NC: CDs 1 & 12 struck down

[muon2]

If this interpretation becomes law, it is going to be a hard standard to meet due to a lack of data. In many states, particularly those recently covered by section 5, districts were routinely either brought over 50% BVAP, or left well below it. That means there will be few examples in those states of districts with BVAPs in the 40s. Without actual results in competitive districts there will be a lot of work for statisticians who have the software for ecological inference and other models designed to estimate crossover voting strength for a minority bloc.

[muon2]

Here's my estimate of the PVIs.

NC-01: D+14
NC-02: R+8
NC-03: R+11
NC-04: D+12
NC-05: R+9
NC-06: R+8
NC-07: R+9
NC-08: R+8
NC-09: R+8
NC-10: R+12
NC-11: R+12
NC-12: D+14
NC-13: R+5

Since I don't have the exact lines in Greensboro, NC-13 may be a bit more Pub and NC-06 a little less Pub.

[muon2]

That Research Triangle area Dem sink CD is just so cute. And Muon2 would not characterize what is going on there as a bridge chop, because he's a stubborn cuss.

Of course its a bridge chop in the larger sense of a strip of low population used to connect two areas of larger population. It's just not one to which I would ascribe any special penalty since one population (Wake) is already subject to a county chop penalty and subunit chop penalties, too.

I was impressed that the new map avoids any traveling chops has only one chop more than the minimum and still reaches their partisan goals.

[muon2]

Yeah, jimrtex, I agree - the split of Bladen County is one the aesthetic points that bugs me the most (putting aside partisan considerations).

The lone Iredell County precinct thats in CD10 is also annoying.

The population in that partial Iredell precinct is small enough that one could arguably absorb that deviation under recent SCOTUS rulings. That's the problem with a partisan gerrymander. In order to defend it against legal challenge, the mappers pretty much have to go for exact equality. That forces the small chops like we see in the map.