US House Redistricting: Ohio

[Bacon King]

What are the specifics of VRA Section 2 case law, exactly? Could Ohio, were they to draw that district, just claim it's a perfectly legal partisan gerrymander? Would it be legal if it was plurality white instead?

[Bacon King]

Torie, are you sending the maps you make to the people that decide redistricting, at all?

[Bacon King]

But no real map is going to go to this extent

GA map, pre-2006. Dems pulled a gerrymander just like Torie's suggesting for Ohio.

example, Democratic district:

[Bacon King]

Very impressive. You've definitely put a huge amount of effort into this.

[Bacon King]

Some mathematical analyses I've read suggest that it's best to put the really hard D areas in with the hardest R areas. Hard D areas will never cross over for a primary challenge, and as long as there are enough hard R areas, then the D can't win a general election either. If that analysis is correct, the maybe Athens should go to OH-2.

You don't think a Bachmann/Schmidt would suffer disproportionate erosion in a university town, vis a vis a Portman, or Rogers, or Ryan, or even say my congresscritter, Campbell, at least to the extent you are not talking about a hard left University? Particularly in these times, when the status quo is really, really f'ing the young, and all we need is the right messenger to get the truth out? Folks from Athens won't be getting those prestigious federal jobs, the number of which has nearly doubled under Obama, and late term Bush. So they don't have that incentive. Most of them are destined to be middle to lower middle class "slugs," to put it brutally, but honestly. Does that make any sense to you Muon2?

The theory is that if there is a pool of hard D votes, there's nothing that can be done to win them in any year. Likewise a pool of hard R would never be lost, so the best district for a hard R candidate would have 51% hard R and 49% hard D with no independent or swing voters.

The swing voters should be reserved for districts that will attract candidates with a moderate appeal, and that would be where the hard core elements of the party can't win in the primary. Ideally it's a district with lots of swingy voters, but with a clear R PVI if the GOP is drawing the map.

This is just one theory, but it make some sense from a statistical perspective. It requires thinking about one's partisans as to the strength of their convictions. That's harder to discern from simple precinct results, but comparing strong elections for opposite parties (eg 2006 vs 2010) can provide a good sense of the amount of swing in a precinct.

Doesn't this analysis kind of ignore turnout, though? For example, your "ideal" district of 51% hard R's vs. 49% hard D's would swing as soon as the Democrats had a turnout increase relative to the Republicans.