me that it would have withstood the 2010 GOP tidal wave (just). Without knowing at all what the next ten years will bring, but being a bit cautious-minded, this might model well for what a 2014 2nd Obama midterm election (assuming his reelection) might look like, or for that matter 2018. Our voters are more prone not to show up in off-year elections whereas the GOP’s are; it is a huge problem, and one that that we ought to be very realistic about when we draw our maps.
Okay, let’s look at two years earlier when Obama romped to his 25 point landslide in his home state.
Obama 161,485 – McCain 85,174 (65.47%… look at the swing between the two years)
Notable areas:
Aurora: 21,472-7,444
Elgin: 20,394-9,858
DeKalb: 12,456-4,333
Joliet: 22,748-6,023
Notice an alarming pattern here? While we carried all four of these reliably Democratic cities in both cycles, the all-crucial pluralities coming out of them simply plummeted. The less Democratic areas in the seat used to connect the cities did swing from Obama to generic Republican between 2008 and 2010 but this doesn’t account for the swing so much as our voters simply not showing up.
Now, finally, let’s look at what a 2016 election without an Illinoian at the top of the ticket might look like. We know what this probably looks like because we have Kerry 2004 to look at. Again, Kerry would have carried my district, and by a healthy 54-46% margin. But the Obama 2008 turnout numbers were historic and probably cannot be counted on across an entire decade worth of political cycles.
(Caveat: Will County doesn’t have publicly-available precinct data going back before 2005, much to my annoyance. What I did, therefore, was estimate what the likely vote share would have been for the part of Will in this district by extrapolating its 2008 numbers back onto 2004…. E.g., if 60% of Obama’s total 2008 vote came from this portion alone, I am assuming that 60% of Kerry’s county-wide total came from this portion as well. A bit of an if given likely greater turnout in Joliet than elsewhere, but probably not affecting the topline total much).
119,000 Kerry – 101,000 Bush (~54%)
Notable areas:
Aurora: 17,249-13,057
Elgin: 14,359-14,486
DeKalb: 10,118-6,957
Joliet: probably 16-17,000 Kerry, 8-9,000 Bush
Having eyeballed the data for the rest of the state but not actually tallied it up precinct-by-precinct yet beyond some of the Chicagoland seats, I can vouch for this being repeated in loads of other places in the state other than Chicago. Chicago turned out fine in 2010; it is why Governor Quinn was re-elected. The rest of the coalition that adds up with Chicago to form 55-57% of the electorate most neutral years did not, and that is why we have Republicans representing Joliet, the Fox Valley, and Rock Island of all places.