Mock 20: Corridor compaction
District 1: Democrat Liz Mathis has a clear-the-field list of endorsements for whatever district includes Cedar Rapids. Christina Bohannan — who primaried a long-time representative in Iowa’s most Democratic state House district — has received former U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack’s endorsement for whatever district includes Iowa City. So what happens if Iowa City and Cedar Rapids get smushed together in my third-best individual mock district? (Local note: Iowa and Tama counties are, by a decent margin, the smallest here.)
District 2: The bulk of the population here is on the east end, but the spread provides a seriously safe R seat.
District 3: Hey, a Des Moines-based district that doesn’t touch a state line!
District 4: Extremely safe R, perhaps mitigating the spread across four media markets. After Woodbury County (Sioux City), Dallas is the second-most populous, then Cerro Gordo (Mason City), and numbers 4-5-6, Boone-Bremer-Plymouth, are widely distributed.
Mock 21: Republican trap
District 1: Ashley Hinson would face a mountain with many counties outside the KCRG viewing area, reducing name recognition.
District 2: An open seat ripe for a Waterloo-based candidate. (Former Rep. Abby Finkenauer, D-Dubuque, has her eyes on the Senate in 2022.)
District 3: Again, just like my very first map, an incumbent-on-incumbent battle with Ottumwa and Des Moines together. Henry County sticks out very awkwardly here.
District 4: A wraparound to Mason City and a jut into Creston. This is one of my more western-oriented 4ths, the district that almost always was “the rest” after creating the first three.
I don’t know if it’s a personal oversight or just the way the numbers break, but I ended up with more river-t0-river (E-W) than border-to-border (N-S) districts. See Mock 20, above. At the same time, I’ve always started working outward from Des Moines and the Linn/Scott areas, and once I do that, it gets very difficult not to just start plugging in the lower-population counties heading westward.
UPDATE 9/22: Fixed slight Scott County population error.