North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

That map basically perfectly matches the partisan split of the state, with 7 seats won by Trump and Biden each, and the narrowest Biden seat is more marginal than the narrowest Trump seat.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Oftentimes getting partisan equality (which the NC map is spot in) is impossible without making it look ugly. For instance, this is the cleanest 'fair map' of WI I could do:
https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::58b328c0-461f-469e-b687-4e747f43d211

I think Wisconsin is a special case, in that a doctrinaire partisan equality approach runs headlong against the very bad geography for Democrats in the state.
It's more feasible elsewhere.
So 'oftentimes' is an overly strong word here.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Oftentimes getting partisan equality (which the NC map is spot in) is impossible without making it look ugly. For instance, this is the cleanest 'fair map' of WI I could do:
https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::58b328c0-461f-469e-b687-4e747f43d211

I think Wisconsin is a special case, in that a doctrinaire partisan equality approach runs headlong against the very bad geography for Democrats in the state.
It's more feasible elsewhere.
So 'oftentimes' is an overly strong word here.

KY and TN are hard.

That's just two other states.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/e1a836cc-2791-43b6-9f7e-5006b4a51f34
Thoughts on this map?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/e1a836cc-2791-43b6-9f7e-5006b4a51f34
Thoughts on this map?

North Carolina is awkward to draw, especially in the Fayetteville/Wilmington/Goldsboro triangle. I like the competitive seat in the area though

Thanks for the feedback.
I was trying to draw a minority seat in the area.
I also managed to reach almost perfect proportionalitality per DRA.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Sol, what are your thoughts on this thing I've just made?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/c5b872ab-3e66-46e6-91dc-4628d8580f66

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Sol, what are your thoughts on this thing I've just made?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/c5b872ab-3e66-46e6-91dc-4628d8580f66

Not bad at all! The only major gripe I have is the slice of Winston--I'd cut into Guilford County instead of slicing W-S down the middle.

Are you proposing to split both Guilford and Forsyth counties?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Sol, what are your thoughts on this thing I've just made?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/c5b872ab-3e66-46e6-91dc-4628d8580f66

Not bad at all! The only major gripe I have is the slice of Winston--I'd cut into Guilford County instead of slicing W-S down the middle.

Are you proposing to split both Guilford and Forsyth counties?

Yeah, that makes more sense than cutting Winston-Salem like that. You could also just split Guilford if that gives you the vapors.

I've now redone the lines, rotating territory between 4, 5, and 6. Winston-Salem is practically whole in the 6th now.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I dislike splitting Mecklenburg in three, but it's a choice I'm willing to make in certain circumstances. Depends on parameters and what I'm doing elsewhere.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I assume Ross would also have the strong advantage against Nickel.

Might depend on how the new seat is drawn? If they drew it towards the south of Wake County to be akin to the 2021-23 2nd district, it’d probably contain more of Nickel’s base than Ross’s.

Back then then Wake + Durham+ Orange wasn't even  2 full seats and you could still add 3 fairly medium sized rurals/exurban counties. Now Orange + Wake+Durham has a spare 100k to begin with with  and if you leave the northern portion of the county open you ruin the oppurtunity for the black seat. Instead of having a clearly R trending swing seat you now have a mix trending seat. The south can easily be bared with either rurals far to the west or just make a hodgepodge of the Research triangle exurbs with the remaining 100k of Wake.

Not only is that part of the state growing very fast, but the state gained a new seat. So it makes sense.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yeah 12-2 is basically impossible now. The northern Wake seat only barely went to Trump and voted for Cooper in 2020.

It’s been pretty much impossible for the last decade, which is why Republicans didn’t do it in 2011.

Last decade you could’ve done the NC-12 snake, the Raleigh-Durham pack, and a swing black belt seat.

Just look at the 2013-2017 map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Behold!
A clean-ish 12R-2D map!
https://davesredistricting.org/join/2aca0b34-1714-412c-844c-1576392cf6b6

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The big problem with a 12R-2D at this stage is 1) it kinda requires carving up the 1st, which is a...gutsy move to say the least, and 2) it requires taking precincts for the Durham seat very carefully, choosing only the highest-numerical vote margin ones mostly. 2) still inevitably leads to at least two Cooper-won seats in Wake. Balancing them to all be Cooper by a marginal amount (like, Cooper+4 at worst) creates a series of R seats after splitting up Wake County Austin-style, but if the state trends hard enough, it risks creating a dummymander.
Btw, the 7th on my map is insanely polarized geographically.

NC-07, outside of Wake 336,172
Democratic 57,048 30.2%
Republican 129,217 68.5%

NC-07, Wake 411,213
Democratic 141,087 62.0%
Republican 81,916 36.0%

NC-07 (in total) 747,385
Democratic 170,559 46.6%
Republican 189,830 51.9%

(2020-PRES)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Behold!
A clean-ish 12R-2D map!
https://davesredistricting.org/join/2aca0b34-1714-412c-844c-1576392cf6b6

That map feel very icarusy to me. I could image some, if not all, of the Biden ~46% seats flipping by the end of the decade.

What do you think is the worst-case scenario for Rs in 2030? The best-case? And the median?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Behold!
A clean-ish 12R-2D map!
https://davesredistricting.org/join/2aca0b34-1714-412c-844c-1576392cf6b6

That map feel very icarusy to me. I could image some, if not all, of the Biden ~46% seats flipping by the end of the decade.

What do you think is the worst-case scenario for Rs in 2030? The best-case? And the median?

Best case scenario would be the start tacking a little to the right as the suburbs stabilize and the rurals turn more red. Worst case is Wake/Mecklenburg start growing like Atlanta as the cost of living in the rest of the country continues to spiral and end up voting like Fulton. Median would be somewhere between, a small democratic swing but growth slows by the end of decade.

I meant in seat count. Thanks for the reply either way, of course.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Behold!
A clean-ish 12R-2D map!
https://davesredistricting.org/join/2aca0b34-1714-412c-844c-1576392cf6b6

That map feel very icarusy to me. I could image some, if not all, of the Biden ~46% seats flipping by the end of the decade.

What do you think is the worst-case scenario for Rs in 2030? The best-case? And the median?

Best case scenario would be the start tacking a little to the right as the suburbs stabilize and the rurals turn more red. Worst case is Wake/Mecklenburg start growing like Atlanta as the cost of living in the rest of the country continues to spiral and end up voting like Fulton. Median would be somewhere between, a small democratic swing but growth slows by the end of decade.

I meant in seat count. Thanks for the reply either way, of course.

Ah do you mean your map or in general.

My map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is what I think will happen:

Congressional: Likely 3-1-10, with the swing seat being a predecessor to the current NC-01 the GOP counts of continuing to shift right. Map is likely similar to the one that was originally overturned, but makes some minor changes now that there's different sets of incumbents and we've seen another cycle of political shifts.

State Sen: Honestly, it's not hard to lock the GOP into a supermajority without doing anything too absurd; the GOP already won a supermajority in 2022 with just a slightly R favorable year. I expect a map similar to the current one that just makes some optimizations so in your average year, the GOP gets to about 32 seats, and basically locks in a supermajority. I don't expect them to be super aggressive with cracking up suburbs of Charlotte and Raliegh, especially given the 2022 results; I think most emphasis will be on the black-belt and more mid-sized cities like Fayetteville, Greensboro, and Wilmington.

State House: This is honestly more difficult to *lock-in* a GOP supermajority, but you can do it so the GOP should be favored in a normal cycle. Again, I expect the biggest point of contention to be the black-belt seats and seats around smaller D-leaning communities. Especially on the state House level, I doubt we'll see GOP aggressively try to bacon-strip out suburbs, but def try to shore up incumbents (rmbr County-splitting rrule is still in place too, so it's literally impossible to squeeze much out of Mecklenburg and Wake Counties).

This seems right to me, though there's some speculation that they might try and overturn the county splitting rules with the newly favorable court.

If the county splitting rules were overturned, what would replace them?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I need to try my hand at gerrymandering the state legislature without nesting. I'll show y'all the results.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I am a bit surprised you can draw a Mecklenburg Trump seat at all.