Political Baseline Numbers for New Marion County House Districts

I spent a few hours today crunching the numbers in the new Marion County House Districts.  Because the House has a list of precincts in each proposed district I was able to look at the partisan leanings of the district using 2010 baseline numbers.  The House Republicans also have a high resolution map available.

First a word about the methodology.  As my low profile race for the baseline numbers, I used the results in the county recorder's race.  Three districts go outside of Marion County:  88, 91 and 93.  (I was incorrect when I earlier said HD 40 came in from Hendricks County into Marion County.  I didn't read the map correctly).  However, the Marion County parts of those three districts were already strongly Republican so taking them outside of Marion County didn't really create an advantage.  This is contrary to the strategy of the Senate of going outside of Marion County to pick up Republican votes to turn an otherwise Democratic district into a Republican.  The numbers for 88, 91 and 93 only reflect the Marion County baseline numbers.

The good news for Republicans is that 8 of the 15 districts favor the GOP.  The bad news for Republicans is that the Democrats would appear to immediately have good shots at winning four of those 8 Republican-leaning districts (87, 89, 92 and 97). On the other hand, Republicans appear to have shots at wining just two Democratic leaning districts (86 and 100).

While it does look like there was some packing of Demcoratic votes in several districts, Democrats can't complain that the Republicans drew only safe seats for themselves. The 15 person Marion County delegation could easily swing to 11-4 in favor of the Democrats. 

Let's look at the numbers.

HD 86   54.6 D  45.4 R   2071 raw vote difference
HD 87   44.9 D  55.1 R   2082 raw vote difference
HD 88   36.8 D   63.2  R  3081 raw vote difference (district goes into Hamilton County)
HD 89   42.8 D   57.2 R   2142 raw vote difference
HD 90   32.1 D   67.9 R   6040 raw vote difference
HD 91   36.3  D   63.7 R  1996 raw vote difference (district goes into Hendricks County)
HD 92   44.6  D   55.4 R  1460 raw vote difference
HD 93   34.3 D   65.7 R  3729 raw vote difference (district goes into Johnson County)
HD 94   78.6 D   22.4 R  7876 raw vote difference
HD 95   72.9 D  27.1 R   6313 raw vote difference
HD 96   83.1 D  16.9 R   11,973 raw vote difference
HD 97   47.6 D  52.4 R    376 raw vote difference
HD 98   76.8 D  23.2 R   6225 raw vote difference
HD 99   79.4 D  20.6 R  7739 raw vote difference
HD 100  56.8 D  43.2R   1548 raw vote iffference