Unless the republicans just give away $5000 dollar checks to every Texan, they are going to lose.
TraditionalBackspace on
So bad, they’re suing California for doing the same thing.
StarWars_and_SNL on
If this doesn’t go their way, in a few years Repubs will just blame Dems for the gerrymander and vote to reverse it, like they are doing with mail-in voting.
AntonioBuehler on
I have a question about the district in and around El Paso. In the neutral districts map it looks like it stretches across the entire western horn of the state. But in the gerrymandered map it is just the El Paso area. Did they just forget to add the border around the El Paso district in the former — because the number of people in the smaller blue district in the latter doesn’t change just because the colors around it change.
They’re using a computer program. Humans can’t draw a map that unfair.
Grehjin on
I’m confused what’s happening with that El Paso district, how is that not overpopulated in your “neutral” map
Also what is the criteria for neutral here because the “neutral” map is still heavily R biased
bubblesx87 on
Imagine if we lived under a functioning benevolent government that served the people instead of whatever this is.
wdaloz on
What is the voter count? Im sure its available but it’d be interesting to see the ratio of red votes to blue vs the ratio of seats
bmillions on
I’m going to laugh if the entire valley flips blue over mass deportations.
SanSilver on
The system is the problem, the maps are just a symptom.
Sleep_adict on
Seeing the massive swing in the Hispanic vote ( to trump in 2024, away now) this will back fire big time
Tankninja1 on
Maybe this is too spicy of a take, but pretty much all states are so badly gerrymandered that we kinda shoot the moon and approach something mirroring the popular vote.
Most of the states that are “fairly” districted are states with like 2 seats where you pretty much always end up just splitting the state’s population in half.
Meanwhile every state I’ve looked up with +10 million people, or near enough, have popular vote results that don’t reflect how their representatives are distributed.
aqa5 on
So I guess the party that gets more districts is winning? How about just counting all votes all over the US and add them up? Did someone already bring that idea up?
(I’m from Europe, sorry. I guess i am annoying )
jdhutch80 on
The real solution to gerrymandering is to expand the number of members of the House of representatives. When the districts are smaller, it’s harder to crack and pack populations.
nursecarmen on
A lot of what they are relying on are votes from the last election. A lot of Texas Latinos voted for Trump. Support for him among that group has fallen through the floor.
I hope this blows up in their faces.
ionstorm20 on
So just out of curiosity, what numbers do democrats need to get to have equal representation? Like if they got 60% of the vote, do they get a 50/50 say?
ToucanicEmperor on
So in this map did El Paso suddenly lose half of its population?
whoisnotinmykitchen on
Gerrymandering is a good sign that you’re not really a democracy.
Same with letting rich people buy politicians.
powerlesshero111 on
If the US really cared about equality, then all reps would be selected based on ranked choice voting, and the entire state would vote on all the candidates. Basically, like Mariokart points, varying depending on the number of seats the state gets. In a 10 seat thing, 1st-10pts, 2-9pts, etc. Then, the top 10 candidates in points get to be reps. It would balance things pretty good, and certain reps would target various areas, and it would be representative of voter ideals/registration.
Mordroberon on
10% moving from one column to the other would flip a lot more house seats in this case.
homebrew_1 on
Can’t gerrymander senate and governor seats in texas. And texas voters still vote for Republicans.
HurlingFruit on
The next logical step is for the TX Legislature to pass a law that while everyone *can* vote, only ballots cast for Republicans will be counted.
240223e on
I just dont understand why cant americans simply do a popular vote it would make way more sense in 2025 than whatever this bs is.
IXPhantomXI on
Now do California. Same thing. California is about 43% Republican and they only have 5 seats. Both sides are guilty of this.
snakesnake9 on
What if districts were decided by a politically neutral body?
PubliusDeLaMancha on
Never should have been a cap on the House
505runner1988 on
Very interesting. Would love to see Illinois as well as a comparison
thirsteefish on
The only fair/democratic options are ranked choice voting and/or neutral computer drawn maps nationwide.
I’d be curious to see how compact AI maps work for IL and CA House district maps. If democrats can’t get past the ‘disparate impact’ issue of compact computer drawn districts then the fight over republican gerrymandering will continue. The shift right in Hispanics and other POC kind of throws out the old argument.
All in all, more competitive races caused by compact districts and ideally term limits would force both major parties to really compete for votes.
--StinkyPinky-- on
I submit that this is the most gerrymandered state in the country.
Without question.
Texas has more registered Democrats than registered Republicans and this doesn’t nearly reflect that reality.
aenea22980 on
Didn’t they just make it easier for a wave election to sweep more seats?
ComprehensiveWrap272 on
If you can’t win without cheating then you didn’t actually win any races at all. I’m so tired of the bullshit and hate filled greed based policies.
The concept of running for office to actually help all people shouldn’t be something only the progressives do.
johnnyringo1985 on
Now do California, New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington
ETA: nevermind. OP admitted to using voting data, not census data. This isn’t how we draw districts, fairly or otherwise.
BizzyM on
Just for fun, do a Democrat gerrymander for Texas. Show what the extreme other end looks like.
Whiskeypants17 on
What I love about this is that if your district has essentially zero influence from the other team, can you still blame them for all your problems? Lol 🤣
SirWillae on
Awesome. Now do California, Illinois, and New York.
Justiful on
Original = Metro area of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin all subdivided to maximize democrat districts. The literally took all 4 metro cities with highest number of Democrats and built out from them to make Democrat districts in the original.
New = Dallas, Houston, Austin San Antonio = Main population centers all a single district.
Overlay original and new map with a topographical map – Which one keeps people geographically distinct from each other apart?
Overlay original and new with the counties of Texas – Which one matches the boundaries of counties best?
————–
The new map is a better representation of the State of Texas. Demographically. Geographically. Representationally by counties.
The original took deep blue concentrations of people and cut them in half or thirds to give the cities more voting power. Dallas had four distinct districts in their metro area with the original.
crisinho67 on
How the fuck is this legal?
TheKen42 on
I’m curious how they got the blue district on the west side of the first down to the little spec in the second map. Aren’t they supposed to be a specific population count?
Euphoric_Switch_337 on
How are we making neutral districts? Black Americans tend to vote for the Democrats and have to have majority minority districts but that effectively leads to packing of the vote. Also the super blue districts in the city lead to packing.
Designer_Version1449 on
Why do we even have districts? Can’t we go straight up by number of votes?
CaptConstantine on
The crazy thing is that we could use all of this data to have computers spit out quite evenly-spaced, competitive, reasonable districts. But we don’t, because politics.
To me it’s like the self-driving car: of course it would be safer and more efficient to put all the cars on a network and let them talk to each other and figure it out while we read the news. Fewer accidents and traffic jams, all that stuff. But nobody wants to be the first person to take their hands off the steering wheel and let the machine do it.
PoliticalNerdMa on
Am i absolutely high? It looks like Texas increased the chance to win those 5 seats and shrank the advantage in more than 5 seats they previously had, ensuring democrats experiencing an abnormally high blue wave midterms effect could win them…?
Because when the special election is already showing a historic level a of voting trends shifting to the left this could absolutely benefit democrats more.
California , from what I’ve been able to look at, isn’t putting their seats in fighting distance for republicans by gerrymandering.
In the right type of election therefore democrats could net 5 in California and then more seats than expected in taxes and be on top (….. kinky…)
jrdubbleu on
Do we know what methodology is used to draw those neutral computer generated districts?
Edit: I didn’t read enough of the thread, ignore me
Negative_Strength_56 on
What does California look like in this system?
Falchion_Alpha on
Notice how the most corrupt states in this country are red and yet they tout freedom?
j_roe on
Few things would make my day as much as this mobilizing Dems to get to the poles en masse and the end up at a minimum keeping the same number of seats if not flipping a couple.
![[OC] Neutral Districts vs. 2025 Gerrymandered Districts in Texas](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/x8hka4nx95nf1-1536x1131.png "[OC] Neutral Districts vs. 2025 Gerrymandered Districts in Texas")
48 Comments
Please also do this for blue states
Unless the republicans just give away $5000 dollar checks to every Texan, they are going to lose.
So bad, they’re suing California for doing the same thing.
If this doesn’t go their way, in a few years Repubs will just blame Dems for the gerrymander and vote to reverse it, like they are doing with mail-in voting.
I have a question about the district in and around El Paso. In the neutral districts map it looks like it stretches across the entire western horn of the state. But in the gerrymandered map it is just the El Paso area. Did they just forget to add the border around the El Paso district in the former — because the number of people in the smaller blue district in the latter doesn’t change just because the colors around it change.
**Data Sources:**
* [NYT Precinct Level Election Results](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/us/elections/2024-election-map-precinct-results.html)
* [Open Street Maps](https://www.openstreetmap.org/)
* [Texas Legislative Council, Plan PLANC2308 shapefiles (2025 districts)](https://data.capitol.texas.gov/dataset/planc2308/resource/c25d964b-9230-49dd-b677-edf862ad37be)
**Tools:** GeoPandas, Shapely, SciPy, Matplotlib, Contextily
**Method:** Neutral map generated using a clustering algorithm (equal-population K-Means)
**Additional context:**
If you’d like a full walkthrough of the methodology and code examples, check out my article: [Redistricting Texas: A Data-Driven Path to Fair Representation](https://medium.com/data-science-collective/redistricting-texas-a-data-driven-path-to-fair-representation-f69ea715b400)
They’re using a computer program. Humans can’t draw a map that unfair.
I’m confused what’s happening with that El Paso district, how is that not overpopulated in your “neutral” map
Also what is the criteria for neutral here because the “neutral” map is still heavily R biased
Imagine if we lived under a functioning benevolent government that served the people instead of whatever this is.
What is the voter count? Im sure its available but it’d be interesting to see the ratio of red votes to blue vs the ratio of seats
I’m going to laugh if the entire valley flips blue over mass deportations.
The system is the problem, the maps are just a symptom.
Seeing the massive swing in the Hispanic vote ( to trump in 2024, away now) this will back fire big time
Maybe this is too spicy of a take, but pretty much all states are so badly gerrymandered that we kinda shoot the moon and approach something mirroring the popular vote.
Most of the states that are “fairly” districted are states with like 2 seats where you pretty much always end up just splitting the state’s population in half.
Meanwhile every state I’ve looked up with +10 million people, or near enough, have popular vote results that don’t reflect how their representatives are distributed.
So I guess the party that gets more districts is winning? How about just counting all votes all over the US and add them up? Did someone already bring that idea up?
(I’m from Europe, sorry. I guess i am annoying )
The real solution to gerrymandering is to expand the number of members of the House of representatives. When the districts are smaller, it’s harder to crack and pack populations.
A lot of what they are relying on are votes from the last election. A lot of Texas Latinos voted for Trump. Support for him among that group has fallen through the floor.
I hope this blows up in their faces.
So just out of curiosity, what numbers do democrats need to get to have equal representation? Like if they got 60% of the vote, do they get a 50/50 say?
So in this map did El Paso suddenly lose half of its population?
Gerrymandering is a good sign that you’re not really a democracy.
Same with letting rich people buy politicians.
If the US really cared about equality, then all reps would be selected based on ranked choice voting, and the entire state would vote on all the candidates. Basically, like Mariokart points, varying depending on the number of seats the state gets. In a 10 seat thing, 1st-10pts, 2-9pts, etc. Then, the top 10 candidates in points get to be reps. It would balance things pretty good, and certain reps would target various areas, and it would be representative of voter ideals/registration.
10% moving from one column to the other would flip a lot more house seats in this case.
Can’t gerrymander senate and governor seats in texas. And texas voters still vote for Republicans.
The next logical step is for the TX Legislature to pass a law that while everyone *can* vote, only ballots cast for Republicans will be counted.
I just dont understand why cant americans simply do a popular vote it would make way more sense in 2025 than whatever this bs is.
Now do California. Same thing. California is about 43% Republican and they only have 5 seats. Both sides are guilty of this.
What if districts were decided by a politically neutral body?
Never should have been a cap on the House
Very interesting. Would love to see Illinois as well as a comparison
The only fair/democratic options are ranked choice voting and/or neutral computer drawn maps nationwide.
I’d be curious to see how compact AI maps work for IL and CA House district maps. If democrats can’t get past the ‘disparate impact’ issue of compact computer drawn districts then the fight over republican gerrymandering will continue. The shift right in Hispanics and other POC kind of throws out the old argument.
All in all, more competitive races caused by compact districts and ideally term limits would force both major parties to really compete for votes.
I submit that this is the most gerrymandered state in the country.
Without question.
Texas has more registered Democrats than registered Republicans and this doesn’t nearly reflect that reality.
Didn’t they just make it easier for a wave election to sweep more seats?
If you can’t win without cheating then you didn’t actually win any races at all. I’m so tired of the bullshit and hate filled greed based policies.
The concept of running for office to actually help all people shouldn’t be something only the progressives do.
Now do California, New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington
ETA: nevermind. OP admitted to using voting data, not census data. This isn’t how we draw districts, fairly or otherwise.
Just for fun, do a Democrat gerrymander for Texas. Show what the extreme other end looks like.
What I love about this is that if your district has essentially zero influence from the other team, can you still blame them for all your problems? Lol 🤣
Awesome. Now do California, Illinois, and New York.
Original = Metro area of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin all subdivided to maximize democrat districts. The literally took all 4 metro cities with highest number of Democrats and built out from them to make Democrat districts in the original.
New = Dallas, Houston, Austin San Antonio = Main population centers all a single district.
Overlay original and new map with a topographical map – Which one keeps people geographically distinct from each other apart?
Overlay original and new with the counties of Texas – Which one matches the boundaries of counties best?
————–
The new map is a better representation of the State of Texas. Demographically. Geographically. Representationally by counties.
https://preview.redd.it/w44ho5u2r5nf1.jpeg?width=1915&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6aba9962c6b7861ca96b4537e2ddef34c0672e4
The original took deep blue concentrations of people and cut them in half or thirds to give the cities more voting power. Dallas had four distinct districts in their metro area with the original.
How the fuck is this legal?
I’m curious how they got the blue district on the west side of the first down to the little spec in the second map. Aren’t they supposed to be a specific population count?
How are we making neutral districts? Black Americans tend to vote for the Democrats and have to have majority minority districts but that effectively leads to packing of the vote. Also the super blue districts in the city lead to packing.
Why do we even have districts? Can’t we go straight up by number of votes?
The crazy thing is that we could use all of this data to have computers spit out quite evenly-spaced, competitive, reasonable districts. But we don’t, because politics.
To me it’s like the self-driving car: of course it would be safer and more efficient to put all the cars on a network and let them talk to each other and figure it out while we read the news. Fewer accidents and traffic jams, all that stuff. But nobody wants to be the first person to take their hands off the steering wheel and let the machine do it.
Am i absolutely high? It looks like Texas increased the chance to win those 5 seats and shrank the advantage in more than 5 seats they previously had, ensuring democrats experiencing an abnormally high blue wave midterms effect could win them…?
Because when the special election is already showing a historic level a of voting trends shifting to the left this could absolutely benefit democrats more.
California , from what I’ve been able to look at, isn’t putting their seats in fighting distance for republicans by gerrymandering.
In the right type of election therefore democrats could net 5 in California and then more seats than expected in taxes and be on top (….. kinky…)
Do we know what methodology is used to draw those neutral computer generated districts?
Edit: I didn’t read enough of the thread, ignore me
What does California look like in this system?
Notice how the most corrupt states in this country are red and yet they tout freedom?
Few things would make my day as much as this mobilizing Dems to get to the poles en masse and the end up at a minimum keeping the same number of seats if not flipping a couple.