Talk Elections

JBE has won reelection. Louisiana’s government is now close enough to locked in for 2021 as it is going to get. Pending any retirements legislatively, the GOP will not have a supermajority in the Louisiana state house. If the Republicans wish to override JBE’s democratic vetoes they need to go to work and convince democrats or independents to vote with them. Louisiana is therefore poised to be a major 2021 redistricting battleground thanks to divided government. There is no easily to predict conclusion in a true battleground, only a long list of potential actions that could be pursued if the players wish to act upon their desires.

 Link to 2010 Atlas Discussion (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=130419.0)

Redistricting History



2010 redistricting in Louisiana was an unusually messy affair. For the first time Louisiana was controlled by a GOP trifecta and they now had unilateral control over the lines. In the past it had always been the Dixiecratic democrats with the superior position when it came to mapmaking. The last time Louisiana had a serious redistricting fight was back in the 90s, and back then the Faultline was between Black and Dixiecratic democrats. The obscene nature of 90s VRA districts resulted in two maps of Northern Louisiana that drew up districts that were more squiggles than actual seats. Counties were rarely kept whole and blacks were separated from whites in the most cherry-picked fashion. After several court cases the dixiecrats won and Louisiana had seven compact districts (https://www.senate.mn/departments/scr/REDIST/Redsum/lasum.htm), with only one in NOLA being for AAs. Those districts drawn in the mid-90s were preserved all the way to 2010 with ‘least-change’ style maps that preserved seat bases. This least change map produced a surprisingly high number of competitive elections and seat flips – even in the VRA seat when William Jefferson got tried for corruption changes. The map required the 2010 election for national partisan trends to finally assert themselves in the Bayou.

Going into 2010 then the Republicans were ambitiously optimistic about their opportunity with the lines. However, population loss from hurricane Katrina tempered these expectations. Louisiana had to drop one of her seats, and even though most of the population loss was in the NOLA region, the AA seat couldn’t be cut because of the VRA. The Republicans would need to draw straws and see who ended up with what.


Republicans began to fight over whose community would be taking the hit and get carved up. There was never any debate about Richmond’s AA seat – that was going into BR. Stretching the 2nd out allowed the GOP to pack AA dems in the only part of the state they were numerous in, and it was even justifiable since Cao had gotten through with a lower AA%. The rest of the map was where the battles were being fought. Both chairs of the legislature’s redistricting committees were from the North and made their presence and opinions known regarding the region’s seats. The north should keep two seats, stretch north south, and those seats would be expanding southwards to fill up on the necessary population. Instead, the freshman Rep. Landry was to be pit against Boustany in a unified Acadiana seat. Landry meanwhile fought back using cultivating support from those not tied at the hip to the legislative leaders, proposing maps that left two southern seats, reshuffled the north, and carved up the Baton Rouge region. In the end Boustany won out as Acadiana got unified with his base in Lafayette but Landry’s base was left out and pushed into Scalise’s 1st.  The dual GOP northern districts were preserved, and everyone’s seat got Redder.

Since 2011

Landry as expected lost his primary with Boustany. Beyond that, the only notable change in Louisiana’s delegation has been the faces. The GOP has held all 5 of their seats incredibly safely, and Richmond has been safe in his squiggle from BR to NOLA. Every GOP rep from Louisiana has retired to run for something else or been replace, with the exception of Scalise who now sits with the House Republican Leadership. Change will only come with a new batch of lines.

2021

This is a battleground, and there are two clear camps with a variety of resolutions. JBE and the democratic legislature will clearly push for as much as they can get, with the ideal prize being a second African American District. For the Republicans, 5-1 is just the beginning. In their ideal world, the GOP pushes beyond 5-1 and draws themselves permanent supermajorities in both legislative chambers. While there is an established backdoor for resolving disagreements concerning legislative lines, handing power over to the state supreme court, there is no such backdoor for congressional lines. The traditional GOP tactic of playing African Americans against white democrats won’t really work here because…well…the African American caucus is the one attempting to gain power. There are only a few white Dems in white districts left in Louisiana, and like much of the deep south, the Democratic party is an African American party locally.

So, lets analyze each party’s proposal. The Democratic case rests on Louisiana’s high African American population statistics that didn’t really change from their 33%-ish in 2010. While the Black Belt has shrunk since 2010, the cities have grown, and kept the overall number stable. NOLA in particular rebounded hard after Katrina and once again has a respectable population living inside the city’s borders. Redistricting 2010 just happened to occur at a bad time for New Orleans demographically. New Orleans is also unique as far as southern cities go in that it has a significant liberal white community that will vote for African American democrats. This is similar to the tidewater in Virginia where a seat does not need to have 50% BVAP if there are enough non-AA democrats to make the seat 100% safe blue but not enough to challenge AA dominance of the primary.


Looking backwards there were three previous attempts to draw a Second African American seat in Louisiana. Two of these plans I alluded to earlier and they were drawn in the 90s as part of a pact between republicans and African American democrats. Both of these seats were squiggles that had almost no community of interest and were designed to pack in as many African Americans as possible – this was the 90s and that was how the VRA was interpreted. Both districts were thrown out, however similar districts may be pushed by the dems in 2020 that give more respect to communities, counties, and other groups. A third plan was drawn in 2010 by the AA caucus that did not go into Shreveport, however it was rather messy in the rest of the state. It threw too many GOP incumbents aside and never left committee. These three potential alignments are the easiest ways to get a second AA seat to work: BR to Shreveport diagonally, BR to Shreveport along the state borders, and BR+ Mississippi river counties with cuts into neighboring towns.


If a second AA seat is to be drawn, one should carefully note the location of the GOP incumbents. If one is to be thrown aside, then the other 4 should be ecstatic about the rest of their lines. Scalise lives in Jefferson to the south of Metairie with a base in the suburbs, Higgins lives in Port Barre (St. Landry) and has a base in the Fayetteville region, Johnson lives in Benton (Bossier), Abraham in Mangham (Richland), and Garret in the republican southern neighborhoods of Baton Rouge. The easiest incumbent to throw aside may be Abraham or his successor – Abraham has expressed a desire to leave Washington which is why he ran for Gov.



The Republican proposal is ideally as least change of a map as possible. The 2010 map worked as far as they are concerned. Now, least change does not mean no change. If the suburban trends continue then the 2nd may need to take in select communities from the 6th and 1st. Clay Higgins presently lives right on the edge of his district and would prefer if his hometown of Port Barre is actually inside the 3rd. Scalise also is likely to demand personal lines for his seat in order to avoid primaries and further his advancement in congressional leadership. When concerning the Democrats arguments that a second African American seat should be drawn, the republican counter-argument is the disparate location of each major community. BR and Shreveport are separated by multiple counties and any district that connects them would be rather unseemly. It’s far better to keep more recognizable communities of interest unified rather than follow racial data and carve them up.

There are a few traditional ways to break a redistricting gridlock. The first way is compromise, with one side giving way on one issue and the others giving way on another issue. The classic example is when two chambers controlled by different parties draw their chambers legislative lines personally and agree to pass the others map. Compromise seems out of the picture though, since both sides are playing a zero-sum game when it comes to redistricting in southern states. The next option is abusing parochial concerns. Republicans can use democratic legislators desire for safe seats against the overall party’s interests and get them on board with a veto override. Democrats though could use republicans desire for personal congressional lines, most notably Scalise, to get them to support Bussing one of their own. Finally, there is the court option. The Louisiana Supreme court is controlled by conservatives which should benefit the GOP, except if these things go to court it is never that simple. Court maps are comparatively undesirable for incumbents when compared to personally decided district lines. Courts taking up maps on racial lines invites in groups like the NAACP, the ACLU, and other minority protection groups to get involved in a serious way. In Conclusion, anything is possible.

What’s left to decide

Nothing.

I don't have anything insightful to add, I just want to say that this series is great, please keep 'em coming.

Hmmm... if this ends up in state court, the (partisan, elected, 5R/2D) Louisiana Supreme Court = Republicans win.  If it ends up in federal court, it gets appealed to the 5th Circuit, which also basically = Republicans win.  If it then gets appealed to SCOTUS, it's clear at this point that 3 SCOTUS Justices (Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch) are ready to strike down the requirement for VRA districts entirely.
 Roberts has clearly favored easing other VRA restrictions on states in the recent past.  They would need one of Roberts or Kavanaugh to back a requirement for a 2nd VRA district or to overturn the LA Supreme Court's adoption of Republican maps. 

I'm not actually seeing a much cause for Dem optimism here unless they have flipped SCOTUS by the time it gets there?  Maybe Edwards makes a deal where he will just sign whatever the GOP draws for the state leg if they send him a congressional map with 2 VRA districts?     

 

Also didn't the US Supreme Court basically ruled recently that when it comes to redistricting, state supreme courts have the final say?   

If it's under state law (as in PA and NC), yes.  They just reinforced that last year by refusing to take up the PA legislature's appeal of the new CD map imposed by the PA Supreme Court.  But any challenges in Louisiana will be based on the VRA, which is inherently federal, so I don't think the CD map ends up at the LA Supreme Court at all, and the LA Supreme Court's choice for the legislative maps could be appealed to SCOTUS on VRA grounds.  Again, though, the VRA plaintiffs would need at least one of Roberts and Kavanaugh when it gets there, possibly both. 

Edit: Roberts did rule against the 2012 version of the NC-01 VRA district in Cooper v. Harris, which is similar to the argument for needing to take LA-02 into Baton Rouge.  So he is a plausible vote for VRA plaintiffs against a CD map with NOLA and Baton Rouge in the same VRA district.  However, I think there is basically no chance of getting 5 SCOTUS votes to prevent the LA Supreme Court from adopting its preferred state legislative plan.

If I was JBE I would request the GOP a map like this
https://twitter.com/TwentyOneCity/status/1196174528444956672

Why?
Its a compromise map first of all
2nd of all it includes his home parish so he could run here.

Good to see I'm not screaming into the void :) . I fully intend these to become the main discussion Hubs as census data comes out and the state begin to prepare for redistricting. I figured it was best to start early and provide some background since states are already locking down the partisan divisions in the  legislative and gubernatorial branch, and some state are already preparing for redistricting. There was a conference in Texas I think a month back just outlining numerical reality to the  legislature for instance, and CA commission applications are all submitted for consideration. Once  I get a few more of these up I'll ping Moun and get a megathread for the links pinned.

Anything like that would be blatant gerrymandering.

Yes, that is dumb.  LA Dems will need to argue explicitly for a 2nd VRA protected district throughout the process.  That 1. gives federal courts a reason to intervene and bypass/overrule the R dominated LA Supreme Court 2. has the potential to create a precedent locking the 2nd VRA district in for future rounds of congressional redistricting even when Dems have no partisan say.

Yeah? It would be gerrymandering in both cases. In the other thread I was just pointing out how they can gerrymander, not just going ahead and saying it was right or anything.

It occurs to me that Justice Thomas is basically a sure vote to strike the current version of LA-02 or a 2021 district resembling it if he gets the opportunity, so I do think there will be separate NOLA and BR districts one way or another.  The 5th circuit likely makes a sweeping ruling that the VRA does not apply to redistricting at all, this gets appealed to SCOTUS, and then Roberts and Kavanaugh narrow it.

However, if the end result is VRA doesn't apply to redistricting at all and JBE's veto holds, LA gets a 4R/2D map, but AL/MS/SC/TN/MO would then all have free reign to draw a clean GOP sweep if they wanted to.  The total number of Dem districts in Texas and Florida could plausibly be cut in half if drawn aggressively using CVAP and state courts look the other way.  On the other hand, Maryland would easily be a Dem sweep and Virginia could draw a hard 8D/3R if they wanted too.

I also wonder if this would lead to a test case with a state legislature voting to elect its congressional delegation at large?  I think national Dems would push California, New York, and Illinois (CA and NY have commissions, but IDK could they just not give the commission anything to draw?) to try that in VRA doesn't apply to redistricting world.  The Texas and Georgia GOP could try the same, but I think they would decide it was unwise to do that after 2018.     

Only Alabama would be a sure goner, Mississippi is only a +15 Trump state and I doubt they would cut it up perfectly when you have parochial concerns.
TN is in a nice little corner and its super D so Cohen should be safe,
Lacy Clay is in a similar situation and Missouri needs atleast 1 D sink to avoid a dummymander
SC- i mean its Trump +15 and the R's just lost SC 1 so why would they want to risk a dummymander here especially when upstate won't represent low country.

Can't talk about Florida or Texas.

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1196447552419303429

Wasserman's map as usual is rather simple and ignores the finer points like incumbent preferences.

Looks quite good, looking at it from a glance it looks like JBE's hometown of Amite is in that district, national D's may not like JBE in a Likely D district but JBE does deserve a future career and he probably does make the district Safe D even during R waves.

Note that 538's Atlas of Redistricting believes that the current map is a pro-Republican gerrymander, while a 4R-2D map (with no swing districts) would be the most pro-Democratic gerrymander, as well as the most proportionally partisan and the one with the most majority-minority districts (2). It also believes that it is possible to create two swing districts (one D-leaning and one R-leaning) by carving up New Orleans.

538s gerrymanders overall a pretty meh. Eg 7 4 Va

https://mobile.twitter.com/MapsMetta/status/1187945134798839809

Wasserman made 538's map and because he was making 200+ maps simultaneously there are obvious ways to improve them. Partisanship can be better/worse  on the gerry's and COI's can be improved for the fair, and cuts can be  reduced on the  county map. They are  also using 2010 data. Therefore, his maps are often good starting spots, not evidence. Now, 4-2 can be a dem gerry depending on the  numbers and lines behind said 4-2, but most are not. Same  with a 4-1-1 and a 5-1 (for Rs), hand-waving statements like that are not helpful.

Very much looking forward to the next installment of this series!

I expect St. Bernard  or at least most of it, will be part of the New Orleans based minority district.

 Here's a nice piece on how Louisiana is now a Redistricting battleground. (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/legislature/article_389d03dc-1094-11ea-812d-9fabc712b7b8.html) Also mentions some of JBE's goals, but it mostly seems he is keeping his cards close to his chest.

Sorry about the big gap in Redistricting posts, I have been enjoying my holiday. I'll hopefully have some more out soon.

Is there significant black flight there?

Black population has risen from 17.7% in 2010 to 23.7% in 2017 while overall population has gone up significantly.

These are small numbers. Off the cuff, it's like from 6,000 to 11,000 people.

Republicans would be dumb to draw a 2nd vra district.  If JBE won't sign a map unless it has one, then it goes to courts who likely will draw a better map anyways.  R's have nothing to lose in that case.  They should try for a clean, compact map like this: https://davesredistricting.org/join/74e52397-8e06-45d0-b6a4-9340c8618304

Yeah AL is the obvious one where the black seat could be cut up if that's allowed.  MS could get away with it.  TN and SC would be risky (due to political geography and TN will already be cracking Nashville and SC-1 needs shoring up) and MO is out of the question.  As for FL, maybe the northern fl AA seat could go.  Crack Jacksonville.  In TX, eliminating a majority minority seat wouldn't be smart, but TX gop could increase Hispanic percentages in some seats to 90% which could really help in southern texas. 

Would TX R's try to elect all its seats at large if it had the option?  Not as much of a slam dunk as CA/NY/IL anymore, but the odds would still favor a Republican sweep 6-8 out of 10 years, right?

That would be a huge mistake, could MASSIVELY backfire, considering how TX is trending.  It would be a good idea in: UT, NE, OK, LA, MS, AL, TN, SC, KY, IN, and MO.  For Texas, it would be smart to use a combo of smds and mmds.  Create 4 multi member districts that elect their representatives proportionally, 1 district along the mexican border (5 reresentatives) 1 district from urban San Antonio to urban Austin (3 represenatives), 1 district containing the blue parts of DFW (4 representatives) and 1 district with the blue parts of Houston (4 represenatives).  The remainder of the state is divides into 23 single member districts, all of which are Republican.  BUT the delegation wouldn't be 23-16.  Republicans would win 3-5 seats in the multi member districts meaning Texas would get a 26-13 delegation at worst or a 28-11 delegation at best. 

Hmmm... states with one party control where that party could safely gain seats from holding at large US House elections, shaded by # of seats gained (30% = 1 seat, 90% in CA = 7 seats, etc.)

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It's a clear net benefit for Democrats despite currently holding more vulnerable seats nationwide, as between CA, NY, and IL, they would be nearly guaranteed to flip 18 seats.  They could also confidently flip another 5 between WA and NJ.  Republicans have Ohio, where they could flip 4, and then several scattered 1-2 seat opportunities, mainly in the South/border states. 

So it looks like D+26 vs. R+17 for net D+9, and if you think VA and CO are safe-ish for Dems going forward (giving R's Ohio probably means we should give D's at least one of VA/CO), they could pick up another 7 seats just by making those 2 states go at large for a net D+16.  So long as Texas doesn't go back to it's 2004 habits or the 2016 Rust Belt states become safe R, allowing at-large elections would create a clear structural Dem advantage in the House.

But this is really about Louisiana, where JBE would still be able to veto the at-large proposal and keep single member districts.

Important update: In a surprise move, the Louisiana House of Representatives just elected a new speaker with support from all 35 Democrats, both independents and a group of 23 renegade moderate Republicans.  This means de facto coalition control of the chamber for the next 4 years and therefore a stronger Dem hand in redistricting.  This also presumably ends any possibility of 2 Dems or Indies switching to create a Republican supermajority.

It looks really ugly, but you can draw a safe 9-0 R map in Tennessee.

I wouldn't say moderate, maybe 'traditional' is a better word. Historically, the LA house elected the Governors nominee for speaker similar to a French style of politics. This was done even if the parties divided on control of the executive and the legislature. This tradition ended  in 2015 with the election of Barras. The people who backed Schexnayder have been described as those who have historically been able to work across factions in the past (who possess various ideologies), a term that should not be confused with moderates. His election should be seen as a slight return to the older traditions, not a total coup.

However, it is correct that the end conclusion that this makes LA increasingly likely to head into the 2021 with divided powers in regards to redistricting. More committee powers means less ability to ignore the dems. The situation also increases the chance a 'corrupt bargain' emerges where one side trades powers over one map for powers  over another - but this is in no way guaranteed.

State legislative Dems really let Jindal pick Republican Speakers both times.  Wow.

I could easily see an offer to let the incumbent Dems draw all of their own seats and maybe make some of the R seats not in the ruling coalition more competitiive or create new minority opportunity seats in exchange for supplying the veto override for the state senate's 5R/1D congressional map.  Remember, Dems have more to lose in the state legislature if it goes to court because the state supreme court (partisan elected R majority) draws the maps.  It's a very similar dynamic to VA 2011, where Dems knew they didn't have a prayer of holding the state senate on a court-drawn map.

I would expect VRA suits regarding the congressional map to continue either way.  It's conceivable a 5/1 NOLA-BR district map passed by veto override gets thrown out mid-decade like the VA maps, especially if Roberts or someone more liberal is still the SCOTUS swing vote. 

There are very few Dems left in the legislature who are not in safe districts.

https://twitter.com/RepAbraham/status/1232759109688135686

As expected, Ralph Abraham is retiring after his failed gubernatorial run. The 5th either could get a true freshman who is easily thrown aside, or it could get a legislative ladder climber with allies in Baton Rouge. If no serious legislators end up running it would be a sign of everyone's expectations regarding redistricting.

So is Richmond like Clay?
Will he pull a Clay and prevent a 2nd Likely R seat or something?

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Anyway heres my fair LA map, 1 Safe R, 1 Likely R and 4 Safe R. Baton Rouge district is Trump +7.3 and trending left but is still deep south.

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Obviously crossed the lake and took in East Jefferson Parish which is quite different from West Jefferson Parish.

Fair map? That’s an illegal map.

How is it illegal?

No AA seat? Is that a 6-0 map?

Oh my bad the green seat is Safe D. 50.5% black by 2018 pop and 63% D. Purple is Lean to Likely R at Trump +7.

Would an AA candidate likely win the green one?

Do the math. 50.5% black and 63.5% D. The answer is yes.

I still think it might elect a white Democrat in a midterm.

No. African-Americans are monolitically Democratic, so even a 35-40% AA VAP district would probably be functional (AAs would make up 35-40% of the voting population but >60% of the Democrats, and could thus elect their candidate of choice).

In Louisiana, only 35% or 40% black would vote gop

well New Orleans + Jefferson is like 40% black and almost exactly 1 district and still about Safe D.

Better to go 50% to avoid litigation

Well the real reason you can't do a NO +Jefferson district is merely cause the eastern 2 counties wouldn't have road contiguity then. So I just decided to treat North and south Jefferson(river) as seperate counties.

Here's a CVAP Black majority 2nd district which doesn't go into Baton Rouge or Lafayette. (https://davesredistricting.org/join/9a1a63a1-92e6-43e2-84b9-134b1ee4782c)

Is there a way to draw a 4-2 map that gets rid of Abraham's district and not Graves's? It just seems like Graves's district is the natural one to get nuked but obviously that's suboptimal.

I mean a 4-2 map is pretty hard tbh without violating the VRA

Well here's the reason I ask:

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It's ugly as sin but it sort of has to be if you want a 4-2 map. Blue is about 53% black 40% white by CVAP, Green is about 56% black 40% white. I wish I could have made the New Orleans seat from only Orleans and Jefferson parishes, but unfortunately I don't think the math works out for it to be black enough. Anyways obviously none of these districts are competitive, blue went for Clinton like 70-30, green like 65-30, and Trump clears 70 in all the other districts (excepts Higgins's, and then only barely). However, as you can see, Scalise and Higgins keep their districts pretty much intact, and Johnson and Abraham's districts are sorta similar, but Graves gets hacked apart, which is unfortunate when Abraham is retiring anyway.

(those faint lines are the current districts)

Here's the link (I think): https://davesredistricting.org/join/ae60bd2f-d8e3-4e5f-af55-64d8fcf31748

How likely is it that a 4-2 map is actually drawn? How much leverage does JBE have in the redistricting process?

So the GOP just sends it to the courts. Most likely we get a district resembling something like Arkansas 2nd.

So most likely JBE vetoes a 5 Safe R-1 Safe D maps, which throws it to the courts, who draw 4 Safe R-1 Lean/Likely R-1 Safe D?

Thats if the GOP doesn't overrides in exchange for legislative or other stuff

Does the GOP have the votes to override? I thought they were a couple seats shy

They don't because of 2 independents, one of whom is a rural socon/fisclib and potentially flippable.  However, the other one is from New Orleans and votes left of JBE himself and they need both to override a veto.  So it's basically a sure thing that the redistricting veto will be sustained unless there is a deal with some of the Democrats. 

It's theoretically possible that Republicans make a deal for a second Dem congressional seat in order to draw the state legislative districts as they see fit, but under the state constitution, the legislative maps go directly to the 5R/2D partisan elected state supreme court to break the deadlock after JBE vetoes.  So it's overwhelmingly likely the state supreme court just adopts the GOP legislative maps. 

If they can get the congressional map into federal court, it gets more interesting, as Roberts and Thomas are both plausible votes against a NOLA to BR LA-02, and Kavanaugh and Barrett haven't decided a racial gerrymandering case yet. 

Its pretty likely New Orleans to BR will be cancelled but they won't draw anything crazy either in favor of Dems, just expect a seat similar to AR 2nd without a VRA rework.

Are you saying this AR-02-esque seat will be centred around Baton Rouge?

Yes if it goes to the courts.

My take on a "bipartisan" map, where Rs cave to the Dem governor and give up a Safe R seat for a tossup; in exchange for some state legislature stuff (I imagine the more likely scenario is the opposite though?)

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Seats 1, 3, 4 and 5 are all Safe R; and all incumbents have their home inside their district. District 2 is Safe D and 49.1% black by CVAP. It is not quite 50%; but it is more than enough to elect a black Democrat I imagine

Seat 6 is the interesting one; being Trump+1 and R+2 it is a pure tossup, though I imagine it is also very likely to be super polarized. It is 43% black and 51% white.

Do VRA seats need to be >50% CVAP or do they just need to be pretty sure that it will almost always elect a minority representative? I'm trying to see how compact you can get a 4-2 map but it's surprisingly hard to get them over the hump with CVAP, they always seem to be just shy of 50%

It's pretty variable--the most important thing is that the minority community can elect their candidate of choice. This is why NC-01 and the two Virginia VRA districts are not that Black, while Latino districts are usually significantly higher in percentage (as Latinos have lower turnout most of the time and are also less politically homogeneous). As for Louisiana and other deep south states, it somewhat depends on how Democratic the White vote is--New Orleans whites are pretty Democratic these days, so there's a little more flexibility in Black %, but outside of the city votes are very racially polarized, so you probably do need an outright BCVAP majority.

Of course I could be getting something wrong as VRA interpretation is very confusing.

It's generally better to have a BVAP majority than a BVAP plurality, and generally better to have a BVAP plurality than a white plurality, and generally better to have a white plurality than a white majority.

I don't think that's necessarily correct--the former iteration of VA-03 was struck down because it packed Black voters.

I don't see a court drawing a second Dem CD myself. Other than doing away with the black seat gerrymander, this is designed within reason to be a least change map.

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I said "generally". There are exceptions, many of them, but there is a trendline of desirability that exists. And of course overall minority influence is highly important.

My map has a high minority rights rating and proportionality rating. My VRA district is the most compact I was able to get with majority BCVAP.

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Partisan composition.

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Majority BVAP is not a legal requirement if a district is otherwise minority performing, and indeed could itself be illegal if deemed a gerrymandered CD which "minority packs," diluting minority influence in other districts to their detriment.

No. I got a high minority rights rating on DRA. That should be good. I made sure to do so. My VRA district is 51.1% BCVAP. My Baton Rouge district is more Democratic than any of the GOP districts on the current real map. I made Garret Graves' district significantly more Democratic. I wasn't able to draw two vaguely compact performing districts.

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Just to be clear, as I am sure that your appreciate, what the DRA "likes," and what the VRA law prescribes, are not co-extensive, and some things the DRA might like, may in fact cause one to run afoul of the VRA. In that regard, I question the legality if it were more or less replicated, of the current lines of the black performing CD in Louisiana. Combining two minority nodes in two different metro areas where not needed to create a minority performing CD, is quite problematical under the VRA law.

That isn't legal. The green district isn't compact enough. Louisiana had two majority-minority districts in the early 1990s, which were struck down in court for not being compact enough. I drew a 4-1-1 map with a swing district that narrowly voted for Clinton in 2016.

Updated map.

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Partisan composition.

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https://davesredistricting.org/join/935ef5ef-b252-408c-afcb-84713f1b36f4
easy 4-2 map
Inspiration came from Oryx's signature

I updated my map. There two majority BCVAP districts. Unlike the early 1990s districts that were struck down my second majority-minority district is compact enough to be legal.

With parishes.

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With numbers.

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Partisan composition.

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Quite good. Is there a reason two counties are split between the 3rd and 4th, though?

Interesting. That looks better. Good map.

Am I the only one here who uses directional numbering of Louisiana?

So far as I've seen, yes.

I use directional numbering for all 50 states. Who might replace Julia Letlow on my map?

LA-01: Steve Scalise
LA-02: Troy Carter/Karen Carter Peterson
LA-03: Garret Graves
LA-04: Clay Higgins
LA-05: OPEN
LA-06: Mike Johnson

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If I had to guess, a Baton Rouge Democrat.

Maybe Sharon Weston Broome?

Definitely possible.
Is there any indications we have, either way, on whether she would pursue federal office?

I would take St. Bernard and Plaquemines out of LA-02.

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Is this what you had in mind?

No. Plaquemines and St. Bernard are still in LA-02 on your map. I would put them somewhere else. I didn't have in mind a three way split of EBR.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/935ef5ef-b252-408c-afcb-84713f1b36f4
Duplicate this map and post in thread when you find a solution.

I don't know if that Baton Rouge-Shreveport district is compact enough to be legal.

Here's my take on a similar concept:

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link (https://davesredistricting.org/join/37c86bef-a06d-4045-ad1b-cc5a8c961ec3)

I figured Livingston Parish was a better fit with exurban New Orleans than Houma way down in the bayou. LA-02 is plurality Black but plurality white on CVAP, still it'd probably vote for the Black candidate of choice. You can probably get a little messy with it and push the Black #s up though.

That is certainly a reasonable map which the Pubs will not be drawing.

Under the test created by Bartlett v. Strickland, a second majority-minority district is required in Louisiana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett_v._Strickland).

Ah, I took your initial map to be a fair one but I see now it was intended as a realistic Republican map.

The GOP doesn’t have a veto-proof majority in both houses. The current map faces a lawsuit.

I didn't actually parse whether there was another reasonable map that would make the Baton Rouge CD swing rather than lean R, and just drew what looked reasonable to me that could be defended as not a gerrymander designed to deprive a minority of a CD that would entail legal risk. When I saw that the Baton Rouge CD I drew was lean GOP, my thought was the Pubs should go for it, as the best option for them balancing off the electoral and legal risks.

Your map certainly would be one for the Dems to bring up in court, but I think the odds are low that a court would insist on it due to the lack of a compact 50% BCVAP trigger CD being in play, and because even if there were one, I tend to doubt a court would insist on such a gerrymander in lieu of a non gerrymandered CD. In any event, I would think the Pubs would rather litigate the matter, then just throw in the towel, and thus my previous comment to you.

I hope the above discursive set of words makes some sense!  :)

Below are two other iterations.

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Yeah sorry, I'm in the habit of drawing maps as if they were drawn by a commission--my map is probably not too realistic, thought I think it's decent?

Sure it's decent, but Livingston County is really the suburbs of Baton Rouge, rather than exurbs of NO.

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I don't disagree, but IMO Houma in with St. Tammany is worse--putting one of the Florida parishes in with non-NOLA area Acadiana is bad CoI.

Look at my maps for an earlier version, just start with East/North Jefferson Parish(whiter side compared to mixed south/West side) and then go to St Tammany.

I just updated my map to make it more compact and have fewer split parishes.

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Proportionally partisan Louisiana (which will never happen, obviously)
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President 2016: ()

LA1: West Florida
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LA02: New Orleans
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LA03: Acadiana
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LA04: Black belt areas
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LA05: North/Central Louisiana
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LA06: Baton Rouge, River Parishes, northern Acadiana
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That LA-04 is illegal because it isn't reasonably compact.

Is that definite? I know the '92 Shreveport to Baton Rouge to Lafeyette district was struck down, but that district was... vastly less compact than this one.

LA-02 is large plurality BCVAP. LA-05 is majority BCVAP.

LA-01: Steve Scalise
LA-02: TBD
LA-03: Garret Graves
LA-04: Clay Higgins
LA-05: Mike Johnson
LA-06: OPEN

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Partisanship.

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My take on what a realistic map drawn by the GOP could look like. JBE can veto maps. 5R-1D.

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https://davesredistricting.org/join/772fdfb1-c5d8-4211-b1a2-5de05e2a90cf

Tried making a sane map with two D seats.

Louisiana is roughly 32% AA so two out of six districts (33%) being able to elect AA's candidates of choice is a reasonable argument to make in court.

This is what a more fair GOP map might look like if JBE can veto a ridiculous map. Who might take LA-05 on my map?

LA-01: Steve Scalise
LA-02: TBD
LA-03: Clay Higgins
LA-04: Garret Graves
LA-05: OPEN
LA-06: Mike Johnson/Julia Letlow

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Partisanship.

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The 5th has a lot of territory currently in the 4th.

Yes, but I drew Mike Johnson (R-Bossier Parish) and Julia Letlow (R-Richland Parish) into the same district. Who might take the yellow district on my map?

There have been cases of incumbents moving in order to run in the district that has most of their territory.

My attempt at creating a state Senate fair map. I am almost completely sure I didn't include enough VRA districts but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interestingly my map ended with many competitive districts despite Louisiana being a very inelastic state

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https://davesredistricting.org/join/f289c3a9-53e5-42c4-b1b1-26a0b68e92af

There should be 9 Safe D districts, 6 competitive districts and 24 Safe R districts.

Tipping point districts are district 7 (Trump+24, R+16; Located western Jefferson parish and northeastern St. Charles parish) and district 18 (covers south Baton Rouge and a tiny bit of Iberville parish)

I just updated my nonpartisan maps slightly.

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After the veto session we just had, I’m wondering what’s the most Republican you can get the State House and State Senate… Republicans have a veto proof majority if they can keep all of their votes, but I wonder if new maps can stack it even further in our legislature, like 80-25 in the House and 30-9 in the Senate

Republicans are actually 2 seats short of a veto proof majority in the state House. However there are also 3 independents who caucus with neither party.

They would have to start messing with black majority districts to get Democrats that low.

i'm not sure if those are still required or what the minimum number of such Louisiana needs to have


the way i read it you could draw a bunch of districts that are 40% black and no such VRA district is legally required

Why would they not still be required?

I tried my hand at a fair 6-district map of Louisiana.


Image Link (https://talkelections.org/FORUM/GALLERY/31773_05_08_21_7_12_21.png)

The Population Deviation is 0.01%, and it reflects 2015 - 2019 ACS Data.

65/100 on Dave's Proportionality Index
68/100 on the Compactness Index
75/100 on County Splitting
92/100 on the Minority Representation index (:))
1/100 on Dave's competitiveness index (lol who cares this is Deep South)

The map above shows results from the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.

Check it out here and see county and municipality boundaries. (https://davesredistricting.org/join/aeb24806-43cd-4006-86da-83cec6c204de)

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Partisan Breakdown by Election

2016 U.S. Senate Election in Louisiana: 5R to 1D

2016 U.S. Senate Election in Louisiana (runoff): 5R to 1D

2016 U.S. Presidential Election in Louisiana: 5R to 1D

2019 Louisiana Attorney General Election: 5R to 1D

2019 Louisiana Gubernatorial Election: 5R to 1D

2019 Louisiana Gubernatorial Election (runoff): 4R to 2D

2019 Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Election: 5R to 1D

2020 U.S. Senate Election in Louisiana: 5R to 1D

2020 U.S. Presidential Election in Louisiana: 5R to 1D

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Opinions?

Also, I just gotta say damn is Livingston Parish Republican. How is it that big and that Republican at the same time?

here is an article from the Hayride about the politics behind the redistricting process

https://thehayride.com/2021/07/heres-what-larry-sabato-says-about-congressional-redistricting-in-louisiana/

Thanks for sharing this with us. This was an interesting read.

Unfortunately, I have not looked at the incumbents residence yet, but here is a map that includes a pretty solidly D district including New Orleans, and a district that includes Baton Rouge that would set up an incredibly competitive contest, Biden +1%.

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4-2 map with 2020 data.

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Made 2 black majority districts.

Making a New-Orleans majority black district that doesn't touch Baton Rouge got a bit harder after the census, but making a Baton-Rouge based black district got a bit easier.

Nonpartisan map with only one VRA district. Such a map is possible because Democrats have just enough seats in the state legislature to allow Edwards to veto a bad map.

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Would Edwards himself run in this LA-06?  He seems like the perfect candidate for it.

*He'd have to wait until 2024, but there's no way a Deep South Trump seat is flipping for Generic D in the 2022 midterm. 

Edwards could run in LA-06 on my 5-1 nonpartisan map. He got almost 60% of the vote in my LA-06 in 2019.

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He’s dead

I think that the poster is refer to John Bel Edwards, the incumbent Governor, not Edwin Edwards, the now deceased comically corrupt ex-Governor.

Doesn’t John Bel Edwards live in LA-1 on this map?

IDK- this map splits his home Parish between LA-01 and LA-06.

Edwards came from Amite, which is in my LA-06.

i keep on saying: the only D who can win in LA other than the VRA house district is Edwards, and he shouldn't waste his time on a House seat when he can challenge for Cassidy's seat in 2026

Do you mean with a GOP gerrymander or a nonpartisan map like mine?

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Maybe, but this only makes sense if the president in 2026 is a Republican.  He could have a nearly sure thing lined up in 2024 if he's willing to go to the House. 

Lol.
If Edwards is dumb enough to think he could win a senate race statewide...I don’t know what to say.

Updated for better compactness.

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Presidential results in 2020.

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2019 gubernatorial runoff results.

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he just won governor statewide twice, and Cassidy voted guilty on Trump's second impeachment.

now if it's anyone else but Cassidy, he doesn't have a shot

At first I didn't believe it.
But lo and behold...
https://davesredistricting.org/join/9ec3a530-2366-437b-9bea-014fbf0d2edd
Only 50 Trump districts, out of 105.

Nice job! It's def a suprising example of pretty extreme favorable geography

Holy crap.  LA Dems need to find 10+ JBE wannabes ASAP.

I tried to do the same thing with the State Senate. It definitely is harder. I still was able to get a majority of Biden districts though.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/50529d59-7aed-4668-a24e-7bf09aca8c13

Are we going to see a trend where Democrats increasingly have geographical advantages in the Deep South?

Yes, with the possible exception of GA because almost all the Dems are within 50 miles of Atlanta, but even there the majority-white rural areas are now extreme R packs, so it’s starting to even out.

i wouldn't think there would be any advantage when both parties are packed similarly. it depends on who draws the maps

they can be centered in cities and fan out (New Orleans could have three different Democrat House members who win close races in swingy districts) or be bigger in size and just dip into the cities (New Orleans could have 0 Democrat House members, each losing close races to suburban R members)

BTW didn't Louisiana just propose/pass an amendment to change the size (and by necessity change the districts) of the state supreme court from 7 to 9 justices?  I believe this was a bipartisan affair and one of the goals was to have 3 black-majority districts instead of the current 1? 

I think it failed in the house. Also I think 9 seats only gives 2 black majority really regarding an Orleans and Baton Rouge seat.

Yes, confirmed it failed. 

The current LA Supreme Court is 5R/1D/1I(former rural D).

I was able to draw a 4R - 2D LA map. Both Dem seats are AA opportunity seats, but they're pluralities though. The 2nd Dem seat Biden won by around 5%.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a89d787c-6052-4c21-895f-081350e22010

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Even in Georgia there’s still a lot of deep blue pockets outside the growing Atlanta bubble. It’s easy to draw two Safe Democrat non-ATL seats with the current GA-02 and a Savannah to Augusta seat. On top of that, you can draw a blue-tilting district with Athens, plus the rural black belt counties east of Macon and drawing all the way to pick up parts of Gwinnett County that GA-07 has left over.

Yes, I looked into it since making that post, and GA is not actually a slam dunk for R's geographically like say WI or MI.  It's only a bare advantage. 

Ye according to my calculations, GA’s geography bias is R + 1.52. States like WI and MI have a geography bias above R + 10. I think another big difference between GA and a lot of southern states is the fact Atlanta metro actually has pretty decent turnout, alongside the fact at least downtown is a Dem hyper-pack

I can’t remember the answer, but do Republicans have veto override numbers on JBE? If not, I bet he could hold off for a competitive 2nd Dem district.

The Louisiana Senate has a Republican supermajority, but the House does not (it's currently 68R-33D-3I). It all depends on what the independents do. Assuming a strict party-line vote, Democrats need two of the three independents.

If JBE delivers, he will be the best governor in the country.

Is it possible to make two compact black-majority seats or not?

I've made a bunch of non-compact ones but they don't look quite as good as I'd like

THIS POST HAS BEEN MOVED FROM A NOW-OBSOLETE THREAD (https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=130419.150)

i kind of hope LA Republicans can trade a 4R-2D map for even bigger supermajorities in the legislature that would require more defections to derail Republican priorities. We had the veto session recently and R's didn't accomplish what they came there to do because some were claiming dubious travel restrictions due to curiously timed knee surgery, etc. as the Republican speaker of the state house publicly admitted he didn't want to do his job and whip votes. Those overrides failed by like one or two votes and JBE and the Democrats gloated.

You’d have to eliminate a handful of black influence and black majority districts in the House for that, which can’t happen due to the VRA.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/6e24626c-029b-478a-b504-74253f34993b
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I sought to drew this as a non-partisan map.
One seat is contained completely within the Florida Parishes. No black-majority seats, but there is one that is Biden+9.9, 47% black, 43% white in total population (most of Baton Rouge) and another that is Biden+28.6, 42% black, 40% white (NOLA+all but 49k of Jefferson Parish).
The rest are safe Republican.

At the expense of most other priorities that one values in redistricting, and with extremely sketchy road contiguity (gotta love Pontchartrain Causeway abuse!), I managed to draw a map of Louisiana with three majority-minority seats, the seat resembling the current 2nd being Black-majority:

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This image shows 2020 presidential colors; JBE wins the northern seat as well.

https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-census-2020-baton-rouge-redistricting-louisiana-supreme-court-d095ea2632e15a74f11bdb00764a6a8e

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As of right now the most overpopulated is the Baton Rouge district at 850k while the Orleans district is 430k. Ideal is around 650k. Expanding New Orleans doesn't really hurt Democrats as it would still be Safe D while the Baton Rouge district losing 200k R areas would make it a lightly dem trending swing district. As far as I see county splits have been done in the New Orleans area. As Supreme court districts don't have strict standards for deviation I decided to treat East and West Jefferson Parish as separate Parish's and accept the extra deviation .
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I took a crack at a State Senate map:

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Trump '20 wins 25 of 39 seats. JBE wins only three more than Biden, due to racial polarization and geographic disadvantage. Drawing a map where he wins a majority of seats requires throwing compactness and ideal minority representation out the window entirely.

11 seats are >40% Black VAP. The ugliness in Jefferson Parish is for the sake of maximizing minority representation against the totalizing wishes of the Big White Brick That Once Sent David Duke To The State House.

As I was asked on Discord before posting this here, I have checked to make sure that every seat has adequate road contiguity.

https://louisiana.redistrictingandyou.org/?districtType=cd&propA=current_2011&propB=congress_chrishenry1_20220104#%26map=6.4/31.25/-91.848

wanted to add this link, which has plans for LA House, Senate, and Congressional districts

Seems like all plans so far make a Baton-Rouge based swingy-Dem leaning seat. Are any of these plans actually official plans though proposed by the legistlature?

NAACP Plan3 is pretty ridiculous as it tries to connect Baton Rouge with Shreveport to create a Black Majority district

No, the legislature might either just decide it to offer a compromise Livingston BR seat or just send it through the courts and hope for least change.

Is it though? The road network and patterns of settlement, not to mention the Red River, all flow diagonally. Seems much more reasonable if you are going for a Second AA seat than the reach-around along the state border.

https://twitter.com/AlexIp718/status/1479515755163095040?s=20

JBE is officially in favor of a fight.

I feel like there's several options here.

First is JBE and the legislature gridlock forcing a court-drawn map. While the LA supreme court leans right, I think they'd have to be very hackish to keep the LA-02 snake and abide by a very strict definition of least change. I think they either moderately keep the snake in place or just hire special masters and completely scrap the current map, in which case at the very least you'd get a swingy Baton - Rouge seat that is black opportunity if not majority. Seems like a seat that connects Lafayette, Alexandria, and maybe to Monroe and Bastrop is more likely than one that stretches all the way to get the black areas of Shrevport.

Important to remember here that LA-02 doesn't actually take in all that much of Baton - Rouge (~100k), just the bluest parts, meaning pretty much any "fattening" of the snake on it's Orleans end in a district that is already pretty close to ideal population as is will pull it out of Baton-Rouge very quickly.

The second option is JBE and the Leg reach a compromise map, which would probably make Baton-Rouge based seat swingy and black-plurality but stops short of being outright majority

The third option is Rs gerry by getting a conservative Dem or one of the Independents on board. This would be quite a narrow tightrope to walk as you'd need all Rs on board too but given how partisan Louisiana politics are, especially on the Republican side, it certaintly wouldn't be impossible. Maybe they give someone in the Legistlature the district of their dreams in exchange for their vote on a 5-1 map.

Will def be interesting to see how this plays out; I feel both 5-1 and 4-2 are possibilities.

I don’t really see a second black performing CD as being in the cards if a court draws the map.

It certainly is not in a least change map: https://davesredistricting.org/join/e319ee0b-1f09-4e6b-867a-9d7c625371b4

And it still isn’t in a less least change map that gets rid of a potentially illegal black pack under the VRA. The less least change map gets the Dems within 10 points in the Baton Rouge CD, but no cigar: https://davesredistricting.org/join/ada627f0-6bff-42ea-b569-a314dbdd7971

Wow, that's interesting and unexpected.

You'd still need two defections for the court to rule against the GOP (one if you include the Independent Chief Justice with the Democrats; he's in the 6th, which is not in Baton Rouge and therefore seems unlikely to be axed). That seems unlikely, so it's probably a low-risk, high-reward move which maintains OK relations with black LA Democrats after the congressional gerrymander.

Apparently this map was left to die on the floor, with a 6-1 map that makes only changes for population passed out of the chambers, though given the incoming veto it is not the end. Apparently there is some movement within the GOP to restart the 9-seat court proposal, which would then be allow the necessary (given the desire to invalidate court challenges) AA seats to be drawn without disturbing the majority or the incumbents.

Had a play around with maps if they did increase the supreme court seats to 9 seats. Seems to be a case of compact districts and minimal county splits for supreme court seats.

A 6-3 map is doable but has two significant disadvantages: firstly the two New Orleans districts would be plurality white (albeit safe D), and secondly the 5th would be almost completely changed which the incumbent there may not be happy with.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/21f797b5-5409-4401-9903-6495faf344fe
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On the other hand a 7-2 map can be done with only a single county split, with existing districts preserved better, and it looks neater, but of course 7-2 is less proportional. https://davesredistricting.org/join/fd521948-0117-4230-ae3c-822f69317fed
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Here's what I got for a 9-seat court map, though this is all still very much up in the air, and an expansion would require a amendment to go before the voters in November - though it would likely pass with decent support from both parties.

All the counties included in this grouping are only about 25K overpopulated, which is fine for a 5% deviation and five seats. Swapping Iberia for West Feliciana and Pointe Coupee puts the group around 15K underpopulated, which is still fine though as I will explain in a moment, why would you do it.

First districts drawn here is D1 which can be nested in St. Tammany and the White East Bank, which interlocks with the presently majority African American D7 in NOLA. Given the lower populations though D7 can remain nested in Jefferson and Orleans. D5 gets as much White areas as possible between St. Tammany and BR, and the reduction of the district size means there is actually the oddity of having a bit too many White precincts for a single seat in this part of the state. new D8 follows the African American population and D6 just goes westwards until it remarkably hits a good pop deviation. Swapping Iberia and West Feliciana + Pointe Coupee therefore would either require removing AA areas from D8 or have D6 go deeper than needed into Jefferson. The two AA seats in this grouping kinda draw themselves.

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The next issue though is the contours of the western 4 seats. The intention appears to be to add a third AA seat as well, and the western grouping has the population for it, but the options are less obvious or neat.

https://archive.fo/nLyzF

On the black Democrat who supported the 5-1 plan.

This map passed the house and senate. Bel Edwards will likely veto.

https://twitter.com/PiperHutchBR/status/1494713664397627397?s=20&t=MH7L5U6K2...

Anyone have shapefiles or a link to a DRA version of the map passed by the legislature?

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Even a 53% black district is very possible.

The real thing is in order to make LA-05 majority black, LA-02 will probably become 49% black or smtg, possibly be condensed almost just to New Orleans, but would obviously remain safe D and black functioning.

I still think Dems have a slightly better argument for a 2nd black district here than AL, but for a variety of reasons it seems less likely than not to happen.

Does anyone have it? I can't import the block equivalency .txt that the legislature's website provides.

I made a legal under current SCOTUS 6-0 GOP map.

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Your schtick gets old, fast.

Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me you can divide a Safe R state into 6 Safe R subdivisions? Impossible. Preposterous. Utterly absurd.

The Louisiana map has been overturned by federal court and in the opinion it sounds like they specifically say there’s still time to make a new map.

However there’s a good chance we end up with a simillar thing that happened in Alabama whee the ruling gets stayed though the 2nd black district has a slightly stronger case in Louisiana.

Reguardless of whether you think Louisiana should get a 2nd black seat, the original map is clearly gerrymanders and absolutely horrendous visually.

Also a reminder given turnout dynamics a 2nd black seat likely will be competitive/D leaning but certainly not a slam dunk for Dems, simillar to GA-02 ig where’s its right around 50% and picks up quite a few Dem leaning cities after crossing through a lot of rurals

Actually, pending whatever further attenuation or evisceration SCOTUS has in mind for it,  under the current iteration of the VRA (as opposed to some interpretation of a state law ala Florida), I think that while there is a violation of the VRA in Alabama, because it looks to me that two "compact" 50% BVAP CD's can be drawn, that is not the case in LA. Two* such compact CD's cannot be drawn in LA (a CD combining the black areas of Baton Rouge and Shreveport is not compact).* So I think the trial court decision** is clearly wrong, and will be stayed if not reversed in very short order by the federal appellate court.***

https://davesredistricting.org/join/8bfa1863-ed2e-466e-9d9f-90b35e656962

*Actually it is even a challenge to draw such a compact 50% BVAP CD in the NO area, but in the end it can be done, barely, if one accepts that water is good enough for contiguity.

**Did the trial court decision even grapple with the compact issue?

***The unpacking of LA-02 (allegedly 70% black) is another issue, and may well have merit, in particular  since it must combine the black areas of Baton Rouge and NO to get to such a high percentage when such a combination is not needed to get to 50% BVAP, much less a performing black CD.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/42873bd9-ce68-4ee1-878e-be420dbf0ee3

The current map is a total mess, LA-1 uses water continuity to connect to the southeast and LA-6 is about as non-compact as you can get.


If LA-2 is allowed to go to like ~49.5 BVAP it's pretty easy to make a second black seat,  the LA-5 in this map actually isn't all that much changed from the current one other than going into Baton Rouge.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/cdc7e216-2e8b-4095-ba10-dd0d45a98e54

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Your map is quite good and I don't know how I missed that solution. It certainly makes for a closer case as to whether your Baton Rouge based district that then runs up the river, is "compact." Well done.

You don’t have to go to Shreveport but it partially depends if you believe a black functioning district is sufficient since 48% is a ton easier than 50%

I agree it likely gets stayed or overturned or whatever by the 5th circuit but LA-02 is a pretty blatant pack, especially since Baton Rouge blacks population is growing, so there’s a small chance they eliminate the snake while still only keeping 1 black majority (and hence Dem seat)

One thing I'm curious about is why does it seem like LA and AR rural black voters turn out at much lower rates than those in AL, MS, and GA?

Do you all seriously think SCOTUS won't shut this down? LOL. The only map with any chance of getting better for us is FL

SB2 managed two compact majority black districts (DRA (https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::da29905c-5878-44d9-b491-0d1c8c4e316e)).

I would love if District 2 could somehow be extended to Jefferson Parish until the lake so I never have to think about Steve Scalise again.

I made a more compact map than SB2 with less parish splitting that has two performing districts with CVAP majority.

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Not to mention you still have to worry about mid-decade redistricting by R's in your state if they flip the state Supreme Court this year.

And if Rs win the SC in IL. Or PA later in the decade lol. The list is endless

PA isn't even possible till 2026 barring suprise deaths and an R trifecta, and even then, overturning the current map wouldn't necessarily lead to a gerrymander. Also one of the Rs was appointed by Woof and is relatively moderate.

IL is def a greater concern for Dems and obv NC is almost certain to go back to being an R gerry.

Ohio really depends on if Dems get a commission on the ballot in 2024 (which would likely pass). Worst case it is a 13R-2D map, thoguh the rules make a truly maximal gerrymander tricky.

I am amazed how you can manage to do your homework (which I am confident that you do) and keep up with all this lacunae with such facility. Well done. What is going to  happen when "lust" consumes you? No, you do not need  to, and indeed, should not answer, that question!  8^]

Tbf school is pretty much coming to an end so there's not much work, and plus I'm autistic hence don't have many friends, at least that I see irl reguarly, which is time consuming for a lot of people.

Also I'd say generally I'm a pretty efficient person when it comes to work, at least compared to a lot of folks my age.

I think another reason you may think I may keep up more than I do is I have a decent memory, so a lot of times I only need to read some electoral fact once or twice to get it engrained.

The specific reasons ik the court compositions decently well is because i did a project on it back in June or smtg last year

I did make this tonight though

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RIP Troy Carter?

https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1536727430681227264?cxt=HHwWgMDT5ZndxtMqAAAA

Did Stern see another leaked opinion or something? Or is he clairvoyant? God the spam that is out there. I don't think the VRA will be gutted myself, but it may be narrowed, e.g., a district does drawn that violates neutral redistricting principles will not be considered compact to trigger Gingles, and a district that does violate neutral redistricting principles does if it packs minorities. We shall see.

He is clairvoyant.

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The plaintiffs in the case provided alternatives with a district made up of northern Baton Rouge along with the Delta area and carefully drawn intrusions into Monroe, Alexandria, and Lafayette to get above 50% CVAP.

The interesting part of the case is that no constitutional claims were brought, and thus no three-judge panel. That is, there is no claim that the map violates the 14th or 15th Amendments, but rather violates a federal statute intended to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments.

This also means that there is no direct appeal to the SCOTUS.

The VRA is a federal statute, so SCOTUS can take the case if it wants it after the appellate court makes a final judgement. I think the compact issue is a close one, with the definition of what compact means at the margins ambiguous. Is a district that does not look too bad visually but travels over white rural areas of some distance to take in the black neighborhoods, and only the black neighborhoods of three sizable cities from its Baton Rouge core, compact?

I suspect at some point SCOTUS if it keeps the Gingles concept will want a clearer definition. And perhaps the most likely "cleanup" would be that if one can draw a 50% BVAP CD that comports with neutral redistricting principles, then a performing black district must be drawn. The CD described above does not.  I think even in the academic world now, taking in pieces but not the whole of disparate cities not in the same metro area (disparate maybe meaning two, but certainly three or more) does not hew to neutral principles.

For example, if in the map below, LA-06 were 50% BVAP, then it must be drawn. A codical could be that if LA-06 as drawn that way, makes it impossible for LA-02 to be 50% BVAP, LA-02 must still be drawn as a minority performing CD. 

https://davesredistricting.org/join/4415fa63-dc85-4946-bcc2-6a572e7616e7

And here's the petition for cert

https://vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media/documents/Em._App._for_Admin._Stay_Stay_Pdg._Appeal_and_Writ_of_Cert._6.17.22.pdf (https://vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media/documents/Em._App._for_Admin._Stay_Stay_Pdg._Appeal_and_Writ_of_Cert._6.17.22.pdf)

Thank you for the link. It is required reading for those who want to master a granular understanding of Gingles, unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, and the existing attendant ambiguities. The brief is extraordinarily well written in many places, while also disingenuous and misleading in others.

Aside from the merits of issuing a stay (probably meritorious, but not slam dunk for a reason not mentioned at all in the brief, to wit that the 59% BVAP erose LA-02 that was drawn by the legislature traveling up the river to take in black precincts and excluding white ones, is in and of itself most probably an illegal black pack racial gerrymander), to cut though all the sound and fury and obfuscation, three issues are presented that SCOTUS most urgently needs to resolve:

1. Under Gingles, what is the definition of a compact minority population?

2. Can a district be found compact while the minority population therein deemed not compact for purposes of applying the Gingles test?

3. Under what circumstances, if any, does drawing a district  that contains a compact  minority population under Gingles, constitute an unconstitutional racial gerrymander?

The resolution of the above questions would resolve the issue of whether, when a district that looks "compact," but fails to hew to neutral redistricting principles, and splits disparate counties and municipalities to include minority population nodes and exclude non minority populations therein, it 1) must be drawn if 50% minority VAP, or 2) cannot be drawn because it is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

It is rare to have a legal issue where it comes down to must or cannot, as opposed to may, but this is one of them.

The Gingles Test was devised in the context of multi-member districts, in particular those of the North Carolina legislature. Under the North Carolina Constitution, counties may not be divided by legislative districts. So for example in 1981, Mecklenburg (Charlotte) had 8 representatives, and Wake (Raleigh) 6 representatives elected at large.

If all the blacks vote one way, and a significant majority of whites vote the other way then the other, any candidate preferred by black will lose. If you can go into a voting booth and flip the levers, but to no effect, has your right to vote been infringed? Not if you voted for Mickey Mouse. But what if you and almost all your neighbors voted for Adam Clayton Powell and the effect was indistinguishable from if you had been barred from the polling place?

That seems a reasonable decision, and would simply require election from single-member districts. Single member districts had already been ordered in Texas by White v Regester. The SCOTUS would think they were setting an objective standard for use in cities and counties. Compact area means an area of residential segregation, a ghetto or barrio. Enough to form a majority in a single-member district means that there is sufficient population to create a minority-majority district. And in an area electing multiple members there may well be a white population voting differently than the black population in at-large election (I'm not sure what the difference between cohesive voting and bloc voting is).

While there might be some variation it is not too likely that the compact area in a city or county that elected five or eight members just happened to have 51% black population in two districts. There might be enough for 1.4 districts in which case you could divide it between two districts, one 80% black and one 60% black.

If Louisiana were going to elect its 6 representatives at large, they would likely all be Republicans. To satisfy the Gingles test you would probably try to draw a district based in New Orleans, but might have come up the river to Baton Rouge to get sufficient population for one district. You wouldn't also include areas of Monroe, Alexandria, and Lafayette as a compact minority population.

You can't assign students to schools based on race at least since Brown v Board or Education, and drawing attendance zones to have the same effect is going to be suspect (e.g. if you follow the railroad tracks and most of the black population lives on one side of the tracks, and there happens to be a school building built in 1923 that used to be
the black high school, and the school on the other side of town was built in 2017 and is known as "The Glass Palace" you are going to be suspected of operating a segregated school system even though some blacks attend that school.

The same is true with congressional districts. You can't assign voters on the basis of race. But if we had recorded whomever drew the illustrative districts, it is quite likely you would see them fiddling around going into Monroe, Alexandria, and Lafayette for the purpose of getting the BVAP over 50%. I can't distinguish between assigning blacks to a district, and drawing a line that includes them in that district.

The point about the VRA vs. the Constitution, is that under current statute, claims based on the 14th and 15th Amendment are held before a 3-judge panel, with any appeal going directly to Supreme Court. The SCOTUS does not have discretion to take or not take the case - they may choose not to hear a case but will issue a ruling.

That is not true for cases based on statute. This is true even though the basis of the federal government intervening in the state legislative process is enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments. So in Louisiana because the plaintiffs are not claiming that the congressional districts violate the constitution, the case was heard by a single district judge who happened to be appointed by Obama. Any appeal will go up through the Appeals Court. Had it been heard by a 3-judge panel composed of a district court judge, another district judge from the circuit, and an appellate judge, the process would likely have been more deliberate and the SCOTUS would recognize that the same issues as in Alabama are in play.

If the Pubs were prudent and risk averse, in their special session they should revise their CD map to unpack their most probably illegally black packed LA-02, while hewing to neutral redistricting principles in the unwind. The map below does that. Just LA-01, LA-02, and LA-06 exchange precincts from the map the Pubs passed. The other three CD’s are not changed at all. The now compact and also perfectly parish nested LA-06 becomes considerably more marginal, but still safely Pub for the moment. That is what happen when blacks are unpacked with a polarized electorate. I made sure Steve Scalise in LA-01 still lives in his CD. I was wondering if he lived in the Garden District given the weird erose lines there, but he does not. He’s parked in Jefferson city in Jefferson Parish.

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https://davesredistricting.org/join/e4105184-43d1-46bc-90f2-d04e0f4f696f

Your map illustrates that blacks are widely dispersed in Louisiana, with BVAP in LA-3 24.6%; LA-4 33.8%, LA-5 32.9%, LA-6 34.2%. Only in a large city such as New Orleans or Baton Rouge can you gather enough blacks in a compact area that constitute a majority.

Your LA-2 has BVAP of 47.0% demonstrates what neither the State or the plaintiffs want to show that you can't draw a reasonable district with a majority BVAP in Louisiana.

Both the State and the plaintiffs have stipulated that LA-2 is a Gingles district. I think that it would be a mess to litigate.

The legislature adjourned the special session on Saturday. So the federal district court judge will impose her plan which will continue to be litigated.

This is the only bill that got through committee but was pulled after it was clear that it could not be passed.

SB 3 (PDF) (https://legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1289264)

Scroll down to see demographics and maps.

I don't want to beat this drum until it has no sound, but you can get to the Gingles percentage for LA-02 without creating too much of a mess as to compactness, athough you do have to do quite a lot of jurisdiction splitting. Having said that, LA-02 may well not be  Gingles CD because the voting pattern is not that racially polarized in NO and Jefferson Parish. There are a significant number of loyal white Democrats.

Then it is a political decision to configure it as a Democratic seat or pack it with Democrats?

Perhaps there will be an amicus to the the Merrill case arguing that applying metrics to measure the percentage of BVAP above 50% is indistinguishable from assigning voters to districts on the basis of race and is therefore unconstitutional.

SCOTUS will legalize this map.

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Black packing via an erose county chopping CD is clearly illegal. You know it and I know it.

Here is an LA-02 that is 50% BVAP.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/c99928e7-deaf-4afe-9107-db79b7d97392

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What if Louisiana had 7 districts, with a target population of 665,396.

Start chopping from the west end. What does the BVAP increase to?

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Could there be an argument that any 50%+ BVAP LA-02 violates neutral redistricting principles given in a nonracially drawn compact and fair map, the New Orleans area would just get it's own dedicated seat rather than attaching black rurals to boost black population? Honestly for the GOP no matter what happens with VRA New Orleans is likely too hard to politically crack down the middle given balancing a bunch of Trump + 17 seats is bound to make someone upset.

Is there any chance it won't become legal to crack New Orleans?

It's already legal to crack New Orleans.

However I'm assuming you mean New Orlean's black population. It'd likely take the most extreme outcome by the court of gutting the VRA alltogether which is unlikely thouhg certainly not impossible given the balance of the court.

Unlikely, really?

Firstly, it'd be terrible optics on the courts part especially right before the election. Gerrymandering and voting rights tends to be a winning issue for Dems so if the justices are really hacksih would they really want to potentially cost the GOP? Furthermore, while elimination of the VRA would help the GOP in the South it could help Dems unpack in other places.

Secondly, the question being debated is what qualifies as a VRA district, not really if the VRA is flat out illegal. That'd be quite the step on the courts part.

Thirdly, even if VRA was overturned it's unlikely the GOP would go 6-0 in LA just cause LA isn't a super deep red state. The more likely implications would be a 7-0 AL and the elimination of GA-02. However, if Dems wanted to they could stetch the South Side of Chicago further South and the Nevada gerrymandering case would be moot. If states like Republican states normally without middecade redistricting (TX, GA, AL) are given permission to mid-decade redistrict, so would Dem states and people seem to forget that, especially since they tend to be more diverse on average and hence VRA plays a bigger role in shaping the maps.

That is another issue that is not entirely clear. Is a 50% BVAP CD but no more a safe harbor if sufficiently compact to trigger Gingles, or is one obligated to follow neutral redistricting principles that have a lower BVAP percentage, so long as it is black performing? The legal answer is probably the former safe harbor one, but I think there is some doubt. As a matter of policy, one should of course try to hew to neutral redistricting  as much as one can while preserving a minority performing CD that is Gingles protected. I think it is pretty clear at the moment that the compact standard for Gingles is looser than the one used for purposes of neutral redistricting principles. The issue is how much looser. One hopes SCOTUS will elaborate.

Exactly. I feel like there's ways to go about it that are better than others, and as tricky as it may be, I'd really be happy with the SCOTUS if they come up with some sort of purely mathematical benchmark even if it otherwise loosens things up a bit.

Also I'd argue the arbitrary strandard for 50% black districts by default violates fair redistricting principles cause ina truly natural map, you should have some 40% black seats and some 60% black seats; not just a bunch of 50% black seats and then a bunch of whiter seats.

Like I kinda feel like black communities should as much as possible be left whole, but aiming for a specific 50% standard doesn't make sense when some of those seats would've already been perfoming at 30% black and others would still be iffy at 50%.

Inherently too, just aiming for black functioning districts eliminates political competition in primaries as well. In fair maps, shouldn't all races ahve opportunities to expand or shrink their coalition if that makes sense rather then deadlock 2 black reps and 4 white representatives for example

As an intellectual [a masturbatory] exercise, I pretended as to dividing the real estate between LA-01 and LA-02, I would forget about everything except compactness, chops (parish and municipal), and beauty.

I came up with the below. Is LA-02 black performing? Yes, I think so to at least close to a reasonable doubt. Is LA-01 still rock solid Pub? Yes? Will it ever be drawn? No. Part of the reason is that some of the whites placed in LA-02 in this iteration are some of the most virulent racists in the US. It has issues as to soft COI issues as I refer to them, and I am a pretty hard liner when it comes to blowing off soft COI claims.  

Btw, LA has no land contiguity requirement for darn good reasons!  8^]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/bc9408f5-7d21-4cd6-bbe9-f4425e68ec06

That's also part of the problem too. There really can't be any rule between "racist" and "nonracist" whites for obvious reasons, though one can argue "racist" whites help make LA-02  amore reliable black functioning seat cause they most likely vote in the R primary.

Also just in general in the South, most "whites" are racist in the sense they don't share the same political interests as black folks. There are very few liberal whites in the South generally so no matter what a district will either be a black pack or include whites who vote opposite to how blacks vote.

Worth mentioning that multi-member districts are fine, just not majoritarian ones.

Precisely which ones would be legal, you think?

MD Legistlature had quite a few iirc.

As I know that you understand, under current law as "explained" by SCOTUS, there is nothing illegal about a 35% BVAP black performing district, nor for that matter a 60% BVAP district, if the latter hews to neutral redistricting principles (putting aside whether the legal result differs per Gingles, if the 60% BVAP CD precludes another black performing CD, that would itself be deemed triggered by Gingles as sufficiently compact.

There's nothing illegal about it ye, but ig what I'm saying is that the 50% standard seems to be the only standard actually upheld.

Take Alabama for instance. The current 6-1 map isn't fair from a racial standpoint because the other 6 districts almost perfectly crack the black community between them'

However, a 5-2 map also isn't fair because one really has to go pretty far out of their way to draw both districts to be 50%, hence violating neutral principles.

In a case like this, it shouldn't be an all or nothing where either you draw a 2nd black seat or don't; draw a black opportunity seat, perhaps based around Birmingham and a rural black seat that is over 50% black. This would be the best compromise in between.

This is obviously pretty idealistic of me, but ig what I'm saying is the trigger shouldn't be 50% or approaching 50% nor should the trigger be finite.

You can make a simillar argument in LA; the current map splits the black votes not in LA-02 evenly between the remaining district rather than make an effort to consolidate them, even though you could argue a 2nd black LA district violates neutral principles.

A state with a good map would be MS where a good chunk of the remaining black population is consolidated into MS-03 even though a 2nd black district obviously isn't warranted and MS-03 obviously isn't a black functioning nor black opportunity seat. There are no real objectable split of black voters in the state without being ridiculous with tendrils to grab black communities

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For instance in this slight modification of the map Republicans passed, AL-07 stays as a safely black district that abides to relative neutral principles, but AL-02 is consolidates a lot of the black population not taken in creating an opportunity that would most years still most likely elect a white R (Trump + 9 seat, 40% black), rather than splitting the black community into a bunch of 30% black seats where they literally have no influence.

There's no reason not to consildate black voters into AL-02 even if the seat doesn't perform other than for partisan reasons.

They are also one common option at the county and city level when districts get tiny compared to the precincts.

SNTV, STV, MMP, Party-list would certainly be legal for non-congressional elections (Constitution requires majoritarian elections for Senate, and an entirely unrelated law requires single member districts for House)

Yes, but would SCOTUS uphold that?

For purposes of proportionality, should minorities be treated differently as a matter of law, such that where hewing to neutral metrics affords some options in design, one should go for the solution that moves towards proportionality? That is what you did with your 40% BVAP CD.

This is not about proportionality rather seat distribution.

The current AL map has 1 50%+ black district and a bunch of below 30% black districts. That is an unnatural distribution of seats cause you have a cluster of low black pop seats and an outlier. A fair map should see a variety of black seat %s.

Converting an "unnatural distribution" into some legal standard is problematic, and in some cases, in my opinion, counterproductive, such as using declination to put lipstick on the pig of doing soft gerrymandering that moves away from proportionality where there is a "natural" party packing, e.g. in large inner cities.

I have come to the firm opinion that you just follow neutral redistricting principles, and where there are reasonable almost as equally good options subject to that constraint, you move towards the one that is closer to proportionality. So your suggestion does move to proportionality, and the lines do I think if you minimized chops hew to neutral principles, so I like what you did, but I think it should apply to partisan proportionality in general, and not just for minority proportionality, so thus my question.

Who's to say? It's not like our court really has much interest in upholding the law as of late.

Firstly, I would say natural party packing can be accounted for by looking at the distribution of how precincts vote on a more granular level. In NY for instance, you have a massive share of precincts that are Biden + 80-90 or whatever, and hence a bunch of hyper D NYC seats makes sense. This adds a whole other layer of complication though idk if the courts can really deal with and write into law.

This is what's so hard about this case, and what is neutral redistricting principles isn't even very well defined. Look how differently all the Independent commissions went about drawing maps, even though they all follow different sets of supposedly neutral principles.

One question ig I have is if for VRA, one must abide to "neutral redistricting principles" when dealing with minority communities, doesn't that pretty much end extreme partisan gerrymandering in any state heavily impacted by VRA districts, since partisan gerrymanders almost always chop up clear communities of colour that would otherwise be left whole when following neutral principles, or make VRA districts far more complicated than they need to be (see TX-33, TX-35, NJ-08). Technically all 3 districts function as minority districts but don't have to be so complex to do so.

Texas is one place where a loosening of VRA could actually be problematic for Rs because if a 2nd Alabama or Louisiana district is considered illegal racial gerrymandering, then isn't TX-37, TX-33, the whole Houston config, or the fajitas? All these districts twist and turn to get to a certain minority % while being very uncompact and unnatural districts, especially when there are clear alternatives that are far more compact (2 Hispanic seats in Bexar, a Hidalgo based district, a more "quadranted" Houston, ect). In all these cases the GOP did not move towards the more reasonable option in drawing the map.

Another underrated possiblity where this could have an impact is Cali where the commission clearly tried very very hard to create minority districts, though the fact the map was drawn by a commission gives it a better face than Texas's which is clearly just gerrymandered and bad overall.

My guess is what the supreme court will do will just lower the standard for what qualifies as a minority district, not neccessarily force a minority district to be particularly compact or coherently. So a minority district CAN violate neutral redistricting principles, just the trigger is based on neutral redistricting principles. This would both spare the GOP from creating 2nd black districts in AL or LA, but also ensure TX map stays more or less legal.

In her order denying AG Landry's motion for an "extension" (read: motion to stay), Chief Judge Dick notes that "the Supreme Court indicated that an immediate stay is not warranted by declining to enter an administrative stay upon receipt of the emergency application, instead ordering a briefing schedule."

the order (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lamd.60244/gov.uscourts.lamd.60244.223.0.pdf)

the supreme court not immediately entering an administrative stay (https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/21a814.html)

The opposition briefs are due today.

White v Regester upheld a lower court finding that the multi-member districts in two counties violated equal protection. On remand, the courts found similar violations in every county except Hidalgo (where Hispanic voters were able to elect the candidates of choice on a county-wide multi-seat basis). Texas has used single member districts universally since then.

It is conceivable that there is an equal-protection violation if one county could elect a delegation that acted as a bloc.

What I was saying that Thornburg v Gingles established a metric for determining whether at-large elections might be unconstitutional or violate the VRA.

Docket Search (https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docket.aspx)

Search on "Ardoin" (the Louisiana SOS).

"Docket for 21A814" is the case of interest. The Alabama amicus brief appears to argue that the Louisiana District got the Section 2 Wrong; or alternatively if the court got Section 2 right, Section 2 violates the Constitution - at least when applied to redistricting.

This is the proposed remedial map from the plaintiffs.

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The defendants said that they were just two of the legislators, and that executive branch defendants were not competent to propose a map due to separation of powers, so that they would not propose a map.

Pretty nice looking map honestly. Certainly better than the current monstrosity.

My DRA transcription of the map. (https://davesredistricting.org/join/3d86f040-c593-4af1-ac4b-630a1f9fc6d6) The Master explicitly went out of the way in his report to not cut VTDs, which is why the map is not zero'ed out like usual with congressional stuff. That said, it is a advisory plaintiff plan and not meant to be final. To this end there are some improvements to be made, like removing the Vernon cut and improving the EBR and Tangipahoa cuts. 

Honestly, this map is miles better than pretty much all the proposed maps by the Dems orginially which really tried to secure the 2nd district to be safe D and hence safe Black at the expense of compactness. This map feels close to what an Atlas user might draw. Yes it still has a few minor annoying parts but overall that's pretty close to the best map you can get if you want a 2nd VRA seat.

Honestly though those black %s on both seats are pretty impressive so they still have a few % to clean the map up if needed.

The map passed by the legislature also did not split VTD's. The deviation in both plans is under 100.

In the mid-decade litigation over the legislative maps in Alabama it was found that many VTD's had been divided on racial lines. This was found to be race sorting. It probably is not worth the risk of litigating over a half dozen precincts split to achieve perfect equality.

Of course they should use whole counties unless necessary to get below 5% deviation.

This is the map proposed by the plaintiffs. A master is someone appointed by a court.

One underrated factor though is that Louisiana precincts are generally significantly smaller than Alabama's, especially in urban communities where one is likely to have significant black population.

I do agree whenever precicnt splits become excessive whatever the reason may be (unless one is following city lines), the map tends to be an unnecessarily bad and complex map.

I'm still amazed at how many precincts the Cali Commission split pretty randomly throughout it's map drawing; another reason why the map is so sloppy.

In the 2019 elections, Republicans in the Louisiana House came up just two seats short of a veto-proof majority (luckily for Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who had just narrowly won re-election that year).  With redistricting settled at least at the state level, if not for congressional districts, does anyone see them winning in 2023 the magical 70 seats they need to implement their agenda regardless of who wins the governor's mansion? 

In the state Senate, Rs locked in a supermajority more or less by ceding 11 seats to Dems.

In the state house, the 2020 Pres breakdown is 72-33 with few competaive seats so a supermajority is def obtainable for the GOP. Redistricting was actually used as a bargaining tactic on the GOP’s part to try and veto override. A few of the depopulating rural blacks esta could be problematic for Dems by the end of the decade (or sooner). If Dems want to break the R supermajority (which seems to be the default), they’re path would have to run through 3 Trump + 10ish suburban Baton Rouge seats and 1 close Trump seat in New Orleans. After that they don’t have many opportunities. I’d say barring rural comsevadems maling a comeback, the gop should hold the supermajority narrowly most of the time

This is likely the end of LA Dems having any power

I think they actually recently got to that number through a defection from D -> R in a rural red seat, one of the reasons why Edwards didn't see a reason to veto the GOPs recent culture war package.

If you turn on the racial display, the splits of Ouachita, Rapides, and Lafayette parishes look like race sorting, with some rural territory included in Rapides and Lafayette to give the appearance of greater compactness. The split of Tangipahoa also appears to be a racial split.

Use of solid colors also hides what is happening around Lake Ponchartrain, including the split of Mandeville so as to provide the bridge connection back to Metairie, but there doesn't appear any way to drive from Slidell to Morgan City while staying in the district.

Anyone know when we’ll have a final map. This might be one final small W for Dems this cycle but we’ll see if the map survives the decade

https://lailluminator.com/2022/06/22/its-basically-a-race-3-courts-consider-future-of-louisianas-congressional-districts/

Thanks.

Tomorrow will be a big day because it's the last day to stay the ruling by the SCOTUS (the stay has already failed the conservative 5th circuit court). Given how last minute they stayed the Alabama case, there's def a good chance we see a repeat here.

Really hoping they draw the and enact a better map ASAP.

So, no stay yet?

https://twitter.com/AmeetTheIndian/status/1541868057743728641

SCOTUS effectively wants to combine this with the Alabama case.

I was right about a 6-0 map being allowed.

Imagine holding out hope that the worst Supreme Court of the last century wouldn't issue a stay. Couldn't have been me.

Will it become legal to draw out Troy Carter?

This is no surprise, given the stay of the Alabama case, where I thought the case that the map passed violated section 2 of the VRA was much stronger. The conservative 5 or 6 clearly think a revision of the Gingles rule is in play.

there is no such thing as an R or D primary in LA. All candidates run in the open primary and if the winner gets 50% +1, they're elected. if no candidate does, there's a runoff between the top 2.

Very unlikely in the sense there can be 0 functioning black districts in the state, however, LA-02 could be an illegal racial pack/sort. At the very least it’d likely be illegal to crack New Orleans black community which is enough to make any district lean D

Any even if VRA is completely gutted I doubt LA Rs would draw a 6-0 map as it’s not easy to balance partisanship of all 6 seats in a way that satisfies incumbents (which they had focused on in drawing their initial map)

I had no hope for this either.

The Supreme Court's motto might as well be:

"A gun in every holster! A child in every orphanage! A white person in every district!"

The Gingles condition is a compact minority, not a compact district encompassing dispersed minorities.

The plaintiffs were clearly race sorting in how they divided Ouachita, Rapides, East Baton Rouge, Tangipahoa, and Orleans parishes. They were also aiming for a specific target percentage.

Section 2 doesn't say anything about districts. It is about practices that have a discriminatory effect. Imagine that there was a law that voters had to be at least 5'8. That would have a discriminatory effect against women, Asian, and Hispanic voters.

The Gingles test came from conditions where there was a compact minority community and  at-large elections were used.

Does the Alabama case mean there will also be 2 black districts in LA?

The case here was successful for the plaintiffs, but was put on hold by the Supreme Court until they ruled on Milligan. That is over and the plaintiffs indirectly won.

This is map previously brought up in court:

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However, the legislature may now move to get a map more favorable to their incumbents in place while comping with orders. Here are a few previously:

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A lot of potential Section 2 remedial maps have the L-shaped LA-05 lock in LA-06 east of BR, which pushes Scalise out of St. Tammany. However, given the tenure of incumbents, especially Scalise, don't be surprised if the legislature preempts the court and goes for incumbent protection while making LA-05 safe Dem and majority Black.

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How do you compactly get two black seats in Louisiana?  When I try, I get a 44% black (but 60% minority) Biden +35 seat in New Orleans and a 42% black Biden +3 seat based in Baton Rouge (and taking in the black precincts of Lafayette).  I guess you need to snake it through my 37% black, Trump +18 Northeast Louisiana district, but would SCOTUS rule differently on that case if it's more of a snake than the Alabama one?

EDIT: Actually, my 37% black district was my Northwestern one.  I can get the BR seat up to 45% black and Biden +5 by going up the river and removing some white Republican parts of East Baton Rouge, but that's still not a safe seat.  And, I don't see SCOTUS going for a snake to Shreveport.

Literally every single map I have posted in my two posts is over 50% BVAP, including the one labeled Fairfax which was ordered by the lower federal court before the stay. And there are other options that are less favorable to incumbent: the Diagonal from BR to Shreveport, and supposedly the BR centered seat with arms to Lafayette and other smaller settlements also works but I havn't tested it cause of what it forces on LA-01.

There's no compact way to get the New Orleans seat to 50%, but you don't need to; even if it were down to 35% black it'd probably still reliably elect the black candidate of choice.

For the Baton Rouge, as long as it has most of BR plus the black parts of Alexandria, Lafayette, and Monroe, it should easily be majority black; you don't need to make it less compact by sending it into St. Helena or Tangipahoa, that just pushes it up to 55% black.

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It'll be interesting to see how Republicans try to shore up Scalise if they have to shift District 2 as well. It seems somewhat counterintuitive to get him out of Jefferson entirely, but if that's the only way to keep him in St. Tammany it might be the wiser move on their part.

It's possible to draw the Baton Rouge district as 50% black without going up into northern Louisiana.  It just requires lots of little arms into counties to grab the black majority towns and cities.

Both the Baton Rouge and New Orleans districts are black majority in this -

https://davesredistricting.org/join/b8b6e650-2869-4e66-9380-bfdad37436b6

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Yep, this is the central BR option I mentioned in my post above this one. There are fundamentally 3 ways to draw a second >50% BVAP seat: the Monroe-BR "L," the BR Blob as shown here, and the Diagonal from Shreveport to BR. You also can do the border snake that goes from BR to Monroe to Shreveport, but the plaintiffs and judge wouldn't accept that on neatness.

All are possible, but the "L" disrupts those with congressional tenure the least, so its the one I expect the GOP would prefer in potential settlement talks.

https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1666942275669065728?s=20

Since the two cases were tied at the hip by the Supreme Court itself, one would normally expect this to be ignored an then the previously ordered remapping to commence.

I read the letter brief and it seems extraordinarily weak. Louisiana doesn't even really engage with the court's decision in Milligan, instead simply reiterating their original objections, many of which were decided by the SCOTUS, even if Louisiana doesn't like their decision. Further, SCOTUS explicitly wrote in Milligan that the district court's findings with respect to Gingles were subject to clear error review. Never put anything past this court but I would be very surprised if this appeal isn't dismissed.

https://twitter.com/tekken_guy/status/1667326977882177541

It’s possible to make a Black-majority LA-05 as close as Biden+4. Cassidy won this seat and someone like Letlow can pull a Gerald Greene and hold it as long as she wants.

Maps like this are put up a lot by DRA users on twitter and atlas on how to "cheat" the VRA ruling, but pretty much never pass through the court and become reality.

The whole point of a VRA section 2 district is that the voters of the minority race can reliably elect the candidate of their choice, especially if the opposition bloc votes against the minority race, which is definitely the case in Louisiana and Alabama.

The lawyers know this, the courts know this, the politicians know this, it just won't happen.

There’s a reason the rural black seats in NC and GA still stand. If it looks like cheating, then it’s probably cheating.

But the NC one is only Biden +7, is that still legal?

These so called 2 Gingles CD maps seem to violate the metric of reasonably hewing to traditional redistricting criteria mentioned by Justice Roberts. While the yellow BR based CD seems somewhat reasonable looking, what is not "traditional" is wandering around from Baton Rogue to Monroe to Lafayette to Alexandria, chopping each city to pick up the black precincts and exclude the white ones. None of the maps put up were linked to the DRA, so it took me some time to discern what was afoot. So maybe another VRA case will find its way to SCOTUS.

I doubt it for a couple reasons.

Firstly, regarding the city chops, the district court considered this issue and found that the proposed remedial plan was superior to the status quo in terms of parish and municipal splits. The Fifth Circuit also found that they were likely to succeed in showing that their alternatives were both sufficiently compact and also not racial gerrymanders. This is, I believe, subject to clear error review, and if SCOTUS was willing to defer to the district court in Milligan I think it will do likewise here.

This is partially a case of "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered" – I'm not the first to note that Louisiana's case is made much more difficult by virtue of the existing map's being very uncompact – but I think there's more to it that people tend to miss here. The stipulation that states must adhere to "traditional redistricting principles" comes to us from cases like Shaw v. Reno, which were dealing with districts like NC's old CDs 1 and 12, which are extremely dissimilar from the proposed remedial maps that have been set forward here. That is to say, existing jurisprudence does not say that section 2 districts must be the types of districts that would be drawn by some hypothetical actor acting with no knowledge of race, and indeed SCOTUS reaffirmed this in Milligan. VRA districts need not adhere maximally to traditional redistricting principles, it just cannot completely eschew them like North Carolina used to.

The other thing is that I think Louisiana really shot themselves in the foot by arguing that the case "presents the same question" as Milligan to get the SCOTUS stay and then doubling back now that Milligan didn't get decided the way they thought it would.

I get it that the non compact maps that were tossed were worse, but the Gingles’ map in AL in Allen was a heck of a lot better, and Roberts expressly mentioned keeping municipalities together, so the LA Gingles map falls squarely in between. If the comparison test between the map passed and the Gingles map prevails as the standard, then yeah the LA hog map tanks the Pubs. If one needs as well a prong that the Gingles map must better hew to traditional redistricting criteria, or at least match it, it arguably fails.

What is missing here is a prong that the map passed must be superior based on traditional redistricting criteria than the hypothetical Gingles map. Roberts alluded/implied that as well, but since not applicable to AL, he did not get into the weeds as to remedies, e.g., that a map must be drawn that is superior to the Gingles map based on traditional redistricting criteria, and if none exist, then minority performing districts must be drawn as dictated by Gingles. That to me would be the appropriate standard.

The Pubs would be wise to pass the Torie map that I drew, and toss the hog map. We shall see.

Good post, one of among many that I have noticed from you lately. You must be a legal type or it’s a major avocation of yours. :) Thank you.

Thank you, truly, that means a lot coming from you!

If you want to "save" Letlow, the easiest way is by making sure that Graves is the one who goes, which is pretty easy.

June 26, 2023 SCOTUS order re: Ardoin v. Robinson:

"The writ of certiorari before judgment is dismissed as improvidently granted. The stay heretofore entered by the Court on June 28, 2022, is vacated. This will allow the matter to proceed before the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for review in the ordinary course and in advance of the 2024 congressional elections in Louisiana. See this Court's Rule 11."

Judging by what I've read from the Fifth Circuit on this matter, looks like Louisiana is getting a second VRA district.

https://twitter.com/DemocracyDocket/status/1673323804683018242?s=20

Louisiana State Republicans shady and desperate appeal that their case was once similar to Milligan but now isn't fails. Stay is lifted, Plaintiff success in the lower courts is the current outcome.  

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This was the map the district court produced before Purcell and Milligan occurred. One suspects that if the state will redraw without a master, the map will have quite a few more changes.

Wow, even knowing that this was guaranteed to happen after Alabama I’m still kinda shocked.

There goes any and all thought of a Senator Letlow happening, unless they somehow sacrifice Garret Graves instead, which is less likely to happen.

If I somehow get into District 2 I might cry. The chance to meaningfully vote for anyone but Scalise would be a dream come true.

Which is to say: I hope they shore him up in St. Tammany rather than Jefferson.

If you live in the East Bank, I wouldn't put much hope in that. Outside of a handful of specific precincts which are mostly (but not all!) in LA02 already, its a strongly majority white region. And thats before we talk about how the Metairie GOP seemingly has huge influence, or how Scalise lives in the East Bank.

I know it's a pipe dream, because I'm on the East Bank, although close enough to Orleans Parish -- and not in Metairie -- that I'm a *little* hopeful. (Only 70% white as opposed to Metairie's 77%.) If you were to draw a majority-minority district in part through the East Bank, it would probably have to run through my area.

You're right, though, that it's more likely to run through the West Bank.

The stay is lifted, but that leaves the issue of whether a second black CD needs to be drawn. if the lower court orders something, it might go back up.

The lower court already ruled favorably. The state then asked for a stay in the 5th, which said no (which really says all you need to know since this is the 5th) and put the case on an very expedited schedule before Milligan. Mapping is proceeding unless something new is handed down. It's like 95% done but tied up with a neat knot yet.

I actually think Julia Letlow is the type of Republican who could win a Biden +10 district.  I wouldn't count her 100% out in a new LA-05 that looks like the plaintiff's map.   

The three judge panel already ordered a second black district I thought?

Could be, but the panel will need to proceed in accordance with the dictates of the Milligan decision, and whatever they decide can go back up the ladder again.

What bothers me is that Roberts wrote about respecting municipal bounderies, and this chops 4 of them in a major way. Such a chop fest was not needed in Alabama. On the other hand, why did SCOTUS just dissolve the stay rather than commenting further knowing it will probably go back up again. I don't know. I look forward to someone being better able to read the tea leaves than I.

Another perhaps unlikely possibility is that the legislature will pass something like my map posted above, that does not produce two performing black CD's, but is far superior on neutral metrics to the two black CD's map. And then that will be litigated back up.

Addendum:

The below is a pretty good summary. The precise contours of the Milligan decision as it applies to LA remain to be litigated.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/politics/supreme-court-louisiana-congressional-redistricting/index.html

I think that those worried about insufficient compactness or excessive municipality splits might find this portion of the Fifth Circuit's order (https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2022-06-12_Robinson-v.-Ardoin_Order-Denying-Stay-Pending-Appeal.pdf) denying motion to stay the district court's order pending appeal:

"First, the defendants’ expert Dr. Thomas Bryan observed that the illustrative districting exercised 'surgical' precision in splitting Baton Rouge and Lafayette between congressional districts such that the black neighborhoods were included in CD 5. Id. at *17. Those split political divisions tend to show that CD 5 breached a traditional redistricting criterion in those locations and raise the possibility that CD 5 divides communities of interest based in a single municipality. But providing evidence of a minor departure in one area of the district has only limited probative value with respect to the compliance of the district with traditional redistricting criteria on the whole. And any implication that the proposed CD 5 splits up communities of interest in Baton Rouge and Lafayette is outweighed by the plaintiffs’ direct testimony that the black populations in CD 5 are culturally compact." (11)

In other words, the Fifth Circuit seems to think that the chops are OK because they are in service of the greater goal of uniting Black Louisianans, who themselves constitute a COI. As far as I can tell, this doesn't seem to be in tension with either Milligan or Gingles.

To the extent that hope exists for Louisiana, though, I would say that they lie in the compactness question. The Fifth Circuit notes repeatedly that the defendants almost conceded this point and put all their eggs in the basket of racial gerrymandering. However, given the language above, I am >90% sure that plaintiffs will prevail.

I see more tension in that statement that the CD is compact because it’s black and what Roberts wrote, but maybe SCOTUS at this point does not care much about revisiting the issue.

Has any Biden  +10 plurality black district elected a republican in a normal presidental election cycle. There's next to no crossover voting here

Bizarrely enough, Joseph Cao won the New Orleans based district in 2008 - but that was a really peculiar election, and he lost in 2010.

Yeah and he won a special not a presidential election.

It was a general election - as general as Louisiana elections are given the runoff system.

So the chance SC is gonna get a second congressional district have gone up exponentially. At this point I think even in NC republicans are only going to gain one seat. RIP Jeff Jackson.

Jackson clearly has his eyes on the Senate. He probably runs for AG so he can run against Budd in 2028.

Reminder that congressionally the SC case - as well as the AR, and secondary parts of the suits in in TX and GA - are solely based on 14th amendment racial gerrymandering claims, not section 2 VRA ones. This is different from Milligan and Louisiana, which is why the case remains on the upcoming Supreme Court docket.

Could a second case be brought regarding SC?

MS-02 is 65% Black and re-elected incumbent Bennie Thompson by 20 points in 2022.

The configuration of LA-05 in the plaintiff's map is ~55% Black and Letlow is the incumbent.  She's also a woman with moderate appeal.   

I could see it being a race, under the right circumstances. 

That's not a completive race, outside of freak circumstances no republican even one with moderate appeal is able to win black voters in substantial number especially in the deep south.  They can win black majority districts if the differential turnout is high enough, but given her district will include a substansial number of college educated liberal voters that won't be that helpful to her here.

....you have obviously never been to Baton Rouge LOL

Letlow is going to win more Black voters than a "normal" Republican in these circumstances.  If differential turnout is high enough, she could win the race.   

What are you basing this on? Can you give an example of this happening for a partisan race in the deep south, where a republican is able to outperform Biden by 10 points among a primarily black electorate?


btw I have actually been there, though only for a few hours on a road trip.

This is weapons-grade wishcasting.  Letlow wanted to overturn the 2020 election.  She’s a generic Republican nutjob with no crossover appeal whatsoever.  Nothing moderate about her.  


Imagine actually believing this ::)

Louisiana had gone back to partisan nominations for Congress in 2008. So there was the possibility of party primary and runoff followed by a general election.

Louisiana cancels uncontested elections. If there were no contested party primaries then they would go directly to the general election with no runoff. If there was a winner in the primary, they would skip the runoff.

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav prevented the primary from being contested, so it was moved to the date of the primary runoff. If the primary was decisive, they could hold the general election on the federal election date in November.

In LA-2, William Jefferson had already been indicted, and there were 7 Democrats (including Jefferson) running in the primary. Jefferson did not receive a majority.

So in LA-2 there was Democratic primary runoff held on the federal election date in November, which Jefferson won. He was possibly assisted by turnout for Obama. Someone who turns out specifically to vote for Obama might just vote for the familiar name of Jefferson. Someone who wanted to vote Jefferson out, would be more likely to vote in a primary on a different date.

Since the primary runoff was held in November, the general election in LA-2 (and LA-4) was held in December. Obama was not on the ballot, and the "general" election was only held in two districts. Turnout was low. Democrats might well have crossed over to vote to vote for Cao, at least enough to cost Jefferson the election.

Had Gustav not happened, it was possible that Jefferson would have lost the Democratic runoff.

Alternatively, if Louisiana had used the Open Primary, the runoff would have been between two Democrats, and Jefferson might have lost.

What I’m assuming is happening is that women are perceived to be more liberal then they actually are, even if they have the same policies, that’s why Klobuchar was seen as a progressive and Warren was seen as Sanders ideological equal. But yea when rubber hits the road these notions are dispelled.

Baton Rouge has a lively black liberal activist base with the likes of Gary Chambers and Sadie Roberts-Joseph. In the LA-02 Special in 2021 Chambers’s best area was Baton Rouge. So yea I don’t imagine Letlow will be able to win over this seat as a republican

Maybe in an off cycle 2022 situation where we saw low black turnout, especially in much of the SouthEastern US. However, I think politics are particularly polarized in the deep South, and in a Pres year you should have more even turnout dynamics; Letlow would be an underdog heading into 2024.

No, a Republican will not win a Biden +10 black seat in the south unless turnout just collapses among blacks. A narrower Biden +5 or so seat, maybe.

Letlow would've won a Biden +10 Black seat in 2022. Race dynamics would have been different in a swing seat, but it doesn't seem like it would've been close either. It could flip in 2024, but she got 10+% more than Trump in most Black counties in her district. And that's with some minor GOP candidates drawing votes. In a 1 v. 1 some of these Delta counties would have had 25 point margin swings to her. This double digit swing was mirrored in MS and AL Black Belt counties.

In some small more Black Parishes:
Morehouse Parish, Trump 56%, Letlow 66%, total GOP 69%
East Carroll Parish, Trump 36%, Letlow 47%, total GOP 50%
Madison Parish, Trump 41%, Letlow 54%, total GOP 56%
Tensas Parish, Trump 47%, Letlow 60%, total GOP 64%

In larger parishes:
Ouchita Parish, Trump 61%, Letlow 71%, total GOP 75%
Rapides Parish, Trump 65%, Letlow 70%, total GOP 77%

Turnout collapsed in 2022. It's not that far fetched to see huge swings in the Black South when it happened just last year. An entrenched incumbent like Sewell would be fine, but an entrenched GOP incumbent vs. a newcomer Dem is not so safe. In Louisiana especially there would be a good chance of a runoff which might feature lower Black turnout.

here's my attempt at drawing a compact louisiana map

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The 2nd is Biden +13, VAP 46% black and 45% white. 1st is Biden +29, VAP 44% white and 40% black. Both should be consistently black performing despite not reaching 50%.

Wouldn't happen because of double bunking R incumbents, though.

You're assuming that the dynamics of an uncompetitive safe-seat race would obtain in a scenario where LA-05 is a top Democratic target -- that seems like an unlikely assumption to make!

I'm not deeply familiar with Letlow, so I suppose it's possible that she overperforms, maybe even by a lot, but the political context of a safe seat mid term election against noname opposition is radically different than what the new seat is likely to be, which is one of the most Biden-voting seats held by a Republican in the country.

Dynamics would be a lot different, but the Dems will have to completely clear the field or it will be hard to get above 50%. The jungle primary is a hindrance, as is Letlow's strength. I think the median scenario would probably be Biden winning the district 54-45, The D-R vote in the primary being 52-48 but where enough Dems run where it's really like 44 top D, 45 Letlow, etc. Then it goes to the runoff where Black turnout may drop further.

Also, Letlow did a lot better than Kennedy did in the Senate race against a different set of no-name candidates. I guess Gary Chambers is fine, but no one paid any attention to this race. I think she is genuinely strong; a telegenic single mother might be better suited to win over Black voters than a crotchety old racist White guy.

Also, has anyone found a reasonably clean way of drawing the New Orleans metro area? I've been playing around with a more compact configuration, making LA-02 plurality Black but still electing the candidate of choice. However, NOLA's crazy geography makes even drawing something reasonably compact difficult.

There’s a lot of unwarranted assumptions in kwabbit’s response to mine. No, you cannot assume the crossover support she received against a nobody would hold up against a well-funded challenger in a high profile race. Second, there’s no precedence on the federal level of a Republican holding a seat that blue in the House. We’ve had Senate incumbents do welll in blue territory in the south, like Jonny Isakson. But it’s all against no names.

My point is that it's wildly speculative to assume that a Republican would win a highly Democratic, majority Black district in the most polarized region of the country, especially one which is likely to attract a high quality group of candidates.

I'm not counting Letlow out -- she can win if things go her way -- but the priors of anyone in analyzing this sort of district should rate her as an extreme underdog and the fact that people are saying otherwise kind of smells like cope to me.

This is especially true given that we don't even know what this district will look like. Redistricters, especially in Southern states, have a tendency to respond to court ordered VRA districts with higher than needed amount of packing, designed to make sure they comply with the ruling. They could decide to sabotage Graves instead, or draw a Shreveport-Baton Rouge district like Oryxslayer made before, which I believe would double-bunk Letlow and Johnson. All of these are possibilities, and we should wait before we assume that Julia Letlow is the next David Valadao or something.

The only current-day equivalents are NY-04 Republican-held seats in California, which are both really an extremely different dynamic. Historically the only remotely close parallel would be Ann Northrup, who iirc did well in the Black community in Louisville, but that was almost 20 years ago, in a mostly white and much closer seat, and she lost.

Is this going back to the same appeals court panel that heard it (Smith, Higginson, and Willett)? If so, it could be so much worse. An en banc decision could be a problem, but SCOTUS did imply it wanted a plan in place for the 2024 election.

There are several Republicans in seats more Democratic than that one (...all in NY or CA, though, and none really polarized the way this seat is), and the seat suggested in this thread would've been notionally Republican in 2022, although because it wasn't strongly contested this statistic is questionably meaningful. (This is an argument Republican plaintiffs could use, incidentally: one could argue that African-Americans in northern Louisiana fail prong three of the Gingles test, of "voting sufficiently as a bloc to defeat the majority's preferred candidate", even if African-Americans usually pass it elsewhere, since majority-black seats can still elect Republicans under certain circumstances. This is also questionable in, for example, northeastern North Carolina.)

Republicans tended to perform well at open seats with similar demographic profiles in 2022, running like 4-6 points ahead of Biden's numbers depending on the seat in question. That wouldn't be enough to save Letlow, but it would be enough to make it a race, and there were no seats like this in 2022 which already had broadly popular Republican incumbents. (Because of Louisiana's unique electoral system, note that Letlow has had to appeal to black voters before, in R-on-R runoffs; black turnout for these is low but not nonexistent, and she actually did very well.) I would call such a seat as Likely D, but probably closer to Leans than Safe.

(Also, broadly post-2012 there has been a trend of African-American turnout falling as a percentage of white turnout, especially in rural areas, basically regardless of the national environment. This is a generational thing and I doubt it'll change in 2024, although a presidential environment means higher turnout broadly.)

Letlow is a generic Trumpy, pro-insurrection Republican backbencher with no crossover appeal.  The race would be Safe D even with a meh Democratic nominee.  Even if black turnout collapsed, she’d have no path to victory absent the Democrat having a bonafide Roy Moore-tier scandal.  No offense, but any suggestion otherwise is simply Republican wishcasting.  

There is no reason to think she’d have anything resembling crossover appeal, especially not with African-American voters.  If LA gets a second AA seat (and it likely will), then she’s gone and it won’t be very close either.  Probably not even a mildly competitive race tbh.

I meant to say there’s no precedent of a Republican holding a seat that blue in the south.

I don’t think Letlow would win every configuration of such a district, in fact in the Biden +10 one we’re talking about she’d probably lose too. A Biden +10 district implies that it is not maximally Black and also doesn’t take in any EBR liberal Whites. This makes the district one with R favorable trends, one that is more racially polarized, and one that is more similar to Letlow’s current district. If the district is Biden +14 or more EBR centered then she’d lose.

The drawer of the map could definitely assume that the district must be drawn in a way that Letlow is guaranteed to lose. I’ve seen plenty of people argue that Valadao’s district is not Hispanic enough/not a functioning VRA district since he’s still winning. Or the district could be more compact and barely a majority, something like Biden +8. It’d be hard to argue that’s not VRA compliant even if Letlow squeaks it out.

Again, the jungle primary makes it nearly certain to go to a December runoff. The Democrats would have to clear the field completely to avoid that. Plenty of EBR legislators are lining up for this. I would be very surprised if there weren’t a few serious Dem candidates. Runoffs can vary a lot obviously. Black turnout could fall sharply in which case Letlow would be in a stronger position, or it could be strong a la GA 2021 and guarantee a loss for Letlow.


 

The runoff is more of a factor than Letlow’s strength. Differential turnout is enough to impact the result in that if it’s a more conservative drawing of the district. There’s a lot of room between Biden +7 and Biden +15 and both could be realistically be drawn. My argument is moot if it’s close to the top end.

The district is racially polarized, but that doesn’t make it allergic to swings. Biden’s margin is ten points lower than Obamas in some of these districts. The area has a longer term R trend and it swung strongly in 2022. It is possible for runoff differential turnout to make it competitive if it’s Biden +10 in a high turnout environment.

Even in a runoff, it’d take a Roy Moore-tier scandal for her to win.

Fair enough, what do you think the median outcome is in a Biden +10, 51% BVAP district for Biden vs. Trump 2024, the cumulative D vs. R in the jungle primary, and in the subsequent runoff if it’s necessary?

I mean, the biggest indication of whether the new LA-05 is winnable for Letlow will be what she decides to do once the map is handed down.  If she runs, then it'd mean she figures she has a pretty good chance - and I'd trust her intuition over the armchair pundits of Atlas! 

As other posters have pointed out, Letlow does have a record of appealing to Black voters.  She's run >10% ahead of Trump/other Republicans across her current district, which includes multiple majority-Black counties. 

Most posters ITT are assuming the existance of a "well-funded" Democrat challenger who will instantly consolidate Black support across the new district.  But there's also the possibility that multiple Baton Rouge Democrats get in and all cannibalize each other in the jungle primary, while Letlow easily advances to the runoff with her reputation intact. 

A Biden +10 majority-black VAP district in the Deep South would be incredibly inelastic.  I'm not buying the argument that Letlow could win that.  This is not at all equivalent to Youngkin winning Virginia.

Based on 2022 results and the recent bipartisan efforts in the state to legislate on moral issues(porn verification, social media parental consent etc), I honestly expect Biden's margin in Louisiana to completely collapse. It won't likely be enough to save Letlow but I'd be wary of assuming Biden will hold up in this state(and the south in general)

It's Louisiana. If the district is over 50% black (or includes New Orleans), the Democrat will win, simple as that. For the same reasons that Democrats from the Deep South can be idiosyncratic on some of these issues, it is unlikely that Democrats will collapse, particularly on the congressional level.

I do think my left-of-center friends should prepare for the possibility that a conservadem wins the new seat, but all the takes about a surprise R victory in the event of a second VRA district are doom/cope.

There are large parts of this district where whites are more Republican than blacks are Democratic.

Then it wouldn’t exactly function as a VRA seat, would it?

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1694004357312765987?t=GILquR3Z8Xzs2FbFgOosXA&am...

Reminder that technically because the equivalent of Louisianas primaries are the same day as the general election,  stretching the case until Purcell isn't really a real option.

This as of yet does not involve a stay of the lower court. If the situation holds, the lower court will put in place a map, and the state would need a 5th ruling in their favor to overturn its actions. 

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1681027606362177536?t=5uOZ0TGvEj1rIksq73D3qQ&am...

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1696662841200107857?t=1H8ajEhGg-fGc73Lcmhb3Q&am...

The previously described October situation remains in place,  for now. The trail court would put in place a new normal,  and the state would require the 5th circuit to overturn it,  not just rule against the plaintiffs. The emergency stay appeal is heard by a different 3, but these three expect to have it transferred.

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1706293050949902419?t=JhNBXl2XX6XWcnbV_8MltQ&am...


Louisiana is having several different court hearings next week: this one potentially on the merits,  one in the lower court to implement a new map, one to potentially stay said lower court action.

Those are pretty rough panels, especially the one hearing the mandamus action. Edith Jones and James Ho on the same panel? Yikes. On the other panel, Elrod is an ideologue. I don't know that much about Southwick except that he's quite conservative. I'm not expecting anything good from either panel. Hopefully, the groups suing Louisiana skip an en banc request and go straight to SCOTUS.