by Christopher Cooper
At the beginning of the academic year, I got a poster-sized version of the United States Congressional districts printed out for my office. It wasn’t long before it was out of date.
Rather than pay to print a new map with every mid-decade redraw, I started to add sticky notes to the map, indicating, for example, that the Republicans in Texas had picked up five seats or that the Democrats in Utah had picked up one.
My makeshift map represents a pretty common way to think about redistricting—we add up Republican and Democratic gains to get a sense of how the current redraw will favor one party or another.
