Based on 2012 results only, which state gerrymander flipped the most seats?

[Sol]

Torie, you are ignoring the VRA in your maps.

[Sol]

You could argue that a black CD is not needed, but I'd say that it's pretty easy to draw a fairly compact Latino-influence CD that's over 50% vap.You will of course have to split all sorts of munis and counties, but it's clear that the courts prioritize VRA stuff over such things.

[Sol]

Train's prediction that NC's gerrymander involved a 2 seat flip to the Pubs, appears to be correct.

There are a few issues with this map.

Firstly, the SE can be made better. The Lumbee community is split along the county line between Robeson and its adjacent neighbors in your map, and you can easily draw whole county districts with a low deviation that put the Lumbee back together. Obviously there's no VRA case, but that seems to be fairer to me, even with an additional county chop--the Lumbee lack a reservation, but, like most other native American groups, they are a clear and obvious CoI. Here's an example of a whole county 6th and 7th.



The 8th is negative -284 and the 7th is -187.

Additionally, there have been concerns raised in the past about linking Gaston County to the other parts of the Charlotte UCC just with a bridge through Mecklenburg. I'm not sure if that matches up with the standards you are using here, but I thought that I would throw that out.

It also looks like you have a discontiguous part of CD-1 south of Goldsboro.

[Sol]

Well, my concern regarding the Lumbee is that, unlike most so-called communities of interest, the Lumbee are genuinely an obvious community of interest in a quantifiable sense. In any case, it's easy to keep them together while maintaining a whole county CD-7 and CD-8 (although it does finks over CD-3 somewhat, but there's always somewhere in NC that gets a little messed up).

Charlotte UCC is too big for 2 districts, so you have to chop somewhere. So you might as well chop in Gaston County since you can't link it to any of the other Charlotte UCC counties.

[Sol]

There are a few helpful tricks in drawing Georgia. For example, DeKalb is the perfect size for one district.

[Sol]

This would be the alternative I would put regarding Torie's map (outside of Metro Atlanta, the map is the same). Unlike his, it retains three black VAP majority districts in the Atlanta area. I don't recall a erosity connection map for Georgia; obviously the black CD is quite erose--I drew it that way to avoid a UCC cover penalty--at least as I understand it. Depending on how the penalties are assessed for both, it might be preferable to draw a seat based in Coweta/Spalding counties and adjacent non-Atlanta areas and then a similar arrangement with Newton/Rockdale/Walton/Gwinnett. All of the Atlanta districts are within 1000 of the ideal.

[Sol]

If one can draw a compact 50% BVAP CD, that triggers the VRA. But the CD need not by 50% BVAP. It just needs to be a performing district, and the test for that is whether of not the black voters make up enough of a percentage of voters in the Dem primary to nominate a black, which might be as low as 40% BVAP or even lower, depending on how Hispanic a CD is, and how susceptible whites in a Dem primary are to voting for a black. Only 3 black CD's need be drawn in Georgia. The SW corner does not have enough blacks to draw a compact 50% BVAP CD. So it is a two step process, first the 50% test, and if met, then the performing test.

Thus my 3 black districts in the Atlanta area.