Colorado, to a certain extent, resembles Oregon. Like Oregon, the census estimates show that all of the districts will need to shrink and shift to make room for the new district. The good news for Democrats is that the least growth is in the Third District (Western Colorado) and the biggest growth is in the First District (Denver). The potential bad news is the change to the rules in Colorado.
Since the last redistricting cycle, Colorado has taken the responsibility for drawing district lines away from the legislature and assigned it to a new nonpartisan commission. In short, that means that the new map may not resemble the old map.
Under the new rules, the commission will be composed of twelve people — four Democrats, four Republicans, and four nonpartisan members. The process for choosing these people also limit the influence of the political parties on the members. The new rules required the commission to justify any deviation from absolute equality. It also requires the commission to consider geographic and ethnic communities of interests. The rules also direct the commission to maximize the number of competitive districts. Currently, none of the districts are that competitive. There are two solid Democratic districts (one of which is ubersolid) and two solid Republican districts. Two of the districts are safe/lean Democratic districts and one safe/lean Republican districts.
Looking at the maps, while in theory, there are enough Hispanics in Colorado for a Hispanic majority district, the Hispanic population appears to be two dispersed to actually draw a Hispanic majority district.
That will leave the Commission to deal with the issue of competitiveness vs. community of interest. By moving northwest Colorado into the Second District and moving some of the Denver suburbs into the Third (which would reach to Boulder), the Third went from a lean Republican (R +6) district to a toss-up (R +1). And by expanding the Fifth slightly to the northwest, the new Eighth would be a south central district that would be R+1. by including the Democratic areas in Colorado Springs (from the Fifth) and Pueblo (from the Fourth) in the eastern part of the district and some of the resort belt (from the Third) on the northwestern part of the district. But those are probably the only two districts that can be made competitive. And getting to those lines requires a tradeoff between not splitting counties and being competitive with splits to move Republicans in the western part of Garfield County into the Second and Democrats in Boulder County and Larimer County (Fort Collins) into the Third and just taking the pockets of Democrats in El Paso County (Colorado Springs) and Pueblo County into the new Eighth. The new lines would make the Sixth District and Seventh District slightly more competitive, but they would both still be lean Democrat. With some careful switches, one of these two districts could possibly be made competitive.
In short, depending on how strongly the commission pushes competitive lines, we should have two solid Democratic districts and two solid Republican districts. For the other four districts, pushing for maximum competitiveness would give you between one safe Democratic district, one lean Democratic district and two toss-ups or two safe Democratic districts and two lean Republican districts.
Colorado is going to be one of the states to look at to see how the states with commissions differ from the states in which legislatures draw the lines and how a mandate for competitive districts influences the process. The core of the state’s population and the Democratic votes are in a belt running from Fort Collins through Denver out to Aspen. That belt represents approximately half of the state’s population. In a Republican controlled process, that area would have three solid Democrat districts with the remainder splintered among multiple districts. A Democratic-controlled process would — to the extent possible — have that area as the core of five safe Democrat districts with some of the population assigned to nearby Republican areas to make one or two (I think probably only one) competitive district. But with a neutral commission, how much will the Democratic belt be kept together and how much will be spread around to maximize the number of competitive districts.
One other lesson from Colorado and that is the same lesson as Democrats have from other states. Democratic votes are geographically concentrated. There are pockets of Democratic votes outside of the Democratic belt, but it takes effort to draw lines that aren’t forced to link up those pockets in a district. In most of the rural part of the state, the Republicans dominate most precincts. So even though Colorado is leaning Democrtic, it’s really difficult to draw a map that gives Democrats extra seats beyond the 5-3 split that you would get from a proportional representation system. It’s even hard for Democrats to “gerrymander” a proportional map in the states that they control. On the other hand, Colorado has been drifting blue. The estimates above are based on multiple elections. If, instead of an 8-10% edge statewide, you assume a 15% edge statewide, things become a little bit easer.
Up next will be North Carolina, a state that may come down to who draws the final map.
