Blue State Gerrymanders

40% vote Republican in Massachusetts, Bristol County voted for Trump… there are nine representatives to Congress from Massachusetts.. none of them are republican.

The extent to which gerrymandering is done in this state, may not rival Illinois, it may surpass it.

You do not need gerrymandering to outperform your % of the total vote. If your advantage is spread sufficiently evenly, you can capture nearly every seat. A sensibly ordered congressional district map in Massachusetts would have (1, 2, 3) three compact districts containing (densely-settled) municipalities in greater Boston, (4) a somewhat more bulbous district which conjoined such municipalities to exurban territory in Middlesex County; (5) a district which conjoined small towns and exurbs in the state’s northeast extremity, the cities of Haverhill and Lawrence and adjacent, Lowell and the pseudopod running between Lowell and greater Boston, and ruralish territory on the New Hampshire border; (6) a central Massachusetts rectangle which captures both greater Worcester and Fitchburg / Leominster, (7) a western Massachusetts rectangle which captures greater Springfield; (8) a district which conjoins the islands, Cape Cod, the exurban portion of Plymouth County, greater New Bedford, and the other municipalities along Buzzard’s Bay; and (9) an inverted ‘L’ which runs along the Rhode Island and Connecticut border and captures greater Fall River, Attleboro, &c. Republican candidates could be competitive in the last district so described. Not anywhere else.
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It’s the same deal in Illinois. You can draw six concave polygons downstate. One would capture the counties nearest St. Louis. Another would capture the rest of the territory south of Springfield and Decatur; another would be a triangular district with points near Ottawa, Decatur, and Springfield and capturing Bloomington- Normal; another would be a triangle whose points were near Rock Island, Peoria and Quincy, another would be a rectangle encasing three rows of counties near the northing border and capturing greater Rockford and deKalb, and another would conjoin the counties on the eastern border with counties to the northwest (which would capture greater Champaign-Urbana, Kankakee, Danville, and Charleston-mattoon. The Republicans will have an advantage in all six districts. Greater Chicago can be cut up into 11 districts. You’d have three ordinary polygons in the Chicago municipality; three based in Cook County’s suburban townships (southern, western, and northeastern townships each appended to a block of unallocated core city territory); one a rectangle which conjoins Cook County’s northwestern townships to the northerly townships in DuPage County, one which conjoins what’s left of duPage County to a small knock of Kane County; one which conjoins Will County to a small knock of Cook County; one conjoining Lake County to a small knock of Cook County, and one which conjoins McHenry County to about 85% of Kane County. The Will County district and the Kane McHenry district might be competitive. The Democrats have a large advantage in the rest. KH one 54% of the vote in Illinois; your single best guess is that the Democrats would take 65% of the seats in an ungerryandered map.