US House Redistricting: California

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I've drawn a very similar district on the partisan version before. It's around mid-60s Obama, so somewhere between D+10 and D+15. Diamond Bar and Walnut are only lean D, but Monterey Park, etc. are strongly D.

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I've drawn a very similar district on the partisan version before. It's around mid-60s Obama, so somewhere between D+10 and D+15. Diamond Bar and Walnut are only lean D, but Monterey Park, etc. are strongly D.

Did you have San Marino and Arcadia in it?

Don't recall, it was a while ago. I was more fastidious about getting it to majority Asian, so I think I had municipal splits. At least parts of San Marino and Arcadia were in it, though.

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You have to consider how surrounding counties will be affected, too. Most notably, Marin and Sonoma Counties are more than one district together but are isolated from the rest of the state by your map. (I seriously doubt they would be connected across bridges to SF or Richmond.)

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A neater solution might put American Canyon (which really belongs with Vallejo anyway) in with whatever district Solano County goes in while taking some parts of northern Sonoma County in CA-01.

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Also west of Santa Rosa, like Guerneville, Occidental, and that Sea Ranch development. Maybe Sebastopol, too, but it's really close to Santa Rosa.

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i kind of wanted to redistrict orange county and see if there was any differences between parts of the county. I divided the county into four quadrants. All of them were pretty 50-50 break even except for the northeast quadrant which gave McCain about 58% of the vote. Bush very well may have gotten close to 65% here. The communities here would be like Villa Park, Yorba Linda, parts of Orange and Placentia etc. What makes that part of the county so much more republican than the rest of the county?

Richer and whiter. Sounds like you split the Democratic areas, which are in the center of the county, among the other quadrants, too.

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Looking at the San Diego part of your map, I have no idea why you seem to think you have eliminated a Dem CD there, Torie. Explain?

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Looking at the San Diego part of your map, I have no idea why you seem to think you have eliminated a Dem CD there, Torie. Explain?

The Anglo city of San Diego CD looks marginal to me, that's why. So the Dems lose half a point. We shall see what the PVI is, when the partisan numbers become available, but that is my guess. Yes, it could also be a weak Dem CD, with maybe a Dem PVI of 2 or 3. We shall see.

I don't see why. You barely changed the current CA-53, just dropped Lemon Grove and added some marginal areas to the north. True, that will drop the PVI slightly, but I would be somewhat surprised if your CA-53 were under D+10. (The current one is D+14.)

There are a lot of liberal Anglos in the city of San Diego. After all, the current CA-53 is 51% non-Hispanic white and 68% Obama.

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Looking at the San Diego part of your map, I have no idea why you seem to think you have eliminated a Dem CD there, Torie. Explain?

The Anglo city of San Diego CD looks marginal to me, that's why. So the Dems lose half a point. We shall see what the PVI is, when the partisan numbers become available, but that is my guess. Yes, it could also be a weak Dem CD, with maybe a Dem PVI of 2 or 3. We shall see.

I don't see why. You barely changed the current CA-53, just dropped Lemon Grove and added some marginal areas to the north. True, that will drop the PVI slightly, but I would be somewhat surprised if your CA-53 were under D+10. (The current one is D+14.)

There are a lot of liberal Anglos in the city of San Diego. After all, the current CA-53 is 51% non-Hispanic white and 68% Obama.

The partisan numbers are what they are, but my CA-53 is 65% Anglo (probably the most Anglo CD in Socal, with the possible exception of whatever "Hollyweird" CD is drawn), rather than 51%. The old version (having just looked at it) looks to me like a Dem gerrymander more or less (its erose lines on the northern edges are there for a reason, and that reason was that this CD in the deal the parties cut, was to be Dem). The new one isn't.   In any event, I wonder what the Bush 2004 numbers were as well. Like CA-48, I suspect there was a huge swing to Obama, which as you probably know, included yours truly.

The northern edge is not drawn to favor Democrats in this seat. Rather, it is drawn to favor Republicans in CA-50, which is a much more marginal seat (R+3 against D+14 in CA-53) that needed to get the ultra-Dem parts of La Jolla, including UCSD, taken out (and CA-53 was the best place to put them). The southern edges of CA-50 that you put in CA-53 are still D-leaning, but not so much that they could not be balanced out in CA-50 by R-leaning places like Escondido.

Dave's redistricting still has the partisan data for California available. The demographic data on that version is less accurate, but not particularly different from the 2009 estimates.

Anyway, the swing in CA-53 was not particularly strong. Kerry won 61% of the vote in 2004, so the swing to Obama was about the same as the national swing.

The increased Anglo vote is interesting but not terribly notable as there are plenty of Dem Anglos in northern San Diego (and well to the north, in heavily Anglo Del Mar, Solana Beach and Encinitas)--not as Dem as the Hispanics downtown, but certainly not going to shift the seat to marginal.

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Definitely an illegal dilution of the Hispanic vote on that Orange County map. Remember Sanchez's district was 65% Hispanic in 2000 and quite marginal. That map is a recipe for five Republicans and no Hispanic Rep.

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No he's right, that was the intended purpose. It's misleading to referred to gerrymandered monstrosities of majority-minority seats as "VRA districts", the VRA doesn't mandate such seats, it merely prohibits the diluting and splitting of heavily minority areas that could otherwise constitute a district. Districts like Corrine Brown's weren't being drawn until after 1990 Census.

Corrine Brown's district isn't a VRA district to begin with. It was a convenient way for the Florida Republicans to pack a bunch of Democrats in.

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Anyone want to calculate the partisanship of that Santa Rosa-to-Marysville abomination? Must be safely Democratic given that Sonoma County has to be around half of the district (with a lot in Napa and Lake as well), but still...

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Fairly conservative in a number of places - the R sink in northeast LA County (hugging the south slope of the hills) stays, Filner's district stays...

No, the new south slope of the hills district is very much not an R vote sink. It's a Democratic seat, probably solidly (maybe over 60% Obama). They put Altadena, most of Pasadena, and Burbank in there. It's good-bye, David Dreier if this map happens.

Filner's district I'm surprised survived. I thought they'd attach Imperial County to Palm Springs, which is a much more natural connection.

Also, there is no way that Orange County map is surviving a court challenge.

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But it was possible to create a majority Hispanic seat in San Diego without Imperial County AND use Imperial County to create another majority Hispanic seat in Riverside County (which they didn't do). And the OC map shows how little respect they had for the VRA anyway, as they ripped apart Loretta Sanchez's seat and cracked the OC Hispanics across three districts.

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Bilbray's seat is more competitive, but he could win reelection. Sanchez absolutely cannot win any of the OC seats, not sure why anyone would think otherwise. (She might have been able to if she weren't so antagonistic towards the Vietnamese, but as-is she's toast.) Gallegly, Miller and Dreier do indeed definitely lose on that map.

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Can someone explain the changes in San Diego? Where do they leave Susan Davis and does someone get a new district?

This is an open district, which is fairly swingy; presumably Bilbray would move here and run:

http://www.mpimaps.com/nggallery/page-89/image/448/

That has almost none of Bilbray's old district. Yes, it's not super-Democratic, but it's still D+3, and he'd be effectively running as a non-incumbent. I think he challenges Darrell Issa in the primary; the district in which they were both placed (http://www.mpimaps.com/nggallery/page-89/image/433/) contains about equal parts of each of their districts (Carlsbad and Encinitas from Bilbray, Oceanside from Issa), plus a bunch of territory that is new for both of them in Orange County, and Issa is a strange person and not a strong incumbent.

A big chunk of Bilbray's old district, the most Republican part, is also in Hunter's district, so I suppose he could run in the primary there, too.

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actually the D+3 district contains his home in Imperial Beach. He is still well liked there and was mayor there before being elected to the old 49th district (which covers a lot of this area) in 1994.

Homes are marked on the map; he lives in Issa's district. But, fair enough that he is running in the other seat. It certainly isn't all that safe for him, though, considering the close races he's run in a safer seat before. We'll see.

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Lots of info to browse through so I'll just ask: What type of seat did McNerney get?

He's either in a primary in a safe seat with Pete Stark, or he moves to Stockton (or Antioch) and runs in a seat that is maybe slightly more favorable than his current one. I suppose if he favors a challenge he could go for the open seat that contains Tracy as another alternative; it's winnable.

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Democrats shouldn't necessarily be so confident in their chances. Even if Gallegly, Dreier, Miller, and Bilbray lose, there is a decent chance that Loretta Sanchez's district could go Republican, along with those of Harman, Capps, and the new district containing Lakewood and Paramount.

Harman? (Or, rather, her successor?) No. Santa Monica was put in that district. It's probably more Democratic than it was before.

Edit: Marginally. It went from 64.4% Obama to 64.6% Obama.

Also, the Long Beach district you're talking about was 66.8% Obama.

Capps and Sanchez are the only two Democrats really made vulnerable by this map, and Capps at least is still fairly solidly favored to win reelection.

Edit again: Forgot about the Central Valley seats. Those are just kind of crazy, lots of potentially competitive races in there.

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Sanchez's district is almost certain to change since the Hispanic VAP isn't majority. As for Capps, her district is the same one she won three times before and the area has grown more Democratic than it was back then, so she's fine there.

I wonder how that will survive a VRA challenge. It is easy to create a majority VAP Hispanic CD with what is clearly a cohesive community of interest.

Please explain why one minority group - Hispanics - should have a district drawn for them that inhibits another minority group living in the same area - Asians - from ever electing their candidate of choice, or the candidate of choice of a sizeable minority of Hispanics.  
 
Quite frankly, the anachronistic Voting Rights Act fails when one "special" minority group has to face off against another "special" minority group.   Given the demographics of the area, isn't it better to draw a competitive district where either group could theoretically elect a candidate of their choice?

There's no reason Garden Grove, Westminster, et al. need to be in the Hispanic district. You could create a separate district that was around 30% Asian. The current (2000) map cracks the Vietnamese across Sanchez, Rohrabacher and Royce's districts in order to keep white Republicans safe from a primary challenge, but a replacement map certainly need not do so. The ideal map would concentrate the Hispanics in Sanchez's district and the Vietnamese (and maybe other Asians if you're willing to go into Cerritos) in Royce's district, where they wouldn't form a majority but would have a lot of influence in the Republican primary.

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Sanchez's district is almost certain to change since the Hispanic VAP isn't majority. As for Capps, her district is the same one she won three times before and the area has grown more Democratic than it was back then, so she's fine there.

I wonder how that will survive a VRA challenge. It is easy to create a majority VAP Hispanic CD with what is clearly a cohesive community of interest.

Please explain why one minority group - Hispanics - should have a district drawn for them that inhibits another minority group living in the same area - Asians - from ever electing their candidate of choice, or the candidate of choice of a sizeable minority of Hispanics.  
 
Quite frankly, the anachronistic Voting Rights Act fails when one "special" minority group has to face off against another "special" minority group.   Given the demographics of the area, isn't it better to draw a competitive district where either group could theoretically elect a candidate of their choice?

There's no reason Garden Grove, Westminster, et al. need to be in the Hispanic district. You could create a separate district that was around 30% Asian. The current (2000) map cracks the Vietnamese across Sanchez, Rohrabacher and Royce's districts in order to keep white Republicans safe from a primary challenge, but a replacement map certainly need not do so. The ideal map would concentrate the Hispanics in Sanchez's district and the Vietnamese (and maybe other Asians if you're willing to go into Cerritos) in Royce's district, where they wouldn't form a majority but would have a lot of influence in the Republican primary.

Here. The district on the right is 61.7% Hispanic VAP. The district on the left is 36.7% Asian VAP (and 32.6% white VAP, 26.5% Hispanic VAP), and could definitely be made more Asian if the DRA data were broken down more manageably. This would guarantee a delegation representing the Orange County area MUCH more reflective of Orange County's diversity instead of packing the Hispanics and Asians into one seat and then cracking the remainder out to ensure that white (Republican, but that isn't so important here) politicians continue to dominate the scene.

Your argument is just absurd, cinyc, sorry.

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I guess the GOP is dead in the Bay Area. Not even the San Ramon Valley is GOP anymore.

Danville is still Republican. It's the only Bay Area city of note with a McCain majority, though.

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Atherton was about 55% Obama. Not sure on Hillsborough, but probably more Democratic than Atherton. I thought Danville voted for McCain, but maybe I'm wrong. Would have to open up DRA to check again.

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Also, Vietnamese voters swung significantly to the right in 2008 due to McCain on the ticket (Vietnam veteran), and had been somewhat more D than usual in 2004 due to Kerry being a vet.