Las Vegas: the map that spread itself thin
Nevada is a coin-flip state, and Las Vegas is its blue engine: Clark County holds nearly three-quarters of Nevada's people and all three of its competitive House districts.
Under the old map, below, the 1st packed the urban core into a safe 63 percent blue seat. Safe, and wasteful: every vote past a majority is a vote that could be winning somewhere else.
In 2021 Nevada's Democrats chose greed over safety. The new map, below, unpacks the core and spreads it across all three districts, each now blue by only a few points. Congresswoman Dina Titus, whose fortress it had been, publicly cursed her own party's legislature for it. Mapmakers call this a dummymander: more seats, each held by a thread.
So far every thread has held. All three districts elected Democrats in 2022 and again in 2024, even as Trump carried the state. In 2024 Republicans won more House votes in Nevada than Democrats and still took only one seat of four: the only state in the country where the party with more votes got fewer seats.
You are playing the Democrats who drew it. Resist the urge to pack your city: spread Las Vegas across the districts thinly enough to win, and take a majority of the three seats.
Biden 53.7%, Trump 44.3%. Clark County's 2020 presidential vote.
The old map, shaded by the 2020 vote: the 1st packs the Vegas urban core into a 63 percent blue seat, with the 3rd and 4th balanced on a knife's edge around it.
The 2021 map: the core is unpacked and its votes spread, so all three districts lean blue by just a few points each.