The Progression of Tennessee House District 13

co-authored by Jack Vaughan

Let’s explore “the most interesting State House district in Tennessee,” as co-author Jack Vaughan put it. Tennessee House District 13 is one of the 26 out of 99 seats in the lower house of Tennessee’s legislature held by a Democrat and has consistently hosted the most competitive races in the state. This first set of maps shows the last five elections for this seat, and it has in fact gone back and forth:

As Vaughan says in his tweet sharing the map:

Rep. Gloria Johnson has been on the ballot all five times HD-13 has had its current boundaries, winning 3/5 times.

This Knoxville-based district has become more favorable to Democrats due to the city's shifts leftward. It's one of two House seats Democrats hold in Knox County. pic.twitter.com/GaQriDMNNK

— Jack Vaughan (@theJackVaughan) April 8, 2021

Knoxville, like many metro areas across the country, is trending Democratic. The part of the district north of the Tennessee River has managed to outweigh the more conservative, rural southern areas of Knox County added to the district by the Republican legislature in the 2010 redistricting cycle in an attempt to swing the historically working-class district to the right. The recent shift is most notable after the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, where the district went from being within a percentage point or two to being above a 5% margin for the Democrat.

State Representative Gloria Johnson has also proven herself to be a strong candidate in Knox County, such as in her 2012 win despite GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney carrying the district by 4.6%

The margin shifts visible in this second set of maps shows that even the Republican-leaning southern portions of Knox County included in HD 13 are moving a little to the left. The significant shifts, though, have occurred in the portions of west and north Knoxville that make up the northern half of HD 13, such as the margin shift of 37% towards Democrats in the West Knoxville neighborhood of Sequoyah Hills and the double-digit shifts in North Knoxville.

HD 13 is somewhat of a microcosm of Knox County: composed of an urban & suburban core with a sizable rural population. The district’s trends mirror those in the county, exceeding double-digit shifts in favor of Democrats the past decade.

Redistricting for 2022 is a complete unknown, however, and Rep. Johnson may face another unfavorable district. She succeeded in 2012, and she may well do it again.

Arkansas Gubernatorial Election 2018

Since the Clinton administration, Arkansas has trended more and more Republican.  Twitter user @yeahitsJ0sh points out that Governor Asa Hutchinson increased his margin upon re-election.  Similarly, and despite a Biden gain on Clinton by 43,438 votes, President Donald Trump surpassed his 2016 margin in 2020 by nearly a percentage point in an already very red state.  Josh says:

1. I think at this point, we all expect Sarah Huckabee Sanders to (unfortunately) be the Republican nominee and the next Governor of Arkansas.
Current Governor Asa Hutchinson was reelected in 2018 by a margin of almost 35 points, considerably more than his first win in 2014. pic.twitter.com/Yv5nRoBMTO

— Josh (@yeahitsJ0sh) May 29, 2021

 This is a finely detailed precinct map, so definitely zoom in and check out the insets:

Iowa's 1st Congressional District Elections 2018 and 2020. A.K.A. the Rise and Fall of Abby Finkenauer

I think that Representative Abby Finkenauer is one of the most interesting freshman of the 2018 House.  Second youngest woman ever elected to Congress by just under ten months, she never attracted as much media attention, positive or negative, as her classmate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  However, her 2018 win was arguably more impressive.

Finkenauer's Iowa House district was based in the southern half of Dubuque, Iowa, which gave her a strong base of support in the 2018 Democratic primary.  However, 15 out of the 20 counties, including Finkenauer's home base of Dubuque County, in Iowa's 1st Congressional District as drawn in the 2010s are "pivot counties", counties that voted for Obama twice then flipped to Trump in 2016.  Democratic enthusiasm was incredibly high in 2018 but Republican enthusiasm nearly met it, making Finkenauer's 16,900 vote win (5.1%) in the swingy 1st District an awesome feat.

These great maps by Twitter user @bob37689044 show how she ended up losing the next cycle:

In her 2018 election against 2-term incumbent Republican Representative Rod Blum, Finkenauer visibly succeeded in keeping the more rural areas of her district competitive, even winning Winneshiek County. Meanwhile, she ran up the votes in the urban and suburban counties of Dubuque, Black Hawk, and Linn.

During a presidential election year, Finkenauer couldn't benefit from the "throw the bums out" effect of a midterm.  She lost ground in Dubuque, while her performance across the rural counties plummeted, including a flip in Winneshiek.  Also, the Republican Party did a good job recruiting a strong challenger in now-Rep. Ashley Hinson, a former news anchor, like Finkenauer an Iowa House member, and a woman of the same generation.

Simply put, Republican turnout went up across the board, and so down went Finkenauer.  However, I'll leave you with this tantalizing bit of gossip:

In honour of Abby Finkenauer's rumoured run for Iowa Senate next year I decided to map her performance in Iowa District 1, in 2018 & 2020 and vs each other. (from left to right, 2018, 2020, % change in margin) pic.twitter.com/rF6JrR0CWr

— bob (@bob37689044) May 27, 2021

The Scottish National Parliamentary Elections of 2026?

You read that right, folks.  It's 2021 and we've got a map from the future.  I'm very excited to share the blog's first speculative map, as well as its first non-USA map.  This one comes to us from Twitter user @bdn0369, who proposes a brand new electoral system for Scotland after its independence in 2023.  I recommend reading their breakdown of the political parties later in this Twitter thread:

#ElectionTwitter These are the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections. Scotland, after achieving independence in 2023, formed its own 100-seat parliament with a proportional regional list voting system. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/nc27e8mwQ1

— ben 🏳️‍🌈 (@bdn0369) May 23, 2021

A proportional regional list system is a system where the country is divided into a number of electoral regions.  Within those regions, each party has a list of candidates, and in a nationwide vote, everyone chooses a party, rather than an individual candidate.  Within each electoral region candidates are elected from the tops of their parties' lists in proportion to the percentage of the vote earned by that party in that region.

This is quite different from Scotland's current Parliament, which is elected via a mixed-member proportional system, or Scotland's representation in the UK Parliament, which is based on a first-past-the-post system traditional to British-style governments.  @bdn0369 has maintained the current electoral regions, although seats are allocated by population rather than each getting seven members.

Will we see an independent Scotland in the near future?  What kind of electoral system would be best for the again-independent nation?  What do you think?

Partisan Control of State Governments: 1938 v. 1939

Today's maps are on a very interesting topic: control of state governments.  And not only that, but it's another set of historical maps!  This pair from @Mill226 on Twitter show the fascinating political time period of the late 1930s USA.  The threat of war in Europe and Asia was growing, while the US continued to suffer from depressed economic conditions.  As the first map shows, the Democratic Party was still riding high on FDR's re-election in 1938.

A point of interest on both maps is Nebraska, which has used a "non-partisan" unicameral state legislature since 1936.

However, after the 1938 midterm elections, Republicans had gained in New England, the Midwest, and the Great Plains.

One thing I really appreciate about these maps is the calculations of what percentage of the US population was governed by each party.  To me, that is a fascinating metric of the parties' relative strengths.  I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the 1938 map shows one of the highest concentrations of state and population control in the hands of single party in the nation's history, perhaps only rivaled by the early-1800s Era of Good Feelings when the Democratic-Republicans were ascendant.

Three Redistricting Possibilities in North Carolina 2021

co-authored by Chris Kirkwood

North Carolina has been subject to extreme partisan gerrymandering by the Republican Party since 2010, resulting in a great deal of litigation.  In 2019, two particularly important court decisions regarding North Carolina were published.

One, from the US Supreme Court, ruled that federal courts could not overturn a gerrymander on the basis of partisanship.  Not only would the federal Congressional districts in North Carolina stay in place, but this was also a major setback to those fighting for fairer maps across the entire country.

The other, from the Superior Court of Wake County, struck down North Carolina’s state Senate and state House districts based on the state constitution, and mandated that they be redrawn under supervision of the court.  This was a reversal; in 2018, Democrats won the majority of the statewide vote but Republicans kept control of both chambers.  Despite the new maps, the state-level results were mixed in 2020, and Republicans retained control of the legislature, and therefore the redistricting process.

Thus the most likely result on the federal House level is some kind of Republican gerrymander.  @bluearrowMaps shows us what that might look like here:

The North Carolina House delegation is currently 8 Republicans and 5 Democrats.  However, North Carolina’s population growth as measured by the 2020 Census led the state to gain an additional seat in the US House.  The result is a 9-5 map, a net Republican gain of +1 seat.

Democratic North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper cannot veto the maps drawn by the legislature, so the Democrats have little leverage, but a remote possibility is a more balanced map.  This 7-3-4 map may better represent the state, which has had a 4% or less margin of victory for the past four presidential cycles:

In a hypothetical world where Democrats controlled the legislature and were gunning for the maximum number of seats, they could pursue a setup like this 5-4-5 map (with all of the 4 competitive seats tilted toward them!):

California Democratic Primary 2020: Top 4 Candidates

 @AveryTheComrade on Twitter brings us this gorgeous map with the following comment:

California was one of 3 states (California, Iowa, Nevada) that Bernie Sanders flipped from the 2016-2020 Democratic primaries, but unlike in 2016 it was much less of a 2-way race. Sanders won with 36% of the vote, 9% above Biden, mostly with support from the lost coast and valley pic.twitter.com/UI6JJFzXru

— Avery 🐸 (@AveryTheComrade) May 16, 2021

The Democratic primary is interesting because of its arcane semi-proportional delegate system.  You earn delegates per House district as well as statewide, but you only win delegates from a place if you get at least 15% of the vote within those geographical boundaries.  This makes a candidate's distribution of votes very important.

This one is worth zooming in on to see some of the nitty-gritty details and fine map-making.