Redistricting Maps! Round One - The DFL Gerrymanders

As promised, I finally got around to drawing some redistricting maps with the easy to use, and free(!) Dave's Redistricting App.

For my first set of maps I'm going to do what I like best and draw some Democratic gerrymanders, which in Minnesota means cracking open the Twin Cities.

Let's start with what is the essential problem that drives the motivation for the Democratic gerrymander, that is the consolidation of Democratic votes in the Twin Cities. As a refresher, here's Obama's share of the vote in the eight congressional districts as they are currently drawn:

CD1: 51%
CD2: 48%
CD3: 52%
CD4: 64%
CD5: 74%
CD6: 45%
CD7: 47%
CD8: 53%

All of the districts were within 5 points of being even except for the two Twin Cities districts which are packed with Democrats. What if we could spread those voters into more than just two districts, though, how many strong DFL seats can we get?

Both of the maps we'll look at take a different approach to breaking up the Twin Cities while keeping the rural districts (1, 7 and 8) mostly intact. The first map breaks up Minneapolis between CDs 3 and 5, while the second map breaks up both cities between CDs 2, 3, 4 and 5. In both cases CD6 becomes the GOP vote sink district, traversing the outer suburbs picking up all the conservative counties along the way.

Alright, on to the maps! First up the Minneapolis split, starting in the cities and zooming out.



Most of the county splitting in this map is in this view; Hennepin, Washington and Anoka are already split in the current map and there's really no way around splitting up these three counties. The current map also splits Dakota and Wright, which remain whole in this one, with Scott and Carver instead getting split.



Out in the burbs I had to split a few counties as well; Le Sueur between CDs 1 and 2, Isanti and Sherburne between 6 and 8.



Now that's a Democratic gerrymander that even the most square of the square district crowd can get behind!

St. Cloud moves out of CD6 and and CD2 picks up the southern portion of St. Paul while the rural districts change a bit around the edges. Minneapolis get's split between CDs three and five, CD four moves all the way out to the river and they're all neat little compact districts, yay!

Here's the Obama %'s for this theoretical map:

CD1: 51%
CD2: 51%
CD3: 62%
CD4: 63%
CD5: 61%
CD6: 42%
CD7: 47%
CD8: 54%

That is three solid Democratic seats were there were only two before. Additionally, CD2 becomes a toss-up district, what's not to like?

If you thought that one was nice though, check out this gerrymander!



I'm not going to bother discussing all the ways in which the counties are divided in this map, all you really need to see is the that thin little finger running down through Dakota county that connects Rice county to CD5 to know you're dealing with a real live gerrymander, one that has no regard for things like county boundaries.



This map could certainly be made to be less ridiculous, Scott county for instance, could become part of CD5 to avoid that narrow path through Dakota county, but that wasn't really the point of this map. The point was to see if four solid Democratic seats could be made where there once was two.



Again, the rural districts don't change much, but check out the Twin Cities, it's unrecognizable. How about those Obama %'s?

CD1: 51%
CD2: 59%
CD3: 59%
CD4: 58%
CD5: 61%
CD6: 42%
CD7: 48%
CD8: 53%

That's four solid Democratic districts from what were once two and CDs 1, 7 and 8 remain close. This map would certainly be nice, but it will never happen, even if the DFL held the trifecta it probably wouldn't happen. The map is a nightmare for the square districts crowd and would be ridiculed mercilessly in the press as an obvious gerrymander.

But something along the lines of the first map, one that creates three districts in the Twin Cities, is something we should be pushing for on the basis of creating a more "fair" map.

What Democrats are fighting against is the perception of what a "fair" map is. We need to be able to articulate why a map like the first one presented is in fact "fair," more fair than the current map even, and that's easier to do when you're not also having to fight the square districts crowd about what the map "looks" like.