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Caprice's Maps and What-Not

Caprice

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To inaugurate my existence on this forum, have some maps of Delaware's state house districts since 1898. Before 1898, the state house just consisted of seven members of each county. However, as New Castle had grown in population so as to approach the size of the other two counties combined by the constitutional convention of 1897, it was decided to give each county ten representatives and Wilmington five more. These districts, as established in the state constitution, lasted until 1964 (with the exception of Wilmington annexing border regions).

1898 to 1964.png

In 1964, the Supreme Court forced just about all of the states to redistrict, as the entire country had really become quite a malapportioned mess. From 1964, Delaware's state legislative districts were numbered, not by county, but evenly throughout the entire nation. Of note is that I could not quite ascertain the borders between districts 26 and 27 and districts 34 and 35, so I improvised. These improvisations have been put in a lighter color.\

1964 to 1968.png

Leading up to the 1968 election, Delaware had to redistrict again. Furthermore, the number of representatives was increased to 39 from 35.

1968 to 1972.png

Ever since then, Delaware has redistricted after every decennial census. The following apportionment, in effect from 1972 to 1982, was the first to have districts split between Wilmington and "rural" New Castle County, the first for which the House had its present 41 seats, and was the last in which county borders were not split.

1972 to 1982.png
 
There is nothing interesting to say about any of the remaining redistrictings. The following is for the 1980s:

1982 to 1992.png

For the 1990s:

1992 to 2002.png

For the 2000s:

2002 to 2012.png

And, finally, the current reapportionment, for the 2010s:

2012 to 2022.png

I also have maps of each house election going back to 1924 and counting, but that would be far too many to put here.
 
I also have maps of each house election going back to 1924 and counting, but that would be far too many to put here.

Feel free to. Or at the very least feel free to upload them all to a DeviantArt account and link the gallery here because I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd be interested.
 
Feel free to. Or at the very least feel free to upload them all to a DeviantArt account and link the gallery here because I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd be interested.

I'm uploading them all here [note in 2021: link dead], along with spreadsheets of the results. I'll only be going back to 1898 with the maps, and when I have that and the State Senate done I'll move on to Pennsylvania. Glad to hear I'm getting a good reaction for these!
 
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I'm uploading them all here, along with spreadsheets of the results. I'll only be going back to 1898 with the maps, and when I have that and the State Senate done I'll move on to Pennsylvania. Glad to hear I'm getting a good reaction for these!

Is that because things start getting very 'here we have 20 independents and one Democrat'?
 
1920.png

The 1920 Delaware State House election, which was won by the Democrats through a combination of a special election to resolve a tie in Sussex-7 and vote-splitting in New Castle-2, which otherwise voted Republican through 1952. The Republicans still won the popular vote, but this was also a state where a region with 500 voters and a region with 13,000 voters both elected one representative, so... yeah.

Democrats - 18 seats, 41,823 votes (44.54%) among 35 candidates
Republicans - 17 seats, 46,677 votes (49.71%) among 35 candidates

Prohibitionists - 4406 votes (4.69%) among 4 candidates (not counting 4 fusion candidates with the Republicans)
Socialists - 800 votes (0.85%) among 6 candidates
Independents - 193 votes (0.21%) among 2 candidates (not counting 3 fusion candidates with the Democrats)

The anomalous results in New Castle-2:
Robert W. Kramer (D) - 4777 votes (36.11%)
William H. Pipes (R) - 4244 votes (32.08%)
John A. Smith (P) - 3844 votes (29.06%)
John A. Griffin (S) - 184 votes (1.39%)
Elizabeth B. Stirlith (I) - 180 votes (1.36%)
 
In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party (which he proceeded to immediately ditch after the election) split the Republican vote down the middle across the country, leading to the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson winning in a landslide. While in Delaware Taft got more votes than Roosevelt, Roosevelt still managed to get nearly 20% of the vote, allowing Wilson's electors to win with 46.5% of the vote. However, this is not about the presidential election. This is about the state house election.

There were seven electoral slates contesting the 1912 election in Delaware. The Democratic, Republican, Prohibition, and Socialist tickets are self-explanatory, being the four biggest parties in early 1900s America. However, to explain the other three I must explain that Delaware, like a few other states (most notably New York) practices electoral fusion, in which more than one party can nominate the same candidate. All the votes for that candidate, across the various parties, are pooled up to determine the winner.

Not all of Roosevelt's supporters wanted to form a permanent third party, only just disliking Taft and preferring Roosevelt. An example of this faction of the Roosevelt camp was Roosevelt himself, which rather doomed the Progressives to decline into obscurity. While in most states these two factions ran on the same ticket, in Delaware they were divided into the National Progressive ticket (those who just wanted Roosevelt to have a third term) and the Progressive ticket (those who wanted to cultivate a new party). For all positions other than presidential elector and U.S. Congressman, the National Progressives cross-nominated the Republican ticket. Oddly enough, for U.S. Congressman, they nominated their own candidate separate from the Republicans or the Progressives, which affords us a good look at who out of Delaware's Roosevelt supporters just supported Roosevelt and who supported the Progressives in general. However, this is not a map of the vote for U.S. Congressman, so I digress.

The Independent Democratic ticket, formed in 1910 entirely so that Thomas F. O'Donnell could run for State House in New Castle's 5th district, also existed. They just cross-nominated the Republicans, and so they did not actually matter. And now, with no further ado, the map.

1912.png

Democrats - 18 seats, 22,738 votes (~48.05%) among 35 candidates
Republicans - 17 seats, 22,220 votes (~46.95%) among 35 candidates

Progressives - 2295 votes (~4.85%) among 26 candidates

Unfortunately, I could not discover the vote totals for the Prohibition and Sussex tickets in New Castle. I did, however, find about two-thirds of their totals in Kent, though without any names and in the most infuriating manner possible (listed by individual precinct in a seemingly random order, going down the ballot for each precinct before starting on the next one), which led to me complaining at my friends at 3:30 AM this morning and being asked what on earth I was still doing awake.

Although the Progressives were hampered by a majority of Roosevelt's support still going behind state Republicans, they still succeeded in splitting the vote and throwing it to the Democrats in the second Democratic victory since the passing of the 1897 constitution; if the Republican and Progressive totals were merged, the Democrats would have lost the State House 12 to 23.

This would be the last Delaware state house election (as of the beginning of 2020) where more than two parties ran candidates in a majority of districts (other than the Progressives, the Prohibitionists ran for at least 21 seats). The Delaware Progressives would go on to cling to the Prohibitionists in 1914, move to the Republicans in 1916, and finally disband by 1918.

The moral of this story is: Screw you, Delaware newspapers, for not caring about third-party totals.
 
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I chose Delaware to go first because it was small, had three neatly-arranged counties, and was devoid of significant party-upsetting drama.

Or so I thought.

1904.png

Between about 1896 and 1906, Delaware's Republican Party was split into two factions known as the Union Republicans and the Regular Republicans. The Union Republicans, more popular downstate, were supporters of the Senate candidacy of J. Edward Addicks, and the Regular Republicans, more popular in New Castle County, supported the bid of Henry A. du Pont (who went on to finally become Senator in 1906). They were so petty in their bids to thwart the other that, from 1901 to 1903, Delaware was left with exactly zero senators, which is not exactly a good thing to have, especially as a state that generally has more senators than representatives. One would think that afterward, given two vacant seats, they might settle the dispute by electing both Addicks and du Pont to the Senate, but apparently they instead decided to choose two entirely separate people in 1903, and so the dispute continued on until 1906. In 1906, only one House seat was divided between Union and Regular Republicans. The Regular candidate won, and the factional division did not exist in the general election afterwards. The 1904 election was thus the last election in which the factional divide was at all significant.

Democrats: 14 seats, 45.66% among 35 candidates
Union Republicans: 12 seats, 24.34% among 20 candidates

Fusion Republicans: 9 seats, 23.30% among 15 candidates
Regular Republicans: 0 seats, 6.70% among 12 candidates


Totals for the 8 Prohibition and 5 Socialist candidates could not be found.
 
Perhaps use orange or pink for one of those factions for clarity?
It has been done. The Regular Republicans on their own never actually managed to elect anyone before 1906, so the Union Republicans get orange. To demonstrate this, here's 1902:

1902.png

Democrats: 15 seats, 43.98% among 35 candidates
Union Republicans: 13 seats, 26.87% among 21 candidates
Fusion Republicans: 7 seats, 23.96% among 18 candidates

Regular Republicans: 0 seats, 3.70% among 14 candidates
 
Not a map, but a chart of the apportionment over time in the House of Delegates of the Holy Caribbean Empire in my timeline, Sages à la Chełm. There is also the upper house, the House of Fathers, but I don't know its size yet. Guessing somewhere in the triple digits.

1579577447461.png

(ERRATUM: West Virginia should be Left Virginia.)
 
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