Timmy's States

[Torie]

I decided to look at what the results of the 2020 presidential election would be in Rio Grande. I got these calculations.
Rio Grande got 816k votes for Biden and 701k for Trump - 53.79% Biden in total, compared with 56.85% for Clinton. Biden won 52.27% of the nationwide two-party vote and Clinton won 51.11%. Thus, the one-cycle PVI is D+1.52 in 2020 and D+4.74 in 2016. This averages out as D+3.13.
It also looks like Texas voted for Biden, largely on strength of his 300k vote lead in Travis and weak R leans in Collin and Denton, as well as Tarrant. Trump meanwhile did very well in Nevada, but backslid in Maricopa.
In Secoya, the big question is, are R wins in the RL Oregon and RL Nevada portions enough to win out over Dem margins in RL CA? In 2008 it was not really very close, but in 2012 and 2016, the state was within 1%, and it was probably the closest state in the 2012 election. In 2020 Trump won by 60k votes in the RL Oregon part and 23k in the RL Nevada one, but Biden won by 218k in RL California one, securing a win likely by a margin of 2 or 3.

Trump in all three of the RGV based CD's ran a tad better than he did nationwide, and thus all three CD's have a small Pub PVI if you just look at 2020, rather than average 2020 and 2016.
In any Pub gerrymander, the Dem PVI will  increase in 2 of the 3 districts, and rather sharply decrease in one. The Dem incumbent in the one slated to switch teams has already announced his retirement.

[Torie]

I decided to look at what the results of the 2020 presidential election would be in Rio Grande. I got these calculations.
Rio Grande got 816k votes for Biden and 701k for Trump - 53.79% Biden in total, compared with 56.85% for Clinton. Biden won 52.27% of the nationwide two-party vote and Clinton won 51.11%. Thus, the one-cycle PVI is D+1.52 in 2020 and D+4.74 in 2016. This averages out as D+3.13.
It also looks like Texas voted for Biden, largely on strength of his 300k vote lead in Travis and weak R leans in Collin and Denton, as well as Tarrant. Trump meanwhile did very well in Nevada, but backslid in Maricopa.
In Secoya, the big question is, are R wins in the RL Oregon and RL Nevada portions enough to win out over Dem margins in RL CA? In 2008 it was not really very close, but in 2012 and 2016, the state was within 1%, and it was probably the closest state in the 2012 election. In 2020 Trump won by 60k votes in the RL Oregon part and 23k in the RL Nevada one, but Biden won by 218k in RL California one, securing a win likely by a margin of 2 or 3.

Trump in all three of the RGV based CD's ran a tad better than he did nationwide, and thus all three CD's have a small Pub PVI if you just look at 2020, rather than average 2020 and 2016.
In any Pub gerrymander, the Dem PVI will  increase in 2 of the 3 districts, and rather sharply decrease in one. The Dem incumbent in the one slated to switch teams has already announced his retirement.

Rio Grande is likely to have a ruthless Dem gerrymander with one GOP-leaning seat already. So little change on that front.

Did you mean "ruthless Pub gerrymander?" The TX Pubs will need to be cautious about the VRA. TX is a quagmire on that front with unresolved ambiguities in the law, which drives how I draw my TX Pubmanders. I am still struggling with the issue of how to draw a performing Hipanic TX-33 without running afoul of a racial gerrymandering rap, in the event SCOTUS deems whatever is drawn as either not performing, or over performing and thus an illegal racial gerrymandering Hispanic pack, or black exclusion. It seems nobody has good answers.Ditto for my TX-18, but there, there is no alternative but to accept the risk.

[Torie]

I decided to look at what the results of the 2020 presidential election would be in Rio Grande. I got these calculations.
Rio Grande got 816k votes for Biden and 701k for Trump - 53.79% Biden in total, compared with 56.85% for Clinton. Biden won 52.27% of the nationwide two-party vote and Clinton won 51.11%. Thus, the one-cycle PVI is D+1.52 in 2020 and D+4.74 in 2016. This averages out as D+3.13.
It also looks like Texas voted for Biden, largely on strength of his 300k vote lead in Travis and weak R leans in Collin and Denton, as well as Tarrant. Trump meanwhile did very well in Nevada, but backslid in Maricopa.
In Secoya, the big question is, are R wins in the RL Oregon and RL Nevada portions enough to win out over Dem margins in RL CA? In 2008 it was not really very close, but in 2012 and 2016, the state was within 1%, and it was probably the closest state in the 2012 election. In 2020 Trump won by 60k votes in the RL Oregon part and 23k in the RL Nevada one, but Biden won by 218k in RL California one, securing a win likely by a margin of 2 or 3.

Trump in all three of the RGV based CD's ran a tad better than he did nationwide, and thus all three CD's have a small Pub PVI if you just look at 2020, rather than average 2020 and 2016.
In any Pub gerrymander, the Dem PVI will  increase in 2 of the 3 districts, and rather sharply decrease in one. The Dem incumbent in the one slated to switch teams has already announced his retirement.

Rio Grande is likely to have a ruthless Dem gerrymander with one GOP-leaning seat already. So little change on that front.

Did you mean "ruthless Pub gerrymander?" The TX Pubs will need to be cautious about the VRA. TX is a quagmire on that front with unresolved ambiguities in the law, which drives how I draw my TX Pubmanders. I am still struggling with the issue of how to draw a performing Hipanic TX-33 without running afoul of a racial gerrymandering rap, in the event SCOTUS deems whatever is drawn as either not performing, or over performing and thus an illegal racial gerrymandering Hispanic pack, or black exclusion. It seems nobody has good answers.Ditto for my TX-18, but there, there is no alternative but to accept the risk.

Rio Grande is likely to have a Dem trifecta that produces one GOP-leaning swing seat (no doubt taking from Bexar) and makes the rest of the map safe/likely Dem.

Why would the Pubs do that? They don't need to. Two Dem seats right on the river, one lean Pub seat mostly in Bexar County, and a close to safe Pub seat on the Gulf. And the map looks clean. TX-11 takes its slice of El Paso and the western side of TX-23, plus the oil patch, and creates another safe Pub majority HCVAP CD. So with the lean Pub TX-23 seat, and the two safe or close to safe Pub seats in the Rio Grande area, the Pubs get 3 seats, and the Dems 2, and the VRA risk is minimal. The fajita strips are tossed into the ash heap of history.

[Torie]

I decided to look at what the results of the 2020 presidential election would be in Rio Grande. I got these calculations.
Rio Grande got 816k votes for Biden and 701k for Trump - 53.79% Biden in total, compared with 56.85% for Clinton. Biden won 52.27% of the nationwide two-party vote and Clinton won 51.11%. Thus, the one-cycle PVI is D+1.52 in 2020 and D+4.74 in 2016. This averages out as D+3.13.
It also looks like Texas voted for Biden, largely on strength of his 300k vote lead in Travis and weak R leans in Collin and Denton, as well as Tarrant. Trump meanwhile did very well in Nevada, but backslid in Maricopa.
In Secoya, the big question is, are R wins in the RL Oregon and RL Nevada portions enough to win out over Dem margins in RL CA? In 2008 it was not really very close, but in 2012 and 2016, the state was within 1%, and it was probably the closest state in the 2012 election. In 2020 Trump won by 60k votes in the RL Oregon part and 23k in the RL Nevada one, but Biden won by 218k in RL California one, securing a win likely by a margin of 2 or 3.

Trump in all three of the RGV based CD's ran a tad better than he did nationwide, and thus all three CD's have a small Pub PVI if you just look at 2020, rather than average 2020 and 2016.
In any Pub gerrymander, the Dem PVI will  increase in 2 of the 3 districts, and rather sharply decrease in one. The Dem incumbent in the one slated to switch teams has already announced his retirement.

Rio Grande is likely to have a ruthless Dem gerrymander with one GOP-leaning seat already. So little change on that front.

Did you mean "ruthless Pub gerrymander?" The TX Pubs will need to be cautious about the VRA. TX is a quagmire on that front with unresolved ambiguities in the law, which drives how I draw my TX Pubmanders. I am still struggling with the issue of how to draw a performing Hipanic TX-33 without running afoul of a racial gerrymandering rap, in the event SCOTUS deems whatever is drawn as either not performing, or over performing and thus an illegal racial gerrymandering Hispanic pack, or black exclusion. It seems nobody has good answers.Ditto for my TX-18, but there, there is no alternative but to accept the risk.

Rio Grande is likely to have a Dem trifecta that produces one GOP-leaning swing seat (no doubt taking from Bexar) and makes the rest of the map safe/likely Dem.

Why would the Pubs do that? They don't need to. Two Dem seats right on the river, one lean Pub seat mostly in Bexar County, and a close to safe Pub seat on the Gulf. And the map looks clean. TX-11 takes its slice of El Paso and the western side of TX-23, plus the oil patch, and creates another safe Pub majority HCVAP CD. So with the lean Pub TX-23 seat, and the two safe or close to safe Pub seats in the Rio Grande area, the Pubs get 3 seats, and the Dems 2, and the VRA risk is minimal. The fajita strips are tossed into the ash heap of history.

Regardless of what could be said about what you have said, Rio Grande is not Texas. Whatever partisan incentive exists for Texas Republicans to gain seats by ditching the fajitas, the Hispanic Democrats who would be in charge of Latino-majority Rio Grande would have interest in having something along the lines of the fajitas both for sake of increasing Latino political power and for partisan gain.

And why would the Pubs accommodate them? In point of fact, the two Dems running for reelection in the RGV would be happy with the map. The other Dem is retiring, because I surmise he saw the writing on the wall. Anyway, we shall see. I have my map, and we shall how close it is to what happens. The map btw creates a second safe Dem Hispanic CD nested in Bexar to join the existing TX-20 there, which I call TX-37. I think the VRA mandates that.

[Torie]

Because the Pubs control how the lines are drawn, or am I missing something? We seem to be shadow boxing here, which is not what we usually do with each other.

[Torie]

I see that I missed  the entire point of the thread, since I did not explore its genesis. Sorry to interrupt your regular programming with my obtuseness!