US House Redistricting: North Carolina

[muon2]

Lol, that sixth district is a piece of art!

I think it follows the current tradition of NC-6.



I would also be concerned about going for 10 of 13 seats. Blue Dogs remain viable in NC, so aiming for 8 or 9 seats might be a safer course for the NC GOP.

[muon2]

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.

One way to address Watt's district is to keep it as close to the current one as possible. That district is the result of the last round of cases and starts with a presumption of legality. The VRA cases imply that race must be considered, but cannot be the sole factor for a district. That leads one to balance race against other redistricting principles.

Keeping a district close to existing borders serves both as incumbent protection and preserving the core of an existing district, which have been recognized as valid principles of redistricting. If the new district also reaches over 50% black VAP it wouldn't be due to race as the sole factor, but by being mindful of the possibility of an area that could be over 50% black as a threshold from Bartlett. I would expect that only minor tweaks to Watt's district is the most likely course of action.

[muon2]

Here's a version of NC to protect GOP incumbents and keep them in their districts,
but put some of the Dems in some stress. This map targets 3 Dems, but keeps 4 safe. I think this creates considerably less risk than a 10 to 3 plan that tries to target 4 Dems.

The key idea is in this map is to merge the D areas of NC 7 and 8 and add to it the heavily D areas in Raleigh NC 2. The new CD 2 drops down to the SE areas that are heavily GOP, and yes it's not pretty . A tidier version would swap some area between CD 2 and 7, but this went for the maximum partisan split. The remainder of old NC 2 is added to the new CD 13 which completely flips its partisan leanings.



CD 1: 74% Obama, 54% black
CD 2: 57% McCain (a big shift in area for Ellmers, but flips from 51% Obama)
CD 3: 59% McCain
CD 4: 64% Obama
CD 5: 58% McCain
CD 6: 57% McCain
CD 7: 67% Obama, 40% plurality black (McIntyre is safe here)
CD 8: 57% McCain (was 52% Obama, Kissell lives in CD 6 here)
CD 9: 56% McCain
CD 10: 57% McCain
CD 11: 57% McCain (up from 52% McCain)
CD 12: 79% Obama, 52% black
CD 13: 56% McCain (the biggest shift here since it was 59% Obama)

[muon2]

Governor Perdue is completely irrelevant for NC redistricting, right?

There is no veto power for redistricting bills. The NC legislature's website says:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[muon2]

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.

A lot of 54%-ish McCain districts that the right Democrat could win in the right year.  McIntyre and Shuler would probably be able to hold the districts that they are in.  Even Kissell might be able to hold onto his seat. 

You know, you say this a lot.  A 54% McCain district is roughly a R+7 PVI - do you know how many districts that are D+7 or more that the GOP won in the wave this year?  ZERO.  Granted, the Dems have had more success holding R+7 districts than vice versa, but there weren't all that many of them and most of them relied on entrenched incumbents (Spratt, Skelton, Edwards, Gordon, Tanner, Boucher...) and probably won't be swinging back any time soon.  So yeah, it's not impossible, but a district like that should be reasonably secure, and even in a strong Dem wave should be no worse than a 50-50 barring scandal.  If you make districts much more GOP you end up with a *Democratic* gerrymander. 

I wouldn't call a 9 R - 4 D a Dem gerrymander. The incoming delegation is 6 R - 7 D, so a pickup of 2 or 3 looks pretty good to the GOP. Why would the GOP risk picking up only 1 by leaving too many swing districts on the map with entrenched D incumbents? At 9 - 4 the GOP can engineer at least 56% McCain in all the R districts and leave little to chance.

[muon2]

My maps of NC: in both maps the only Democratic districts are: 1(Dark Blue), 12(long thin line) and 13(Peach color)

What are the percentages? The GOP will want to dislodge Dem incumbents and that will require districts with 55% or more for McCain.

[muon2]

I thought it would be interesting to put my 9-4 map side by side with JLT's 9-4 version. My guess is that the similarities offer a good clue as to the eventual map from the legislature.

This was mine:

and here's Johnny's:

Here's the partisan numbers, mine in italics and JLT's in bold. I've matched districts that correspond to the same general area.

CD 1: 74% Obama, 54% black; 67% Obama, 51% black
CD 2: 57% McCain; 58% McCain (JLT CD-7)
CD 3: 59% McCain; 57% McCain
CD 4: 64% Obama; 70% Obama
CD 5: 58% McCain; 57% McCain
CD 6: 57% McCain; 56% McCain (JLT CD-13) not a great match between the two areas, but his 13 doesn't really match any of mine.
CD 7: 67% Obama, 61% Obama (JLT CD-8)
CD 8: 57% McCain; 57% McCain (JLT CD-6) also a weak match, since our CD-6's are similar, and here my CD 8 has no good match in his map.
CD 9: 56% McCain; 54% McCain
CD 10: 57% McCain; 57% McCain
CD 11: 57% McCain; 57% McCain
CD 12: 79% Obama, 52% black; 76% Obama, 48% black
CD 13: 56% McCain; 57% McCain (JLT CD-2)
[/quote]

[muon2]

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.

[muon2]

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?

NC seems to lack the large defined areas that one gets in VA, SC, or GA. They aren't quite as populated, so a district always requires linking separate areas. For instance, CD-1 can link to Raleigh or Durham to add enough black pop, but those aren't really the same community of interest as the rural black counties and smaller town centers.

[muon2]

So they went for 10-3; not exactly unexpected. McHenry and Foxx's districts are diluted, but probably not enough to cause them to lose. I do think they're playing with fire making NC-12 majority-black; that could open the district up to being declared an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Black VAP is 49.35%.

Very clever of them...

Actually 49.35% is the black-only VAP. Technically one must also count those who had multiple races including black as well. In that case the district is 50.41% any part black VAP. The current district was 51.07% any part black VAP in 2000.

[muon2]

The Republican dominance of redistricting is just amazing this year.

Democrats have acted like idiots during this redistricting cycle; quite a contrast to the aggressive Republicans...its so frustrating for me.

Come, come now. There's both IL and MD for the Ds.

[muon2]

While possible to draw, I doubt that such a district in either Louisiana or Alabama could have been upheld.
South Carolina is a different matter, actually. Though they would have to be quite tentaclish in which rural precincts to include or exclude, the two Black districts to draw there would have been far more logically composed than the one they actually drew.
Of course, Dems were okay with it because the two seats might have been lost in a 2010clone style wave...

The two seats would likely be around 53% black and in the high 50's for Obama.  I could see these two seats being held to the low 50's in a year like 2010, but I doubt Democrats would have lost them even in 2010. 

A black-majority seat in that area would be about 62%-64% for Obama. I posted an SC map with 2 black majority districts last June and the tentacles aren't particularly extreme. I don't think there's any chance they would have been lost in a 2010-style wave barring bad candidates.

[muon2]

This redistricting session was, by far, the most expensive in NC history.

North Carolina taxpayers have shelled out $695,000 in the past year for outside legal help on the state’s new voting maps – four times what they paid in the previous redistricting cycle from 2001 to 2010 – and the bill is still growing.

IL established a fixed budget for both sides before the 2010 elections.

[muon2]

House Bill 606, a bipartisan bill that creates an independent redistricting process, seems to be gaining steam.

I emailed my Representative, Charles Jeter, a conservative Republican who represents a swingy district, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he supports it.

Democrats should have passed this in 2010.

Just before redistricting both parties hold out hope that they will control the maps, so they resist reform. Ohio had competing reform proposals in the House and Senate in 2010, but neither side wanted to budge, and they were willing to gamble all or nothing at the Nov polls.

[muon2]

Oh look, isn't this nice. Another lawsuit challenging CDs 1 and 12.

The mapmakers relied on section 5 for their districts. Section 5 was overturned as far as applicability to NC after the maps were drawn and survived a challenge. Is the map now subject to a section 2 challenge having tried to meet the law as it existed at the time?

[muon2]

Using a fair map theory of urban county clusters, Cumberland and Hoke should be entirely within the same district except for microchops. By that measure, I definitely like this version better.

You could make CD7 and CD8 whole with your plan:

[muon2]

Under that scenario, you could give Johnston/Sampson Counties to CD3 instead of having it reach up to Franklin/Granville Counties:

Better still why not have CD 1 go into Raleigh as well as Durham and eliminate all those fingers into CD 3? This one reduces county chops to 7.

[muon2]

Better still why not have CD 1 go into Raleigh as well as Durham and eliminate all those fingers into CD 3? This one reduces county chops to 7.

But that map pulls out of 8 or 9 Section 5 counties.

Yes, but only Section 2 is relevant now. Even then, if you caught the AL debates we had on this subject, it's not clear how much Section 2 requires any of these long fingers and what a geographically compact area with 50% VAP means in that context. In particular there was a lack of consensus about forced rural-urban links for a minority population.

[muon2]

Better still why not have CD 1 go into Raleigh as well as Durham and eliminate all those fingers into CD 3? This one reduces county chops to 7.

But that map pulls out of 8 or 9 Section 5 counties.

Yes, but only Section 2 is relevant now. Even then, if you caught the AL debates we had on this subject, it's not clear how much Section 2 requires any of these long fingers and what a geographically compact area with 50% VAP means in that context. In particular there was a lack of consensus about forced rural-urban links for a minority population.

What is your Wake County if not a "forced rural-urban link"? That pendulous teardrop to grab blacks  is really the height of ugliness.  You may say that that going into Durham shouldn't be required, either, but you can do it in a much less ugly, and much closer-to-contiguous, way.

I agree and that was part of my point. If you must run a finger into Durham as the means to make a 50%+ BVAP CD, why not run one into both Raleigh and Durham and eliminate 4 other less populated fingers poking into small cities. Essentially I'm trading 4 chops for one and either way there's a rural-urban link.

On the other had there was the argument put forward by some in the AL thread that such a link isn't required. If so then there's no reason to force a link to Durham and a much more compact map can be drawn.

[muon2]

This attempt involves the urban county cluster model. Urban clusters are made from counties in an MSA that have over 40% population in an urbanized area (or have 25K urbanized population). Minority clusters are contiguous counties that are over 40% BVAP. The map shows the UCCs in pink and the MCCs in green. The number in the circle is the minimum number of CDs it takes to cover the UCC.



For this plan UCCs and MCCs are each covered with the fewest number of CDs. Only Mecklenburg and Wake are chopped, and 4 microchops are used to keep all CDs within 0.5% of the population quota. There is no forced linking of the urban minority populations in Raleigh or Durham with CD 1, so it is left with only 40.3% BVAP. However, CDs 1, 3, 4 and 13 could be rearranged to provide a 50% BVAP CD without changing the rest of the map.

[muon2]

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.

[muon2]

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?

The Census Bureau calculates for each county the fraction of population that is in urbanized areas, urban clusters (ie small cities) and in rural areas. That data was used to separate the mostly commuting counties from the more significant contributors to the urban area. The file is at http://www2.census.gov/geo/ua/PctUrbanRural_County.xls. The data from that file is the basis of the maps jimrtex put together here.

[muon2]

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?

The Census Bureau calculates for each county the fraction of population that is in urbanized areas, urban clusters (ie small cities) and in rural areas. That data was used to separate the mostly commuting counties from the more significant contributors to the urban area. The file is at http://www2.census.gov/geo/ua/PctUrbanRural_County.xls. The data from that file is the basis of the maps jimrtex put together here.

I used this file, which is the relationship file between urban areas and counties, so for each county has the individual urban areas (plus rural remnant) for each county.

http://www2.census.gov/geo/ua/ua_county_rel_10.txt

Are there any places where the files would produce different results?

[muon2]

This attempt involves the urban county cluster model. Urban clusters are made from counties in an MSA that have over 40% population in an urbanized area (or have 25K urbanized population). Minority clusters are contiguous counties that are over 40% BVAP. The map shows the UCCs in pink and the MCCs in green. The number in the circle is the minimum number of CDs it takes to cover the UCC.



For this plan UCCs and MCCs are each covered with the fewest number of CDs. Only Mecklenburg and Wake are chopped, and 4 microchops are used to keep all CDs within 0.5% of the population quota. There is no forced linking of the urban minority populations in Raleigh or Durham with CD 1, so it is left with only 40.3% BVAP. However, CDs 1, 3, 4 and 13 could be rearranged to provide a 50% BVAP CD without changing the rest of the map.

If I force a VRA CD unto the plan above, I get the following plan. CD 1 is at 50.3% BVAP. The other eastern CDs are adjusted to keep chops and erosity down.

[muon2]

I slightly modified my non-VRA plan to reduce erosity without increasing chops (with previous posts updated). It shifts Stanly to CD 8 and alters the splits in Charlotte to follow the official planning regions, only chopping the east region between CD 8 and 12. Politically (based on 2008) the map is 7R, 2e, 3d, 1D.

CD 1 D+2
CD 2 R+0
CD 3 R+8
CD 4 D+11
CD 5 R+10
CD 6 D+1
CD 7 R+8
CD 8 R+13
CD 9 D+2
CD 10 R+16
CD 11 R+8
CD 12 R+6
CD 13 D+3