NY with 26 CDs in 2020

[Torie]

My understanding of Gingles is that if you don't have 50% in an area, no VRA district is required. So presumably if a black VRA district is required in Queens in addition to the two in Brooklyn, then there is a finding that a suitably "compact" area exists with the population of a CD that is at least 50% for a single minority (compact often loosely construed). My observation is that once there is that finding, 50% BVAP becomes something of a safe harbor. When a map goes below 50% BVAP and is challenged in court then the parties trot out their dueling experts to determine whether or not the sub-50% district can in fact perform for the minority. When courts are called upon to draw the map and a VRA district is required, they tend to go for the safe harbor and avoid that type of expert analysis.

I'm not saying that either of us would like such a district. I am saying that the track record of court-drawn VRA district tends towards meeting the population goals of the Gingles test. I am also saying that if you want to show your plan to NY bloggers (or other interested parties), then it is easiest to justify a district that is at 50%, since we haven't actually done the ecological inference or other techniques needed to demonstrate minority performance. I also think that if one is showing the plan to other parties, then there is utility in pointing out that if one wants to maintain 50% it will require a CD more strangely shaped than the area is used to.

In NYC, the candidate of choice may be the candidate chosen in the Democratic primary, so you might be forced to push BVAP up over 50% in order to let Asian and Hispanic voters an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice in "their" districts.

Except that there are next to no Pubs on the ground to be seen. They are in those zones basically next to extinct. And I really can't think of an instance where getting the BVAP higher, would also get the Hispanic percentage higher in an adjacent CD. Just the opposite actually, since some precincts have considerable numbers of both Hispanics and blacks (most dramatically along the border of my NY-09 and NY-12). And the black percentage went down in NY-14 because after NY-16 took in the white areas on the west side of the Bronx, it then needed to take some black areas farther east, while avoiding taking Hispanic precincts.

[Torie]

Yes, Mike, I drew that NY-05 CD too (or a facsimile thereof), and got to 45.9% BVAP. But it won't be drawn that way. It's more natural for it to take in precincts in Nassau right next door that have much higher black percentages than the jut out areas in Queens, and the CD is cut to the bone, and it may be over time that a higher percentage of Hispanics and Asians there will become citizens as time goes on. Again, it is better to reach for 50% if it can be done in a contiguous area without undue erosty, even if it crosses a county line. One only does what you did if the blacks in Nassau were not right next door. Anyway, I think that is what a court would do, even if the evidence in this close case statistically supports the legality of what you drew based on the citizenship rate estimates (and that is all they are - estimates - not exact numbers).

[Torie]

Which is why a functional test is whether the protected group can choose their candidate of choice in the Democratic primary.  If the group you are protecting is Hispanic or Asian, then not only do you have to keep their CVAP high, you need to keep that of the BCVAP as low as possible.

And how is that supposed to work, exactly, when some voters are both black and Hispanic?  That is probably most salient in Charlie Rangel's current district, which has many black Hispanics from the Dominican Republic (though some might not be citizens).

NHBCVAP and HCVAP

Is it clear under the VRA that you have to use NHBCVAP, i.e. that being Hispanic somehow trumps being black? And what if non-Hispanic blacks live in the same neighborhoods as Hispanic blacks and it's otherwise difficult to get to 50%?

I am not sure that has been litigated. I suppose it depends on evidence as to voting patterns. If Hispanic blacks vote differently from both Hispanics and non Hispanic blacks, say somewhere in-between if both an Hispanic and black candidate are running in a primary, ala in the Rangel election, then they might be considered their own ethnic group, and not count for either group. Interesting question.

[Torie]

I suspect Torie and I have reversed the roles we played earlier discussing IL when he complained about some liberties I took regarding the rules due to my preference in dealing with areas in Cook. Here I'm pushing to follow the rules, yet I sense from Torie a desire to recognize political expectations in NY.

Anyway, here is my attempt to provide more detail to the upstate districts. I preserve county subdivisions, but I'm not using estimates for the county subdivisions - instead I'm apportioning the county-level projections to the subdivisions on a more uniform basis. It's less accurate, but faster that way. All the districts should be within 0.5% when projected to 2020.

I preserve all UCC cover and pack rules, except the Albany pack. In exchange there are only 6 chops and none are macrochops except the mandatory chops of Erie and Westchester. None of my districts are unusually erose, so I expect a good score there. I don't see why one wants 9 chops (counting both fragments connecting Westchester to upstate) just to avoid the penalty for the Albany pack. Also, by placing Columbia with Dutchess and a piece of Ulster with Orange Torie's map incurs a pack penalty for the NYC UCC, which negates the avoidance of a penalty in the Albany UCC.

Torie's map has some attractive features, but I want to follow up on train's observation on the Rochester UCC. The UCC consists of Monroe and Ontario, and my projection puts their combined population and 870K which is about 12% more than the population of one of 26 CDs. If the UCC expands at all this decade, Wayne is the most likely candidate since the Rochester UCC is already in that county and it wouldn't take much to link up the Palmyra and Newark urban clusters along NY-31.

With that in mind I intentionally put both Ontario and Wayne in the Syracuse district. I slightly overpopulated the Syracuse CD with the intention of taking population from Ontario in that district to beef up the slightly undersized Rochester CD. That way I could keep the UCC cover and pack rules intact there with a minimum of chops. The initial Torie plan would incur both a cover and pack penalty for Rochester.

Note that since a single chop of Ontario in my plan would bring both the Rochester and Syracuse CDs within 0.5% of the projected quota. Similarly chops of just Erie and Steuben are sufficient to bring the other western CDs within 0.5%. In the Hudson valley I selected the counties such that chops in Franklin and Sullivan are sufficient to bring those four CDs within the 0.5% margin. Of the aforementioned chops, only Erie is a macrochop.

Muon2, do you agree the map below has one less penalty chop than yours (I have one more county chop in Madison County that you avoid, and replace a chop of Sullivan with Rockland, but avoid the pack and cover penalty that you incur for the Albany UCC)?  If so, our maps should be competitive. I win the chop contest, but am probably tanked on erosity by the extra macrochop in Saratoga assuming that each town on the CD line counts as a road cut (if that is what happens with macrochops).   Yes, Columbia County had to be sacrificed for the cause.    And that makes NY-18 go to a Dem 3% PVI, given that it needed to cut more deeply into Westchester County, and take in most of the very Democratic Town of Greenberg, but it is what it is.

Odd for me that I would win on chops and lose on erosity, but there you have it.  I really hated what you did to Albany, and worked hard to avoid your map proving to be the king of the hill.  Given the shape of NY state, you can really make the size of the Rockland chop anything you want, by just having all the NYC area CD’s vary a bit in population, and build up to the number you want for the chop to lose the Sullivan County chop. It turns out, none of that was really necessary, but the option was there. This game can get complicated!

By the way, Dutchess should not really be in the NYC UCC area per my visual observations (it's really quite rural, with towns spread out). And it's not really a commuter county, even the southern part. The really suburban action starts in Putnam. Statistics can lie. But it's hard to write into a uniform model statute that UCC areas should be defined by Torie's visual observations. Among other things, I won't be alive forever, as tragic a thought as that may be.