US House Redistricting: Nevada

[Brittain33]

How risky would a hypothetical 3-1 map for Democrats be?  Would such a map get into VRA trouble?

It won't get past the governor's desk, so... and such a map would have to have two Clark County-to-Reno districts, otherwise a Republican northern district and Republican exurban Clark district draw themselves.

[Brittain33]

Those partisan figures can't be right, Joe. Clark County as a whole is only D+5.

I wonder if it's registration numbers, not PVI. The Republican version of NV-2 has a 7 point registration edge for Republicans and this is functionally the same district. I also recall that in 2002, voter registration numbers were the key factor in how NV-3 was drawn.

[Brittain33]

I'm not really going to adopt krazen's framework for defining various categories as white liberals and conservatives and how they behave, but I will say that by this standard, in the 2008 Congressional elections "white conservatives" elected exactly zero African-Americans and zero Hispanics who weren't Cuban-Americans in predominantly Cuban districts. This is at least one fewer than a caucus composed solely of the Democrat he's throwing out as an exception.

[Brittain33]

The fact that millions of white liberals voted for Obama over Clinton or Edwards in 2008, or even that millions live in diverse districts and regularly vote for minority congressmen, is less significant than the fact that Republicans in a district with .2% of the country's population voted for a Filipino-American rep with the first name "Steve" and a last name that's the same as a European country. White liberals are the racists, even though almost all of them have voted for minority officials at some point or another. The vast majority of w.c.s don't live in the few districts that keep getting referenced by our friend as redeeming an entire country.

This is nonsense on stilts.

[Brittain33]

And I'm sure you'll be just as vocal about the need for a second minority-majority district in South Carolina, Virginia, and Alabama

Not at all. I believe in retribution for decades of Democratic gerrymandering in the south. They get 1 district.

Interesting, the shift from using "white conservatives" and "white liberals" to party here. Which term do you think better describes the Democrats who controlled state government in the south for most of the last century?

[Brittain33]

This looks like it was from the first map they passed:

I did my best to draw it in DRA:

NV-01 - 59-39 Obama
NV-02 - 49-48 Obama
NV-03 - 56-42 Obama
NV-04 - 57-41 Obama

I... don't think that's going to fly with the governor.

Wow 3 D seats and 1 swing seat? That's pretty bold.

NV-2 went narrowly for Obama, but there's plenty of evidence from the last several elections that it's too R to be a swing seat for Congress.

[Brittain33]

Feeble Democratic hopes crushed by victorious Republican hammer of righteousness.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/oct/11/democrats-present-redistricting-plan/

[Brittain33]

Given that Steven Horsford wants to run in the 4th, I wonder if he tries to engineer changes to this map to move the rural areas into the 3rd.

How do you propose he does that?

Simply pass a map that tweaks the court master's boundaries.

Under what circumstances would he do that to weaken the 3rd rather than unpack the 1st? Other than in order to help Republicans, of course.