Texas 2020 House Apportioment

[I’m not Stu]

How would being well over 55% Hispanic CVAP be too low?

My worry was with the 5th district, which is only 49% Hispanic though I recognize that is not in the RGV

Put some neighboring areas in for a majority.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Yeah, my personal feeling was that D+2 was cutting it too fine when you have other neighbouring districts that a) have a lot of Hispanic voters to share and b) are that much more Democratic.

My Laredo-San Antonio district is only D+1, but I didn't feel that two in that general bracket would be acceptable.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/e476466d-9715-45b5-bb98-245d4fa2c7ba

Ran some calculations on the new map.

In 2020 Pres, the partisan breakdown was 85 Trump to 65 Biden. Breakdowns for most other similar elections are similar given the lack of competitive seats and Biden doing the best in suburban Texas where there are a lot of Likley R type seats.

The median seat in 2020 was Trump + 7.9. Still about a 2.5-point bias in the GOP's favour. However, 2 important factors to consider are that narrow Trump seats are disproportionately suburban but also tend to lag topline shifts.

A few other observations:

-For whatever reason, the GOP seemed much more aggressive/greedy when gerrymandering Dallas than Houston or Austin. Collin and Denton counties especially seem like disasters waiting to happen for the GOP whi9le Houston seems a bit more generally secure and in Austin there's really only 1 or maybe 2 seats Dems could gain.

-Right now, Hidalgo and Cameron counties have horrible geography for the GOP. Between the 2 of them, it's pretty much impossible to create a Trump seat even though he won 40% of the vote there. Instead, you get a bunch of Biden + 20ish seats that the GOP could gain down the road if they continue to make enough gains, though I'm skeptical they will win either county outright anytime soon.

-Democrats have quite a high floor relative to the GOP. Seat 60 was Biden + 12.4. Seat 55 was Biden + 18.9. There's virtually no chance Rs win a supermajority in the State House because of this.

-San Antonio's map really isn't that bad and has 2 competitive districts. Seems like VRA constrained Rs a bit. Republicans currently hold the Biden + 3 seat on the South Side of the city.

So yeah, basically Texas county rules and bad geography made it difficult for the GOP to make a gerrymander that's very secure, and if Dems do win they're path likely runs mostly through holding their RGV seats, making gains in the Metroplex, and flipping a few narrow Trump seats here and there throughout the state.

[Nyvin]

DFW could be a complete disaster for the GOP later in the decade, in a D-wave year it's easy to see Democrats picking up 12-13 seats there.   I think it would've been smarter to concede a D sink in Denton and a stronger D sink in Collin, but maybe the Republicans thought a 10 seat majority is already too small?

Assuming the three vulnerable RGV seats flip to R's their floor is probably 62 seats and a majority is 76 so DFW could be right on the cusp of everything they need for a majority.

Those two Bell County districts aren't really all that secure either for the GOP, and northern Bexar actually has good trends for Democrats too so that's another 2 seats that R's hold.

For the Republicans to make up ground I don't see much beyond the three narrow RGV seats (37, 74, 80),  maybe they can flip the Corpus Christi district??   Also Democrats currently hold HD-52 in Williamson, but that's been a competitive seat for a while and has pretty strong D trends.

For the state house, Republicans just can't escape from the fact that Texas is just a very urban state overall.

[Skill and Chance]

DFW could be a complete disaster for the GOP later in the decade, in a D-wave year it's easy to see Democrats picking up 12-13 seats there.   I think it would've been smarter to concede a D sink in Denton and a stronger D sink in Collin, but maybe the Republicans thought a 10 seat majority is already too small?

Assuming the three vulnerable RGV seats flip to R's their floor is probably 62 seats and a majority is 76 so DFW could be right on the cusp of everything they need for a majority.

Those two Bell County districts aren't really all that secure either for the GOP, and northern Bexar actually has good trends for Democrats too so that's another 2 seats that R's hold.

For the Republicans to make up ground I don't see much beyond the three narrow RGV seats (37, 74, 80),  maybe they can flip the Corpus Christi district??   Also Democrats currently hold HD-52 in Williamson, but that's been a competitive seat for a while and has pretty strong D trends.

For the state house, Republicans just can't escape from the fact that Texas is just a very urban state overall.

It depends on how much weight you put on trends.  IMO the optimal path to hold for the decade would have been drawing a conservative ~7 seat majority that is like 98% safe through 2026 while opening up as many long term opportunities in the RGV as possible.  The problem is at that point you are asking existing members to sacrifice their own seats for something that might happen in the future, and the rules make it impossible to just draw 76-78 60% Trump districts and make the majority a sure thing.

BTW something I always thought would be hilarious is if a state legislature had a tied chamber in the redistricting year (in a state with few or no restrictions on gerrymandering) and they made a deal to draw half of the districts >60% for each party to keep it tied for the decade.