  In eight states, a "nesting rule" requires that each state Senate district be
exactly composed of two adjacent state House districts. In this paper we
investigate the potential impacts of these nesting rules with a focus on
Alaska, where Republicans have a 2/3 majority in the Senate while a
Democratic-led coalition controls the House. Treating the current House plan as
fixed and considering all possible pairings, we find that the choice of
pairings alone can create a swing of 4-5 seats out of 20 against recent voting
patterns, which is similar to the range observed when using a Markov chain
procedure to generate plans without the nesting constraint. The analysis
enables other insights into Alaska districting, including the partisan latitude
available to districters with and without strong rules about nesting and
contiguity.
