Free Elections in the Free State: Ensemble Analysis of Redistricting in New Hampshire
Atticus McWhorter, Daryl DeFord
Published: 2025/9/9
Abstract
The process of legislative redistricting in New Hampshire, along with many other states across the country, was particularly contentious during the 2020 census cycle. In this paper we present an ensemble analysis of the enacted districts to provide mathematical context for claims made about these maps in litigation. Operationalizing the New Hampshire redistricting rules and algorithmically generating a large collection of districting plans allows us to construct a baseline for expected behavior of districting plans in the state and evaluate non-partisan justifications and geographic tradeoffs between districting criteria and partisan outcomes. In addition, our results demonstrate the impact of selection and aggregation of election data for analyzing partisan symmetry measures.