Browsing: Maps

Lost in the discussion of Blagojevich’s sins is another fact: the end of Blago marked the end of the Illinois Democratic Party’s effective competition downstate. Looking at the trends from 1998 to 2006 shows a clear shift and a fascinating look at the rapid decline in the state’s ancestrally Democratic strongholds.

Democrats feel confident that Republican Kris Kobach facing the Democratic front runner, State Senator Barbara Bollier, would lead to a competitive race in Kansas, but unfortunately for Democrats this is likely not the reality. Kobach is weaker than other Republicans, but there is no reason to believe that he is weak enough to lose a seat the GOP has held since 1932.

Local elections are typically dull, uninteresting affairs. For offices with minimal power, between candidates with little in the way of campaign infrastructure, very few voters usually pay attention to municipal races and often the elections end in uninteresting, low turnout landslides. Outside of New York and occasionally Chicago, elections for mayor are hardly noticed by the national media, and until recently, elections for district attorney were even less talked about. But in 2003, San Francisco was different. When the results were in, the city’s voters changed the course of modern American politics without even realizing it.

Despite the recent redraw of North Carolina’s congressional maps, the state remains gerrymandered to a degree and the maps will again have to be redrawn in a few years. Using the 2016 Voting District lines from Dave’s Redistricting App, I’ve drawn a map that could be used as a baseline for the 2022 redraw.