1st District - The new 1st retains almost all of its districts, losing only Jones to the 2nd. It grabs 11 lightly populated counties from the 4th and 1 from third.
2nd District - The 2nd district picks up seven 3rd district counties and one from the 1st.
3rd District - The 3rd retains Des Moines as its anchor but has to move west and pick five 4th district counties, including Story County that has 4th District congressman Tom Latham's Ames home.
4th District - The new 4th has all the current 5th's counties and picks up the remaining 11 from the 4th.
I took each county's congressional vote and re-assigned it as Republican and Democratic votes in the new configuration. These are the changes:
The 5th district is mostly the new 4th district, with all of Steve King's voters. He'd likely run in the 4th and actually expand his margin with new Republican voters coming in.
If the counties had been set up this way in 2010 Republicans would've won 3 of the 4 districts and come close on the 4th. Of course this was a Republican year. It's unlikely 2012 will favor the Republicans as much. The more important thing to look at is that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd absorb the remainder of the 50,000 Republican edge, so each will be more Republican than it is now. They'll be harder for the Democrats to win than they would be if the map was untouched. Leonard Boswell and Tom Latham would both have their homes in the new 3rd, setting up a likely match-up. While this new district had more Republican votes in 2008, a majority of those will not have been in Latham's district. The "new Republicans" who voted for Brad Zaun should move to Latham.
I see this as being 3-1 Republican after 2012, possibly 4-0. At worst it'll be 2-2. In all those scenarios the Democrats lose at least one seat.
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