A Blue Dog Tennessee, 5 Dem seats
The Tennessee Republican controlled legislature just released its map that creates 7 safe Republican districts to just 2 for Democrats in a state where Dems held 5 of 9 seats from 2002-2010. This map...
View Article2012 Congressional Race Ratings, Part 1: The House (with map)
This diary will lay out my race ratings for all 435 House of Representatives districts for the 2012 elections. This election cycle brings us the added bonus of being a redistricting cycle, so many...
View Article2012 Congressional Race Ratings, Part 2: The Senate (with map)
Continuing with my Congressional Race Ratings (part one is here) this diary contains my ratings on the competitiveness of each of the 33 senate races in 2012. This cycle finds Democrats defending 23...
View ArticleUtah Redistricting, finding the limits (Updated)
Since roguemapper recently compiled 08 presidential data I decided to see how Democratic a district I could get out of Utah and the results surprised me. Not only is it an Obama district, but also a...
View ArticleA Dirty 2-2 Utah Dem Gerrymander
Kudos to skibum59 for actually doing a politically feasible version of this, but with this map I decided to push it to the limits. Jim Matheson gets a district where he is favored and the new 4th...
View ArticleWashington State: 2 Dem maps (now with .drf)
Washington is one of the few states I had yet to diary where you can really go crazy without having to worry about VRA violations. As any of you who have drawn Washington before know, Seattle is very...
View ArticleMissouri GOP 7-1 map: Cracking Kansas City
Last year Republicans in the Missouri state legislature, along with the help of a few turncoat Democrats and governor Jay Nixon's lack of effort to the contrary, passed a congressional map that...
View ArticleWashington GOP 6-4 map
Since I just completed two Washington Dem gerrymanders, one clean and one dirty, I thought I would try my hand at drawing a Republican fantasy gerrymander with the goal of creating six Republican...
View ArticleNorth Carolina if Area Codes were Congressional Districts
I'm taking a break from my usual crazy Dem gerrymanders to look at how the 6 telephone area codes in North Carolina breakdown politically. This map creates 2 safe Dem seats and 2 more which should...
View ArticleIf the 2012 Congressional Elections Were Held under Fair Maps
Seeing as how the SCOTUS just struck down the court-drawn interim maps in Texas, I wondered what would be the impact if every state had its congressional lines drawn by a neutral arbiter in the vein of...
View ArticleOhio 11-5 solid Dem map
This is my second attempt at drawing an 11-5 map of Ohio and is much more successful. I was able to make all 11 seats strong enough for Democrats to win, even in a 2010 type of wave election. All but...
View ArticleGeorgia 9-5 Dem map
I've been clearing out some of my old maps recently and publishing them, and this was my attempt at a 9-5 gerrymander of Georgia. 4 seats are black majority, 2 over 40%, and all but one are over 58%...
View ArticleSouth Carolina 4-3 Dem gerrymander
This map of South Carolina tries to give Democrats a chance at winning 4 of the state's 7 districts by going to gerrymandering extremes. While only James Clyburn's VRA mandated seat is safe, as it is...
View ArticleMichigan 12-2 Democratic Gerrymander
This is my first map of Michigan in which I try to find the limits of what Democrats could do if they controlled the process, ignore Michigan's statutory compactness guidelines, and only complied with...
View ArticleFantasy Redistricting: State of Appalachia, Part 1 - the States
Appalachia is a region of the United States that has long been distinct from the standard definition of the North and South with which it overlaps, both culturally and politically. Central Appalachia...
View Article3 Mississippi Democratic Gerrymanders
Mississippi currently has just 1 safe Dem VRA mandated seat, but several maps have previously been posted on here showing that 2 safe Dem, if not black majority, seats can be created. With that in...
View ArticleMinnesota with 7 Congresional Districts
Minnesota currently has 8 congressional districts, the same number it has had for many decades. However, Minnesota's 8th was the 435th district to be assigned, and North Carolina came within about...
View ArticleWhat if North Carolina got a 14th Congressional District?
North Carolina came about 15,000 people shy of getting the 435th congressional district during reapportionment, but instead it went to Minnesota. This diary looks at what North Carolina might have...
View ArticleFantasy Redistricting: State of Appalachia, Part 2 - The Districts
This is part two in my series looking at the political effects of what would happen if Appalachia were to become a state. The previous section discussed the region itself as well as the statewide...
View ArticleLouisiana: Extreme Democratic Gerrymander Edition
As many of you are probably well aware by now, I like to find the limits of what a Democratic gerrymander could do in each state. This time I take a look at Louisiana, where Dems only have 1 seat. I...
View ArticleA Democratic Alabama: 2 maps
Alabama data was recently added to DRA thanks to roguemapper, so I thought I'd see what I could do with it. 2 majority black districts are easily doable, and I figured it wouldn't be that much more...
View ArticleFantasy Redistricting: State of Appalachia, Part 3 - The Districts
This is part three in my series looking at the political effects of what would happen if Appalachia were to become a state. Part one discussed the region itself as well as the statewide impact on the...
View ArticleMinnesota Dem 7-1 map
In this diary, I look at what the limit of a Democratic 7-1 map would be in Minnesota. Democrats have 3 seats that could potentially flip, but that's what you get if you want 7. With that in mind, I...
View ArticleArizona Dem 6-3
I had been holding off on doing Arizona for some time because I didn't want to have to deal with the Hispanic VRA seat issues, but I'm finally getting around to it and this is my attempt at finding the...
View ArticleDoubling the House: North Carolina
For any who may be reading this series for the first time: this is a thought experiment where I and user HoosierD42 among others try to see what would happen if the size of the House of Representatives...
View ArticleOhio as a Court Might Have Drawn It
Redistricting in Ohio was conducted entirely by Republicans, who control both chambers of the legislature and the governorship. They drew a map intended to produce 12 Republicans to only 4 Democrats...
View ArticleMaryland: 7-1 and 8-0
Time for another installment of how effective of a Democratic map can I draw. This one involves Maryland, which I had been holding off on because there have been so many excellent and actually...
View ArticleVirginia with 2 VRA districts
I had thought this was impossible, but I had only tried it previously with new population estimates rather than the actual census numbers. This map creates 2 reasonably compact black VAP majority...
View ArticleNew Mexico: 3 hypothetical gerrymanders
New Mexico's congressional districts were implemented by a court and as such were fairly non-partisan. That map was only minimally different from the current one and should result in a reasonably...
View ArticleWhat NC Republicans Should Have Drawn: An Insurmountable 9-4
Republicans got their chance to gerrymander North Carolina's congressional district map for the first time following their capture of the state legislature in 2010. The map they opted for sought to...
View ArticleWhat Arkansas Dems Should Have Drawn: A Solid 2-2
Democrats controlled the redistricting process in Arkansas during the most recent round of apportionment, but unfortunately passed a map that is likely to lead to Republicans holding all 4 of the...
View ArticleHow a Court or Commission Might Draw North Carolina
Congressional redistricting in North Carolina falls exclusively to the legislature which after the 2010 elections flipped to Republicans for the first time in the modern era. Unfortunately, this means...
View ArticleWhat if Redistricting Had Taken Place After 2008? - Part 1
Redistricting in the US takes place after each decennial census and impacts the congressional district lines that will be used for the 2012 elections. Following their massive gains in the 2010...
View ArticleWhat if Redistricting Had Taken Place After 2008? - Part 2
This is part two of my diary series looking at what the effects of redistricting on the 2010 and 2012 house elections would have been had it taken place after 2008 instead of the 2010 elections. In...
View ArticleA Fair Michigan Congressional Map
Congressional redistricting in Michigan was controlled entirely by Republicans, which allowed them to draw a gerrymander aimed at protecting all of their seats and eliminating Gary Peters. Given how...
View ArticleMy Excel Table Template for Presenting DRA District Data
This is for all of you election nerds and DKErs who like to do your own redistricting hypotheticals using Dave's Redistricting App. Those of you familiar with my past redistricting diaries will notice...
View ArticleSawolf's US House of Representatives Race Ratings (with clickable map)
Now that redistricting is complete, I've had the chance to update my House of Representatives Race Ratings. These ratings, like DailyKos Elections' own, are based on the likelihood each party has of...
View Articlesawolf's US Senate Race Ratings
This is the second installment of my race ratings for the elections to the United States Senate this fall. You can find my ratings and analysis for the House of Representatives here. Since there are...
View ArticleWhat Would Redistricting Look Like Had Dems Won All Prior Close Races?
Redistricting in the United States took place in 2011 and 2012 following the midterms of 2010 where Republicans made historic gains across the nation. These gains left them well positioned to control...
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What if We Had Non-Gerrymandered Redistricting Nationwide?
Disclaimer - I am currently in the process of revising this article to incorporate actual election results from 2012 and to provide more research to support alternative maps. (January 2013)This...
View ArticlePolitical Geography, Part 1: The Northeast
This is the first of what will be a four part series looking at the political geography of the states in order to get a better idea of how each party does outside of just the presidential elections....
View ArticlePolitical Geography, Part 2: The Southeast
This is part two of my series looking at the political geography of elections at the state level. In it, I present maps and data for the average of statewide races from 2004 to present by county for...
View ArticlePolitical Geography, Part 3: The Midwest
This is part three of my series looking at the political geography of elections at the state level. In it, I present maps and data for the average of statewide races from 2004 to present by county for...
View ArticlePolitical Geography, Part 4: The West
This is the fourth and final part of my series looking at the political geography of elections at the state level. In it, I present maps and data for the average of statewide races from 2004 to...
View Articlesawolf's Final Race Ratings and Predictions for Pres, Gov, Senate, and House...
Welcome to the third and final edition of my race ratings for the 2012 elections! You can find my January and June versions for the House here and here, and the Senate here and here. As with the...
View ArticleAnother Compact 8-6 Georgia
Seeing as jnnca just posted a Cleanish 8-6 Georgia Map, I figured I'd dust off one of mine that had been lying around that is also 8-6 and "clean" but takes a bit of a different approach. This one...
View ArticleA Clean, Solid 7-0-1 Maryland
Several diarists here have shown that it's possible to get 8 Democratic seats out of Maryland, but due to parochial interests, Maryland Democrats instead drew a 7-1 map. This map cleans up the...
View ArticleDrawing a Democratic Pennsylvania 13-5
Since this week seems to be "dust off your old fantasy maps week" on DKE, I wanted to post this beauty I constructed using the state's partisan average of 2004-2008 statewide races as a guide. Unlike...
View ArticleHow Dems Helped Cost Ourselves the House: The Arkansas Dummymander
As many political junkies, Democrats, and liberal activists are well aware, Democrats won the popular vote for the House of Resentatives in this year's election, but thanks to gerrymandering only won...
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Republicans STOLE the House! Here's What YOU Can DO to Fight Back!
By now you've probably heard that last November, American voters chose to give Democrats control of the presidency and both chambers of congress in this past election. Wait, both chambers? No,...
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