2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Louisiana

[Spectator]

Are we going to see a trend where Democrats increasingly have geographical advantages in the Deep South?

Yes, with the possible exception of GA because almost all the Dems are within 50 miles of Atlanta, but even there the majority-white rural areas are now extreme R packs, so it’s starting to even out.

Even in Georgia there’s still a lot of deep blue pockets outside the growing Atlanta bubble. It’s easy to draw two Safe Democrat non-ATL seats with the current GA-02 and a Savannah to Augusta seat. On top of that, you can draw a blue-tilting district with Athens, plus the rural black belt counties east of Macon and drawing all the way to pick up parts of Gwinnett County that GA-07 has left over.

[Spectator]

No, a Republican will not win a Biden +10 black seat in the south unless turnout just collapses among blacks. A narrower Biden +5 or so seat, maybe.

[Spectator]

There’s a lot of unwarranted assumptions in kwabbit’s response to mine. No, you cannot assume the crossover support she received against a nobody would hold up against a well-funded challenger in a high profile race. Second, there’s no precedence on the federal level of a Republican holding a seat that blue in the House. We’ve had Senate incumbents do welll in blue territory in the south, like Jonny Isakson. But it’s all against no names.

[Spectator]

There’s a lot of unwarranted assumptions in kwabbit’s response to mine. No, you cannot assume the crossover support she received against a nobody would hold up against a well-funded challenger in a high profile race. Second, there’s no precedence on the federal level of a Republican holding a seat that blue in the House. We’ve had Senate incumbents do welll in blue territory in the south, like Jonny Isakson. But it’s all against no names.

The only current-day equivalents are NY-04 Republican-held seats in California, which are both really an extremely different dynamic. Historically the only remotely close parallel would be Ann Northrup, who iirc did well in the Black community in Louisville, but that was almost 20 years ago, in a mostly white and much closer seat, and she lost.

I meant to say there’s no precedent of a Republican holding a seat that blue in the south.

[Spectator]

Based on 2022 results and the recent bipartisan efforts in the state to legislate on moral issues(porn verification, social media parental consent etc), I honestly expect Biden's margin in Louisiana to completely collapse. It won't likely be enough to save Letlow but I'd be wary of assuming Biden will hold up in this state(and the south in general)

It's Louisiana. If the district is over 50% black (or includes New Orleans), the Democrat will win, simple as that. For the same reasons that Democrats from the Deep South can be idiosyncratic on some of these issues, it is unlikely that Democrats will collapse, particularly on the congressional level.

I do think my left-of-center friends should prepare for the possibility that a conservadem wins the new seat, but all the takes about a surprise R victory in the event of a second VRA district are doom/cope.

There are large parts of this district where whites are more Republican than blacks are Democratic.

Then it wouldn’t exactly function as a VRA seat, would it?