Georgia 2020 Redistricting Discussion

[EastAnglianLefty]

What's the case for 55% VAP being the upper limit? Given that the Supreme Court isn't exactly keen on defending the VRA, surely there's an incentive to push the envelope there? More generally, it looks like it shouldn't be that hard to remove largely white precincts from the 3 VRA districts and replace them with more Hispanic/Asian precincts from GA-6 and GA-7.

The east to west abomination won't satisfy the Gingles criteria, but it might be an effective way of packing GA-2 and freeing up space for other districts to bacon-slice the Atlanta metro.

[EastAnglianLefty]

You really need to read up on what the VRA is for - it's not about electing minority candidates, it's about ensuring that concentrated minority populations are able to elect the candidate of their choice. Black voters in SC aren't likely to be Tim Scott voters.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Slightly different way of thinking about the redistricting challenge for Republicans: what metric do you use to assess whether a seat is safe enough for the decade?

I'd suggest you probably want a gerrymander that holds up even if you're losing that state by around about 5% - and if that happens the swing will probably be proportionally greater in Atlanta than elsewhere in the state, due to population growth and more voters switching.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Since some mentioned GA-02 (if kept with a similar composition) being a swing district by the end of the decade despite being a VRA plurality/majority black district, I now wonder if something similar has ever happened.

Has a white Republican (with ~10% black support presumably) ever won a VRA black district? GA-02 seems like it would be extremely inelastic and titanium D despite the low margins

replace "black" with "hispanic" and you're basically describing TX-23. Will Hurd is a non-Hispanic Republican who has narrowly won three times against Hispanic Democrats even though the district is 68% Hispanic

Also with GA-2 specifically, the scenario you're describing actually almost happened in 2010, when Sanford Bishop held on by less than five thousand votes. I doubt it would happen in the upcoming decade, though, because honestly SW GA's white population is shrinking just as quickly as the black population.

There was also Joseph Cao in the 2010 runoff for LA-02, although that was a very exceptional situation and he is not white. 

However, increasing urban/rural polarization is clearly impacting minority communities as well (see NC-09), and it's not unreasonable to wonder if Republicans could compete well in some substantially rural VRA districts (e.g. GA-02, MS-02, a VRA district on a 6 seat AL map, one or more seats in South Texas on a 39 CD TX map, the plurality-black rural state house district in VA that nearly flipped last year, etc.) by the end of this decade. 

I'm not sure what the voting behaviour of the Lumbee tells us about the voting behaviour of black-majority seats.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Given how no one has drawn a white Dem district (is one even possible?); the number of Dem seats equals the number of black seats

So now the question is:

1: Can GA-02 be dismantled? Can it be brought to Atlanta or other black areas of the state?
2: How many black majority districts are needed in the Atlanta area?

Once you answer those 2 questions you can start drawing. The VRA essencially means Georgia will have a court designed map in practice as 11-3 is impossible.

GA-6 was 60% white as of the last census. That will have changed, of course, but it's still comfortably white-plurality so your premise is wrong.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Has anyone tried state legislative maps based off of the 2018 population data?

I've got one that's 85% complete based off 2016 population data, which tries to account a little bit for areas that are shrinking/growing. Will try to finish it off and tweak it for 2010 data later this week.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This is what I came up with for the State Senate: https://davesredistricting.org/join/5042f2bd-9a85-4fc5-ad28-f2c91d971eea

I assumed a Republican map, which aims to protect their current legislators and give each of them a district to run in. It helps that they lost seats in Atlanta in 2018 and that there are a couple of vacant seats downstate, though you might need uglier lines if their replacements live in inconvenient places.

Broadly speaking, my aim was to try to lock in a majority until 2030, even if Georgia becomes a lean D seat. I wanted to keep cleanish lines outstate but was willing to get moderately aggressive in the Atlanta metro, because a baconmander is much more noticeable on a statewide map than in an urban inset.

Trump got over 60% in 24 seats and got over 55% in 5 seats outside the Atlanta area, where we can presume there won't be a strong trend. That's enough to lock in a majority.

In addition, Republicans hold six seats (17, 21, 32, 37, 45, 56) centred within the core of the Atlanta metro, which for these purposes I'm defining as Cobb, Fulton, Douglas, Clayton, Henry, Newtown, Rockdale, De Kalb and Gwinnett. (Obviously this isn't the accepted definition, but outside these areas their seats are under no threat.) In five of them Trump got between 56 and 60% and in the remaining district he won 53-42. There's also one vaguely competitive Clinton district - district 6, which she won 50-45.

All of these seats have strong Democratic trends, because it's Atlanta, but all of them should hold out for at least a couple of cycles and at least some of them ought to survive until 2030.

In addition, I sought to draw Democratic districts that would elect minority senators, in an echo of the way Texas Republicans have traditionally sought to eliminate Anglo Democrats to avoid creating opportunities for candidates with statewide potential. All existing black majority districts are preserved (and in fact one of the more difficult challenges was keeping them all below 70% black, as that looks to be the limit they used in 2010 avoid allegations of packing) and additionally the 42nd district is made majority black. The Democratic primary in the 33rd district is probably majority-black, the 5th district moves closer to becoming a performing Hispanic VRA district and the 48th district (which has almost no cross-over with the current district) is anybody's guess. However, the 6th and 40th remain likely to elect white Democrats.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Here's an attempt at a Republican map following the methodology of the Texas Republican Party c. 2004 - i.e. to ensure that no white Democrat can be elected.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7059ff9a-a84b-4391-bad8-4f50422e6c65




It concedes four districts in Atlanta, but makes sure they're all comfortably black-majority by CVAP (GA-6 is only black-plurality by CVAP, but the black population is more than twice as large as any other racial group so it's still secure.)

GA-2 is also drawn as a black-majority district, since if you eliminate a black district downstate you get no credit for creating an extra one in Atlanta, and because if you reckon the Supreme Court is going to back you up you can always eliminate that in a mid-decade redistricting. All other districts retain approximately their present orientations and Clinton didn't break 41% in any of them.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It doesn't matter whether the district itself is 50% black. It matters whether the Gingles test is met.

You can easily draw a geographically compact district in SW Georgia in which African-Americans constitute more than 50% of the voting age population; African-Americans in the south without question vote in a politically cohesive manner; the same is equally true of white votes in SW Georgia.

All three legs of the Gingles test are therefore satisfied, unless you can somehow argue that a district based on Columbus and Macon isn't 'geographically compact'. And whilst I could see some courts accepting this argument, that isn't due to the merits of such a claim.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Could you solve that problem just by packing the Atlanta VRA districts? There's no VRA issue in doing this with Gwinnett Latinos and with the current Supreme Court they'd have a decent chance at getting away with moving the VRA districts from the 50s% black to the mid 60s% and getting away with it.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Could you solve that problem just by packing the Atlanta VRA districts? There's no VRA issue in doing this with Gwinnett Latinos and with the current Supreme Court they'd have a decent chance at getting away with moving the VRA districts from the 50s% black to the mid 60s% and getting away with it.

I don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Gingles test stipulates that if a protected minority group constitutes a majority of the electorate in a hypothetical compactly-drawn district. African Americans are the only group to which this status applies in Georgia (Gwinnett Latinos couldn't be the majority in any district so can crack them either way). Given it is now possible to draw five compact, majority African American districts in Georgia (Macon-Columbus, South Atlanta Burbs, South Fulton/Douglass/Cobb, Core Atlanta, and East DeKalb/South Gwinnett), it can easily be argued that collapsing the latter four districts into three is an illegal racial gerrymander because it dilutes the natural voting power of Atlanta-area African Americans.

That, however, is the best Dems are getting in GA. The GOP shouldn't run into legal trouble stripping North Fulton/North Cobb/North Gwinnett deep into Appalachia.

Yeah, I didn't mean denying a fourth AA district in metro Atlanta - the only way you're avoiding that is if the Supreme Court is willing to radically reinterpret or strike down the VRA. I meant using those four districts to ensure that you can't draw a fifth Democratic district in the city.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I wonder if the senate results change the GOP game plan here?  They could decide to play it extra safe or could just as easily decide to go for broke because it's clearly their last chance to draw the maps for a very long time. 

Also, the senate results mean there is now an opening for congress to strengthen VRA provisions in advance of redistricting. 

This is a very important point. None of the Democratic caucus is going to have any reason to object to putting in a new coverage formula for section 5, which is likely to have a big effect on redistricting.

[EastAnglianLefty]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/01/gerrymander-marjorie-taylor-greene-lose-seat/?utm_source=reddit.com

Lol,I do wonder if they try this to any degree(mostly futile due to the fact she's a carpetbagger)

I don’t see how, without giving democrats a new seat in a disgusting way. All of her FEC filing is actually out of district so even then She’d run in a red sage seat. If you lump her in with an incumbent she’ll primary and she will beat them. She’s a cancer and doesn’t deserve a seat in congress, but as long as there’s a Republican seat in north west Georgia she’s going to be in congress.

Even if it worked, it'd just increase the odds that she'd run for Senate and create an even bigger problem for Republicans.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's the Georgia Republican Party. The notion that they would have a problem with dividing a county five ways to bolster their partisan prospects is obviously absurd.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's the Georgia Republican Party. The notion that they would have a problem with dividing a county five ways to bolster their partisan prospects is obviously absurd.

It really isn't considering both their 2005 mid-decade redraw and their 2010 redraw were both fairly moderate and relatively reasonable districts. The worst aspect of the current map is probably how GA11 grabs Buckhead rather than GA06 but I did the math and fixing this would actually make GA06 more red. IIRC it was more Nathan Deal just being mad at Price.  OTOH The Texas GOP ...

Because Georgia was strongly Republican enough (and strongly polarised enough) at the time that they didn't need to do more than that - they just needed to undo the Democratic gerrymander, and then to tweak their map slightly to remove the few holdouts they didn't get the first time.

But their record on voting rights has been radical enough that it's abundantly clear they are willing to play hardball when they believe it gives them an advantage they require.