Redrawing boundaries of Hamilton County's political districts may continue for several more weeks, but most commissioners have at least made positive remarks about a potential 11-district map.
The additional 10th district would be carved out of the fast-growing area of eastern Hamilton County, and the 11th district would take in parts of Lookout Valley, Lookout Mountain, St. Elmo, Alton Park, East Lake, Eastside, Ridgedale, Downtown and Missionary Ridge.
The potential District 10 is likely to lean Republican since it would be carved out of districts that already lean Republican in federal, state and local elections.
The potential District 11 is another matter.
"I don't think that will be Republican," a Republican member of the Hamilton County Commission told us recently. "I think we might lose that one."
The commission currently has six Republicans and three Democrats. If the other districts remain as they are, and the new districts were split one to one, a potential 2022-2024 commission would have seven Republicans and four Democrats.
Although the final redistricting map has not been set, and using only the results of previous elections, we thought we'd test the commissioner's theory by using clearly unscientific methods.
Using what appear to be current Hamilton County Election Commission precincts (which we acknowledge may be split between commission districts since official maps can use only census tracts to redistrict), we wanted to see which party voters supported in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and in the 2018 commission races.
Although voters can change their preferences from year to year, we thought those results would give us an idea how the commission seat would lean.
Upon testing our theory, we believe the commissioner is right. The potential district definitely leans toward Democrats in presidential elections, but we believe it could be somewhat closer in commission elections.
In the 2016 presidential election, the precincts that could become part of the 11th district gave Republican Donald Trump 4,591 votes and Democrat Hillary Clinton 6,772 votes. In the 2020 presidential election, they gave then-President Trump 5,678 votes and Democrat Joe Biden 8,092 votes.
Of the 15 precincts that could be part of the potential district (depending on whether some precincts are combined), Republicans can only count on three for healthy majorities - Lookout Valley's two precincts and the Lookout Mountain precinct.
Of the other 12, eight - with large minority populations - vote heavily for Democrats.
Of the other four, St. Elmo 2 is closely split between Republicans and Democrats, and Missionary Ridge split toward Democrats 54%-46% in 2016 and 60%-40% in 2020. The remaining two precincts only had a handful of voters in the 2020 election.
In the last county commission races, the split among the two parties in the potential 11th district is not quite so evident.
Commissioner Warren Mackey, a Democrat who currently represents six precincts in the potential new district, had only an independent opponent in 2018. But that independent candidate picked up 18.1% of the vote. Commissioner Tim Boyd, a Republican who represents one precinct in the potential new district, did not have an opponent in 2018, but 10% as many voters as he got in the precinct wrote in someone else.
Commissioner David Sharpe, who now represents six precincts in the new district, was outvoted 1,574 to 1,299 in those precincts in 2018.
In sum, 2,559 voters in 2018 selected a Democrat or a write-in candidate in the potential new district, while 2,207 voters picked a Republican or independent, a difference of 352 votes.
If the 10th district is approved roughly as currently drawn, of course, it will have new candidates. Thus, no incumbent will have an advantage.
And if it is so approved, the commission has an excellent chance of having 27.3% representation by nonwhite members, which is just shy of the 30% of nonwhite residents in the county and an increase from the approximately 22.2% representation of nonwhite members on the current commission.
To meet or exceed that 30% mark, and still follow the redistricting laws on the book, commissioners would have to pick up residents and physically move them to another district. And we don't see that happening anytime soon.