2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: California

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Made this 51 seat map in one go.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/a3d57aa3-1d03-485d-805a-055343ea10ca
One thing is clear from this map: Kern County is a mess in a 51 seat map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Made this 51 seat map in one go.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/a3d57aa3-1d03-485d-805a-055343ea10ca
One thing is clear from this map: Kern County is a mess in a 51 seat map.

Here is what I got to earlier: https://davesredistricting.org/join/6ad2d237-ddd7-4621-abb6-8605215c0c17

The first thing that stands out to me on your map is the split of Inglewood. I don't think that should ever be done. It seems like maybe you were trying to keep two AA districts, but there just isn't enough population to do that.

I like that you went San Diego-OC, I think it loosens up the IE a bit. I tried to make an Asian district in OC but it makes a poor earmuffs shape.

Your central valley districts actually look pretty decent but I've really come to think that there needs to be two VRA districts there given how easy it is to draw two compact Hispanic districts (20 and 21 on my map).

The Hollywood split...I'd prefer not to talk about.

I tried to maintain 2 AA seats. I think 57H 30B is a black seat in practice.
A big problem is that there isn't enough AAs for 2 seats and too many for 1.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://madison.com/wsj/opinion/column/los-angeles-times-californias-independent-redistricting-commission-is-dangerously-close-to-failing-its-basic-task/article_f7c22c56-3948-587a-ac1c-6eb0731c6072.html#utm_source=madison.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletter-templates%2Flocal%2Fwsj%2Fopinion&utm_medium=PostUp&utm_content=0670a0b8ab672e5506254522c03922380bbbcf9e

Incognito to get around the paywall.
Its an opinion but yeah .

I wonder if it is possible for a new referendum to be placed on the ballot revamping the current commission.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Here is a 44-8 D somewhat Dem Gerrymander congressional map of California based on 2020 Prez data. On top of that, Dems also have such a huge geographic advantage in this state.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/c0ae6298-6253-40c7-92d2-387d154db55e

Possible to make both 23 and 24 Democratic through exchanges of territory?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/1b0ed7a3-7ce0-412a-95c3-6472c474d9f4
Made a state senate map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Democratic seat gains in the House & State legislature during the 2000s under the party-drawn maps:  5 (2 Congressional, 4 State Assembly, 1 State Senate loss)

Democratic seat gains in the House & State legislature during the 2010s under the independent commission-drawn maps:  22 (8 Congressional, 8 State Assembly, 6 State Senate)

This is in jest, isn't it?

California underwent a metamorphosis in the 2000s, from +12 Gore to +24 Obama. The CA state assembly was even GOP until 1996, when since 2018 both chambers are 75+% Dem.
This rapid polarisation explains the seat flips much better than an advantageous independent commission.

There's a reason why most of the gains happened in 2012, the year right after redistricting. It's not that the independent commission was particularly Dem-friendly, it's just that the previous map was an "incumbent protection" gerrymander that the absolute cretins who ran the CA legislature at the time had agreed to, and in a state that's trending Dem, incumbent protection is effectively a Republican gerrymander.

That's true.
The same is true in a state that is trending R.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I did a map of Garden Grove's wards.

Nice work!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

California's first drafts were released:

https://twitter.com/RedistrictNet/status/1453071799110021123?s=20

Northern CA looks Dem favorable. Interesting that the Latino CD in San Diego is expanding north.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

California's first drafts were released:

https://twitter.com/RedistrictNet/status/1453071799110021123?s=20

Northern CA looks Dem favorable. Interesting that the Latino CD in San Diego is expanding north.

Yeah, with Butte and Yolo being in CA-01, it essentially becomes a Lean R seat.

I dunno if I'd go that far. It seems to have Chula Vista still, and the areas in Riverside being added aren't all that R.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

From what we now know, how many Trump districts do y'all think are in the map? 5? 7? 9?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

From what we now know, how many Trump districts do y'all think are in the map? 5? 7? 9?

Started putting it into VRA. Issa goes from Trump+8 to Biden+6, Young Kim goes from Biden+10 to Biden+8, Steel goes from Biden+2 to Trump+0. So in OC/SD, Issa flips to Biden but Steel (by like 700 votes) flips to Trump.

Fascinating. What about CA-51?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

From what we now know, how many Trump districts do y'all think are in the map? 5? 7? 9?

Started putting it into VRA. Issa goes from Trump+8 to Biden+6, Young Kim goes from Biden+10 to Biden+8, Steel goes from Biden+2 to Trump+0. So in OC/SD, Issa flips to Biden but Steel (by like 700 votes) flips to Trump.

Fascinating. What about CA-51?

The vomit-inducing monstrosity they came up with going from Chula Vista to Needles?

Biden+36 -> Biden+21. That's the other thing flipping Issa.

Ah, just as I suspected. East County is just not large enough to really push it into the R column, far from enough.  And at least a very large minority, perhaps a majority, of the people in it are probably still in urban San Diego County.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Fun fact: On that map, my backyard fence is the line separating CA-47 and CA-48.

Poetic.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Aren't  Latinos in the San Fernando Valley much more inelastically D downballot than in, say, the Central Valley?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So Nunes now has a Biden seat, albeit a narrow one?

Looks like it.
It'll be nice seeing him try to adjust to this new constituency. Among the most partisan CA Rs, stuck in a Biden district....

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Starting to think the commission were actually geniuses. There's so much potential in this map.

Reworked the norcal bits a little to take advantage of the northern inland district careening left in the proposal, and with a little elbow grease LaMalfa goes from Trump+15 in the current map to Trump+6 in the "visualization" and Biden+7.5 in this map.


All of this, without even touching the core population centers of SF and LA! Literally just left those alone and reworked the SB-Riverside-OC borders and the Sac/Fresno/Modesto suburbs, and got this beautiful map out of it.

I mean I know you are gerrymandering here, but everyone should bear in mind that the initial 2010 visualizations were the best map ever made that cycle for the GOP, the various drafts and impact of minority concerns led to the maps getting better and better for the Dems.

wait, what did the 2010 visualizations look like?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It’s some how poetic that every major democratic state has a Republican floor of three seats

Rule of Three.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Got bored, decided to take it balls to the wall. Bears barely any resemblance to the commission visualization outside of the main metros, which are still mostly untouched.









https://davesredistricting.org/join/a163e6c0-d47d-471a-8ce0-a120e1f282c8

Didn't bother going for equal populations, I'll save that for some of the maps coming up.

That big San Bernardino CD is the epitome of "land doesn't vote, people do".

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

You know what they say - no participation trophies!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Christy Smith lost the current CA-25 by a razor-thin margin. She should be able to win a CA-25 nested within LA County with relative ease. (provided she is main Dem candidate)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Christy Smith lost the current CA-25 by a razor-thin margin. She should be able to win a CA-25 nested within LA County with relative ease. (provided she is main Dem candidate)

It's only 3 points more D, I strongly doubt she would even win a Biden midterm

3 points more D is enough to make Garcia disfavored even in a Biden midterm.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Christy Smith lost the current CA-25 by a razor-thin margin. She should be able to win a CA-25 nested within LA County with relative ease. (provided she is main Dem candidate)

It's only 3 points more D, I strongly doubt she would even win a Biden midterm

3 points more D is enough to make Garcia disfavored even in a Biden midterm.

That presumes the cycle is less than 3 points more R, I imagine.

If we get a R+3 shift, it won't be equal all over the country. It depends on elasticity.
Is northern Los Angeles county more elastic than the nation as a whole? I would presume it would be smaller due to Latino voters being hard to move and the presence of lots of hardline white liberals and conservatives. In general the CA interior  is more driven by turnout differentials than anything else.
So Garcia would need more of an R shift than that, in much the same way a R candidate for a D-held open seat in the MW would need less of one.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

BEAVICAL is an abomination.

Basically Beavical takes in white areas in East Riverside which I think is the Coachella Valley but  SECAL takes in mixed exurbs in central Riverside. However said white areas are famously gay and very Democratic while the exurbs are actually R.

Basically an attempt to boost the hispanic population of SECAL.

Still quite streching a majority minority seat as a Coachella valley seat is way more compact and logical even if it may not fully maximize hispanic %

What does BEAVICAL stand for?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Sadhwani is the obvious Dem hack on the commission.

https://twitter.com/eqca/status/1469467044231860224

Seems like a large part of her map proposal came from this one.

As an aside, doesn't it seem like a bit of a joke to argue that certain sets of districts can "empower" race-based LGBTQ+ COIs?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yikes.

On the bright side it seems like CA-22 was cleaned up a bit with negligible change in partisanship

I mean the tail is unnecessary, but this is just the White parts coast separated from the Hispanic parts of the coast.

I feel like a major recurring theme in this thread is people expressing {shock, horror, dismay} at district lines in California because they don't look "pretty", without realizing that

1. precincts are just awful outside major urban areas because the terrain is weird
2. the commission explicitly has to conform to municipality lines, which also look terrible

Thing is, is the commission considering splitting precincts?