Alternative Districts: Missouri State House of Representatives
Below you'll find my alternative to the Missouri State House of Representatives district map contrasted with the actual map. My version displays a better way of keeping together communities of interest, while respecting political and geographical boundaries. My version also improves minority opportunity districts. Recreating the actual map using Dave’s Redistricting App was not practical since too many districts couldn’t be drawn to match exactly, which caused major discrepancies that had significant effects on district demographics. The district numbering keeps to the previous numbering as closely as possible. This presentation will follow a layout similar to the North Dakota State Legislature diary. What you’ll are see images of different regions, book-ended by an overview of the state, and you’ll also be able to see each district’s number. The images of each region will include some overlapping districts from other regions. This is done to help in getting a comprehensive perspective of the map. Also, there’s no county breakdown. As always the data for each district is assembled at the end of the diary using spreadsheets via Stephen Wolf’s guide, which is cited alongside my other sources.
St. Louis
Columbia-Jefferson City
Kansas City-St. Joseph
North
Springfield
Joplin
Cape Girardeau
South
Overview
Currently, the Missouri State House of Representatives district map favors Republicans. While my version increases opportunities in which Democrats can compete and win, primarily in the urban areas — St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbia, and Springfield — Republicans would be favored to consistently win majorities. Still, my version improves the overall appropriateness of the districts by: improving overall compactness, coalescing communities of interest, and respecting political boundaries, which makes my version of the chamber’s districts more representative of the state.
Thanks for viewing!
P.S. District PVIs will be included in a later update of this diary.
The maps were created using Dave’s Redistricting App: gardow.com/…
2016 Election Results were acquired via Dave’s Redistricting App 2020 update
The charts and data were assembled using spreadsheets via Stephen Wolf’s guide: www.dailykos.com/…
The Statistical Atlas was used to match the district numbering: statisticalatlas.com/…
Link to Missouri Senate Map
Alternative Districts: Missouri State Senate
Link to North Dakota Map
Alternative Districts: North Dakota State Legislature
Link to South Dakota Map
Alternative Districts: South Dakota State Legislature