The Gerrymandered States of America

I have a feeling that election maps are going to feature quite a lot this coming week. So let's get the ball rolling with an interactive map from the Washington Post which gives a gerrymandered score for each congressional district in the United States.

The Washington Post has determined the gerrymandered score of each district based on the "ratio of the district area to the area of a circle with the same perimeter". The result of this rough analysis is that districts which follow a regular shape tend to be more compact and score low on this ratio, while districts which have a lot of squiggles and offshoots score highly and are rated as being more gerrymandered.

The How Gerrymandered is your Congressional District? map colors each congressional district based on this gerrymandered score. You can mouse-over each district on the map to view its gerrymandered score, the state average score and the name & party of the district's representative. You can also read a little more about how the scores were determined and which states have the most gerrymandered districts in the Post's article on America's Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts.