What if congressional districts kept more friends together? Explore maps drawn to split fewer social connections.

A Clear Objective

Communities extend beyond neat shapes on a map. This project asks how well congressional districts could preserve one measurable kind of community: social connections between places.

Meta’s Social Connectedness Index lets us estimate Facebook friendships between ZIP-code areas. We search for districts that split fewer of those friendships. Party, election and incumbent data do not enter the objective; that does not guarantee politically neutral outcomes.

Allowed Population Deviation

Each district’s estimated population must be within the selected percentage of its state’s ideal. These are exploratory tolerances, not legal standards. Whole ZCTAs limit precision. The 8% plan received more search than the others; comparisons across targets do not isolate the cost of population balance.

Across the 50 states, the optimized plan cuts --% fewer estimated Facebook friendships than the 2024 maps, on the same ZCTA approximation.

Baseline: November 2024 districts (CD119). Census lists the direct CD120-to-ZCTA crosswalk for 2027. Newer geographic products exist, but require vintage checks. See Updates.

Where Facebook Friendships Fall

Where estimated Facebook friendships fall across the two maps

Reading the comparison

The bar compares estimated Facebook friendships: within a ZIP-code area, between areas kept together in 2024, split by the optimized map, the net reduction in splits, and across state lines.

A lower total cut does not mean every previously preserved connection stays together. Some ties are newly cut. The green segment is a net reduction, not a count of individual ties saved. The shares use Meta’s aggregate estimates and the population approximation described in Methods.

Assignments Table

Download the default ±8% plan table listing ZIP code (ZCTA) assignments for each congressional district.

Download ±8% CSV

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2024 Actual Optimized · ±8%

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Click a map to explore the difference

States ranked by percentage reduction in friendships split