Redistricting Utah with four districts

[Хahar 🤔]

The orange district has no incumbent, but I imagine it would be pretty hard-core Republican. The black and brown districts have Republican incumbents, and the beige (?) district has a conservative Democratic incumbent.

[Brittain33]

Interesting, although I'm not sure how you're figuring the incumbents. Both Republicans live in the orange district: Rob Bishop in Box Elder County and Chris Cannon in Utah County. Jim Matheson's site said he was born and raised in SLC, although that leaves the possibility he doesn't live there now. The gray district, where he lives, is a hell of a mix of Democratic Salt Lake City and conservative Davis County.

I haven't done the numbers, but my map would include a Democratic district based on Salt Lake City; a Republican district combining Utah County and southern Salt Lake County; an Ogden-based district in the north, and another, new Republican district in the south and east.
Matheson would run in the first of these districts, Cannon in the second, and Bishop in the third.

[Хahar 🤔]

Interesting, although I'm not sure how you're figuring the incumbents. Both Republicans live in the orange district: Rob Bishop in Box Elder County and Chris Cannon in Utah County. Jim Matheson's site said he was born and raised in SLC, although that leaves the possibility he doesn't live there now. The gray district, where he lives, is a hell of a mix of Democratic Salt Lake City and conservative Davis County.

I haven't done the numbers, but my map would include a Democratic district based on Salt Lake City; a Republican district combining Utah County and southern Salt Lake County; an Ogden-based district in the north, and another, new Republican district in the south and east.
Matheson would run in the first of these districts, Cannon in the second, and Bishop in the third.

I f***ked up with the incumbents; I looked at the birthplaces. I'll come up with vote data soon.

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm lazy, so these totals assume that Salt Lake County is split equally between the black and brown CDs, which is blatantly untrue. So, the tallies for the CDs aren't exactly equal, and the brown district is even more Republican than it looks.

Black:
Republican: 56,680 (50.94%)
Democratic: 48,390 (43.49%)
Brown:
Republican: 99,703 (57.89%)
Democratic: 63,022 (36.59%)
Orange:
Republican: 101,302 (73.57%)
Democratic: 26,275 (19.08%)

I'll have totals for the beige district up soon.

[muon2]

Here's my version with projected 2010 populations. The Salt Lake City district omits the Sandy / South Jordan area which attaches to the eastern and southern counties.

[Verily]

Here's my version with projected 2010 populations. The Salt Lake City district omits the Sandy / South Jordan area which attaches to the eastern and southern counties.

Interesting; that map might actually be able to elect two Democrats, assuming Matheson runs in the larger district (which contains most of the areas with vestiges of traditional Democratic Party strength anyway such as San Juan County, Grand County and Summit County). It's very similar to his current district, essentially simply exchanging parts of Salt Lake for Summit County (and switching around some equally Republican and small counties in the south).

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

But that still won't do him any good unless it contains enough Democratic parts of SLC as well.

[Verily]

But that still won't do him any good unless it contains enough Democratic parts of SLC as well.

Like I said, Summit County is actually more Democratic than SLC. It was in his district until the 2000 redistricting, when the Utah Republicans tried to unseat him by putting Summit in a hyper-conservative district and replacing it with various extremely conservative counties in the south. (Iron County especially, which is not in the district muon drew.)

[Alcon]

But that still won't do him any good unless it contains enough Democratic parts of SLC as well.

Like I said, Summit County is actually more Democratic than SLC.

But has about 1/20th of the voters.

[Verily]

But that still won't do him any good unless it contains enough Democratic parts of SLC as well.

Like I said, Summit County is actually more Democratic than SLC.

But has about 1/20th of the voters.

According to the map, anyway, Matheson's not losing much of SLC anyway. And he does get a net gain in the south by losing Piute and Iron in exchange for Sanpete (which is essentially identical to Iron but with half the population.)

[Alcon]

Any chance that a Kerry CD could be carved out here?  I wish SLC didn't charge for precinct data.

[Verily]

Any chance that a Kerry CD could be carved out here?  I wish SLC didn't charge for precinct data.

Depends on how badly gerrymandered you'd allow the district to be. It wouldn't be too difficult to take the Democratic areas of Salt Lake, Summit, Carbon and Grand Counties and combine them with little threads of district.

[Alcon]

Any chance that a Kerry CD could be carved out here?  I wish SLC didn't charge for precinct data.

Depends on how badly gerrymandered you'd allow the district to be. It wouldn't be too difficult to take the Democratic areas of Salt Lake, Summit, Carbon and Grand Counties and combine them with little threads of district.

Haha.

I was thinking an incidental gerrymander, not something so aggressive.  SLC proper probably voted for Kerry.  I guess it would depend how the inner-rung suburban areas voted.  If they were heavily Bush, it'd probably end up Bush by a few points.  But if there are any moderate inner-rung suburban areas, you might get a very slightly Kerry CD.

[Brittain33]

I was thinking an incidental gerrymander, not something so aggressive.  SLC proper probably voted for Kerry.  I guess it would depend how the inner-rung suburban areas voted.  If they were heavily Bush, it'd probably end up Bush by a few points.  But if there are any moderate inner-rung suburban areas, you might get a very slightly Kerry CD.

I found this link useful for differentiating among SLC sprawl for political habits.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3762929

[Alcon]

I was thinking an incidental gerrymander, not something so aggressive.  SLC proper probably voted for Kerry.  I guess it would depend how the inner-rung suburban areas voted.  If they were heavily Bush, it'd probably end up Bush by a few points.  But if there are any moderate inner-rung suburban areas, you might get a very slightly Kerry CD.

I found this link useful for differentiating among SLC sprawl for political habits.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3762929

Very cool.  Thank you.

I didn't expect SLC proper to be so strongly Democratic.

[muon2]

I was thinking an incidental gerrymander, not something so aggressive.  SLC proper probably voted for Kerry.  I guess it would depend how the inner-rung suburban areas voted.  If they were heavily Bush, it'd probably end up Bush by a few points.  But if there are any moderate inner-rung suburban areas, you might get a very slightly Kerry CD.

I found this link useful for differentiating among SLC sprawl for political habits.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3762929

Using the percentages on the linked map, the SLC district in my map would be very close to 50-50. On that linked map Midvale, Sandy, South Jordan, Riverton, Bluffdale, and Draper are in the district that stretches east and south, and the whole district would be about 70% R based on the vote in 2004. The rest of the linked map plus some unincorporated communities east of the area shown with percentages makes up my SLC district. For the record the other two districts are 79% and 86% R based on 2004 votes.