January 2013
Download this layer (.zip file, 2.5 MB):
 - ESRI Shapefiles (arc and polygon)
 - ArcMap layer files (.lyr) (for ArcMap 10 and 9.0*)
* The data sources in the LYR for Arc 9 will need to be reset)

Overview

The Massachusetts House Legislative Districts (2012) datalayer reflects the state House of Representatives district boundaries as defined by Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 57: Section 4. These 160 districts are those used in the Fall 2012 elections and beyond, until they are redrawn. The names of the statewide datalayers are HOUSE2012_POLY (polygons) and HOUSE2012_ARC (arcs). These replace the older HOUSE02_ARC and HOUSE02_POLY layers.

View and query these data in the Legislative District Viewer. Users may search for their district based on municipality, legislator, or district name. When identifying the districts, the results contain links to their representative's Web pages.

2012 State House of Representatives Districts
Click to see the full size image.

Production

Staff at the Massachusetts House of Representatives developed this layer with its contractor, Caliper Corp. (Newton, MA), using Maptitude for Redistricting software. MassGIS appended the 1:100,000 coastline and state outline and added the attribute fields. Election results are obtained from the Secretary of State.

Attributes

The HOUSE2012_POLY attribute table has the following fields:

FIELD NAME WDTH / TYPE DESCRIPTION
DIST_CODE 10 / C District code, from Redistricting Committee
REPDISTNUM 5 / I Unique number for each district
REP_DIST 40 / C Name of the district
REP_FIRST 14 / C First name of representative
REP_LAST 25 / C Last name of representative
REP_PARTY 3 / C Political party of representative
REP 40 / C Rep.'s full name and party
URL 150 / C Rep.'s Web site address

In the HOUSE2012_ARC attribute table, the item OUTLINE is coded as follows:

  • 0 =  Internal district boundaries
  • 1 =  State
  • 2 =  Coastline

Maintenance

MassGIS maintains the layer and will make updates as needed. In January 2013 the polygon attributes were updated with the information for members of the 188th General Court.

Also see the current state Senate and Congress data layers.

Last Updated 1/4/2013