2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Virginia

[Skill and Chance]

The HoD map has compact outer Albemarle and Fredericksburg seats that should be at least Lean D, a single clearly Dem black-opportunity seat around Petersburg, and an extra clearly Dem seat in Loudoun.  Unless I am missing something that makes an incumbent Dem precarious in RIC/Hampton Roads, the chamber should clearly flip back at the next election. 

[Skill and Chance]

DRA link for the congressional map.

Working on uploading the senate and HoD maps.

6-5 by Pres 2016, 7-4 by Gov 2017, Sen 2018, and Pres 2020.

So Clinton still won VA-02?

No she won the Loudoun seat by 1.

OK, wow, that one's clearly going Dem in the next election that isn't a GOP wave then, but the flip side Luria and Spanberger both likely lose next year.  

[Skill and Chance]

Lol, they nested the HoD districts into the Senate districts even though there is no requirement.

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1468698441572397068?s=20

Trende at his best!

[Skill and Chance]

Spanberger and Wittman are double-bunked in VA-01 here, the seat went from Trump +16 to Trump +10, so probably picks Wittman in 2022 but Spanberger could certainly be back later in the decade.

Perhaps her best bet would be to carpetbag to new VA-10?  She would be the ideal Dem candidate to hold a seat like that in this environment.

[Skill and Chance]

If that's the final Senate map it would be difficult to dislodge the Democratic majority. I believe the 20th seat would be Clinton +7/Biden +17 SD-16 in Henrico County.

Do you mean 20th R seat?  D's need 21 now or Sears breaks ties. 

[Skill and Chance]

The GOP incumbents should be fine, Wittman might grumble a bit but the territory that is switched from his district is more D leaning .  Now the Democrats are interesting. Luria is losing for 2022 but she should still try of course if the environment gets better.

Now Spanberger can not win the new West Henrico to  Williamsburg seat. Simple as that it is Safe R for 2022. Now Wexton also may not be too happy about the new Loudoun seat. The current district is Biden +19 but she only won by 13.  The new seat has a few more downscale rural areas but if I had to bet she would have won by around 5 points in 2020.  She may consider trying to persuade Connally to move to PWC or move there herself. So there is still clearly an open NOVA seat . Spanberger may be the one who considers taking the leftover NOVA seat or she simply has to retire.

Oh, that's right, Wexton lives in Loudoun, so the Lean (Tilt in 2022?) D NOVA seat already has an incumbent.  It's extremely likely Carroll-Foy or Ayala goes for Safe D VA-01 then.

On the other hand, that VA-10 has just enough rural territory for R's to nominate someone unapologetically Trumpy.  Could easily turn into a reverse CO-03 situation where D's always nominate a ski resort lefty and lose.

[Skill and Chance]

What does the tipping point look like in the HoD?

[Skill and Chance]

If that's the final Senate map it would be difficult to dislodge the Democratic majority. I believe the 20th seat would be Clinton +7/Biden +17 SD-16 in Henrico County.

Do you mean 20th R seat?  D's need 21 now or Sears breaks ties. 

I meant the 20th D seat, oops.

The 21st D seat would be Clinton +6/Biden +13 SD-31 in outer Loudoun and the northern half of Fauquier. Still pretty tough.

Hmmm...  the currently decisive seat by presidential #'s. was the Clinton +7 SD-21, a Roanoke to the college towns gerrymander in SWVA.  It was probably a lot less than Biden +13, though, because Clinton did worse than Obama there.

[Skill and Chance]

Does John Edwards have a good seat to run in here?

They compromised on a much milder gerrymander that brings his seat to Trump +7 in 2016 and Trump +0.6 in 2020. He probably couldn't hold on in this political environment but could still in 2023.

In total, how many Biden districts in the House and how many in the Senate, under these lines?

Senate Map

Pres 2016: 23D-17R
Gov 2017: 24D-16R
Sen 2018: 26D-14R
Pres 2020: 24D-16R

House Map

Pres 2016: 52D-48R
Gov 2017: 56D-44R
Sen 2018: 68D-32R
Pres 2020: 60D-40R

Notably, because of reapportionment and undoing some of the State House 2011 Gerry in places like Charlottesville and Fredericksburg, the GOP would need to win in 2023 by even more than in 2021 to hold the state house.

The HoD looks next to impossible for R's to hold, but the Senate probably got a bit easier for R's to pick up.  D's likely have to flip a narrow Clinton->Biden->Youngkin outer NOVA R seat to hold the Senate. 

[Skill and Chance]

Does John Edwards have a good seat to run in here?

They compromised on a much milder gerrymander that brings his seat to Trump +7 in 2016 and Trump +0.6 in 2020. He probably couldn't hold on in this political environment but could still in 2023.

In total, how many Biden districts in the House and how many in the Senate, under these lines?

Senate Map

Pres 2016: 23D-17R
Gov 2017: 24D-16R
Sen 2018: 26D-14R
Pres 2020: 24D-16R

House Map

Pres 2016: 52D-48R
Gov 2017: 56D-44R
Sen 2018: 68D-32R
Pres 2020: 60D-40R

Notably, because of reapportionment and undoing some of the State House 2011 Gerry in places like Charlottesville and Fredericksburg, the GOP would need to win in 2023 by even more than in 2021 to hold the state house.

D's have probable HoD pickups in VA Beach, Albemarle, Fredericksburg, and Loudoun.

The 2 competitive outer Richmond State Senate seats are probably just R enough to hold, and the SWVA Dem gets a Trump seat, so they need to pick up an extra NOVA seat to hold the chamber.

EDIT: The new version of the Petersburg seat that flipped this year is not obviously better for Dems.  They still have enough opportunities to flip the chamber though. 

[Skill and Chance]

Does John Edwards have a good seat to run in here?

They compromised on a much milder gerrymander that brings his seat to Trump +7 in 2016 and Trump +0.6 in 2020. He probably couldn't hold on in this political environment but could still in 2023.

In total, how many Biden districts in the House and how many in the Senate, under these lines?

Senate Map

Pres 2016: 23D-17R
Gov 2017: 24D-16R
Sen 2018: 26D-14R
Pres 2020: 24D-16R

House Map

Pres 2016: 52D-48R
Gov 2017: 56D-44R
Sen 2018: 68D-32R
Pres 2020: 60D-40R

Notably, because of reapportionment and undoing some of the State House 2011 Gerry in places like Charlottesville and Fredericksburg, the GOP would need to win in 2023 by even more than in 2021 to hold the state house.

D's have probable HoD pickups in VA Beach, Petersburg area , Albemarle, Fredericksburg area, and Loudoun.

The 2 competitive outer Richmond State Senate seats are probably just R enough to hold, and the SWVA Dem gets a Trump seat, so they need to pick up an extra NOVA seat to hold the chamber.

What do you suspect is the path of least resistance to R control of the state legislature, under these lines?

Basically win everything Youngkin won.  Legislative R's generally trailed him this year, which is highly unusual in VA.  However, the HoD is likely gone for good now that the Dem small towns have their own compact seats.

[Skill and Chance]

Does John Edwards have a good seat to run in here?

They compromised on a much milder gerrymander that brings his seat to Trump +7 in 2016 and Trump +0.6 in 2020. He probably couldn't hold on in this political environment but could still in 2023.

In total, how many Biden districts in the House and how many in the Senate, under these lines?

Senate Map

Pres 2016: 23D-17R
Gov 2017: 24D-16R
Sen 2018: 26D-14R
Pres 2020: 24D-16R

House Map

Pres 2016: 52D-48R
Gov 2017: 56D-44R
Sen 2018: 68D-32R
Pres 2020: 60D-40R

Notably, because of reapportionment and undoing some of the State House 2011 Gerry in places like Charlottesville and Fredericksburg, the GOP would need to win in 2023 by even more than in 2021 to hold the state house.

The HoD looks next to impossible for R's to hold, but the Senate probably got a bit easier for R's to pick up.  D's likely have to flip a narrow Clinton->Biden->Youngkin outer NOVA R seat to hold the Senate. 

I'm not sure that's true. Neutral year:

Ds currently have 21 seats.

D-1 in Roanoke/Blacksburg
D+1 in Richmond (Ds currently have 3, will have 4 assuming they can win the eastern Henrico seat, which did not vote for Youngkin)
D-1/+0/+1 in Hampton roads (Ds currently have 5, there are 4 solid D seats and a Clinton +3 seat in Suffolk and a Clinton +5 seat in Newport News both of which have D incumbents, so this could be anywhere from D-1 to D+1)
D+0/1 in NoVA (Ds currently have 11 seats, the new map has 11 solid D seats with the most marginal a Clinton +11 eastern PWC district, plus the aforementioned Clinton +6 outer Loudoun district)

Democrats just need to win one of the marginal Hampton Roads seats and they don't even need the outer Loudoun seat. 

Whoops, missed the extra McAuliffe seat in Henrico.  The bolded seat is likely going R given trends in that area, but the Newport News seat would be enough to hold without the Loudoun pickup.

Hmmm... almost feels like there was some horse trading between the congressional map (R shift) and the state legislative maps (D shift).

[Skill and Chance]

The problem for Abigail Spanberger is that VA-02 and VA-03 were underpopulated and had to take in parts of VA-04. Thus forcing VA-04, which was fairly even, to pull out of Hampton Roads and grab more Dem precincts in the Richmond area.

You basically had to openly gerrymander to save Spanberger,  so that was a given.  If Dems want to be mad, they should be upset about Luria, but that VA-10 is probably easier to hold than the old VA-02 was.   

Both parties got something to like here.  D's get an additional NOVA seat and R's get a Biden +1.5 VA-02 drawn into R-trending, heavily Youngkin areas. 

Another interesting observation is that VA-01 picked up a very Dem part of Henrico and all of the massively Dem trending Williamsburg area.  It's still Trump +10 in 2020, but I'm not at all sure that seat holds in a 2026 or 2030 R president midterm.

[Skill and Chance]

Here is the ball game. I thought the deal would be to keep two swing seats, VA-07 and VA-02, but with the Dems having the high ground in VA-07 that is trending Dem anyway, and the Pubs having the high ground in VA-02* that is not trending Dem that much, and where the Pubs did really well in 2021, with a snap back that was above the state average, and about 4 points (8 point margin)  more Pub than the state. Instead, VA-07 was made pretty safely Dem, but in exchange, the Pubs did get the high ground in VA-02, in the sense that it went from Biden +4.4% to Biden +1.4%, a PVI shift of 1.5 points. That is about the best the Pubs could expect, in a state where the spoils all other things being equal should be 6D-5R at best. It would be interesting to find out if Youngin won VA-07 or not when he won the state by 2 points. In a "fair" map from a partisan divide of the spoils perspective, the party that wins the state should win VA-07 by a similar margin. And for never Trumper Sean Trende, the Trumpers have only two safe haven CD's. I admire the man's skill, I really do.

* My map took the same approach of using the existing chop line in Chesapeake County, but then ceded territory to the west, rather than to the east, while this map does the opposite for a cleaner map, but with the same partisan result. And I thought moving the CD down to about Biden +1% was about the limit that would fly.

Yes, this map seems almost intentionally keep VA-01/VA-02/VA-10 away from the Trump faction.

Also, VA-04 had some NC-01/GA-02 risk later in the decade before it shed these SE areas to VA-02.

[Skill and Chance]

My guess is national Democrats would probably prefer a reshuffle where Connally/Wexton figure out the Fairfax and PWC seats and Span Berger can carpetbag over to the new VA 10th. I doubt Loudoun particularly cares about carpetbaggers at least for a general and Spanberger already represents the rural parts of the district. Wexton underperformed Biden by 6 points while Spanberger ran even with Biden. You definitely don't want a Wexton like performance in what is now a Biden +9 instead of 19 seat at least for 2022 even if the seat overall would be a rental for the GOP.

That's a good point.  If you're going to carpetbag, you want to carpetbag to a large county that grew 25% in that past decade.

Spanberger would be more of a sure thing to hold that seat, absent a major carpetbagging penalty.

[Skill and Chance]

Thanks to cinyc, we now have the approximate 2021 numbers for the CD's.

https://twitter.com/JMilesColeman/status/1468801865164984323

Via Sean Trende's twitter account, there is a link to the Special Masters report which makes for fascinating reading. These guys set a new standard of excellence that one hopes will improve the quality of others charged with redistricting on a non partisan basis.

https://twitter.com/SeanTrende?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Interesting.  Dems should be happy that this VA-10 was not an absolute Youngkin blowout like current VA-07.

Also, new VA-04 is now out of the GA-02/NC-01 late-in-the-decade danger zone. 

[Skill and Chance]

Thanks to cinyc, we now have the approximate 2021 numbers for the CD's.

https://twitter.com/JMilesColeman/status/1468801865164984323

Via Sean Trende's twitter account, there is a link to the Special Masters report which makes for fascinating reading. These guys set a new standard of excellence that one hopes will improve the quality of others charged with redistricting on a non partisan basis.

https://twitter.com/SeanTrende?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Interesting.  Dems should be happy that this VA-10 was not an absolute Youngkin blowout like current VA-07.

Also, new VA-04 is now out of the GA-02/NC-01 late-in-the-decade danger zone. 

It was never in that danger zone as long as it had Richmond in it.

It was "only" McAuliffe +12 before.

[Skill and Chance]

My guess is national Democrats would probably prefer a reshuffle where Connally/Wexton figure out the Fairfax and PWC seats and Span Berger can carpetbag over to the new VA 10th. I doubt Loudoun particularly cares about carpetbaggers at least for a general and Spanberger already represents the rural parts of the district. Wexton underperformed Biden by 6 points while Spanberger ran even with Biden. You definitely don't want a Wexton like performance in what is now a Biden +9 instead of 19 seat at least for 2022 even if the seat overall would be a rental for the GOP.

That's a good point.  If you're going to carpetbag, you want to carpetbag to a large county that grew 25% in that past decade.

Spanberger would be more of a sure thing to hold that seat, absent a major carpetbagging penalty.

Yeah, running in VA-10 is quite clearly the best option for Spanberger.

I would also suggest Connolly should go to new VA-07 since today's VA-11 includes a portion of Prince William and that Wexton should go to new VA-11 since today's VA-10 includes a portion of western Fairfax.   

[Skill and Chance]

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1469145353303830529

Hes going to sue the VA supreme court for the maps they drew.

Brilliant grifting

Will be hilarious if he racks in a bunch of cash. Gotta respect the dedication.

He gets closer to being the left's Ellis/Eastman every day. 

[Skill and Chance]

Theory: Should Miyares go for VA-02?  He's from VA Beach.  It sounds crazy because it could be construed as a step down from AG, but he was clearly the weakest of the 3 (barely beating a scandalized incumbent) and there's no way he's winning a statewide primary against Sears, or Youngkin for that matter.  Whereas he could hold this seat for the decade and then make his move for governor the next time a Dem wins the WH. 

[Skill and Chance]

People are making way too much out of a 2.5% average Dem advantage in the presidential PV since 2000 when 1. the presidential candidates know in advance they aren't competing for the PV and 2. narrow Dem presidential PV wins have not translated to downballot Dem control of anything- R's won the US House PV in 2016 and 2000. 

[Skill and Chance]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1473143588057976840

WE HAVE THE BEST LEGAL TEAM DON'T WE FOLKS.

Richmmond county does exist but its some random rural in the NE of VA.

Yes, I think this is pretty much a done deal.  Some chance that all of Albemarle ends up in new VA-10 or a couple VRA districts get adjusted at the state legislative level, but that's about the most that can happen. 

[Skill and Chance]

Wow, this is interesting!

On paper, the median district got slightly more Republican (Biden +9ish 1st draft to Biden +7ish final draft), but Democrats would probably prefer a setup where Spanberger, with her track record of winning highly competitive elections, can run in the median district instead of Wexton, who severely underperformed Biden?  Note Clinton actually did better in 2016 in final draft VA-07 than in 1st draft VA-10.

Final draft VA-02 is still Biden +2ish, as in the 1st draft.  Luria is probably out of luck in 2022 unless the national environment dramatically improves.   

VA-05 takes all of Charlottesville and Albemarle, but is still just safe enough to stay Republican for the decade (Trump +11 2016 to Trump +8 2020). 

Final draft VA-01 is now much more suburban dominated and looks like a Dem flip waiting to happen (Trump +14 2016 to Trump +7 2020).

Looks like the state legislative map changes were minor?  According to the document, median district partisanship stayed almost exactly the same in both chambers, meaning the state senate slightly favors Democrats on paper and the HoD slightly favors Republicans on paper vs. statewide results.

[Skill and Chance]

Wow, this is interesting!

On paper, the median district got slightly more Republican (Biden +9ish 1st draft to Biden +7ish final draft), but Democrats would probably prefer a setup where Spanberger, with her track record of winning highly competitive elections, can run in the median district instead of Wexton, who severely underperformed Biden?  Note Clinton actually did better in 2016 in final draft VA-07 than in 1st draft VA-10.



VA-05 takes all of Charlottesville and Albemarle, but is still just safe enough to stay Republican for the decade (Trump +11 2016 to Trump +8 2020). 

VA05 actually doesn't have all of Albemarle. A small portion remains in the north

Also Wextons current seat basically is a Frank Wolf Mander in Fairfax County.  For example even Mark Warner ran like 7 points behind Behind in cities like Great Falls.

That's true.  Would love to see Youngkin #'s for final draft VA-07.  1st draft VA-10 I believe was Youngkin +4.

Also, final draft VA-02 was Trump +5 2016 to Biden +2 2020 so it's actually trending left pretty meaningfully.  It probably flips next year and then flips back in the next R president midterm? 

[Skill and Chance]

Assuming the safe seat rule, Wittman will carpetbag to the Richmond seat so there is a open seat based with a PWC dem base.

If its open R's can win it. Spanberger may think of carpetbagging there though.

The 7th is definitely flipping with or without an incumbent imo. I also think the long-term prospects for Republicans in that district are not particularly bleak - minority-heavy East PWC is slowly but surely shifting Republican, so it probably remains winnable throughout the decade.

I think Spanberger is slightly favored there in 2022, but generic R would be slightly favored over generic D.

R's have a slightly easier path to 6/5 in a good year (IMO remove slightly without Spanberger), but D's now have a path to 8/3 in a good year when they were capped at 7/4 before.

Overall, a very good map for a lean Dem but not safe state.