Saturday, February 16, 2013

Comparing D and R Drawn Maps - Demographics & Politics

Inspired by Paul Ogden's great catch (see "Technical Flaw May Doom GOP Drawn Indianapolis Council Districts") on the Republican drawn Council district maps, I stopped putting off using the Common Cause software to look over the Democrat drawn district maps.
Here are pertinent links for all of the competing maps and Council proposals:
--- R drawn maps
--- R ordinance
--- D drawn maps
--- D proposed ordinance
--- Common Cause DrawMarionCounty - R drawn maps
--- Common Cause DrawMarionCounty - D drawn maps
The Common Cause online program is helpful as it can be used to compare the various statistics for each of the maps.

I did input all of the D drawn maps, and as a verification that I did so correctly, the population of each district matched exactly the numbers provided on the Council website.

I looked at both the political (R voters vs. D voters) generated with the Common Cause website, which uses 2008 voting data and which generates only percentages.  There were two differences with the numbers provided on the Council website for the D drawn map - Council District 12 shows a Democratic majority on the Common Cause website, but a Republican majority on the Council site & Council District 3 was just the reverse.

Using the Common Cause website, the R drawn maps create 16 D majority and 9 R majority districts.  The D drawn maps create 17 D majority and 8 R majority maps.  The Common Cause website projects 19 D and 6 R districts in the currently used maps.

Of more concern, though, is the loss of Black majority voting age population districts.

Again, using the Common Cause website, the R drawn maps create 3 Black voting age population majority districts, the D drawn maps create only 2.  Both are down from the current 4 districts.

Looking at the non-white minority voting age population districts, both the D and R drawn maps create such 8 districts.  Currently there are 7.

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