Dave's Redistricting: Better Color By Population Control

dgb

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Friday August 26, 2011 · 4:00 PM PDT

2011/08/26 · 16:00

Based on feedback from my previous diary (about 6 weeks ago), I've added additional controls to allow fine-grained viewing of population demographics. You can now select a single demographic group and view the percentage of the population just for that group.

For example, here's a view of the Non-White population in South Seattle.

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

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Wednesday July 13, 2011 · 4:46 PM PDT

2011/07/13 · 16:46

The Washington State Redistricting Commission is accepting redistricting plans from the public until August 15th, 2011. The Information Page describes how to submit a plan, which boils down to downloading their spreadsheet (XLS) and filling in districts for Congress and/or Legislature.

Although the Commission provides no tool, you can use Dave's Redistricting App to build a plan and then fairly easily copy the result into the Commission's spreadsheet.

The Commission provides KML files representing the precinct shapes, which can be loaded into Google Earth for viewing. The Commission has a Excel spreadsheet with the population info, including demographic data. The basic instructions are to view the map and decide which precincts to place in which district. The spreadsheet does aggregate the population info via a pivot table, which is helpful, but that's all the assistance you get.

You can, however, use DRA, which makes it way easier. I've outlined the steps for using DRA and then getting the data into the Commission's spreadsheet here and also below the fold.

Remember you have only until August 15th!!

dgb for PacNW Kossacks

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Wednesday July 13, 2011 · 2:34 PM PDT

2011/07/13 · 14:34

I have uploaded a new version of Dave's Redistricting App (2.2.9), which changes the colors that are displayed for showing population demographics and election data. I think the information is much more evident than before and it includes all demographic groups. Here's a quick taste of what it looks like.

This shows full population demographics of the area between West Hollywood, Dodger Stadium and USC. More details 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

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Wednesday July 06, 2011 · 2:38 PM PDT

2011/07/06 · 14:38

Last week I posted a couple of diaries showing alternative plans for Washington's 10 districts. One diary showed the new 10th district centered around Olympia. Another diary favored keeping counties mostly together, which results in a lot of fairly competitive districts (1st, 6th, 8th and 9th).

Well, here's other one, which takes the "Keep Counties Together" and pushes it a little back toward what the current 6th, 8th and 9th districts look like, making them safer for Dems and for Republican Dave Reichert.

See below the fold for more.

dgb for PacNW Kossacks

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Wednesday June 29, 2011 · 4:02 PM PDT

2011/06/29 · 16:02

Yesterday I posted a diary outlining what an Olympia-oriented 10th district might look like.

Today I present an alternative where I generally try to keep counties together. Overall the Democratic districts are not as safe, but neither is Dave Reichert (R)'s 8th district. This would take Tacoma away from Norm Dicks (D), which will be a tough sell, so I suspect it's not that close to what the commission will come up with.

See below the fold for the details.

dgb

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Wednesday June 29, 2011 · 1:39 PM PDT

2011/06/29 · 13:39

I've uploaded election data for NJ and TN and (finally) corrected NM data for Los Alamos.

The TN presidential vote counts are about half of what they should be, I think due to early and absentees (although the notes from the team was not specific on this). The overall percentage is about right. In any case, the average is there as well and should provide a useful guideline. Average includes presidential, governor, senate and house races from 2004-2008.

The NJ vote counts are just a little low. Some vote districts changed between 2008 and 2010 and the team had to distribute vote counts across some vote districts. The average includes presidential, governor and senate races from 2002-2009.

For NM I updated the Los Alamos precincts based on roguemapper's numbers from comments in a diary from June 7th.

The Prof team released data for MA, CT and NH as well. However, MA and CT do not have vote counts; only registraion percentages, so I am not going to use them. For NH there are vote counts for vote districts, but I know that vote districts are less useful than block groups for NH. So, let me know if any of you want to use NH vote distrct data.

Enjoy.

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

WA Redistricting: New District around Olympia

dgb for PacNW Kossacks

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Tuesday June 28, 2011 · 3:43 PM PDT

2011/06/28 · 15:43

Washington State gets a 10th Congressional Seat. But where to put it? And what might the delegation look like?

There's been some talk of centering a new district around Olympia (Thurston County), the capital, even though Thurston did not grow as much as King County (where Seattle is) or Snohomish County (north of King) or Clark County (closest to Portland, OR).

Nevertheless, I decided to see if we could create a 10th around Olympia, but still allow the 6th (Norm Dicks) and the 9th (Adam Smith) to retain their cores. Well, we can. And it's not bad for Democrats either. And it might even be acceptable to Republicans.

More below the fold.

dgb

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Wednesday June 22, 2011 · 3:49 PM PDT

2011/06/22 · 15:49

Thanks to roguemapper we have California election data! Yay! You will need Version 2.2.7 to see it.

Caveats: the presidential data has some problems "especially with regard to the presidentials in Los Angeles & San Mateo," according to roguemapper. The "Average" is based only on data from the 2010 Governor's race between Brown and Whitman, which roguemapper says is fairly solid.

Look for a diary soon by roguemapper giving more detail about the data. He hopes to be able to correct the presidential data at some point in the near future.
[Updated] Here is roguemapper's diary.

Also, I've uploaded a new .DRF of the June 10th CA Congressional Draft in which I have renumbered the districts to match the old districts as close as possible. And remember you can get rid of that "CD" text in the labels (although the app doesn't yet remember when you reload).

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

And thanks roguemapper!

Dave's Redistricting: New Stuff & CA Draft

dgb

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Tuesday June 21, 2011 · 4:08 PM PDT

2011/06/21 · 16:08

I've uploaded DRA Version 2.2.6 today. The big new feature since Version 2.2.4 (my last diary) is the ability to read a 'block equivalency' file and color the map according to the file. These files are a common way to express a redistricting plan and such a file is available for the California June 10th Draft Plan for congressional redistricting.

Other changes: (1) the ability to get rid of the text 'CD' on CD labels; (2) fix for states that have non-number names or non-consecutive numbers for legislative districts; this had caused some files to not load, including for Minnesota.

See below for more details plus a DRF file you can use to load the CA draft plan in DRA.

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

dgb

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Sunday June 12, 2011 · 4:29 PM PDT

2011/06/12 · 16:29

I've uploaded DRA Version 2.2.4, which has a new feature for California, which allows you to work with a subset of the state at a time. Because California is so large, even on a fast machine panning and zooming can be pretty slow. By working with a subset those operations are noticably faster. (And it's not the old feature where it automatically puts a bunch of districts around the center of the screen! :-))

Also, I uploaded Block Groups for California. These were much needed because some voting districts had more than 100,000 people in them -- way too big to reasonably work with.

See below the fold for more details and screen shots.

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

I'll be at Netroots Nation. Would love to meet DRA users.

dgb

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

Tuesday June 07, 2011 · 2:05 PM PDT

2011/06/07 · 14:05

I've uploaded election data for Indiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma (thanks to Steve Ansolabehere's team) and Pennsylvania (thanks to roguemapper). DRA now has election data for 19 states.

IN and PA have 2008 presidential data only. NM has persidential plus an average over all 2010 statewide races. OK has presidential plus an average over the 2004 and 2008 presidential and the 2006 Gov, Lt Gov and AG races.

The presidential numbers for IN, NM and OK are slightly lower than actual, I think because of absentees not being counted by precincts.

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

I'll be at Netroots Nation. Would love to meet DRA users.

WA Redistricting w/ Majority Minority District

dgb for PacNW Kossacks

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Friday June 03, 2011 · 12:31 PM PDT

2011/06/03 · 12:31

Back in March George Cheung, director of the Win/Win Network proposed that Washington State could have a majority minority congressional district. (See the Seattle Times article here). The article for the most part argues against such a district, because it goes against the conventional thinking that all of Seattle should be in 1 district.

For starters, the idea of splitting the city of Seattle between two districts may prove controversial. The city currently is contained entirely within the 7th Congressional District.
While not ruling it out, U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, the 7th District's 12-term Democratic congressman, said "it's always made sense to me" that Seattle remain unified in a single district.

Splitting Seattle could prove unpalatable to Republicans, since it would put the city's overwhelmingly Democratic vote at play in two congressional races instead of one.

Former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, one of the Republican members of the redistricting commission, said the commission welcomes ideas from any group, but noted that the panel is supposed to avoid splitting cities wherever possible.

Cheung refuted that argument.

Cheung defended the idea, saying "communities in Southeast Seattle in many ways are more connected to places like Renton or Kent than they are to Laurelhurst or Northgate. [neighborhoods in the the more affluent north Seattle]"

In addition, although the core of Seattle is in CD 7, CD 1 extends into the affluent northwest corner of the city, while CD 7 extends north of the city into Shoreline. So, contrary to what Slade Gorton said, the commission did not adhere to that guideline last time, when they clearly could have.

I took Chueng's idea and using Dave's Redistricting App made such a map. It's very doable. See below for maps and numbers.

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RSS

Dave's Redistricting: Better Color By Population Control

WA State Commission Accepting Redistricting Plans (and how to use DRA for it)

Dave's Redistricting: Better Colors Showing Population and Election Data

WA Redistricting: New District in King County

WA Redistricting: Keep Counties Together

Dave's Redistricting: NJ & TN Election Data

WA Redistricting: New District around Olympia

Dave's Redistricting: CA Election Data

Dave's Redistricting: New Stuff & CA Draft

Dave's Redistricting: New for California

Daves Redistricting: IN, NM, OK, PA Election Data

WA Redistricting w/ Majority Minority District