US House Redistricting: Florida

[minionofmidas]

To the best of my ability and comprehension of the state, and within the constraints of not splitting precincts and keeping all districts within 500 of target, this is how I would have drawn the state. I worked from the Senate draft.







1 75-14-5 / 78-13-5 (numbers are anglo-black-hispanic as per DRA, total and VAP), 67.6% McCain
This is as the draft has it, except they could split the precinct at the northeast corner of Holmes for a slightly more reasonable split of the county overall.
2 66-25-5 / 68-24-5, 52.0% McCain
The six county area from Jackson to Hamilton belongs together (they form sort of a North Florida Black Belt, even though only Gadsden is majority Black). Population constraints make it impossible to quite follow up on that notion (unless you want to remove the southernmost precinct of Jefferson and split Wasilla. But that's clearly gerrymandering.) You see why the Senate plan adds Taylor and a small part of Madison instead of Madison and half of Hamilton, of course. Not safe for Southerland.
3 74-14-7 / 76-13-7, 60.0% McCain
Fairly minor changes from what the draft calls the sixth. Yeah, I fixed the numbering scheme for them, seeing as the original north-to-south scheme is still very visible.
4 72-13-8 / 75-12-7, 64.0% McCain
5 36-49-10 / 40-46-9, 67.4% Obama
I tried quite a few arrangements before keeping the 3rd roughly in place (it's painted black here rather than the default yellow, partly because the 18th is close by but also because it's a crawling black snake, of course.) Part of the issue was my inability to keep reasonableish map shapes I tried (e.g. Gainesville, Palatka, Black parts of Jacksonville and Ocala) from going over 50.00% Anglo. Then, there's the size of the Jacksonville Metro to consider - defining that as Duval, Nassau, Clay and the parts of St Johns I included in the fourth here. Oh, and Palm Valley which stayed in the 7th.) Much too large for one seat, much too small for two. The draft has it in four seats, I would have loved to cut it to two but it just wouldn't map out right. So now it's in three. The corridor in eastern Clay through the poshest white suburbs remains super-annoying, of course.
6 82-4-11 / 84-4-9, 52.4% McCain
I initially intended to keep this unchanged from the draft, but eventually I switched out the part of Polk for part of Citrus. Would be safe R.
7 76-10-11 / 79-9-9, 51.5% McCain
Yeah, the bit of Saint Johns in the fourth is extremely Republican. No, I didn't plan on removing it throughout (I toyed with the notion, off and on). That was actually part of my last major revision. Is this still a safe R seat without it? I am not sure.
8 77-10-10 / 81-9-8, 57.6% McCain
A close cousing of what the draft calls the 26th.
9 72-7-15 / 75-6-14, 54.4% McCain
Safe for a Bilirakis. I played with options that wouldn't have had it run this far south, too.
10 74-12-8 / 78-11-7, 56.3% Obama
The Pinellas seat. Fun fact: the House committee report actually contemplates the option of drawing two D sinks in Tampa Bay (though they don't call it that) by crossing the Petersburg-Bradenton bridge.
11 44-21-29 / 48-20-27, 62.7% Obama
See? Removing Bradenton and St Pete minorities doesn't really change the figures here at all as they're still plenty of minorities in Hillsborough to suck up. The white share, that is - five points off the Obama share.
12 64-13-18 / 69-12-15, 53.1% McCain
Polk County sort of gets its own district. Also sort of a descendant of Webster's district in the draft, but without the corridor through central Orlando Whiteyland.
13 79-6-12 / 83-5-10, 52.2% McCain
Slightly more complex than the Manatee+Sarasota-Myakka City district that's also possible; and more Republican as a result (but still 0.9 points less than the draft map's.) I removed North Port which belongs with Port Charlotte anyways, to have this suck up all of the Hillsborough population surplus.
14 66-9-23  / 72-7-19, 57.6% McCain
As advertised above.
15 75-6-16 / 79-6-13, 55.9% McCain
Charlotte, Cape Coral, rural interior, odds and ends.
16 36-12-44 / 40-11-41, 63.4% Obama
Close cousin of the draft 27th. Freed Saint Cloud Anglos, withdrew out of Polk, and drew it deeper into Orange, though. Hispanic plurality VAP (not CVAP, obviously. There are a lot of Puertoricans in Orlando, but a lot of Mexicans too.)
17 68-8-18 / 71-8-16, 50.9% McCain
Descendant of both current and draft 24th, but further south. Racially massaged boundaries, obviously. Not safe in a wave year - neither is the draft's, I think.
18 79-8-9 / 81-8-8, 55.0% McCain
Brevard district, loses Indian River and random bit of Orange, gains random bit of Volusia and very much non-random bit of Osceola in exchange.
19 72-11-14 / 76-10-12, 51.7% McCain
Rooney should like this slightly better than what the Senate drew for him.
20 62-13-21 / 67-11-19, 60.7% Obama
And West is dead.
21 66-13-16 / 70-11-15, 60.0% Obama
22 54-10-31 / 56-9-29, 60.4% Obama
I did not check where any incumbent lives, by the way. You're officially not supposed to. Kept this out of Dade entirely (it's basically Schultz's district.)
23 26-49-21 / 30-45-20, 80.2% Obama
Withdrew some of the furthest-removed precincts. Still consists of two quite separate areas plus the Everglades (and the Belle Glade and Clewiston Blacks!), of course. Draft is also below 50% VAP Black.
24 8-4-86 / 6-4-88, 57.4% McCain
Odd VAP numbers, I know. Anyone know what's up with that? Over a third of the White population is under 18. Cubans considering their children non-Hispanic because they don't speak Spanish? Superpacked Hialeah seat. Still includes a (smaller than the draft's) Dem Hispanic bit of Broward.
25 15-12-70 / 15-11-71, 53.4% Obama
Yeah, these Hispanic suburbs around Homestead and Kendale aren't all that Republican, you know. Didn't Obama carry some of the Cuban districts in 2008 too? Should still be capable of electing its Republican machine to Congress, though getting ever iffier. In an earlier version where this included the Keys, it was 57% Obama.
26 11-54-31 / 13-52-32, 87.4% Obama
The old 17th of course. Apart from the 1st, the district that changed the least - just a couple precincts. No reason to draw it any different.
27 33-4-60 / 34-4-60, 52.9% Obama
Now even more of a coastal rather than a Cuban district as it goes all the way north to the county line (where the draft has it lose Miami Beach.) Ros Lehtinen does well enough with these Whites, though. Would hold this easily enough absent a wave-and-strong-challenger combination.

[minionofmidas]

I know very little about Florida demographics, but based on all this, do you think there's enough basis here for someone to make a case that this violates the Fair Redistricting Amendment?

Though there are roads in between, really Miami (okay, Key West) and Naples (okay, Marco) are dead ends as far as the population distribution goes. It does feel unnatural to bridge it. The 25th takes in a (smaller) part of Collier as is, and IIRC quite a few of those (sizable, but not majoritarian) Hispanics there are Cubans who've come across from the Dade Little Havannas, so there is some logic to it.
I am really no expert on American legal interpretation, and nobody really knows how a court will decide.

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Not so fast here. Huge numbers of non-Cuban Hispanics in Dade; South Americans mostly. Low turnout and citizenship rates, obviously. And even the Cubans don't vote monolithically. IIRC we've had proposals to create four Hispanic districts in Dade including one that was a Dem sink.

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The point is that not treating Dade as a dead end, you can fidget where all the (non-Black, as these are carved in stone) Southeast Florida districts begin and end. That's how they helped West, and they probably did it on purpose - least disruption, as it were. The two Dem White seats could also stay roughly where they were. Not that that's a valid criterion in going from a no-rules map to a rules-governed map.

[minionofmidas]

2010 (2000)
Florida
4.224mio (2.683mio) Hispanics of which
1.213mio (833k) Cubans, 848k (482k) Puertoricans, 630k (364k) Mexicans, 433k (203k) Central Americans, 300k (139k) Colombians, 375k (163k) other South Americans, 172k (71k) Dominicans, 253k (429k) did not state, or Spanish
Decline in the dns/unclassifiable write-ins numbers is a US-wide pattern. Probably to do with questionnaire layout.

Broward
438k (272k) Hispanics of which 84k (51k) Cubans, 76k (55k) Puertoricans, 67k (30k) Colombians, 79k (34k) other South Americans etc

Dade
1.624mio (1.292mio) Hispanics of which
856k (651k) Cubans, 213k (128k) Central Americans, 115k (70k) Colombians, 159k (84k) other South Americans, 92k (80k) Puertoricans, 58k (36k) Dominicans, 52k (38k) Mexicans, 80k (203k) did not state
On these figures, the Cuban share of the Hispanic population of Dade actually increased.

Monroe (why is this place in a Minmaj district again? Oh right, geography.)
15k (13k) Hispanics of which 8300 (7100) Cubans

Collier
83k (49k) Hispanics of which 39k (28k) Mexicans (ah.), 17k (7k) Cubans etc

Hendry (why not?)
19k (14k) Hispanics of which 13k (10k) Mexicans, presumably toiling in the sugarcane just like the Haitians a town or two to the east. 2800 (1500) Cubans.

So... all certainties should be muddled up by the numbers. Now we need a good geographical breakdown of Dade, I suppose...

[minionofmidas]

Now we need a good geographical breakdown of Dade, I suppose...

Cities/towns/CDPs over over 20k inhabitants.

Aventura 36k inhabitants, 13k Hispanics, 8k South Americans
Coral Gables 47k inhabitants, 25k Hispanics, 15k Cubans, 5k South Americans
Coral Terrace 24k inhabitants, 22k Hispanics, 17k Cubans
Country Club 47k inhabitants, 37k Hispanics, 16k Cubans, 10k South Americans
Cutler Bay 40k inhabitants, 22k Hispanics, 10k Cubans
Doral 46k inhabitants, 36k Hispanics, 21k South Americans (of which 9k Venezuelans, the largest community in the place apparently), 6k Cubans
Fountainebleau 60k inhabitants, 55k Hispanics, 28k Cubans, 11k South Americans, 9k Central Americans
Golden Glades 33k inhabitants, 6k Hispanics
Hialeah 225k inhabitants, 213k Hispanics, 165k Cubans, 17k Central Americans (10k Nicaraguans alone), 14k South Americans
Hialeah Gardens 22k inhabitants, 21k Hispanics, 14k Cubans
Homestead 61k inhabitants, 38k Hispanics, 10k Cubans, 9k Mexicans, 8k Central Americans, 5k Puertoricans
Kendale Lakes 56k inhabitants, 49k Hispanics, 29k Cubans, 9k South Americans
Kendall 75k inhabitants, 48k Hispanics, 25k Cubans, 12k South Americans
Kendall West 36k inhabitants, 32k Hispanics, 16k Cubans, 8k South Americans
Leisure City 23k inhabitants, 17k Hispanics, 6k Cubans, 5k Mexicans
Miami 399k inhabitants, 279k Hispanics, 137k Cubans, 63k Central Americans (29k Nicaraguans, 23k Hondurans), 35k South Americans
Miami Beach 88k inhabitants, 47k Hispanics, 18k Cubans, 15k South Americans (they're intending to drop this place into a non-VRA seat while retaining Monroe and expanding in Collier? Hmmm... Retrogression! Retrogression! )
Miami Gardens 107k inhabitants, 24k Hispanics, 10k Cubans. Primarily a Black town, of course.
Miami Lakes 29k inhabitants, 24k Hispanics, 17k Cubans
North Miami 59k inhabitants, 16k Hispanics, 4k Cubans still the largest group
North Miami Beach 42k inhabitants, 15k Hispanics, 5k South Americans, 3k Cubans lead when S.Am. broken up
Palmetto Bay 23k inhabitants, 9k Hispanics, 4k Cubans
Princeton 22k inhabitants, 13k Hispanics, 5k Cubans
Richmond West 32k inhabitants, 25k Hispanics, 13k Cubans
Sunny Isles Beach 21k inhabitants, 9k Hispanics, 5k South Americans. More Colombians than Cubans.
Tamiami 55k inhabitants, 51k Hispanics, 36k Cubans, 6k South Americans, 3500 Nicaraguans
The Crossings 23k inhabitants, 16k Hispanics, 7k Cubans, 5k South Americans
The Hammocks 51k inhabitants, 39k Hispanics, 14k South Americans, 14k Cubans
University Park 27k inhabitants, 23k Hispanics, 17k Cubans
Westchester 30k inhabitants, 27k Hispanics, 21k Cubans
West Little River 35k inhabitants, 18k Hispanics, 8k Cubans, 5k Central Americans

I intend to sort these geographically and add McCain-Obama figures. But not today.
 

[minionofmidas]

The House released several potential maps. No big surprises. Brown's district is the same, West is still in trouble. Many have a district combining Osceola with half of Polk, I'm not sure if that's a vote sink.

One difference is that unlike the Senate map, all House maps drop the ridiculous spur into Bradenton that was only road-contiguous in one direction at a time.

Link?

That spur makes the difference between a safe Buchanan and a waveweary Buchanan.

[minionofmidas]

The northern whites are inaccessible except through the black areas (obviously not possible) or through downtown Miami. They would have to all be in one district because it's just too narrow to partition them otherwise. Drawing a district like that, I end up with 54% Obama--might be possible to lower that to 51-2% if you're more precise, but it can't go much lower, which is far from safe.

That's effectively what I drew for Ros Lehtinen just above. Of course, I also gave her Monroe County.
With the result that the Southern district picked up some of the Cuban Republican territory. That was okay with me because I needed one of the three Hispanic districts to extend into Broward, and the northwesterly one at least bordered Hispanic territory (of a different character... but it seems the Cubans are interspersed with non-Cubans anywhere north of Hialeah anyways.)

[minionofmidas]

The Hispanic areas north of Hialeah (but still in Dade County) are actually very Democratic, like 65% Obama. I guess the Cubans don't live up there?

Miami Lakes would be the biggest incorporated town in those parts, and it's majority Cuban.

[minionofmidas]

Here's my fair map of Dade and Broward Counties. Since non-Cuban Hispanics actually outnumber Cubans in Dade County, they got two districts and Cubans got only one.

Can't you read numbers? Cubans are a majority of the Hispanic population in the county.

[minionofmidas]

The black district can of course assist in grabbing some non Cuban Hispanics.

Does so inevitably, actually. (Well, some Hispanic Democrats. It's clearly not the same thing.)

I do not see that a double county split between Dade and Broward is illegal per se, but it would need to be justified to be defendable in court. Krazen's parts of Broward are not really connected - he's cutting out a Hispanic area that doesn't vote the way he wants and places it in a White district, after all - and I'm not sure of the racial breakdown of the areas he includes instead. If they're White, it's should be very tough to defend.

[minionofmidas]

There seems to be a very real battle between the House and Senate on whether the bill should be faithfully executed or the GOP should just take its chances in court, in the Tampa Bay area. You'd almost think the House was under split partisan control.

This is what the Senate EDIT: the Senate Committee passed. Race stats. (I also found a document with loads of other statistics by district, but nothing political in there. Tenure, age groups, and whatnot.)

The House Committee, meanwhile, has narrowed the choice down to this, this, or this. http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/Legislative%20Plans/H000C9041.pdfHighly technical report, amend 1 to 3 or 5 at end of address for other two plans.

[minionofmidas]

There seems to be a very real battle between the House and Senate on whether the bill should be faithfully executed or the GOP should just take its chances in court, in the Tampa Bay area. You'd almost think the House was under split partisan control.

This is what the Senate EDIT: the Senate Committee passed. Race stats. (I also found a document with loads of other statistics by district, but nothing political in there. Tenure, age groups, and whatnot.)

The House Committee, meanwhile, has narrowed the choice down to this, this, or this. http://censusvalidator.blob.core.windows.net/mydistrictbuilderdata/Legislative%20Plans/H000C9041.pdfHighly technical report, amend 1 to 3 or 5 at end of address for other two plans.

The FL Senate passed a pretty aggressive map today.  FL-22 and the new FL-27 are conceded.  None of the other 19 R seats gets worse than 51.5% Obama, but FL-02 could be a toss up with a Blue Dog.

Same map as the Senate committee map linked above, or do I need to go search for it?

[minionofmidas]

We never discussed the eventual compromise map.

I can't find any of the cool demographic reports for it that we had for earlier drafts. Even the googlemaps link they offer is broken. All I got is a lousy pdf.
Senate caved on Buchanan, House on Young. (Which means they drew something similar to what the NAACP wanted in the Tampa Bay, though with somewhat more of St Pete in the Tampa district.)
They also appear to have decided at the last minute to restore the north-south numbering scheme broken in 2000. I approve of that.

[minionofmidas]

The new Dem seat in Orlando (now the 9th) gave Obama 60%... but actually went for Bush by a whisper in 2004. Swings around Orlando were that huge (and not only 2004 to 8 - the area swung pretty heavily Dem over the 90s, then back a bit in '04, then back the other way to new extremes in '08.) Not safe for Grayson against an electable Republican.

[minionofmidas]

Wait. Have they or haven't they reached a compromise? I am currently confused.

It looks as if that map linked to has so far only been passed by the House redistricting committee (and is set to be passed by the House tomorrow), but is nonetheless assumed to be the final map by commentators. Whether rightly or wrongly I've no idea.

[minionofmidas]

I've also found all the statistics I could want except for voting results (which I suppose they aren't supposed to officially take into account and are not releasing for that reason).

Some more on the merry-go-round: Mica and Adams both live in the leanish-R Seminole district; Mica will run in the safer Volusia district instead. Nugent and... I forget who... both live in the safe 11th, one of them will have to run in the even safer 3rd instead. I wonder what Bilirakis thinks of that 15th the House drew him - safe R and all, but quite a new district when earlier plans incl. the Senate map had his old district more or less in one piece.

[minionofmidas]

Corrine Brown's seat is just ever so barely (50.1%) majority Black alone or in combination VAP. Doesn't say in the report, but can be surmised to be about ~48.0 or ~48.2 non-Hispanic Black Alone (ie DRA figure). Of course, that's Blacker than before, and seems to be majority non-Hispanic Black Alone in total population.
Shouldn't legally matter as it's not compact anyways... and as I see no striking down as no more compact version can be drawn. But still a nice touch.

Oh lol, the Senate version actually stops at 49.96%. Somehow I think both versions do it on purpose, based on what they think is legally safer.

[minionofmidas]

Florida always does those crappy PDFs. It's the same design they used 10 years ago!

There are some decent insets for the Senate plan... but although most districts* are quite similar, only the 1st, 2nd, and 8th (15th in the Senate scheme) are identical.

*everything but the east-central part (sans the Pinellas-Tampa pair) of the state, and Monroe County's placement between the two southern Cuban seats.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, it looks like the district for Bilirakis is actually the 12th, not the 15th as I claimed above.

If everybody were to run in the district that got the largest part of his old district - even if it's only 40odd% and/or they don't live there - that leaves every Dem in a safe seat, every Rep bar West in at least an even seat, the D 9th and the R 17th open. With Wayne Rooney and Fred West's announcements to both run in the district that got the second largest share of their old one instead even though they live nowhere near them, that leaves the D 9th and 22nd open instead. Easy D+2. Provided everybody holds and Dems actually do take the new seats, of course, but there's a major natural (yeah right) break at this point - no district more than 51 but less than 57 percent Obama. (How did the House map make Rivera safer than the Senate map? That's a trick I missed looking at it. Also, looks like the Senate map still endangered Buchanan, so kept the Bradenton carveout for nothing? Hilarious.)

[minionofmidas]

I don't see how that Bradenton could be considered legal. Good lawsuit basis there.

Bradenton isn't in the House map.... you mean St Petersburg?

The issue to use is clearly the Cuban districts; retrogressing out of Miami Beach to take more White Republicans in Collier is a risky move by Republicans. You'd also hope to clean up west central Florida... though I doubt a map that makes everybody happy (and I don't mean politicians looking for a safe job) is actually feasible there.

[minionofmidas]

Incidentally that district is the 54% McCain one...ie Ironclad, compared to the other 2.

Of course, of course - it's the Diaz Balart district (though Mario continues to live in his former district FL25/6 and, hilariously, Rivera's home was drawn into this district. No, they will not switch.) But you need to regard the three district area, really. Move it further east, you'll always continue to have one ironclad district for a Diaz Balart but the GOP's chances at the other two weaken (not necessarily to the point where they'll have to actually concede one.)

[minionofmidas]

The three House Plan Cuban districts taken together take in virtually the entire old 25th (a sliver in Collier actually goes to the new Lee/Collier district), 91% of the old 21st (remainder split between Deutch and Wilson), just 80% of the old 18th (ditto, Deutch getting more though), as well as 8% of the old 14th, 3% of the old 16th (I think this must also be on the Collier/Hendry side of things?) and minuscule parts of the old 17th and 23rd. Like, 20 people in the Everglades in the latter case.
23rd and 24th move up to over 37% and 32% Hispanic VAP respectively as a result of shifting southwards.
I'm just looking at my handwritten notes here; the report I took these from would have the racial breakdown of the territories transferred.
Obviously, the usual process if this were a commission would be to skim some non-Hispanic areas off the edges of the Cuban seats (as they're oversized, summed), and the Collier part that both doesn't belong COIwise and isn't even majority Hispanic ought to be your first place to look. The 17th (now 24th) needing some additional population complicates it a little, and I don't think a court'll object to dropping a few Dem Hispanics into it. But only a little.

Of course, not doing that, and taking that legal risk (and a risk is all it is, I'm not saying it's certain the map'll end up court-drawn or anything), not only helped Ros Rivera and Ros Lehtinen a little, by pushing all the Gold Coast districts south it also helped the Rooney-West switcheroo. Rooney has little incentive to switch districts if you don't do that.

[minionofmidas]

52% of Collier's population is in Mario's district under the House plan (50% under the Senate plan).

[minionofmidas]

It is where he's actually from, of course. But yeah, his decision came as quite a surprise to everybody, apparently.

Also, the new 7th is basically a smaller version of Mica's 90s district; almost all of it was in it.