US House Redistricting: California

[cinyc]

One needs to start at the Mexican border and move north to do this map stuff. That will tell you exactly how much of OC will go to a CD that is also in San Diego County. The Commission is just not going to do that ridiculous appending of Imperial County to San Diego. That is DOA - especially since an Hispanic CD can be carved out of south San Diego, and another inland taking in Imperial County. And it makes no sense for CA-49 to go into Riverside County, given the Coachella Valley chop that is necessary to create an Hispanic CD, an Hispanic CD that might well be dictated by the VRA in fact.

Why shouldn't Imperial County be appended to San Diego County?  It would seem to have very little in common with the Palm Springs area and more major transportation ties to San Diego County.  Does the new California law require racist gerrymandering be considered before all other considerations be taken into account?

[cinyc]

Imperial County is more connected to the Coachella Valley than to San Diego. You just drive up the valley from the Mexican border, all irrigated desert with Hispanic farm workers, right up to Indio and La Quinta.  Then the Hispanic work force changes to service personnel for the Anglo geezers living or snow birding in the Coachella Valley. It is all pretty seamless. You have to drive over mountains that are empty to get to the Imperial/Coachella Valley from San Diego. There is basically nothing there other than migrating illegals.  By the way, arguably the Coachella Valley presents one of the most extreme examples of wealth and poverty in the world - side by side. The city of Coachella is a very dreary place. Another little faclet, is that perhaps close to half of CA-45 is below sea level. It would disappear, along with my desert houses, if that little 50 foot high berm created by the Colorado River that keeps the Gulf of California out of the valley, collapsed in an earthquake - perhaps one of the greatest disasters in human memory if it ever occurs. Fancy that.

Do you want Hunter's district, CA-52, to go to the Imperial Valley or something, dropping a bunch of San Diego suburbs?  The Imperial Valley would have been connected to San Diego if necessary to create an Hispanic CD there. It wasn't. It is necessary to create a Coachella Valley Hispanic CD however, one that I think is quite arguably mandated by the VRA. It would almost certainly be litigated, if not drawn.

On the other hand, the major highway in the Imperial Valley runs East-West into San Diego County, and those mountains don't just start in San Diego County.  Both San Diego and Imperial Counties are on the border and share common border issues than inland Riverside County doesn't. 

I don't want any one particular district to go anywhere.  What I do want is for congressional district boundaries to stop being drawn on arbitrary things like race.  Granted, that's not going to happen any time soon, but why is the goal maximizing Hispanic districts in a state without an ethnic majority?  What if the Census results show the state has more Hispanics than Anglos?  Do you start drawing Anglo opportunity districts?

[cinyc]

Since the official data aren't out yet and you'll have to redo once they are... I'd put this on hold for now.

Have there been substantial discrepancies between the town estimates that became available about 6 weeks ago, and the final census numbers in other states with finalized numbers to your knowledge?  If so, yes, you are right. The only thing, is the county numbers are final, so the overall shape of what I drew so far will still hold (SD and OC counties basically, with the Hispanic CD in Riverside County that kind of draws itself, and can expand or contract a bit, and one other CD wedged in the SW corner of Riverside, which can easily expand or contract a bit). But starting to do LA County would indeed be insane, if the numbers are going to move much, I agree.

I don't know about the town estimates released 6 weeks ago, but some of the 2009 ACS estimates have been wildly off.  Omaha, with a 2010 census population of about 408,000, was estimated at almost 455,000.  Chicago and Houston were also significantly overestimated.  And as Lewis said, some areas of Texas were more over- or underestimated than others, seemingly without any particular rhyme or reason.

Given that - and that Dave Bradlee's app generally distributes estimated county population gain uniformly across the county when otherwise not estimated, advice to hold off before assuming your districts are close to final is a good one.

Luckily for you, we get the 2010 California data tomorrow afternoon.

Edited to add: I don't know what data you are looking at from six weeks ago, but I don't think California's county numbers are final.  The 2009 ACS county estimates were off, but probably less so than city estimates.  For example, Sarpy County's (Omaha) actual population was only about 7,000 above the 2009 estimate.

[cinyc]

Why are you so sure they will draw that appendage though? Why not just add Pasadena and other areas closer by instead? And why are you so sure they won't do that? That they won't just be satisfied with a 30% Asian district. And it's not even as if Asians are a monolithic group, so I really wouldn't be so sure it will happen. Don't the Chinese near Monterey Park and surroundings tend to be from the mainland while I know for a fact that Rowland Heights and Hacienda Heights is a heavily Taiwanese community.

Hispanics aren't monolithic, either, but that hasn't stopped demands for VRA districts.  Puerto Ricans are not Dominicans are not Mexicans are not Colombians.

[cinyc]

Torie-

Just to follow up the overestimation/underestimation discussion, California's overall population was 0.79% higher than the 2009 ACS estimate (2010 population-2009 estimate)/(2009 estimate). 

The following of the top 20 cities were most overestimated, relative to the state as a whole (2010 City Population-2009 Estimated City Population)/(2009 Estimated City Population)-0.79:

Santa Ana: 5.4%
Oakland: 5.3%
San Jose: 2.7%
San Francisco: 2.0%
Los Angeles: 1.8%

And these of the top 20 cities were most underestimated:
Chula Vista: 8.2%
Bakersfield: 6.3%
San Bernardino: 5.0%
Oxnard: 4.7%
Fontana: 3.5%

Most county errors were smaller.  Among the overestimated:
San Francisco: 2.0%
Orange: 1.3%
Los Angeles: 1.1%
Santa Clara: 1.0%
San Mateo: 0.9%

And the underestimated:
Santa Barbara: 3.3%
Kern: 3.2%
Riverside: 2.2%
Tulare: 2.1%
Ventura: 1.7%


Note again that the errors are relative to the error for rest of the state, which is most relevant for Torie's purposes.   To compute the actual error, you need to subtract 0.79 from the underestimated and add it to the overestimated.   San Mateo County's estimate, for example, was pretty much dead on, and Santa Barbara County's population was actually underestimated by 4.1%.

[cinyc]

Daves redistricting is now working for California, however, some of the districts contain over 50,000 people so the data is impossible to work with. Hopefully some block group figures will be released?

Block group and block figures have been released.  Dave's redistricting app doesn't handle them for 2010 as of yet.

California's redistricting file is so long that Excel can't easily handle it.  It has 1,072,087 lines of data.  I had to use a database program to open it.

[cinyc]

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?

[cinyc]

You can't create a majority VAP Asian CD in Orange County, so no other minority group would be a collateral screwee. But you can in LA County, and they did, which I consider appropriate.

Once you start talking about the VRA, doesn't the concept of county lines fall out the window?  Even if it doesn't, you could create a CD in Orange County that would be more likely to elect the candidate the Asians in the area prefer.

To me, a truly competitive district where either group could elect the candidate of their choice should suffice.  The district is 53.4% Hispanic, anyway, albeit a few points lower than that in VAP (48.1%).  Hispanic CVAP percentage is much lower still (31.8%) - likely reflecting a large illegal alien population which can't legally elect anyone.