The Census Bureau released its county-by-county estimates on May 4. By “released”, I mean “said in advance they would be available but I had to dig into nested folders and stumble on a straight-outta-1995 icon list that led me to a CSV file containing year-by-year estimates for every county in the United States, copy rows T807-T906, and paste them into my pre-existing mock-district spreadsheet.”
Then came the biggest takeaways:
- The July 1, 2020 estimate (NOT the April 1 head count) adds 8491 people from the 2019 estimates, for a state estimate of approximately 3.16 million, and an ideal congressional district population of 2122 more each.
- The vast majority of Iowa’s 99 counties changed up or down by fewer than 200 people … except Polk and Dallas, which combined grew by 7630 — nearly 1% of a district! Nine and a half people moved to Dallas County every day.
- That, and 2600 more people in Johnson County, blew up every map I’d made.
- Notice that the estimated growth in those three combined is greater than the growth in the state estimate. The other 97 counties lost 1739.
While these numbers are closer to what will be used for creating Iowa’s districts, they aren’t exact. Keeping that in mind, let’s see how out of whack my maps got thrown.
Mock 1: Hinson’s nightmare (map)
Mock 2: Incumbent-safe (map)
Mock 4: The Marshall County Dangler (map)
Mock 5: Weird within adjusted parameters (map)
Mock 7: Double gerrymander (map)
So, yeah, everything went seriously off except for Mock 1 Districts 1 and 4 — the map that scrambles incumbents and separates Polk and Dallas counties — and Mock 2 District 1. However, every individual district meets the 1% deviation percentage variance threshold, as do Mock 1 and, ironically, the gerrymander maps. The rightmost columns for the 2011 districts were 76 and 0.01%.
It’s back to the map mines until the actual numbers come in September. Iowa’s Temporary Redistricting Advisory Commission still needs a fifth appointee. It’s, like, three meetings, right? Would I have to submit conflicts of interest?