2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Virginia

[Tintrlvr]

How easy is it to draw out Bob Good? He’s such a joke.

Not sure where he lives, but Virginia geography requires a conservative Southside district, so if he’s willing to move it is hard.

He lives in Campbell County, near Lynchburg.

[Tintrlvr]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7c257837-44c0-4fc5-9cbd-0d35742f574e

Thoughts on my fair map?

It's prettier than mine and in some places good for COIs, but the biggest problem is that there are no majority minority CVAP or black opportunity districts.

How? VA-11 is clearly majority-minority (only 46% white), and VA-03 and VA-04 are both >40% black.

According to Citizen Voting Age Population, the standard metric to determine majority minority districts, VA-11 is 55.4% white. To me there ought to be a district in which the black population makes up a plurality if not a majority, because the point is that the minority group is able to elect a candidate of their choice.

This is only required (or appropriate) if black voters are generally denied the candidate of their choice in districts that are less than plurality black CVAP. However, VA-3 and VA-4 would clearly be controlled by the black voters in their districts, who make up a majority of Democratic primary voters, as they are currently.

As for NOVA, while I don't necessarily object to spindles of district trying to maximize the non-white population in one district, I think you also have to take into account that the non-white population is not monolithic and actually highly diverse and may have different preferences (so concentrating them all in one district could reduce one group's influence rather than enhance it), that there is simply not a large enough non-white population to create a heavily non-white district, and that non-white voters' preferences don't seem to strongly diverge from white voters' preferences in the same area. By concentrating more non-white voters in one district, you may actually be harming non-white voters' ability to elect candidates of their choice across the NOVA region, if it would otherwise be plausible for such to be elected in more districts.

[Tintrlvr]

Here's a somewhat different take on Virginia, designed of course to favor the Democrats but not in a way that looks aggressive/overt. Still, it's an 8-3 Clinton/Northam set of districts, and only more favorable under 2020 figures.

Charlottesville-NOVA is definitely a feasible alignment that doesn't get explored much, and it does make the Shenandoah Valley much neater.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/0db3a517-d9ad-4318-a9b8-51b61866e0ad

[Tintrlvr]

Here's a somewhat different take on Virginia, designed of course to favor the Democrats but not in a way that looks aggressive/overt. Still, it's an 8-3 Clinton/Northam set of districts, and only more favorable under 2020 figures.

Charlottesville-NOVA is definitely a feasible alignment that doesn't get explored much, and it does make the Shenandoah Valley much neater.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/0db3a517-d9ad-4318-a9b8-51b61866e0ad

VA-7 is a pretty bad leftovers district, lol.   Other than that great map.  Spanberger would probably love the Richmond suburb district.

The one thing I do like about VA-7 (it's definitely a leftovers district) is that it covers a few relatively self-contained specific regions ((1) the Lynchburg metro, (2) rural central Virginia away from former plantation country and (3) the Tidewater) without splitting any of them up across districts, something very few other maps accomplish. Of course, it still combines three distinct regions into one district, but at least they are three regions that would probably prefer to be combined with each other than be combined with and outvoted (not necessarily in partisan terms, but in representation/in primaries) by the more populous regions that surround them.

UK-style district names, because I was bored:

1. South West Virginia
2. Shenandoah Valley and Roanoke
3. Arlington and Fairfax North
4. Alexandria and Fairfax South
5. Prince William and Loudoun East
6. Charlottesville, Leesburg and Fredericksburg
7. Lynchburg and the Tidewater
8. Hampton Roads East
9. Hampton Roads West
10. Richmond East, Petersburg and Danville
11. Richmond West

[Tintrlvr]

Also worth noting we haven't seen the congressional map yet.  It could be that Democrats are very worried about what the state supreme court would do, but it could also be that they agreed to legislative maps that look like toss-ups for control based on non-2020 data in order to get a congressional map that preserves 7D/4R.  For example, giving Spanberger Charlottesville and Luria the majority-white part of Norfolk would do this.

If Dems had drawn the map, I think they probably go 8-3. I'd guess they'd have made 5,6,9 extremely red while putting 1 into Prince William and Fairfax.

No way 8D/3R is possible with the county/municipality-splitting rules.  Best case scenario is 7/4 and that's only if Albemarle ends up with the non-VRA district parts of Richmond or VA-01 takes all of Prince William County and VA-10 includes both all of Loudoun and all of Albemarle.  In the second scenario, VA-07 becomes safe R, and VA-01 becomes safe D.  Considering the commission includes elected officials, I highly doubt they would vote to throw both Wittman and Spanberger under the bus, so I consider the Henrico-Charlottesville scenario the only way to get a 7D/4R result within the rules.  And this would of course depend on giving R's most everything they want on the legislative maps.  

8D/3R is 100% possible within the rules. See below. Is this a good government map? Not really, although I think I actually did quite a good job of keeping COIs together while gerrymandering, and the only truly disparate districts are the Charlottesville-Loudoun district (VA-6) and the central Virginia rural white areas district (VA-3). But it does follow the splitting rules and also keeps two minority opportunity seats. (I didn't bother finishing NOVA and as a result the Prince William seat is undersized but those will obviously all be safe D.)

https://davesredistricting.org/join/27adc2e6-7e61-4fea-9ad1-14e26019cce8

[Tintrlvr]

Was the last map drawn by a GOP trifecta?

No, the Democrats controlled the State Senate at the time. But in any event recall that the Democrats had held VA-09 right up until the 2010 elections (the Republicans failed to even field a candidate there in 2008!), so "gerrymandering" in 2011 would not feel like gerrymandering these days anyway.