State apportionment numbers are coming out at 11 EST today.. so in fifteen minutes. North Carolina is expected to hold pat. No matter what the change in the number of seats, each still will have to redistrict to make its congressional districts equal to all other districts in the nation (essentially total population of US / 385 = CD size)--- this is done by the state legislatures and will probably be a cluster. The data for redistricting is coming out around March 2011.

12/21/2010 10:45:57 AM

Good catch, this is going to be a big deal and the GOP state-house pickups this past election will play a big role here.

Some good off-season action for political junkies



Just found this in my e-mail stash yesterday from Chris Cillizza:

Quote :

"Major Republican victories at the state legislative level in the midterm elections have handed complete control of the re-mapping process to the GOP in 195 districts, compared with just 49 for Democrats. (The remaining 191 districts have split party control.)"

[Edited on December 21, 2010 at 11:02 AM. Reason : cc]

12/21/2010 10:50:58 AM

FILLING OUT CENSUS BAD

PICKING UP SEATS GOOOOOD

12/21/2010 11:08:15 AM

This time of year always makes me wish that we had independent redistricting panels doing this instead of state legislatures.

12/21/2010 11:10:07 AM

436 North Carolina 14 15753 0.165%
437 Missouri 9 15028 0.250%
438 New York 28 107057 0.551%
439 New Jersey 13 63276 0.718%
440 Montana 2 10002 1.006%

First column is seat position #. Of course a seat #436 doesn't exist, but if it did, NC would have received it.

Second # is the # of the seat--this would have been the hypothetical seat #14.

The third number is the total number of people that would have had to been counted additionally overall in the state to jump to position #435.

The fourth number is the total % increase in Census turnout for that state to achieve said number.

So, yeah, 158 more people from each of NC's counties would have gotten them another seat.

[Edited on December 21, 2010 at 12:53 PM. Reason : .]

12/21/2010 12:31:03 PM

My state was a big loser: Ohio will lose 2 House seats.

12/21/2010 5:34:33 PM

Anyone know how they do the re-districting? Do they start at one end of the state arbitrarily drawing lines that sorta make sense and then have multiple other iterations where they firm it all up? Is there any sort of software used to help generate the lines, etc?

12/21/2010 5:39:07 PM

^ put rich white people together so they vote republican, put poor people and minorities together so they vote democrat.

Keep college areas isolated from normal people.

[Edited on December 21, 2010 at 5:46 PM. Reason : ]

12/21/2010 5:46:31 PM

Let the gerrymandering begin!

12/21/2010 6:34:18 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/21/singer.census.america/index.html?hpt=T2

Quote :

"Many of the states that have gained in their head count have gained non-white minorities, especially Hispanics. Estimates already show that four states that gained seats -- Texas, Florida, Arizona and Georgia -- are highly ranked in the Top 10 states for growth in the Hispanic population during this decade. Moreover, more than half the population growth in those states alone came from increases in the Latino population. These additions were a result of net immigration and births in those states. While the large increase in Hispanics in these high-growth states includes some immigrant newcomers ineligible to vote, eligible Latinos tend to vote Democratic in most of the states that gained seats."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/12/senate-dream-act-/1
Dec 18, 2010

Quote :

"The Senate today failed to break a logjam on a bill that would give some children of illegal immigrants a chance at legal status in the USA. The 55-41 vote effectively kills the DREAM Act for the year and, possibly, for the rest of President Obama's term. The legislation would grant legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the USA illegally who have attended two years of college or signed up for military service. "It is disappointing that common sense did not prevail," Obama said in a statement. Opponents, led by Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., argue the bill amounts to amnesty for lawbreakers. Obama and other supporters say the measure would bring children of illegal immigrants out of the shadows and give them a chance at an education. ... Three Republicans joined 52 Democrats to cut off debate on the DREAM Act and move to an up-or-down vote on the bill. The GOP votes came from Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Robert Bennett of Utah and Richard Lugar of Indiana. ... In political terms, immigration bills tend to struggle in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to consider most issues on the floor. That will become even tougher in the 112th Congress, when Democrats will control 53 of the Senate's 100 votes and Republicans will be in the House majority."

12/21/2010 6:34:35 PM

Madman, you're not quite correct; actually the ideal is for the size of each Congressional district to be as close as possible to (population of 50 states)/435; the current method (in use since 1940) is known as the Huntington-Hill method, or Method of Equal Proportions, which for each Representative after the first 50 ranks the states according to

(a.k.a. the geometric mean between its current population-per-Representative and what it would be after adding a Representative), gives a Representative to the top-ranked state, gives that state a new ranking, and iterates the process as long as necessary (this is why the Census Bureau can state confidently where the next 5 Representatives would go if the size of the House were increased to 440, without needing to make a whole new table for each House size): https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment#The_Method_of_Equal_Proportions

This method minimizes the percentage differences in Congressional-district size among the states.


Chance, a few states (like Iowa) have independent re-districting panels that try to keep the Congressional and state-legislative districts compact and following county lines and other regional boundaries where possible, while most states have the process controlled by the state legislatures and the Governor.

Where both houses are of the Governor's party, the aim is to make as many districts as possible that are likely wins for their own party ("cracking" likely voters of the other party among these districts), so that in the end they will be slightly over-represented in the House of Representatives and the state legislature, and if they can't make all of the districts like that, make the rest of the districts almost completely full of the other party's supporters ("packing"); unfortunately in "wave elections" like 2006 or 2010, the party previously unfavored in those "cracked" districts can gain enough strength to achieve a slew of victories, so the party in power shouldn't spread its own current likely supporters too thinly.

Where partisan control is divided, often bi-partisan gerrymandering is in order, in which districts consisting almost entirely of likely supporters of one party or the other are created; this leads to nearly proportionate partisan representation but very little general-election competition, so that most of the competition is in the primaries, leading to more polarizing House and state-legislative candidates.
California is a textbook example of this; its bi-partisan gerrymander in 2000 was so powerful that in 2004 no state or Federal office changed partisan control, and in 2006 only one did, when Jerry McNerney (D) defeated Richard Pombo (R) in the 11th Congressional district: http://www.redistrictinggame.org/index.php?pg=learnaboutmission&mission=3

12/21/2010 10:09:22 PM

Lewisje, I'm aware of the way the huntington-hill method creates the priority ranking for each state. This ranking is only used to determine which states get which seats and the order in which they do that, based on the total population of the state. To tell you the truth, it's not really that hard to run in excel and it's quite interesting to see which states JUST missed out (as I computed above) and by how much based on the method. It gave me a real good Excel buzz to do it.

However, that priority ranking system has now been used... now the states have to make districts they have been given the same size -- or as close to it as they can. I was wrong to say it would be pop/385--I should have said pop/435--but the huntington-hill method has not so much to do with redisctricting as apportioning. Even then Pop/435 is a silly number--a more realistic number will be Total State Pop / # of State Seats (the HH method ensures that this number will have the least variance as possible across the 50 states). However, there is no hard rule: redistricting is left up to the states barring some exceptions.

Quote :

"Anyone know how they do the re-districting? Do they start at one end of the state arbitrarily drawing lines that sorta make sense and then have multiple other iterations where they firm it all up? Is there any sort of software used to help generate the lines, etc?"

Census data will be given to state legislatures on a small enough geography that they can (really, quite finely) draw new Congressional District boundaries that group the population as evenly as possible. This data, along with city/county/township data, will be released in the coming months. The GIS capabilities have progressed tremendously in the last 10 years. Of course, none of this really means a whole lot since it's not a technical challenge but rather a political one.

I will be working closely with a couple of states' redistricting efforts and I can tell it's going to be painful. It amazes me that in a lot of states it is basically winner-takes-all so long as they aren't clearly spreading out minorities as to disenfranchise them.

A trival note: in 2000 North Carolina won the highly contested #435 seat (utah claimed they had more people but it didn't show because 14,000 missionaries were overseas--the supreme court said that didn't matter since the census only counts people physically in the US [exception to troops overseas]). This year NC was the odd man out and had seat #436. Of course, NC didn't lose anything but it really sucks to be so close. Minnesota gained #435 this year and had the second-highest mail return rate in the country (Wisconsin).

[Edited on December 22, 2010 at 12:23 AM. Reason : .]

12/21/2010 11:57:34 PM

I just ran it in LibreOffice and am now changing the macros to VBA for Zoho so I can send a link for anyone who wants to try it out; you can also just download the ODS file here: http://jansal.net/HuntingtonHill.ods

Then those of you who use Microsoft Office can install this plugin to read all OpenDocument Format content (this is the latest free version): http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Other-Office-Tools/Sun-ODF-Plugin-for-Microsoft-Office.shtml

I took this file from the Census Bureau: http://2010.census.gov/news/xls/apport2010_table1.xls
Then I stripped it down to just the list of states and populations, made a couple more columns to display the steps in the Huntington-Hill method, and added some functionality for setting the number of Representatives yet to be assigned and buttons to move one step (iter), finish it off (run), and reset the process (reset), assigned to the following macros:

Option Explicit
Sub iter
 Dim oSheet,R,S,N%,I%,M&,C& : N=0 : M=0 : C=0 : oSheet=thisComponent.Sheets(0)
 Rem Find maximum priority value in Huntington-Hill Method
 For I=1 To 50 Step 1
  C=oSheet.getCellByPosition(4,I).value
  If C>M Then
   M=C : N=I
  End If
 Next I
 Rem Assign next Representative
 R=oSheet.getCellByPosition(5,1) : S=oSheet.getCellByPosition(3,N)
 S.value=S.value+1 : R.value=R.value-1
End Sub
Sub run
 Dim I%,N% : N=thisComponent.Sheets(0).getCellByPosition(5,1).value
 Rem Fill up the House
 For I=1 to N Step 1
  iter
 Next I
End Sub
Sub reset
 Dim oSheet,I% : oSheet=thisComponent.Sheets(0)
 For I=1 to 50 Step 1
  oSheet.getCellByPosition(3,I).value=1
 Next I
 oSheet.getCellByPosition(5,1).value=385
End Sub

12/22/2010 3:26:05 AM

Quote :

"Based on the results of the 201o Census, eight U.S. states will gain a total of 12 House districts, and 10 states will lose those 12 Congressional seats. Fact 1: Of the 8 states that will gain districts (Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Washington), all states except Washington are Right-to-Work states. Fact 2: Of the 10 states that will lose districts (Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, and New Jersey), all states except Iowa and Louisiana are Forced-Unionism states. Fact 3: Right-to-work states had a net gain of 9 House seats (gain of 11, loss of 2), and Forced-Unionism states had a net loss of 8 House seats (gain of 1, loss of 9). "

Keeping in mind that correlation does not prove causation.

12/23/2010 6:38:43 PM

Quote :

"Anyone know how they do the re-districting? "

The 1st and 12th are subject to the Voting Rights Act. So the legislature will either draw those and submit them for preapproval to the justice dept or start there and draw around them and submit all of those to the justice dept.

A few months later (probably after they deal with the state budget) they will vote on a plan for the state legislature. they are restricted by the state constitution saying the splitting of counties should be avoided (and a 2001 court and justice dept ruling saying the voting rights act doesnt trump that after the gop sued). so they will put all the counties in clusters as close as possible to even amounts (every cluster will be a multiple of seats eg 1-10). then they gerrymander within the cluster as much as possible.

house and senate pass a plan. then the lawsuits begin.

[Edited on December 24, 2010 at 1:04 AM. Reason : avoided]

12/24/2010 1:03:22 AM

Quote :

"RevoltNow: house and senate pass a plan. then the lawsuits begin."

This made me LOL inappropriately during family Christmas festivities

Sad part is that it's true

12/24/2010 3:01:00 PM

SAD BUT TRUUUUEEEEEEEAA-AH!

12/24/2010 5:58:19 PM

I have just made a fun fun fun illustration in Javascript; soon I will apply more HTML hackery to allow you to see the whole table and the controls in one screen without such a tiny font: http://jansal.net/HuntingtonHill.shtml

12/25/2010 2:34:04 AM

Chicago sheds 200,000 people in 10 years.

2/15/2011 5:33:15 PM