CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 05, 2011 11:55 PM UTC
20 Comments
The Joint Select Committee on redistricting here in Colorado, which we’ve affectionately nicknamed the
Will Denver be divided?
Will Brandon Shaffer have a Congressional district he can win?
The rumors are flying.
If I am reading the numbers right Denver may lose a State House and Senate Seat. That could make for some very interesting primary battles.
The next few weeks will be interesting.
people cut off from the few Demish parts and in an even more Republican CD6!
Who drew that map? Wouldn’t be the same party that dropped a bill this session to ‘keep the West Slope whole’ now would it?
if there’s a legal reason Denver shouldn’t be split up? I get that it’s a community that, seemingly logically, should be kept in one CD, but does it have to be?
Over the years here, it seems to come up occasionally.
A handful of other fairly large cities across the country get split w/o any fanfare…what’s the deal w/ Denver?
Mayor Webb fought to keep Denver together last time.
So if there either wasn’t a court challenge, or if could be proven that the interests are preserved (by splitting in certain places, possibly), then it could be split.
largely because the two competing strategies in the past have been to either make Denver into an uber safe seat for the Dems or to dilute it into several pie-shaped Republican leaning districts with no real middle ground.
Thankfully, the pie-shaped congressional districts radiating away from Denver are ancient history. Aesthetically, they would make the Colorado CD map look like a big asterisk * or maybe a butthole, depending on your point of view.
Perhaps this tendency against overreach could see some Denver modification, especially since nobody has an overriding interest in DeGette’s comfort.
There are state and federal laws and court cases setting the redistricting rules, including the following:
(1) Approximately equal size (within 1-5%, but it isn’t specifically stated)
(2) Must not split up nor overly concentrate ethnic/racial minorities.
(3) Must not split up Counties
(4) Should try to keep communities of interest together.
You can see that to meet the equal size and voting rights parameters, you may have to split up some counties.
Practically speaking, in Colorado, each district will be dominated by one to three large population centers.
You say that “must not” split up counties, and you say they might have to. Which is it?
#4 points to keeping Denver together, but I’m not sure #2 does. And it’s getting harder and hard to satisfy #1 without splitting Denver up.
Denver can be split up. That’s the answer. I think your conditions are part opinion, and the map can be drawn very differently than it is today.
…not to split of counties or cities to the extent possible.
In practice, the national guidleines have been not to split cities in a metro area (unless a city is bigger than a district) and not divide counties in the rural areas.
That “to the extent possible phrase gives a lot of weight in my mind to NOT splitting Denver.
Dan and everyone else.
Fine that they lean one way or the other (evenly divided on the leans). But close enough that a strong candidate will beat a weak candidate regardless of party.
While all of us will be fascinated to develop scenarios, the drawing of the Congressional district lines is really very mechanical.
They always start at the state lines and work toward the center. Once they have done the big geographic districts, they come back to Denver and try to keep it as whole as possible. DeGette has to pick up some population and about the only way she can really go is further into Aurora on the east and southeast sides.
Once Denver is set, the suburban ring of 2, 4 and 6 will get crunched – with some eye toward the El Paso County boundaries.
In the end, I doubt that the map will look much different than it currently does.
For fun, they could rotate 3 and 4 90 degrees and run them east-west instead of north-south. That could be pretty cool.
They’ll probably keep Western Slope and Eastern plains as communities of interest. More likely to rotate CO-07 CW or CCW.
They will have to deal with growth in Weld County, which maybe puts Longmont back in CO-02.
Maybe CO-03 will pick up some of the resort communities.
Like I said above, Colorado population is concentrated in a few major metro areas, which have to be assigned 1, 2 or 3 at a time. You can’t just make up a random map.
Nobody’s suggesting a “random map.” What is so special about this ten year old judge selected map that the only thing we can do is tweak it around the margins?
I’d really like to see some proposed maps before I put this debate in somebody else’s box.
Go to Dave’s Redistricting App and make up your own map, according to the rules listed above.
I already mentioned the problem you will have. Once you assign large population centers, most of the districts are mostly set, and you are left distributing the little counties to try to even up the populations.
Yes, you’ll have to split a few of the counties. Dan Willis’s map is nice because when he splits counties, he tries to keep cities together. He makes a good point that a city is a community of interest.
Splitting Denver would have to avoid splitting up racial minorities, which is one of the stronger rules in the list.
…I would like to draw attention to a report (with maps) I have written and submitted to the redistricting committee.
It can be found at my website
This is very interesting and I am eagerly reading. If the winner was whoever is first with a detailed plan, you’d win!
I think you’re right about expanding CD-7 north to include the rest of Jeffco, but I’d be surprised if the Adams portion of Westminster was included. The high population of Wetsminster would require a pretty dramatic change in the make-up of the district which would inevitably lead to a big political fight – something I think everyone is trying to avoid.
My guess is that since CD-7 needs to be bigger and CD-2 needs to be smaller, it makes sense to give north Jeffco to CD-7. Another option would be to circle CD-7 around Westminster and throw in Broomfield.