North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So I've been messing trying to make a good dem gerrymander and I've made an 8/6 map that does so pretty well. And boy is it ugly. Containing 3/4 snake districts it's probably one of the worst intentional maps I've created. It also contains two minority majority (just barely) districts.



NC-01 - Clinton won, 31.1% (53.1% Black)
NC-02 - Clinton won, 17.2%
NC-03 - Clinton won, 17.8%
NC-04 - Clinton won, 17.0%
NC-05 - Clinton won, 15.9%
NC-06 - Clinton won, 11.9%
NC-07 - Trump won, 25.7%
NC-08 - Trump won, 23.5%
NC-09 - Trump won, 38.3%
NC-10 - Clinton won, 13.2%
NC-11 - Clinton won, 27.1% (50.8% "Minority Coalition"/ 34.1% Black
NC-12 - Trump won, 35.0%
NC-13 - Trump won, 46.9%
NC-14 - Trump won, 39.2%

All of these districts are pretty safe for their respectively parties, the only ones that show much chance of flipping are the 10th and *maybe* the 8th. But both would take strong wave years.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

And if you don't mind really ugly gerrymandering and if you want to spread the D butter even thinner:



1: Clinton +12.6
2: Clinton +14.4
3: Trump +35.3
4: Clinton +14.1
5: Trump +45.6
6: Clinton +13.8
7: Clinton +16.3
8: Clinton +16.5
9: Clinton +10.0
10: Trump +37.9
11: Trump +13.0
12: Clinton +19.0
13: Trump +46.2
14: Clinton +15.5

It's beautiful, shame Boone and Asheville can't get a blue seat

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

They can:


The 8th, 10th and 12th are Clinton +9.3, 9.8 and 9.3, respectively. Biden results should be even better.

Oh this. I hate and love this.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This is my attempt to make a better looking dem fixed map that includes the crucially important and neglected "Democratic voting towns in the Western part of the state" COI that is totally legit and should be ignored no longer!

• NC-01 Clinton 13.4, The Asheville/Boone/Gastonia/Winston-Salem snake(s)
• NC-02 Clinton 15.3, Centered around Rocky Mount (47.7% Black)
• NC-03 Clinton 18.0, High Point, Greensboro, and Burlington
• NC-04 Clinton 17.7, Durham, Chapel Hill, and a bunch a deep red rural areas (This would make some fun elections
• NC-05 Clinton 20.1 Most of Raleigh
• NC-06 Clinton 15.9 Cary to Fayetteville
• NC-07 Clinton 30.8 North Mecklenburg
• NC-08 Clinton 10.7 Charlotte suburbs to Wilmington(The least democratic, and could possibly flip in an R Wave year)
• NC-09 Trump 26.4 The Outer banks mostly
• NC-10 Trump 26.8 Raleigh exurbs to the Wilmington Coast... I guess?
• NC-11 Trump 22.5 Fayetteville suburbs to the Charlotte exurbs
• NC-12 Trump 42.9 Kannapolis then parts of the Charlotte suburbs, sorta
• NC-13 Trump 34.0 The Mountains
• NC-14 Trump 38.9 The rural Northwest

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This is my attempt to make a better looking dem fixed map that includes the crucially important and neglected "Democratic voting towns in the Western part of the state" COI that is totally legit and should be ignored no longer!

hahaha

I especially enjoy the fact that that district has a semi-decent chance of electing a pol from Winston-Salem.

I’d say the two biggest bases are Asheville and Winston-Salem. So I could see a primary battle between people from the two. (What an unholy match)

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This is my somewhat terrible attempt at a "fair map". I like most of it, but the center of the state could be better. This would breakdown to a 5 democrats (1,3,4,5,10), 1 swing ( 8 ), and 8 republicans (the rest). I like District 14 being the "Mountain" district and I like 2 being almost exclusively the Outer banks. The 3rd is a plurality black (by literally just 300 people). 6, 9, and 11 are really awkward though. There was an iteration of this map where 11 was a ring district around Winston-Salem & Greensboro, with the 9 being a northern counterpart to the 8th. (I have the map saved if anyone is interested in seeing that mess)

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I think the secret sauce for making attractive NC districts is shifting the 1st district westward. That gives the 3rd and 7th room to maneouver without having to dip into exurban Raleigh or the Sandhills, and makes for decent districts in the Triangle and Piedmont.

You're not wrong, just there's a bit of a white wall you hit once you get past Granville County. There's some black population in Caswell and Person, but usually taking a lot out of that looks terrible. The only significant black communities in that region are in Raleigh and Durham. I don't know if other people have this issue but North Carolina is one of the hardest states for me to try and make district for. It's population geography is all weird.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I think the secret sauce for making attractive NC districts is shifting the 1st district westward. That gives the 3rd and 7th room to maneouver without having to dip into exurban Raleigh or the Sandhills, and makes for decent districts in the Triangle and Piedmont.

You're not wrong, just there's a bit of a white wall you hit once you get past Granville County. There's some black population in Caswell and Person, but usually taking a lot out of that looks terrible. The only significant black communities in that region are in Raleigh and Durham. I don't know if other people have this issue but North Carolina is one of the hardest states for me to try and make district for. It's population geography is all weird.

Yeah NC is frustrating--it's population is incredibly evenly spread so when you make a cut it's pretty difficult.

What I tend to like to do is something like this--take in Franklin and Granville, plus Person and Caswell, and then compensate by only taking the most heavily Black portions of Eastern NC.

Person and Caswell are the bane of my existence, no matter where you but them they don’t feel like they fit. I say we let Virginia have them

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So like for a “fair map” how do we feel about county splits? I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is part of the reason for my 2/7 split.) I noticed at kwabbit’s map there’s a lot of county splits, but still a good map.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So like for a “fair map” how do we feel about county splits? I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is part of the reason for my 2/7 split.) I noticed at kwabbit’s map there’s a lot of county splits, but still a good map.

i mean the issue with fishing for perfect county groupings is that they basically only exist for a year, so you’re going to have to reconfigure your entire map when you have the 2020 census numbers. on the other hand, when you draw with a less hardcore emphasis on county splits and more on immutable characteristics, the resulting map is far less tenuous

edit: also, putting county lines at the forefront typically forgoes compactness and communities of interest, which imo is a poor trade-off

Yea, I've noticed that happening. I just try to avoid unnecessary once, but I end up erring too much on the "absolutely no splits" side too much

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So I've made a pretty solid VRA district in Mecklenburg, a little bit under par to give it some room to grow.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

IIRC that does split the towns of Mint Hill and Matthews though--shockingly precincts are pretty close to town lines there.

You're not wrong, but I feel that's almost expected for a VRA district

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This is my next attempt at a fair map using the comments people have made so far. I like the new south Wake, as it's fairly good in terms of keeping a same community together. It's now a dem trending swing seat. 1, 2, 6, 7, 10 are all safe dems, with the rest being safe red. 3 is nice and 4 is.. ok. I'd like it more inland. 5 could be made a second swing district is I added Fayetteville to it, but that would take some finagling. I made the Mountain district much more mountain focused, and now is only R+7. Overall I think its a fairly decent map with nice, but compact districts.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So I wanted to try a least county split map just to try and it actually isn't horrible. Far from good, but not as bad as I was expecting. There are only two (!!) county splits outside of Wake and Mecklenburg (Davidson and Forsyth). The greatest deviation is in the 6,000s which isn't too terrible so a least split map.

• NC-01 - POP. 727,089 Clinton 40.4 (37.3% Black)
• NC-02 - POP. 726,100 Clinton 22.1 (44.4% Black)
• NC-03 - POP. 724,487 Clinton 15.5
• NC-04 - POP. 731,432 Clinton 31.8
• NC-05 - POP. 727,111 Clinton 10.1
• NC-06 - POP. 719,610 Trump 20.4
• NC-07 - POP. 731,794 Trump 3.9
• NC-08 - POP. 722,264 Trump 9.5
• NC-09 - POP. 725,341 Trump 27.0
• NC-10 - POP. 720,763 Trump 10.3
• NC-11 - POP. 727,867 Trump 36.4
• NC-12 - POP. 726,399 Trump 16.6
• NC-13 - POP. 719,282 Trump 37.8
• NC-14 - POP. 726,059 Trump 15.1

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of legal rules with population deviation, but that deviation is awfully high--I think states usually shoot for extremely low deviations to minimize possible legal challenges. I personally usually use +/-1000 as the max deviation, and IIRC that's wildly generous.

Also that 9th district is a yikes!

Yea this isn’t a realistic map, but that 9th is just so bad. The 7th ain’t much better. This map is certainly pushing the limits of deviation (which is hard push down more due to county splits).

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

Seems pretty good all things considered. 4 and 6 could be reworked to look nicer, but I know how annoying that region is. The biggest thing I don’t like is the east/west split of Davidson. It’s more fitting for a north/south split. (Overall I personally would like less county splits).

However, I am deeply disappointed and concerned that the small democratic towns in the western part of the state COI has been grossly ignored. It’s truly the absolute top priority when districting there state

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

Seems pretty good all things considered. 4 and 6 could be reworked to look nicer, but I know how annoying that region is. The biggest thing I don’t like is the east/west split of Davidson. It’s more fitting for a north/south split. (Overall I personally would like less county splits).

However, I am deeply disappointed and concerned that the small democratic towns in the western part of the state COI has been grossly ignored. It’s truly the absolute top priority when districting there state

How is that the absolute top priority lol?  Anything excluding an Asheville split in Western NC is fine.

It totally is and anyone who says otherwise is 100% a trumpian Republican hack who wants to gerrymander every map for republicans. Any map where Hendersonville and Greensboro aren’t in one district are totally unfair and should be throw out

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Bumping this so I can find it easier when I get home and post by 9-5 Democratic map

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

and behold... my masterpiece. 9 Democrats to 5 Republicans in North Carolina. The map shown uses composite but ever district voted for the same party in every election Dave's has rn

Also there are *Three* minority seats

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I was able to make a 9-6 Dem Gerrymander. I was trying to do a 10-4 D map by making two Dem seats in the Winston-Salem and Greensboro area, but the margins were way too small to be sustainable for the Dems, so I had to combined that area.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/b920bf1a-b50f-420f-8e33-cdf93731c92f

I did make a 10-4/9-4-1 map on page 19 of the thread. VRA complaint too

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

And people called me crazy when I suggested TXGOP might just through the VRA out the window…

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

https://twitter.com/MurphinNC/status/1455660028103479300?s=20
Moving towards house.

This map is beautiful considering what Dems are doing in other states.

You do realize it’s maps like these that’s why democrats are doing what we’re doing in Illinois, Cali, etc.?

Like you’ve got vaguely the right idea just wrong Way around

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

If you honestly think that is why the Democrats in then states do that. Then you are fooling yourself.

I’m not saying it’s the only reason. But it was definitely republicans that started the modern gerrymandering war with the old Texas, Louisiana, Florida maps of the 2000s & 2010s. Democrats also are playing in this, but we’re the ones trying to end it.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

If it’s wrong then why do Democrats do it now? And you can’t say well the Republicans are doing it so we have to do it to off set them… that crap and we know it. No matter who it is. The party in power will do what they can to help their party. There is no such thing as a fair map when you have people making them. They will alway bring in their bias view point.

And don’t say the Democrats made a fair map in NC, because even though their map was 7-7, it put Communities together that shouldn’t have been for the sake of making a more Democrat friendly map.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like everything about the Republican map, there are things I would change. But it is what it is.

You gave your self the answer then refused it. Idk what else to tell you. All I can say is maybe state democrats can gerrymander brownbeat republicans into advancing the anti-gerrymander legislation they refuse to pass federally

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Where would a sixth Dem district even come from? I count one seat in Charlotte, one in Raleigh, one in Durham/Chapel Hill, one in Greensboro/Winston-Salem and one in the Northeast black belt (that's trending R).

It’s very easy to draw 5 democratic seats in the north central region, plus 2 competitive (or one safe, one Republican leaning competitive) in the Charlotte suburbs and the black area around Lumberton, Fayetteville. This adds another minority seat too!