Virginia 2020 County Projection Map

[Torie]

Gorgeous map. A+. 

[Torie]

Would you project the BVAP's forward to 2020 in the same way you project population figures forward?

[Torie]

Would you project the BVAP's forward to 2020 in the same way you project population figures forward?

It would be hard since the BVAP is not the same as the black estimate, and the estimate is based on a 5 year span. What I would say is that there isn't a great deal of change in percent in most of the SE counties, so using the 2010 DRA numbers should be a decent estimate of the BVAP.

It might be relevant as to whether a performing black district can be drawn that is Richmond based.

[Torie]

Would you project the BVAP's forward to 2020 in the same way you project population figures forward?

It would be hard since the BVAP is not the same as the black estimate, and the estimate is based on a 5 year span. What I would say is that there isn't a great deal of change in percent in most of the SE counties, so using the 2010 DRA numbers should be a decent estimate of the BVAP.

It might be relevant as to whether a performing black district can be drawn that is Richmond based.

In 2010 the total black population was about 1.5% higher than the BVAP in SE VA. Over half of those excess black children will be voting age in 2020, so using the total black percentage from 2010 should be close to the BVAP in 2020.

I find that I can make two whole county CDs in SE VA that both have about 40% black pop. One is Richmond, Petersburg and the southern rural areas. The other is in Hampton Roads. Those should be pretty close to performing. With a couple of chops they would clearly be performing.

That is about what I guessed. 40% should be performing. The Dems would be smart if they hold the power to do a gerrymander light, that is not an ugly map.   If the Pubs had done that, they would not be facing the full court press of legal challenges they face today perhaps.

[Torie]

Here is my little effort. It should be amusing to see what contortions are administered as NOVA is bacon striped and a black performing CD is jettisoned to squeeze out a couple of more Dem CD's in a map that by then SCOTUS will have very probably held to be illegal. Have fun. In the real world, the Dems are going to have to content themselves with a 6D-5R map, and if the Pubs have their way, a 6R-5D map. The joy out of gerrymanders is just not going to be what it used to be. Sad, not!

[Torie]

Here is my little effort. It should be amusing to see what contortions are administered as NOVA is bacon striped and a black performing CD is jettisoned to squeeze out a couple of more Dem CD's in a map that by then SCOTUS will have very probably held to be illegal. Have fun. In the real world, the Dems are going to have to content themselves with a 6D-5R map, and if the Pubs have their way, a 6R-5D map. The joy out of gerrymanders is just not going to be what it used to be. Sad, not!

What justification is there to run VA-10 all the way down to Charlottesville?   There aren't even any highways running that route.  

Also VA-7 is already just about a swing district as it is,  you don't need to take BVAP away from VA-4 to make it a Dem seat in 2020,  just add Charlottesville to it and take away the rural GOP parts from it.   The dems most certainly do not have to contend with a 6-5 map,  that's just silly,  VA-10 can be a NOVA safe seat without Charlottesville easily.  

Your map borderlines on a R Gerrymander.

I'm confused. You add Charlottesville to what CD to make it Dem (appended to a NOVA bacon stripe CD I guess)?  CD-07 is already Dem in the above map. If you want another Dem CD, you could do Muon2's contortions to make CD-02 more Dem (lacking an all year bridge or ferry connection, but whatever). I'm not sure what his BV is in his map however in CD-04 and CD-03, and if it is substantially lower than mine, the black caucus in VA might not like it. In my VA-04, when the census comes out, the BV should move up, as certain precincts in Chesterfield can be selected that get a lot more black, as compared to the county as a whole.

[Torie]

Here is my little effort. It should be amusing to see what contortions are administered as NOVA is bacon striped and a black performing CD is jettisoned to squeeze out a couple of more Dem CD's in a map that by then SCOTUS will have very probably held to be illegal. Have fun. In the real world, the Dems are going to have to content themselves with a 6D-5R map, and if the Pubs have their way, a 6R-5D map. The joy out of gerrymanders is just not going to be what it used to be. Sad, not!

This demonstrates that the concept of competitive districts is a myth.

I think you should put the northern cape (Accomack and Northampton) in VA-1.

It depends on the state. VA could have two very competitive districts if so desired in a somewhat reasonable map.

[Torie]

I look forward to seeing your map based on the 2020 population projections. Oh, I see them above. It's about what I expected, and utterly hideous. As I said, I doubt such a map will be legal in 2020.

On this VRA stuff, what has SCOTUS said about racially gerrymandered maps that do not connect widely dispersed and non contiguous minorities, that help create more performing minority districts than would otherwise be the case, rather than packing? I don't think SCOTUS has ever struck such a map down. So I don't think that VA-03 district that Jimrtex hates is illegal.

[Torie]

What is the percentage of competitive CD's in the nation right now? About 10%?

[Torie]

I look forward to seeing your map based on the 2020 population projections.

There's clean county maps right here in this thread of a 7-4 Democratic map based on pop. projections.

I think you're seriously underestimating how easy it is to make 4 Safe-D clean NOVA based seats without ugly county splits while making VA-02 safe D and VA-7 likely D with merely the additions of Norfolk and Albemarle/Charlottesville, respectively.

Yes, I see them now, and commented on them above. I did not ever say that what you wanted is impossible. What I said is that such maps would be hideous, and will probably be illegal by 2020. And I don't think the Dems will do that even if legal. The sentiment now is more along the lines of gerrymandering lite. One fallout of going hideous, is that it tends to end up with an initiative that has an independent body draw the lines.

[Torie]

Yes, I see them now, and commented on them above. I did not ever say that what you wanted is impossible. What I said is that such maps would be hideous, and will probably be illegal by 2020. And I don't think the Dems will do that even if legal. The sentiment now is more along the lines of gerrymandering lite. One fallout of going hideous, is that it tends to end up with an initiative that has an independent body draw the lines.

To be fair, assuming you mean a ballot initiative, there is no process in Virginia to do that. If Virginia Democrats wanted to draw hideous maps, no one but the courts could stop them.

I'm going to post my perfectly legal 9D-2R map here later tonight just to piss off the nay-sayers in this thread.

No, you are amusing me.

[Torie]

Yes, I see them now, and commented on them above. I did not ever say that what you wanted is impossible. What I said is that such maps would be hideous, and will probably be illegal by 2020. And I don't think the Dems will do that even if legal. The sentiment now is more along the lines of gerrymandering lite. One fallout of going hideous, is that it tends to end up with an initiative that has an independent body draw the lines.

To be fair, assuming you mean a ballot initiative, there is no process in Virginia to do that. If Virginia Democrats wanted to draw hideous maps, no one but the courts could stop them.

OK. My guess is that if the Dems have thin majorities in the legislature, there will not be a majority vote for a hideous map. These days, that could be a career ender for those from marginal districts.

What I guess Kennedy will do is hold that a map with a substantial and enduring partisan bias which also traduces reasonable redistricting principles by going all erose and choppy, is illegal. He will not buy into this ridiculous efficiency metric.  We shall see.

[Torie]

Nice effort. Erose affair (putting aside the emaciated twisted snake like VA-03 for a moment, in particular the yellow CD, and to a lessor extent the blue one), but you did try to keep the chops down. Assuming SCOTUS does not tighten the noose too much to nullify your map in general, I wonder if Justice Kennedy will tolerate your VA-03 excursion into erosity in particular. He struck down a Pub drawn Hispanic CD in Texas that got performing by combining Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande and Austin. when a more compact Rio Grande based Hispanic CD that did not take in two very disparate communities was possible, but avoided by the Pubs in order to jettison a white Dem Austin based CD. You perhaps have done the same, in the opposite direction.

I would delete the precinct lines when posting a map. You don't need them, and it makes more difficult to see the lines where erose in urban areas.

[Torie]

You know if you combine what Muon2 did to VA-02 with what I did with VA-10, you get a 7-4 map that would look far better than what you did to squeeze out an additional marginal seat. And if you drop the BV for my VA-03 down three points so that mine matches Muon2's BV for that CD, then with my map VA-02 becomes a swing seat.

[Torie]

What's so ugly about my map? This is probably the cleanest map Virginia's seen in decades, and there's absolutely zero reason for Democrats to not go for it if they have a trifecta. They can make the case that a D+4 VA-02 and a D+5 VA-10 and an R+1 (albeit D-trending) VA-07 are more than sufficient for the GOP to make a play on given the state's Democratic tilt. They have zero incentive to make a 7D-4R map if a 5 safe D, 2 Likely D, 1 swing, and 3 safe R map is possible. A court challenge based on racial gerrymandering wouldn't hold up and it's very unlikely that a SCOTUS ruling would prevent my map.

It has a very high erosity score per Muon2's metric, or any other metric for that matter, and to my eyes looks ugly, but aesthetics is subjective. And it has legal vulnerabilities, as I noted, in particular your design of VA-03. If I were a partisan Dem in VA, I would question whether it is worth it all to get another swing seat. But I guess by 2021, we will have a much better idea what the law is than we do now, so in that sense the question might be moot when it comes time to actually draw maps. But for this exercise if the map were being drawn now, the questions are not moot at all.

[Torie]

If you can link me to this "erosity metric" that'd be much appreciated. In any case, such a map would probably still hold up until (READ: if) the courts strike it down, so it could still be of use for 2-3 cycles in all likelihood.

I am also confused as to how it supposedly dilutes the black vote considering both seats are just as black as the current VA-04. Sounds like a BS Republican gerrymander talking point. My map doesn't even divide cities in Hampton Roads like the current map does!

Muon2 counts state road chops between counties in different CD's, with a similar metric involving road cuts between municipalities in different CD's within a county, but more complicated, for counties that have chops involving more than around 40,000 residents.

As I explained above, your problem with VA-03 is that it combines black populations in two different metro areas, where it is possible to draw a performing black CD that does not do that. There is a specific SCOTUS case on that issue.

Btw, Muon2 mentioned with his map, that a seasonal link between counties is now the equivalent of a non state highway. I thought such merely seasonal links were banned under his rules. Maybe he modified his metric, or maybe I missed something. It doesn't matter. Courts are not going to be applying his rules (in particular the more esoteric aspects) any time soon.

[Torie]

Ftr I luv how my maps with limited county splits are ugly yet Republican abominations of county splits and cracks and slices have held up the entire 2010 decade in like a dozen states lol

The law is in flux. Stay tuned.

[Torie]

Torie Imma draw a 7-3-1 Virginia map that even you can't take issue with. And I'm sure it will make the R's on here furious.

There have been no sightings of "furious" Pubs here as of yet.

[Torie]

Yes, I agree that PNM's map is about the best one can do, to achieve his nefarious goals.

There does not appear to be a way to avoid the yellow CD traveling the entire length of the state, given the assorted and sundry "blockages."

I might revise my map to avoid a macrochop in Chesterfield County and in VA-02 to play Muon2's game (I will ignore Muon2's rule to the extent it exists of banning bridge chops, because I don't agree with it, except as a preference). It raises a public policy issue actually. In the real world, it is better when creating a black performing CD to take in immediately adjacent black hoods in an adjacent county, rather than have the CD take in disparate and far away black rural counties. Indeed, it raises the Kennedy issue when one does so, although it would probably pass muster based on the rationale of avoiding a county chop, particularly a macro-chop, and the rural counties are adjacent, and where there is not a nefarious purpose of gerrymandering away a white seat of a given party. If in fact avoiding a chop of Chesterfield served the purpose of creating another white CD for the party of the map drawers, the map would be more vulnerable. Which is what PNM's map does (well a swing CD), but I digress.  My revised map will not be doing that, so it should be less vulnerable.