DRA Update: Oregon data and 2.2 still working

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday January 02, 2017 · 12:41 PM PST

2017/01/02 · 12:41

Greetings,

Steve Gerontakis has sent me Oregon 2008 presidential election data, which I have added to DRA! Thank you, Steve! This means every state now has election data. In addition, Puerto Rico now has election data (2012 governor’s race) thanks to Steve.

DRA 2.2 (which uses Bing Maps) is still chugging along. As I mentioned previously, the control that DRA uses to communicate with Bing Maps is officially past it’s “end-of-life” now...but it’s still working. However, it could fail at any time. (From what I’ve read it depends on different parts of the API that comprise that control, so if one API that the app uses dies, then the app will stop functioning.) But DRA 2.5, which does not use Bing Maps, is available and should continue to work into the future. It has no map background and some features no longer work, but it’s functional. See the DRA launch page for more info.

Note also that Firefox regular releases are no longer supporting the NPAPI that the app uses, but you can download the ESR version and enable the plugin when prompted, if you want to continue to use Firefox for your mapping.

Here’s to 2017! May it be a year of progressives working together and finding some bits of silver in the lining.

— Dave

Daves Redistricting App Down...and Change coming [Updated -- now fixed]

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday October 16, 2016 · 6:55 AM PDT

2016/10/16 · 06:55

Hi everyone,

Just a note that my app is currently down. The ISP moved servers Thursday night and since then the app will launch, but then fail to talk to the server when you select a state or try to load. I have a ticket in to them and we’re working on it.

While I have your attention, DRA as currently built will stop working after this November 30th. I am working on a “fix” but it will be a little different. The reason is that Microsoft is pulling the plug on the API the app uses to access Bing Maps (the Silverlight Bing Map control). What I’m working on is removing Bing Maps from the picture, which means you won’t see the roads and other map features. Pan and Zoom will be different as well (not as nice, but functional). A few obscure features may no longer work, but you should still be able to load and save DRFs, output CSVs and color the map.

I expect the current app to be back up soon and then I’ll post more detail in mid-November when I get the altered app ready for prime time.

Thanks!

— Dave

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday April 19, 2015 · 3:56 PM PDT

2015/04/19 · 15:56

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note to say that because Google has disabled support for NPAPI (the old Netscape plugin protocol), Dave's Redistricting App will no longer work on Chrome. DRA uses Microsoft's Silverlight, which uses that protocol. DRA should still work on Firefox, Safari and IE. See here for more info.

This is very unlikely to change, because Microsoft is phasing out support for Silverlight anyway, so they will not release a new version with the newer protocol.

While we're on the subject, looking a little further into the future, the Bing Maps Silverlight Control, upon which DRA relies, will no longer be supported as of November 30, 2016, which I'm pretty sure means DRA will no longer work at all. I would like to build a new version, but....time will tell whether that will happen.

Thanks!

Dave

New DRA with 113th Congress Shapes

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday February 10, 2013 · 5:20 PM PST

2013/02/10 · 17:20

Hi everyone!

Version 2.2.23 is released!

Spurred on by a mention of DRA in Sam Wang's NYT article I've spent most of this weekend enabling DRA to load the 113th Congress shapes as the "Old CDs." The existing 111th "Old CDs" are still supported, too.

I've also added a few options (when you start a state) to avoid loading Old LD/SD shapes, City/Town shapes and VAP data. Avoiding these saves memory, so they could be particularly useful for people who have had trouble with California. (On IE a quick experiment indicates it saved 100MB.) You change those en masse when you load a saved file, too.

I hope to make other small improvements as I can find the time and work on some related things in the near future. I have to admit that after all the redistricting in 2011 and the election last year, I've been just doing other things and not thinking as much about politics and redistricting. But thanks to sawolf (with his redistricting call to action) and Sam Wang and Census Bureau releasing the new shapes and all those tea partiers trying to change statewide rules, I'm reengaging. Redistricting should be one of the big battles of this decade. I want to do my part.

Thanks!

Why Jay Inslee will win

dgb for PacNW Kossacks

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 07, 2012 · 9:49 PM PST

2012/11/07 · 21:49

Tonight I've been looking at the numbers for the Washington governor's race and I have a lot of confidence that Jay Inslee will win when the count is done. Inslee is up 51.16% to 48.84%, about 49,000 votes. Total votes so far: about 2.1 million. Total votes cast 4 years ago in governor's race: just over 3 million.

I put together a spreadsheet with the county-by-county totals and the expected ballots yet to be counted by each county. A straight extrapolation with each county's percentage yields an Inslee win of 52.2%.

But let's say the newer ballots fare worse for Inslee and there are more of them. This table shows additional votes if Inslee does 3 percentage points worse across the board and there are twice the number of ballots left as currently reported (yielding a ballot total of over 3.6 million out of 3.9 million registered voters).

	Current Total	Additional Votes	Expected Total	Pct
Jay Inslee	1078944	735948	1814892	50.12%
Rob McKenna	1030178	775924	1806102	49.88%

As you can see, Inslee still wins with 50.12%, about 8800 votes. I think Inslee could see a slight degradation in his percentages in the big counties, but 3 points would be a lot. And I doubt we'll get 3.6 million votes. So I feel good about this!

Here's the link to the Google spreadsheet.

Update (11/8) below the fold.

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday January 11, 2012 · 12:10 PM PST

2012/01/11 · 12:10

Dave's Redistricting now supports Washington, DC and Puerto Rico. You'll need the new version (2.2.20). DC is supported with both 2010 and 2000 block groups. (There are no VTDs from the Census Bureau.) Puerto Rico has only 2010 block groups.

Also new is presidential data for Washington State and Utah, courtesy of roguemapper.

More about Silverlight 5 issues below the fold.

Happy Mapping!

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday January 02, 2012 · 11:11 AM PST

2012/01/02 · 11:11

Happy New Year!

I've uploaded a new version (2.2.19) of Dave's Redistricting, which enables
(a) Extra data sets to be loaded and
(b) Alaska to be redistricted.

The one extra data set so far is Texas Voter Registration, which shows the percentage of Spanish surname voter registrations in each voting district. This data was gathered, naturally, by roguemapper! This data is relevant to the current litigation over Texas redistricting.

Also, roguemapper has provided corrected presidential data for MO and NV and new presidential data for ND and HI.

More about the new feature below.

dgb for PacNW Kossacks

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday December 30, 2011 · 6:49 PM PST

2011/12/30 · 18:49

As you've seen Washington Redistricting Commissioners Gorton (R) and Ceis (D) have released a compromise map. It protects all incumbents well and gives Denny Heck (Olympia Dem who ran in the 3rd last time) a nice district to run in, but leaves the other open seat leaning a little too much Republican. In my view, a map that is fair to both R's and D's would preserve the 5-4 D-R delegation, strengthing incumbents on both sides commensurately and then make the other district 50-50.

I've put the map in DRA, which you can download here. To create the map I did "Auto Color/Color Districts from Block CSV" with the block equivalency file. 87 of nearly 7000 voting districts got split, so the Auto Color had to assign to one or the other, which is why the deviation is up to 3000 people. Nevertheless, this gives a good picture of what the district demographics and electoral makeup are.

More below the fold.

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 20, 2011 · 10:16 AM PST

2011/12/20 · 10:16

Newsday, the suburban NYC newspaper has launched U Map NY. It includes opinion pieces, maps drawn by Common Cause of NY and an interactive map, which is based on...Dave's Redistricting.

I've been working with Newsday and Common Cause on this over the last couple of months. The application is similar to DRA, but has a new left panel in which you can switch between the Reform maps (from Common Cause and Newsday), the old maps and ones that you draw yourself. You start your own map from the Common Cause map or from a blank slate. When the state and suburban NYC counties produce their maps, those will be available, too. The idea for the left panel came from Newsday, and I really like it a lot. You can save your map locally and also on the Newsday server, where you can share with your friends.

Check it out.

Dave's Redistricting 2.2.16, Florida map [updated]

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday December 02, 2011 · 3:03 PM PST

2011/12/02 · 15:03

There's a new version of Dave's Redistricting. The big change is that you can Auto Color a voting district map from a block assignment file. Previously you could do this only for a block group map. At this moment this is enabled only for Florida, but I will add the ability for more states in the next few days.
[Update: Ability now enabled for all states with voting districts! Also, version 2.2.17 fixes a bug with PA and NM updated voting districts that was introduced in 2.2.16.]

And using that feature, I created a DRA map for the recent Florida State Senate Congress plan.

More below the fold.

Dave's Redistricting is a project of ProgressiveCongress.org. Please consider supporting the project with a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you.

dgb for PacNW Kossacks

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday September 14, 2011 · 6:00 PM PDT

2011/09/14 · 18:00

The individual members of the Washington State Redistricting Commission came out with their redistricting proposals yesterday. As most of you have already read, the commission has 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans. They only published PDFs, but I have created Dave's Redistricting maps for each of them. You can download the DRF for them and load them into DRA (via File/Open) and play with them yourself.

Dean Foster's
Tim Ceis's
Slade Gorton's
Tom Huff's

Also, I've put an spreadsheet up there that is a composite of the CD CSVs for each proposal (they are output from DRA, so you could do this yourself if you can't read an .xlsx). The composite shows the actuals that went into these tables for all 4 proposals.

Because DRA has only voting districts (and thus cannot split voting districts into census blocks), I can't represent the exact map in the presence of splits. Except for Tim Ceis's these DRFs are very close approximations. Ceis split a lot more blocks, so it's not quite as precise, but I think is easily close enough to give us a good sense of the political implications of the maps.

Below the fold are tables that show, for the existing 9 districts and for each of the proposals, what the demographics and election data look like. The election data is only 1 race: the 2010 Senate race between Patty Murray (D) and Dino Rossi (R). Murray won with 52.4% of the vote.

Enjoy.

dgb

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday September 07, 2011 · 3:12 PM PDT

2011/09/07 · 15:12

New Mexico and Pennsylvania have released new voting district (precinct) files. In both cases some voting districts are new and there have been splits and merges, meaning there are new shapes and new population data, and for NM, election data.

I've released a new version of DRA (2.2.12), which can accommodate these. The reason for the change is that maps using the current Census Bureau-released shapes and data cannot be converted into the new shapes/data. So, existing maps will still work, but if you create a new map for NM or PA, you will have an additional choice to use the updated files. Remember, you need 2.2.12 to be able to use the new files (check the About box; you may have to clear your browser cache).

New Mexico has started its special legislative session to do redistricting, so get to work using the latest and greatest shapes and data.

The Pennsylvania data released by the state does not include any election data, so for now that is not available. The earlier 2010 voting districts do still have the presidential election data.

Dave's Redistricting is a project of ProgressiveCongress.org. Please consider supporting the project with a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you.

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DRA Update: Oregon data and 2.2 still working

Daves Redistricting App Down...and Change coming [Updated -- now fixed]

DRA won't work on Chrome 42+

New DRA with 113th Congress Shapes

Why Jay Inslee will win

Dave's Redistricting: DC & PR

Dave's Redistricting New Data & Feature

Unhappy about WA Redistricting

U Map NY - Newsday Redistricting

Dave's Redistricting 2.2.16, Florida map [updated]

Washington Redistricting: Numbers

Dave's Redistricting: Updated Precincts for NM & PA