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May 12, 2004
The Founders' Gerrymander
After Zell's crazy ranting about the Senate, I got to thinking about what Grover Norquist has called the Founding Father's Gerrymander...the US Senate. What would US Senate "Districts" (ie states) look like if they were apportioned equally by population (like the US House and state legislatures are) instead of rigidly defined by state lines that in some cases are over 200 years old.
Well using Maptitude software I have created a redistricting of the US Senate. Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, which aren't shown, compromise one new "state". The other 49 are made by carving up the existing Continental US. As you can see, I first tried to keep as many existing boundaries as possible. Washington, Missouri and Tennessee fell within a deviation of +/- 5% and these new "states" retained the old borders.
After making these states that were idential to existing state boundaries, I made as many new "states" as possible by combining old states. Colorado and Utah combined to form a new region as did Mississippi and Arkansas. After this point, I generally started with major cities and drew outward, trying to keep regions that were similar (Alabama and the Florida panhandle or the coastal regions of Virginia and North Carolina) together.
You can take the basically evenly divided Senate and look at this map and try to guess what the partisan makeup would be if these were the new election districts. Those little "states" concentrated on the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York would probably each send 2 Democrats, while a lot of those big rural districts might send 2 Republicans.
The funny thing is, looking at this map, the outcome would probably be pretty close to even. I attribute this to the ability of local parties to achieve parity -- you've got a lot of Republicans from the otherwise pretty liberal Northeast and a lot of Democrats from the otherwise Republican great plains.
Even if partisan control in the Senate under this map was 50-50, I think you'd have a much more conservative and rural/exurban Republican party and a much more liberal and urban/suburban Democratic party. Say goodbye to the Arlen Specters, Tim Johnson's, Olympia Snowe's and Evan Bayh's and say hello to a lot more Senator Inhofe's and Carol Moseley-Braun's. I guess moderation through gerrymandering is just another bit of unintended wisdom from the founders.
Here is a blowup of the New York City area:
Download a printable 8.5 by 11 PDF file of this redistricting map.
Posted by Chris at May 12, 2004 05:09 PM
Comments
This is just cool. You should try to name them...Caloregon, Nevarizona, Utalorado, New Vermaine, etc. What would the big orange one be? Or the Chicago suburbs?
Is that my imagination, or is Rhode Island still there, just with the addition of the Connecticut casinos?
--Bob
Posted by: Bob at May 12, 2004 07:59 PM
Actually, Rhode Island was grouped together with most of Massachusetts. A portion of Mass. was grouped together with Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire to form one new region.
Eastern Connecticut was grouped together with Long Island and Western Connecticut joined up with inland New York to form two separate regions. Those three counties in the heart of NY got one state all by themselves and New Jersey was divided into two, with Southern NJ going down into Delaware and Maryland.
Posted by: Chris at May 13, 2004 05:21 AM
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