Could a real congressional district actually look like this?

Three actual U.S. congressional districts, drawn to their real boundaries.

Real-world companion to H003 — Gerrymandering. The gerrymandering explainer shows the mechanism with a simple grid; these are real districts.

Illinois 4th — “The Earmuffs”

113th Congress · 2013–2015 · Chicago

Two separate arcs of Chicago — one largely Puerto Rican, one heavily Mexican-American — were joined in a single district by a narrow connecting corridor.

Maryland 3rd

113th Congress · 2013–2015 · Baltimore area

One of the least compact congressional districts of its era, its boundary looped through disconnected-looking pieces of the Baltimore–Washington region before being substantially redrawn after 2020.

North Carolina 12th

113th Congress · 2013–2015 · I-85 corridor

A long, narrow district following the I-85 corridor. This version became part of the racial-gerrymandering case Cooper v. Harris (2017), in which the Supreme Court invalidated the district.

The strange shapes are real. Shape alone does not explain why they exist.
An unusual boundary can reflect partisan strategy, minority representation, voting-rights law, geography, or several forces at once.

When a pattern looks strange, what evidence would tell you what created it?

Boundaries: 113th Congress congressional district geography (2013–2015), U.S. Census data via the unitedstates/districts open-data project. Historical context includes congressional and court records, including Cooper v. Harris (2017).