Talk Elections

Mississippi has four CDs and a large number of small counties, yet unlike IA or AR which have the same situation, MS does not try to keep counties whole, but goes for exact population equaliy. Out of curiosity, I drew a map of MS using the 2010 Census data following the style of AR with whole counties only. The maximum deviation is 983 (0.13%) and CD2 is 59% black VAP.

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CD 1 (brown) 742,807
CD 2 (green) 741,494
CD 3 (yellow) 741,041
CD 4 (slate) 740,955

Looks about right. Just take the 2 counties with the most blacks and throw them in the black district, and population balance.

I doubt this will be hard.

Yet MS doesn't bother to keep counties intact. The VRA district is solid enough that I wouldn't think that a few hundred people would cause a map to fail preclearance. In any case, MS could follow the example of AR in 2001 and have a second map that was essentially the same but with exact equality as a backup plan.

You're talking of the rl map? Yeah, to be more precise you take Natchez and most of Panola County. :)

From the existing map, Adams, Wilkinson, and Panola counties go in CD-2. Then you just need to shift about 22k people between the 3 GOP districts.


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FWIW, the current representatives are from:

MS-1 Nunnelee, Tupelo
MS-2 Thompson, Bolton (Hinds County)
MS-3 Harper, Pearl (Rankin County)
MS-4 Palazzo, Gulfport

Is it possible to put all of Madison County in MS-2?

I kind of like going for the Mississippi is just like Iowa solution.

I certainly could and did. There's really no reason to further split white precincts from MS-2. It's well over 50% and the increased numbers border on racial gerrymandering.

You can, if you really want to, but its split right now along those exact lines. So I left them there.

Madison consists of a suburban White south and a rural Black north. I would suppose Southern Madison has more community of interest with the rest of the Jackson metro than with the rural parts of the country. So... unless you're suggesting to also add the remaining Hinds precincts and most of Rankin County... I wouldn't worry.

I'm not sure that it is even particularly that White.  I think it could be a case similar to DeKalb Georgia, where you have white suburbanites followed soon by black suburbanites.

Between 2000 and 2010, White population increased 18%, Black population by 29%.

The southern part of Madison County is nothing like DeKalb, Georgia.  Its approximately 60,000 residents are 68.5% white, 70.2% by VAP.  If you add the fast-growing Gluckstadt precinct currently in MS-2, the population goes up to approximately 70,500 and the white percentage to 70.3%/71.7%.   Most of the black residents live immediately adjacent to the county line or in the northern part of the county.

The part of Hinds County that is in MS-3 is 62.1%/66.0% white.  That might sound low, but it isn't, really, compared to some Jackson voting districts that are 95%+ black.

Were you to add the missing Madison and Hinds pieces to MS-2, you can draw a very good map that generally respects county lines except to balance population, without the need for MS-2 to drag all the way down to the Louisiana border.  Every district on this map has a deviation +/-10 from the ideal CD population.  MS-2 happens to be exactly correct:
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MS-01 (blue) is 71.5% VAP white and has 9 more residents than ideal;
MS-02 (green) is 58.8% VAP black and is ideal;
MS-03 (purple) is 61.3% VAP white and has 2 more residents than ideal;
MS-04 (red) is 72.9% VAP white and has 10 residents fewer than ideal.

Unfortunately, the Columbus/West Point/Starkville Golden Triangle area ends up split up, as in the current map.  Columbus is in MS-01; West Point Starkville and some southern Columbus suburbs are in MS-03.  As does Rankin County from the rest of the Jackson metro - but that was a conscious decision made in the past for racial reasons.  In a color-blind world, the three major counties of the Jackson metro would be kept together, which would allow the Golden Triangle to stay together in the same CD.

Nixon in 1968 had a majority in DeKalb county in a 3-way race.

In 1980, it was Reagan's 28th strongest county, with Carter only carrying the county by 5%.  In 1988, it was Dukakis's 23rd strongest county, and along with Fulton, the only two counties outside the Black Belt carried by Dukakis.
In 2000, it was Gore's 2nd strongest county, putting up a 44% plurality.

Or going further south, Clayton has gone from 35% for Dukakis in 1988 to 83% for Obama in 2008.

Madison historically had a substantial black population, which then had some suburban growth from folks leaving Jackson.  But if they could afford it, white folk would probably prefer Rankin to Madison.  Moreover, the blacker part of Jackson is the north side.  So whites can also go south and west in Hinds County and keep in whiter areas.  But it is likely that Madison will become the preferred area for suburban-seeking blacks.

If you follow county boundaries you don't have to have a perfect ideal population 1% may be close enough.  How far off is MS-4 if you leave out the piece of Jefferson Davis.

What if all of Lowndes is all in MS-3, and Webster and/or Clay are put into MS-1.  Or maybe add Grenada to MS-2 and put all of Attala in in MS-3.

No doubt the southern part of Madison may turn into the Jackson version of DeKalb county in 10 or 20 years.  But it's not quite there yet, according to the 2010 census.  The part of MS-02 in Madison County is still majority white.

No doubt I could balance population within 1% without crossing county lines if I had to.  Muon2 already did.  I'm not convinced that's where the legislature is headed, though.

It sounds like they are going to crash and burn on legislative redistricting, and will put off congressional redistricting.

With the 2008 data uploaded in DRA, here's a mild Democratic gerrymander:

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MS-01: This would be friendlier to Childers. It sheds some GOP-leaning central counties and grabs some heavily-black counties from Thompson and Harper. It moves from 62/37 McCain to a more manageable 55/44 McCain.
There's a good chance Childers could have held this seat last year. If I recall, he lost by about 13 points; this district actually swings 14% towards Obama.

MS-02: Thompson takes a hit to weaken Nunnlee. Its now 56% black, down from 63%. At 61/38 Obama, still Safe D.

MS-03: Other than 4 new counties from MS-01 and taking more chunks from MS-04, pretty much the same. Its McCain % goes up by 4 to pack Republicans. Its now 65/34 McCain up from 61/38.


MS-04: There wasn't much I could to help Taylor in a possible rematch other than giving him familiar territory. Virtually no change; 67/32 McCain.

They tried to put south Madison County into district 2 about 10 years ago, and both sides freaked out.  The suburban whites didn't want to be in Bennie's district, and the Delta didn't want suburban voters mucking in their rural district.  Even though it looks bad and forces me to have a dufus like Gregg Harper as my Congressman, there's no political will on either side to have all of Madison County in the same district.

It looks like judges will be drawing the congressional districts. (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-23/mississippi-judges-to-draw-congressional-redistricting-map.html)

Perhaps they'll look at the map in my OP. ;)

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Unless, the first act of the legislature is to move qualifying periods back.

Here we go:

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This court drawn map is a minimal-change plan.

Not entirely. They kept Natchez in CD3, let the second take some more of CD1's remaining Blackbelt areas instead, extended the 1st southward as a result.

Well, numerically speaking, its pretty minimal-change.

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CD1- 62/37 McCain (62/38)
CD2- 64/35 Obama (66/33)
CD3- 61/38 McCain (61/38)
CD4- 68/31 McCain (67/32)

The amount of changes beyond the minimum necessary to equalize the populations of the four districts may indeed be very small. But,  wasn't keeping "communities of interest" suppose to be standard?

Under that standard, why not have the delta district extend down the entire delta?

I've wondered that too. Both Adams and Wilkinon counties are geographically and politically similar to MS-02 as a whole.

If I were drawing the maps, I would have included Adams and Wilkinson in the 2nd in exchange for some of the eastern counties, but communities of interest are certainly better served by this map than the maps in most states.

This would be the "delta district":

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MS-02 ans MS-03 each move about 1 point more towards Obama and McCain, respectively.

I basically traded Adams and Wilkinson for Leake and Attala. I also moved around a few precincts in the Jackson area.

The Delta ends at Vicksburg, of course. The non-minimal changes they did precisely united the Delta, at the price of foregoing a few extra Blacks and Dems.

Hmm... So it does. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_delta)

So when is the now-Republican controlled legislature going to get around to redrawing state legislative districts? 

Is that legal in Mississippi? It's not in all states.

Yes, it is the precedent. 2001 was run under the old lines, and, new lines were drawn for the 2002 special for the remaining three years of the four-year terms.

I think you mean 1991 and 1992.  The first Mississippi guburnatorial election (when the Legislature would normally be elected) of the 2000s was in 2003.  I doubt Mississippi would have been required to hold a special election in 2002 to just move the effectiveness of redistricting one year earlier, as some states have four-year terms where some legislators would have last been elected in 2000 and would serve until 2004.

The Mississippi Constitution requires redistricting every 10 years, in the year ending in 2, and permits redistricting at other times.  A federal district court ruled last year that was valid, and so the 2001 elections could use the existing districts.  The court said that if the legislature drew districts this year, they would then consider whether special elections should be held.

If you look at a Mississippi house districts map, your eyes will bleed.

Yikes.

It is quite a bit to take in.  (http://www.msjrc.state.ms.us/ms_house.html)

What is this I don't even

VRA, presumably.

Pretty much answers my own question -towards the end of April (http://www.sunherald.com/2012/04/09/3872256/mississippi-lawmakers-close-to.html).

The redistricting plan for the Mississippi House will be unveiled tomorrow. (http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20120424/NEWS010504/120424024/Mississippi-House-redistricting-plan-may-unveiled-Wednesday?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CHome)  The Senate will likely unveil its redistricting plan a few days later.  

In case anyone cares, the redistricting map for the Mississippi House has been released (http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2012/04/mississippi_house_redistrictin.html), and as expected, it targets white Democrats by increasing black majority districts:

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If anyone has a clearer version, please don't hesitate to share it.  

Of course...there's an unholy alliance in the south between black Democrats and Republicans.

If increasing the number of Black seats is considered a worthy goal, then why is any more problematic to eliminate White Democratic districts than White Republican districts?

These racial packing districts tend to hurt the Democratic party and democracy. One rare exception might be Louisiana, where they might have tried for a 6-0 map without the requirement to make a black district.

A 7-0 map also would be possible in Alabama had it not have been for the black district.

Not as common as it's made out to be, fwiw. More often, the black democrats are uninvolved bystanders who coincidentally benefit from Republican mapmakers because it's convenient to make the legally-required VRA districts to be the Dem-packed districts their gerrymander needs.

The only time actual collusion happened in the Georgia Assembly was in the creation of the maps used 92-94; once they saw the electoral aftermath, the leaders of the black caucus were very apologetic to the rest of the party.

It's not, in and of itself. What sickens me is when Black Democrats enable Republican gerrymanders, either for this purpose or to shore up their existing incumbents.

Yeah, the blacks in Georgia were pretty good during this cycle. I think one of the black Democratic leaders in the Assembly threatened to support primary challengers to any Democrats who voted for the GOP maps.

Why the vitriol over something that, like I said before, happens so rarely? Besides, it's not like white democrats don't collaborate with Republicans on redistricting just as often; they're just more likely to switch parties in the process.

As expected, the House approves the new map (http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20120427/NEWS010504/204270346/House-approves-new-maps-Debate-spans-race-party).  And here (http://www.clarionledger.com/assets/pdf/D0188412425.PDF) is the PDF version of the map.  

And a more user-friendly version:

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Does anyone think the Justice Department will let this map stand and focus instead on voter ID laws and other measures?

It increases the number of black majority districts.  On what ground would they object?

It will be interesting to see whether there is an effort to require new elections or not.  Otherwise, these districts won't be used until 2015.

They will be used this November.

Mississippi ordinarily doesn't hold legislative elections in even-numbered years.  Actually they are every 4th year, since both house and senate members.

The constitution itself calls for apportionment every year ending in "2", plus whenever the legislature feels like it.   Last year the legislature tried to reapportion in time for the 2011 elections, but failed to do so.

The NAACP sued in federal district court, but they ruled that it was not a violation of the US Constitution to have reapportionment only once every 10 years.   This decision was affirmed by the US Supreme Court.

Reading the court's order, they retained jurisdiction; and said that if the legislature passed redistricting this year (2012) and this was approved by the USDOJ under Section 5 of the VRA, they would entertain claims that they should order special elections.

IOW, it is OK to reapportion every 10 years; but it might not be OK to not use new district boundaries until another 3 years pass.

And if there are not lawful districts (*passed by the legislature; signed by the governor; and precleared by the USDOJ) the federal court could act to draw its own districts.

* Mississippi has its own backup commission consisting of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the AG, the SOS, House speaker, and Senate president pro tempore in case the legislature doesn't finish its action.

And the Mississippi Senate follows through (http://www.necn.com/05/02/12/Mississippi-Senate-adopts-its-redistrict/landing_politics.html?&apID=69958beb768b4fc791191759fb16f358) in approving its map:

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And if you want a larger image, click here (http://media.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/photo/mississippi-senate-redistricting-map-95415f19f41b3b00.jpg). 

Aren't the maps approving with time?   Give a few more decades and Mississippi will be yanked into the 20th Century.

Assuming the Justice Department clears these maps -which they probably will- how big will Republican majorities be in either chamber?  

Here's what we have currently, with our color scheme:

Mississippi House:

64 Republicans
58 Democrats

Mississippi Senate:

31 Republicans
21 Democrats

The bolded colors indicate the party in charge of that particular chamber.  

Both House and Senate plans precleared Sept 14th, apparently