US House Redistricting: Texas

[dpmapper]

Here's my latest attempt at the Hispanic districts in the south:





In reading the Supreme Court decision, it seems like their beef was that a) the voting age population of Hispanics wasn't enough in TX-23, and b) there was too much of a geographic stretch to go from Austin to Laredo in TX-25.  What I conclude is that 65% Hispanic is enough to satisfy condition a (as that's roughly what the court-drawn TX-23 had), and that if you confine yourself to south Texas, you'll satisfy condition b.  I couldn't find any section in which the court added up votes and said that these Hispanics are too Republican, or anything like that. 

If that's right, then my lines will pass muster.  Canseco's TX-23 (in brown) is 65% Hispanic, 51-48 McCain (previously 51-48 Obama).  I dropped the rural counties in the far west - they can be added to the Midland/Odessa district - so this is less sprawling than it was before (albeit only slightly).  Farenthold's TX-27 (in green) is 65% Hispanic, 50-49 McCain (53-46 Obama previously).

After that it's simple.   Dem districts only in El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, 3 in Houston, and then 1 or 2 in Dallas - I've been able to draw just one and have all the other districts safe for the GOP but if the DoJ insists then draw two.  You have to be a bit careful with the districts in the Austin suburbs (you probably want to split Williamson in case it continues to trend blue) but otherwise almost anything will work once you pack the urban districts. 

[dpmapper]

 The issue is that I can't get Farenthold's CD above McCain 52% with 60% Hispanics in its current configuration or something close.  You go to the north and east and you pick up too many whites.

I got a Farenthold district at 50% McCain, 65% Hispanic:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=129772.msg2765676#msg2765676

You could probably modify it to get 52% McCain, 60% Hispanic pretty easily.  

[dpmapper]

The issue is that I can't get Farenthold's CD above McCain 52% with 60% Hispanics in its current configuration or something close.  You go to the north and east and you pick up too many whites.

I got a Farenthold district at 50% McCain, 65% Hispanic:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=129772.msg2765676#msg2765676

You could probably modify it to get 52% McCain, 60% Hispanic pretty easily.  

I should have clarified - without making it look *butt-ugly*.  

But even with that, you should seriously think about f-ing Cuellar.  The trick is going up to Midland-Odessa, pulling in rural counties  around that area in west Texas (which have lots of Hispanics) and splitting Webb.

Not any uglier than some of your dangling arms.   You could call it the Hispanic hook from hell.   :-p

I'm toying with combining that with an Austin-San Antonio VRA district... might be able to get to 25 GOP 2 lean 9 Dem whilst adding two Hispanic seats. 

[dpmapper]

As for Texas, what is pretty clear is this - you have 24 obvious GOP seats and 7 obvious Dem seats (3 Houston, 2 Dallas, 1 San Antonio, 1 El Paso, 4-5 Hispanic minority majority) in a fairly nice looking map, irregardless.  What's left is Doggett, Cuellar, Hinojosa, Canseco and Farenthold.  Drawing Canseco into a new north Bexar and other district is rather easy, so you'll create an open seat.

As for the rest, another Dem seat has to either be the Hispanic-majority Austin to San Antonio thing I mentioned or the Austin pack.  The Hispanics will insist (especially with Austin pack, but with other too) that the others be Hispanic-majority, and it is hard for me to disagree there because the numbers support it.

One could try to make the Austin-to-San Antonio Hispanic seat the same as the San Antonio Dem seat... that's getting really ambitious but I can make that happen in some configurations.  Might require too many districts pitching in to chop the rest of Austin, though. 

[dpmapper]

One could try to make the Austin-to-San Antonio Hispanic seat the same as the San Antonio Dem seat... that's getting really ambitious but I can make that happen in some configurations.  Might require too many districts pitching in to chop the rest of Austin, though. 

Bexar has close to 1,000,000 Hispanic residents according to the 2009 Census estimates; Travis has about 300,000. You need more than one district for everyone.

It's not like all of those Hispanic residents live in areas that need to be part of the Dem pack.  Especially if a good number of them are used in a San Antonio+points south Hispanic marginal seat.  

[dpmapper]

I've got a map with 8-9 Hispanic districts (depending on whether you want 1 or 2 in Houston) that goes 26 solid GOP, 2 swingish-lean-GOP, and ONLY 8 DEMOCRATIC DISTRICTS!!!!  Now, whether this is too ugly to pass muster is another question, and I haven't bothered to check where incumbents live too much.  But here goes:



It's not complete, but the rest of the map should be easy.  

Going along the border:

* El Paso district in green.  

* El Paso/Odessa/Midland/Laredo district in pale aquamarine: 65% Hispanic, 56-43 McCain.  Solid GOP.  Midland is split so Conaway might or might not be in this district.  



* Midland/San Angelo/San Antonio/border in royal blue: this is a mess but it's not a VRA district so it doesn't matter.  49% Hispanic, 56-43 McCain.  Might be Conaway's or Canseco's, depending on where they live.  

* McAllen/Brownsville in violet-red: 92% Hispanic for Hinojosa.  

* Harlingen-Corpus Christi-Victoria district in spring green for Farenthold: 62% Hispanic, 52-47 McCain.  



* McAllen-San Antonio district in Orange for the party-switcher, or maybe for Canseco: 65% Hispanic, 51-48 McCain.  

* north Bexar district in purple for Lamar Smith: 55-44 McCain.  You didn't think there would be a GOP district this compact, did you?   



* the Austin-San Antonio pack in greenish grey: 71% Hispanic.  If you get enough heavily Hispanic areas in SA then you can put the black areas of *both* Austin and San Antonio in this district - this is nice if you are trying to crack Austin since the black areas are about 20 points bluer than the Hispanic ones.  

* Bexar county-New Braunfels-San Marcos-Austin + counties northwest in reddish-brown: 55-43 McCain.

* Austin-west Travis/Williamson-rural counties to the northwest in yellow: 55-44 McCain.

* north Austin-Round Rock-Waco outskirts in teal: 55-43 McCain.

* east Austin-Houston exurbs in bronze: 55-44 McCain.

* Corpus Christi-Galveston in maroon: This district still has 107K to go but it's at 56-44 McCain.  

* Abilene-Waco-Killeen-Temple in orange: This district is short 64K right now (not enough to take in Lubbock) but it's at 60-39 McCain.  

[dpmapper]

How on earth are they claiming that their District 25 (Travis County - Austin) is a Republican district? 

[dpmapper]

How on earth are they claiming that their District 25 (Travis County - Austin) is a Republican district? 

Pull up the 112 plan. The Dem districts are 16, 20, 9, 18, 27, 28, and 30, I think. 25 barely touches Travis.

Aha.  They've got the wrong plan number listed on their blog post. 

[dpmapper]

I don't understand why the TX GOP wouldn't make Gene Green's seat a swing seat by doing something like this in the Houston area:



TX-29 (in grey-green) INCREASES its Hispanic VAP from 66.1 to 66.9%, it better respects municipal boundaries (no longer splitting the major cities of Pasadena and Baytown in half); and Obama still won the district (50.4%) so it's not like Democrats can argue that their candidate will be shut out. 

Yellow is SJL's district which is now up to 49.6% black, 33.9% Hispanic; Al Green gets cyan (where whites are the 4th largest race! 29.9% black, 40.6% Hispanic, 14.1% Asian, 13.9% white - is there anywhere else outside of NY and LA where one can do that in such a compact fashion?); and as a further bonus, a new majority-minority (49.9% white) entirely-in-Harris district in purple (which happens to be 63.1% McCain). 

With all of these minority-friendly modifications I can't see how there could possibly be any legitimate VRA issue.  But I'm sure you'll let me know. 

The grey district to the west is TX-07 for Culberson (unchanged in PVI: 58% McCain); Pete Olson's TX-22 in bright green gains a point of Republican PVI (now 59.4% McCain).  Both of these keep their previous shape, for the most part.  TX-02 in Green still has Humble for Ted Poe and still goes out east to Beaumont; and then there's a Galveston district to the south in bronze.  (Outer districts aren't complete, but they're obviously safely Republican.)

[dpmapper]

*looks up who represents Eagle Pass and Del Rio in the Texas State House*

Pete Gallego for Congress?

Obama share went up by 0.4 percentage points, btw. Not much (Canseco would still have won under these lines... ignoring the fact that his opponent wouldn't have been there) but every little bit helps.

I wonder where it's coming from. They added a number of Permian counties after all, and just two Rio Grande Valley rural counties, and those cast 5k odd votes together (59% Obama both). And the withdrawal out of Bexar ought to hurt Dems. Must have been doing some pretty clever stuff in El Paso.

Indeed, if you look at El Paso they did a solid job plucking out some GOP areas for TX-23 and putting all the Democrats in TX-16. Quite favorable to Canseco.

Then of course you get TX-33 which is just created out of thin air and certainly not based on any existing legislative intent.

Really odd map overall.

I don't understand why TX-23 has to go all the way to El Paso.  Most of the counties in the trans-Pecos are bluish and TX-23 can get its Hispanics from redder areas elsewhere.  Let the Midland district soak up those voters. 

[dpmapper]

So, it will basically end up being a 23-13 or 24-12 map.  The real toss-up seat is the Canseco one, but Dems will need to run the right candidate (Gallegos would be the correct choice).  McCaul's seat is too partisanly divided (as well as geographically divided) for Dems to have a chance there, for now.

The obvious mistake the GOP made again was to not draw a Hispanic district in DFW.  That being said, what the court did in Dallas really makes no sense.  I would be surprised in the GOP doesn't realize its mistake this time and correct in 2013.  As for the rest of the map, the protection of Doggett will probably be addressed by the GOP in 2013.  As said many times here, the correct road to go would have been 25-11 (Canseco would always have some issues, so 24-12), but draw a Hispanic district or two looking towards the future.

They should do 24-9-3, with the 9 being:
* 6 Hispanic seats in El Paso, San Antonio, San Antonio-Austin, Laredo-McAllen, McAllen/Brownsville-Corpus (picking out the worst parts), DFW
* SJL and Al Green in Houston, and the black district in DFW

and the 3 being 3 Hispanic seats that are roughly 49-51% McCain - one for Canseco, one for Farenthold (Harlingen-Corpus), and one in the Houston area (Gene Green's seat). 

How hard would that have been to figure out?