After reading parts 1 and 2 of my attempts to create 2020s U.S. House districts for Iowa using 2019 population estimates, someone might ask:
These districts are too practical. Can you do something weird? Something that an unscrupulous non-Iowa legislature would try?
Mock 5: Let’s get weird within slightly adjusted operational parameters
District 1: Wow, that almost worked. Scott and Muscatine counties account for more than a quarter of the population. I don’t think the 2020 numbers would be enough to knock Audubon County out, but otherwise, this is … vaguely plausible? Have fun attending town hall meetings in both McCausland and McClelland, southern Iowa candidates.
District 2: Cerro Gordo County forms a sticking point in getting the western end figured out, but 2-county pairs marginally aid the perimeter rule. This is the most competitive of the four.
District 3: The goal here was to strip Polk and Johnson counties together. This would likely be the most racially diverse district in Iowa history — not just in those two population centers, but including Marshall County’s Hispanic population and the Meskwaki Settlement in Tama County.
District 4: Dallas County gets separated from Polk in a pretty standard northwest/north-central district. In such cases, though, consider that the Dallas County portion of West Des Moines will be one of the district’s largest cities and Waukee could crack the top 10.
Mock 6/5A: Keep the weird, tweak the edges
I have decided to exclude this map because, like Mock 2/1A, it didn’t vary enough from the other. Besides, Mock 5 only got weird with one district, and …
Mock 7: The name’s Mander. Jerry Mander.
District 1: It turns out one CAN get Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, and Davenport to share a district! Its county collection is only recently moderately competitive on the presidential level — these made for near-Democratic sweeps until 2016.
District 2: The last year Dubuque and Lyon counties shared a congressional district was 1862 — when much of north-central and western Iowa was still frontier. (The same goes, incidentally, for Black Hawk and Scott counties.)
District 3: Identical to Mock 5. Perhaps surprisingly, the overall variance is only slightly worse.
District 4: Maximum media markets: Ottumwa, Des Moines, Omaha, and Sioux City. (District 2 also has four.) Keokuk and Washington counties would see ads for every congressional race except theirs.