US House Redistricting: North Carolina

[Torie]

That little yellow snake creating some black district in the NC map above,  would  generate the third in a series of SCOTUS decisions, about the legality of black snakes in NC, with the outcome uncertain, since the first two decisions were not particularly coherent.

[Torie]

Ya, hoist SCOTUS on its own petard as it were.

[Torie]

With no constraints on what you can draw except the VRA, in states like NC, you can do just about anything can't you?  It is almost like looking at the state  vote totals, figuring out what max Obama district percentages would be for the number of CD's you cede to them, and then deduct those vote totals, and divide the McCain margin by the number of remaining CD's in a relatively even way, and you calculate his percentage, see if you think it high enough, given trends, and whatever peculiarities might motivate you, and when satisfied, just draw the districts to hand out the McCain margin in a relatively even manner.

Michigan isn't like that.

[Torie]

Well, I can't draw 56% McCain districts in Michigan. But you should see the kick ass Michigan map I spent two days drawing. Dave's district drawing utility is very addictive. After about 3 days of working with it, I have finally got the knack of how to move population around from one district to another, shifting folks around like dominoes. Say you have two many folks in the CD on Lake Michigan, and two few in a in the Flint district. Shifting people without breaking county lines or township or city lines, can be very tricky. One needs to be well rested sometimes to handle it.

Anyway, in the Michigan map, all the Pubbies are now uber safe, and the Levin-Peters district is marginal. I am not sure yet whether Bush or Kerry carried it. These two  gentlemen (one Jewish and one Episcopalian) will have fun running in a CD with well to do WASP's in Broomfield Hills, cranky blue collar Catholic Dems in Warren, and lower middle class ones in Sterling Heights,  mixed marginal Dem territory in St. Clair Shores, Roseville and Eastpointe, and upper middle class to rich Catholics in the Gross Pointes. Yes, I unlocked the Pubbies in the Pointes by cutting down the number of CD's in Oakland to 3. I figure that if Oakland has lost a CD, well Wayne should gain one!  

[Torie]

A 54% McCain district in a place where there wasn't much of a swing, or a negative swing, to Obama from Bush 2004 means something very different than a 54% McCain district, where there was a big swing (i.e. a Dem trend). In general, in the South, Copperhead, and fossil fuel belts, one will need a higher McCain percentage than elsewhere to reach the same measure of GOP safety.

One size does not fit all in this game. Oh, and one other thing. Look at MS-01. DeSoto County stays heavily GOP no matter what, but a Dem won the seat in the special not so long ago (losing this year), because of huge swings in the rural areas. So in some places, rural GOP numbers don't mean as much as more urban ones, particularly against a Tory Dem, when it comes to the delta function.

[Torie]

Johnny's little mappie is so good I think, that I am going to abandon my plan to work on NC next, and just sign off on his map. I think it is a wrap.  He hit all the right bases, each and every one. Well done Johnny! 

So what should I do next I wonder?  Maybe I will do a brief swing by Maryland, to see just how realistic it is for the Dems to ax a Pubbie. I tend to doubt that it is much, but I guess it is time to find out. And then maybe I will look at the liquidate Cooper's Nashville CD game in TN, to see how attractive I think that is. After that SC or IN  I guess, unless Johnny or somebody has drawn maps there that look in finished form to me.

[Torie]

Johnny's little mappie is so good I think, that I am going to abandon my plan to work on NC next, and just sign off on his map. I think it is a wrap.  He hit all the right bases, each and every one. Well done Johnny! 

So what should I do next I wonder?  Maybe I will do a brief swing by Maryland, to see just how realistic it is for the Dems to ax a Pubbie. I tend to doubt that it is much, but I guess it is time to find out. And then maybe I will look at the liquidate Cooper's Nashville CD game in TN, to see how attractive I think that is. After that SC or IN  I guess, unless Johnny or somebody has drawn maps there that look in finished form to me.

Hmm? It actually seems really easy for the Dems to axe both pubbies.

Frank Kratovil overperforms on the Eastern Shore, so you run MD-1 into PG County.

Roscoe Bartlett is over 80. Run him into Montgomery and he'll probably retire.

Remember that you have two CD's where you need to keep the black percentage up. We shall see.

[Torie]

Johnny's little mappie is so good I think, that I am going to abandon my plan to work on NC next, and just sign off on his map. I think it is a wrap.  He hit all the right bases, each and every one. Well done Johnny!  

So what should I do next I wonder?  Maybe I will do a brief swing by Maryland, to see just how realistic it is for the Dems to ax a Pubbie. I tend to doubt that it is much, but I guess it is time to find out. And then maybe I will look at the liquidate Cooper's Nashville CD game in TN, to see how attractive I think that is. After that SC or IN  I guess, unless Johnny or somebody has drawn maps there that look in finished form to me.

Hmm? It actually seems really easy for the Dems to axe both pubbies.

Frank Kratovil overperforms on the Eastern Shore, so you run MD-1 into PG County.

Roscoe Bartlett is over 80. Run him into Montgomery and he'll probably retire.

Well having played with the MD map a bit, I think the best the Dems can expect to do is make one of the 2 Pubbie CD's marginal, and they may not get even that far (I got down to making MD-06 a 50% McCain district, before things started getting messy), and to get to even that point,  MD-08 had to take in Annapolis and part of the Eastern Shore, so things are starting to get really bizarre. Is Van Hollen really going to want that done with his CD, particularly given that he is a partisan high profile Dem assigned to be one of their chief attack dogs, and political strategists, when it won't really in all likelihood knock off another Pubbie anyway?  I suspect not. So I am going to keep MD at no change on my redistricting score card list for the present.  I might change my mind; I doubt it, but I might. I will work on it a bit more, and put up a map at some point.

Basically only MD-08  has a significant excess of useable Dems to attack one of the Pubbie CD's, and that means attacking MD-06, and not MD-01, given where MD-08 is. The two black CD's cannot have their black percentages diluted down much, and in addition, in MD-05 the blacks will not want their 35% percentage diluted down much as well (and Hoyer needs most of  them anyway to keep his CD in the safe zone). The blacks have a veto power on redistricting in MD, basically.

Hoyer's MD-05 is only about a a Dem +8.5% PVI or so CD (so not much to give there, maybe a little, but not much, and again the blacks there are not going to want much of a dilution, since they may see that CD in their future (this is a high black increase zone), and MD-2 and MD-03 are only about Dem PVI +5.5 and 5.0, respectively (and therefore have nothing to give really).

Oh yes, for Bush 2004, MD-06 has a GOP PVI of +13%, and MD-01 is +11% GOP PVI.  So both have a lot of Pubbies to drain off and pack and move. MD-08 had a Dem PVI of 17.5%. So using just MD-08 alone, to get MD-06 down to an even PVI, means basically that MD-08 has to move 13 of its 17.5 Dem PVI points over to MD-06 to get MD-06 down to even, leaving MD-08 at just Dem +4.5 PVI. Van Hollen is just not going to allowing his Dem PVI to get down that low (and that reminds me, that I need to check where Van Hollen lives). Now to get MD-06  down to a GOP PVI of say +4% GOP PVI, I did not use MD-08 alone, but it was mostly MD-08, and as I say, at that point, the map started to get really ugly. That is when I decided to take a break.

[Torie]

Oh dear. My rule of thumb is that you have to get up to 53% black to be confident that you are up to 50% black VAP. 51% won't cut it. Thanks for the comparison Muon2.

[Torie]

North Carolina is not a preclearance state. Suits based purely on what the last DOJ wanted aren't going to get far past the "laughed out" stage of court proceedings. Besides, the previous districts were roughly 51% Black too.

No pre clearance does not mean no lawsuit, but I guess it is pretty clear with NC that a map with a 50% VAP CD that ties together communities of interest probably cannot be drawn anyway. Still, the 50% VAP figure should be kept in mind, in case such a potential CD is lurking out there.

[Torie]

North Carolina is not a preclearance state. Suits based purely on what the last DOJ wanted aren't going to get far past the "laughed out" stage of court proceedings. Besides, the previous districts were roughly 51% Black too.

NC has individual counties that require preclearance. Therefore a congressional map is subject to section 5 since it affects the counties requiring preclearance. Map makers and the DOJ will operate in this cycle with the Bartlett decision. It set for the first time a clear threshold below which the VRA does not have an effect. That threshold applies to areas where a district with over 50% VAP may be drawn. Jurisdictions wishing to reduce their exposure to litigation will draw 50%+ districts, where < 50% would have been fine 10 years ago.

In playing for a few minutes with an NC map, and looking at the nearby black percentages to the existing black CD's, it seems pretty clear to me, that no CD tying together what could even remotely be called communities of interest can really be drawn. Was that your experience Muon2?

[Torie]

What is all of this "fairness" chat about in the context of one party having control of drawing the lines? When that happens you gerrymander in this day and age (unless you are Mitch Daniels in Indiana who likes to play Mr. Nice Guy).

[Torie]

This has dummymander potential considering how unpleasant many of the GOP incumbents are. McHenry for example can't be considered truly safe with Asheville in his seat, he's the type of guy who can't run in anything but the most absolutely safe districts. Coble is also notably kind of a jerk and has a far too diluted district, but he's older than dirt and my just retire anyway. Ellmers is an idiot who could end up being the next Jean Schmidt. I agree that it won't oust McIntyre. The GOP can also forget about primarying Jones like has been tried since the seat is now winnable for the right type of Democrat, but then again losing seats has never kept the GOP away from nominating idiots before.

That is a rather uncharitable tour de horizon of the NC Pubbie landscape (Coble has had a rep as a nice guy since rocks cooled for example), but the beauty of it is, if the weaklings are culled from the herd, that just makes room for someone better to run and cut down the Dem who did the culling.  It is kind of a win-win in my book. I like somewhat marginal GOP districts. It may have the potential to produce a better work product in the public square.

[Torie]

I think NC-08,13 will be tough for any Dem but McIntyre will survive more easily than anyone expects in NC-07. That district is 3% more R now but he won 54% in a very Republican year. His numbers in the prior years were between 65-75%! In a neutral political environment it's tough to see him as any less than a 4:1 favorite. Even if you take 3% off his 2010 margin he still wins re-election and that possibly could be as bad as it can get for him.

I wonder why McIntyre is such an effective politician. I have never seen him on the tube, so I am curious what his qualities are that make him successful.

[Torie]

A court will let the legislature fix this technical error. You can bank on it. Man this redistricting game is  like a football game with no penalties for unnecessary roughness.  Half the players end up in the hospital.

[Torie]

Where did this 40% in an urbanized area county concept come from again, and how does one define "urbanized area?"

[Torie]

Where did this 40% in an urbanized area county concept come from again, and how does one define "urbanized area?"

In the course of a couple of threads in July and August there was an emerging consensus that chopping a metro area should count as much as a chop of a county. There were a variety of Census Bureau definitions of metro areas and after looking at cases in a few states there was convergence on the concept of urban county clusters which are formed from metropolitan statistical ares. jimrtex has outlined the definition and I have now stickied the thread that he created showing all the qualifying UCCs in the US.

What I don't get specifically, is how you determine that an individual county is 40% or more "urbanized."  I don't think the census bureau chops counties that way, does it?

[Torie]

The 1st district does not have to be drawn into Durham/Raleigh to be black plurality.  And it should not be.

That requires an extensive number of erose peninsulas into the center of every small city in eastern NC. Yuck.

Good to see that you are on erosity patrol these days, Mike.