North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Also for some reason the NC GOP decided to split 1 precinct  into 3 districts?

Like why?

What was the size of the precinct in population?

It is in Wake county, it looks really ugly down there for some reason. I guess it was just hard to get population equality?. I don't think any republican is from that area.

That sounds most likely.
Wake has some pretty big precincts too iirc.
I asked because precinct splitting twice looks much better on a 10k precinct as opposed to a 2k one.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Also for some reason the NC GOP decided to split 1 precinct  into 3 districts?

Like why?

What was the size of the precinct in population?

It is in Wake county, it looks really ugly down there for some reason. I guess it was just hard to get population equality?. I don't think any republican is from that area.

That sounds most likely.
Wake has some pretty big precincts too iirc.
I asked because precinct splitting twice looks much better on a 10k precinct as opposed to a 2k one.

Yeah if the map somehow stands in time it will probably be the earmuffs all over again as it looks nasty at a close up.(Aka a whole map that is gerrymandered but the focus will be on the wrong area)

At least its not as gerrymandered as the 2013-2018 map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

What's the Trump margin in that NC-11?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Guys guys, lets not forget the real tragedy by the NC GOP

They renumbered the districts


/s

in the state House?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Guys guys, lets not forget the real tragedy by the NC GOP

They renumbered the districts


/s

in the state House?

Nah congressional. They did it PA style East to West.

I see. That's unnecessary, but whatever.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Gerrymandering is not an evil, it's merely a tool that can be used for good or for bad. Like so many other things in politics.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Gerrymandering is not an evil, it's merely a tool that can be used for good or for bad. Like so many other things in politics.

And it's nothing more than an attempt to take advantage of the predictability of the voters. Gerrymandering doesn't succeed if the voters choose to vote unpredictably, particularly so if a significant number of them choose to vote for split tickets.

I agree completely.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is pointless. The SCONC will flip anyway and republicans will draw another gerrymander mid decade

There’s no downside for us; why not fight it in court and see what we can get?

This.  It's also unconstitutional in NC to redraw the state legislative districts mid-decade, so if either of those maps get thrown out, the changes will stick.  Dems could plausibly flip a chamber over the course of the decade.

Did they explicitly forbid it? If not, this will be up to the likely GOP SC in 2022.

It says the process is done at the first legislative session after the census is released. 

Have you checked TX, GA, NV constitutions? I believe such language should be there as well. I am curious which state does not have this type of language.

TX and NV have this language for the legislative districts.  Georgia’s language is a bit more open.

Mid-decade legislative redistricting is clearly allowed in GA, as they made some minor changes through the normal legislative process in the late 2010's without a court ordering it. 

Yep.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Court drawn NC maps are interesting because there are 7 obvious and easy to draw districts in the eastern half of the state (the triangle and points east and south) but only enough people for 6 districts. A fair map has to choose one of these self-evidently reasonable districts to destroy.

For the record, the obvious districts are:
A. A northeastern NC Black influence district (NC-02)--this would be the obvious seat to destroy if this were say, UK redistricting rules, since it lost population and isn't a super strong CoI. But that in practice is both racially discriminatory and probably violates the VRA so a fair map shouldn't do it IMO.
B. A coastal district north of Wilmington (NC-01)--this district has the outer banks and New Bern and potentially some of various small inland cities depending on how exactly you finesse the lines with the 1st.
C. A Wilmington-based district (NC-03): Something based in New Hanover, Brunswick, and Pender, plus various adjacent rurals or Onslow/Carteret.
D. A Sandhills/Fayetteville district (split up currently between 3, 4, and : Something based in the core of Fayetteville and the Lumbee community.
E. An exurban Raleigh district (split up between 4, 5, 6, and 7): Something based in the outer parts of Wake plus various neighboring exurbs, like Johnston.
F. A Raleigh district (5)
G. A Durham and Chapel Hill based seat, also ideally could take in Chatham as well as Granville.

So the art of drawing any map of NC comes down to decide which one of these you want to utterly destroy.

Certain combos work better than others but all have bad effects. Combining B+E and C+E gives you decent district outside of the combination in the east, but forces a lot of the Triangle into a seat based in the Piedmont, either messing with G or with a logical rural Piedmont seat.

Dicing up D between C and E, with Fayetteville going to the latter, has a certain elegance and logic (possibly the best option in terms of CoI?), but also dilutes minority influence and sort of functions as a Republican gerrymander. It also forces population westward out of the Triangle.

Destroying either F or G, by dipping A into Raleigh or Durham, doesn't have that same problem but creates an obviously bizarre district. Cracking Durham is easier because Raleigh is quite white.

Some options don't work very well--in particular B+C is overpopulated without an obvious place to remove people and preserve contiguity.

So yeah, this is the fundamental problem of NC redistricting--which logical community do you absolutely destroy?

https://davesredistricting.org/join/f53aa2e9-29cb-49f1-a13a-0c9f47f58e41

Would you say this works? A broader "western parts of the Triangle" seat isn't all that bizarre...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So any chance the congressional map gets overturned or is at least ordered to change 1-2 districts?

I think there's a decent shot that NC-02 (old NC-01) gets remade to be at least likely Dem/VRA-compliant.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up upholding the gerrymander of the Triad, considering the not-so-subtle pressure the NCGA has been applying to the court over the related Voter ID lawsuits and recusal issues therein.

State legislature I suspect will be similar--reconfiguration in the NE and maybe Asheville but little else.

Hope I'm wrong!

One thing to consider is a compromise.  

The Plaintiffs want a Lean to Likely D seat that doesn't take in Winston Salem interestingly. They claim they want competitve maps so what about replacing that medium red part of Forsyth with either part of Rockingham or Davidson which therefore makes the district more competitive?


I actually thought the NC GOP would do it in 2019 to give Mark Walker a chance but their position there was much weaker. It looked like NC would be a tossup statewide and the court was more D. Now heading into 2022 NC looks Likely R and the court is much more narrow.

Idea for a competitivemander to pair with this sort of seat: Winston-Salem and Carrabus in the same district?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So any chance the congressional map gets overturned or is at least ordered to change 1-2 districts?

I think there's a decent shot that NC-02 (old NC-01) gets remade to be at least likely Dem/VRA-compliant.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up upholding the gerrymander of the Triad, considering the not-so-subtle pressure the NCGA has been applying to the court over the related Voter ID lawsuits and recusal issues therein.

State legislature I suspect will be similar--reconfiguration in the NE and maybe Asheville but little else.

Hope I'm wrong!

One thing to consider is a compromise.  

The Plaintiffs want a Lean to Likely D seat that doesn't take in Winston Salem interestingly. They claim they want competitve maps so what about replacing that medium red part of Forsyth with either part of Rockingham or Davidson which therefore makes the district more competitive?


I actually thought the NC GOP would do it in 2019 to give Mark Walker a chance but their position there was much weaker. It looked like NC would be a tossup statewide and the court was more D. Now heading into 2022 NC looks Likely R and the court is much more narrow.

Idea for a competitivemander to pair with this sort of seat: Winston-Salem and Carrabus in the same district?

Winston Salem is pretty hard to get into a D leaning district or even swingy. To get through Cabarrus means going through some deeper red areas although yes it is possible.





Anyway here's a map I made based on this earlier Greensboro district that could theoretically happen. Changes involve Sandhills district, Keeping Guilford whole, and swapping Franklin with Lenoir to boost black VAP in NE seat.  In a year where NC is close- it would be 3 Safe D, 1 lean D(black belt), 2  pure tossups , 2 Likely R(Western seat and Charlotte suburban) and 6 Safe R.

It does require Dan Bishop to take the Sandhills district . I think he was the only Republican to match Trumps Robeson county margin. It still goes R in 2022 with a generic R but Charles Graham would be a tough opponent here as he would reduce the R margin in Robeson.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/f61276d0-731c-4efe-974a-1ab8e1fdad5b
Drew a competitivemander. I got a Trump+4 Winston-Salem CD.
Not really realistic since it changes so many things across the state though.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

By the way does anyone have the county clusters for the 2010 cycle for the legislative maps? I just want to see how likely it was the GOP would have had their 3/5 supermajorities anyway in 2016-2017

Wouldn't you be able to do this manually by looking at the number of districts nested in certain sets of counties?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

By the way does anyone have the county clusters for the 2010 cycle for the legislative maps? I just want to see how likely it was the GOP would have had their 3/5 supermajorities anyway in 2016-2017

Wouldn't you be able to do this manually by looking at the number of districts nested in certain sets of counties?

Just wondering if there were any other cluster options. An interesting thing is the map used in 2016 had 31 Trump districts but 35 R senators yet 76 Trump districts in the house and 74 R house members.

Aaaah. I see.
If I knew more about this I'll tell, but the best I can do is point out Atlas threads from the 2010s round of redistricting I guess.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This isn't a what about post by me. Note that steins map is when he was in the minority in 2010 .I just find it funny how once you push the 13th entirely into Wake what Democrats wanted in Raleigh 10 years ago is what the GOP prefers now.

I'm sure you know this already, but Stein was trying to preserve the old Brad Miller 13th district, which linked Greensboro to Raleigh via touch-point contiguity.



Miller was able to do what Tim Moore couldn't, and gave himself a house seat.

Yup i posted about it a few months ago when a few  here said it was only white conservative Democrats gerrymandering . Miller was anything but conservative of course. Overall Steins map just seems to be incumbency protection . Obviously Berger posting this map without the context on 1 and 12 is disingenuous  as those 2 were thought to be VRA required.  Demoxrats would have definitely been happier with a whole Mecklenburg district as even McCrory loses it in 2012 . I don't think anyone really cared about 1 as it mostly takes the blackest parts of 3. Maybe 3 might have been winnable for a non blue dog but Walter Jones kept it safe. The funnier thing is that 4 and 2 are relatively reasonable districts and the only difference is 13 shrinks entirely into Raleigh which therefore makes that a ok district.

Anyone who thinks only white conservatives gerrmandered in NC is making two big mistakes. 1) not realizing that Democrats of all stripes gerrymandered the state with great regularity for over a century, and 2) thinking that gerrymandering is a "Republican" thing altogether.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If NC Rs impeach the court, even after they strike down maps, then we have to wait years before we have control of it again...while also still likely having to contend with GOP control of the legislature. What a tactical mistake this is.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If NC Rs impeach the court, even after they strike down maps, then we have to wait years before we have control of it again...while also still likely having to contend with GOP control of the legislature. What a tactical mistake this is.

What good is a Democratic SC if it can be cowed by GOP blackmail?

What good is throwing away your leverage all for what is highly likely to be a failed gambit? It's better to concede ground so that you can fight another day.
Fighting for the sake of fighting is noble but dumb. Fighting at a time and place where you can expect to win is better at effecting change that actually helps the people.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If NC Rs impeach the court, even after they strike down maps, then we have to wait years before we have control of it again...while also still likely having to contend with GOP control of the legislature. What a tactical mistake this is.

You need a 2/3rds majority to remove a justice. How do you conclude such a ridiculous powerplay would mean Dems waiting years for control? If anything, this would help Dems maintain control through popular backlash.

Wait, I thought the GOP had the votes to unilaterally impeach the D justices.
This is the first time I'm hearing about a 2/3 requirement.
I'm feeling a bit dumb right now.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If NC Rs impeach the court, even after they strike down maps, then we have to wait years before we have control of it again...while also still likely having to contend with GOP control of the legislature. What a tactical mistake this is.

You need a 2/3rds majority to remove a justice. How do you conclude such a ridiculous powerplay would mean Dems waiting years for control? If anything, this would help Dems maintain control through popular backlash.

Wait, I thought the GOP had the votes to unilaterally impeach the D justices.
This is the first time I'm hearing about a 2/3 requirement.
I'm feeling a bit dumb right now.

Impeachment is a majority vote in the House, but removal from office is a 2/3rds vote in the Senate. It's being floated as a nuclear option for redistricting because accused officials are temporarily suspended from office until the Senate's verdict.

So, it's most akin to a temporary field advantage.
How soon is the Senate required to give its verdict?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So impeachment probably isn't happening then?

Probably not, thank god.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

God bless them for keeping the district numbers the same as the current ones. That was one of the most egregious features from the map that got tossed.

Agreed.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

That district 9 is certainly unexpected... looks like a swingy district though

It took me a bit to realize they drew Union County and Chapel Hill in the same district.
The 9th looks like a seat drawn specifically to be competitive.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

That district 9 is certainly unexpected... looks like a swingy district though

It took me a bit to realize they drew Union County and Chapel Hill in the same district.
The 9th looks like a seat drawn specifically to be competitive.

If this is the map, then there appears to be the goal of making sure the Democratic primary voters in the swing seats are going to be nominating candidates with geographic (media markets), financial (PoC in the 14th), or potentially ideological (college town vs suburbs) disadvantages. The MS SD-21 situation only applied for partisan rather racial gerrymandering.

 I wonder if the court would accept something like this. Maybe it is good enough. Perhaps they already decided when delivering the opinion that nothing from the Leg would match their standards and something else was needed from a different party - as they gave themselves the power to do in the court order. We don't know.

What you said makes sense. It's quite cunning of them as well too.
I wonder what the Senate will cook up.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Eyeballing it, is the 14th roughly 12% Native?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I'm a bit surprised to see Mecklenberg split in 2 like that.
Also, numbers on that NC-01?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Just wondering, why is it that redistricting seems to be so exceptionally contentious and painful in North Carolina even compared to other swing states?

If I had to guess: A history of court maps (encouraging people to sue against maps favoring the other side), hardball power plays from both parties (D and R), gerrymandering basically being completely okay with no limits until very recently, it being reliably contested territory in a way few other Southern states have been, and a GOP still rather new to dominating the levers of power.