California Districting

[Torie]

None of the districts are politically competitive. One might think CD-3 is, but it isn't. It includes the heavily Dem Hillcrest area.

[Torie]

None of the districts are politically competitive. One might think CD-3 is, but it isn't. It includes the heavily Dem Hillcrest area.

That is irrelevant.   The root cause of gerrymandering is where districting is done for the purpose of producing a particular result, whether that is ensure that most races appear competitive but aren't really, or to prevent pairing of incumbents, or to ensure that a particular racial or ethnic group can control the result by making the primary decisive.

Splendid, but totally naive. Just keep doing what you are doing, and you will have about as many competitive CD's in California as you have now. In heavily populated areas, just where the lines are makes a huge partisan difference, which is the case in your 3rd CD. This game should be called Jimrtex Lotto.   I might add that I could draw maps every bit as "non-partisan" looking as yours, and perhaps swing 5 seats or more, knowing the precincts.

[Torie]

None of the districts are politically competitive. One might think CD-3 is, but it isn't. It includes the heavily Dem Hillcrest area.

That is irrelevant.   The root cause of gerrymandering is where districting is done for the purpose of producing a particular result, whether that is ensure that most races appear competitive but aren't really, or to prevent pairing of incumbents, or to ensure that a particular racial or ethnic group can control the result by making the primary decisive.

Splendid, but totally naive. Just keep doing what you are doing, and you will have about as many competitive CD's in California as you have now.

Less than 1? I doubt that.

The rest of the text I believe.

Actually, the state has about 3-4 competitive CD's, as certain GOP percentages in certain precincts continue to erode. Look at what happened to Pombo. A couple of Dem held seats are also marginal, at least on paper.

[Torie]

The thing is to have a balance - the golden mean. One metric dominating is unwise. Nice neat little maps might turn out to be a hideous gerrymander, in the sense that one party getting close to half the votes in a state with say, 10 seats, might end up with just two or something. And then there is the matter of protecting minority seats - or not.

[Torie]

The OC map violates the Voting Rights Act. It wipes out the Hispanic CD.  A community of interest map would have the extra voters for the SD CD come from Riverside County (the Temucula area), not Orange County.

[Torie]

CD 9 should be GOP. It seem to have enough of Anaheim Hills, the wealthier parts of Fullerton, and hyper conservative Yorba Linda, to keep it safe, despite the array of sans culotte precincts in the "wrong" part of Anaheim, and marginal areas such as La Habra.

[Torie]

Yeah lumping in Santa Ana with Villa park and Anaheim hills is well, weird to say the least. But congratulations on creating an all republican OC although CD 9 would be a little interesting.

Nothing weird about putting Orange and Santa Ana in the same district.    Villa Park has about 6,000 residents and is entirely surrounded by Orange.

Personally, I think it is really weird to put San Clemente in the same district with Riverside, Costa Mesa in the same district with Palos Verdes, and Whittier in the same district with Chino and Mission Viejo.

Yeah your districts are not bad at all...if you are a republican.   Well of course there is the voting rights act thing but disregarding that good job.

Working class Hispanic turnout is so low, and Middle class Hispanics in Orange County probably lean Republican anyways, that it takes some gerrymandering to create a district that will elect a Hispanic. If you don't consider that a valid goal of redistricting, obviously you'll create a map with only Republican districts in Orange County - Santa Ana was the only city in the county to vote for John Kerry, and it did so by a handful of votes. (Sanchez' district, even as it stands, voted for Bush.)
 

The most Democrat town in Orange County is Laguna Beach. It was one of two towns Kerry carried in OC, the other being Laguna Woods (aka Seizure World). Bush carried Santa Ana 10,000, to Kerry's 9,000.  So says the statement of votes

[Torie]

Seisure World?  Anything like Leisure World, in Seal Beach[?]?  I'm missing the local color

It is actually what McCain called Leisure World (which is in what is now called Laguna Woods near me down in south county), back in the 1990's sometimes. That is what we all call it now. McCain gave it its moniker.

[Torie]

Ya Lewis, you are right about Santa Ana. I don't know what I was looking at, and my link isn't working. I was looking at something. I thought Kerry had carried it to, but just assumed that what I was looking at was some final vote including all of the late votes.

[Torie]

That's because you copied the url wrong.

Here's your link again:
http://www.ocvote.com/live/e13/sov1.pdf

Ah ha, I was looking at the early vote totals.

[Torie]

That's because you copied the url wrong.

Here's your link again:
http://www.ocvote.com/live/e13/sov1.pdf

Ah ha, I was looking at the early vote totals.

Well, since we're on the subject, I'm in the process of making a Bush-Kerry map.

I assume that you are aware of this facility Xahar.

[Torie]

Very nice. How did you do this?  By the way, you can fill in Coto de Caza a nice dark blue. 

Los Flores is 60-75 percent Bush (Just to the west of Coto, and that little white area south of Rancho Santa Margarita. Ditto, Tustin Foothills (that white area to the east of Santa Ana).

[Torie]

hmm.. Fountain valley is more republican than I thought.

That is what happens when a place is 64% Anglo and 26% Asian, with the latter mostly Vietnamese.

[Torie]

hmm.. Fountain valley is more republican than I thought.

That is what happens when a place is 64% Anglo and 26% Asian, with the latter mostly Vietnamese.

I guess for some reason I thought it was another Westminster. I was mistaken. Its more a continuation of Costa mesa and HB I guess.

Westminster is that deep blue town next to it, so FV is another Westminster, except that Westminster is more Vietnamese.

[Torie]

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It is very much possible to create no black majority districts but you cannot not create hispanic majority districts. And many of those districs will have a majority of areas "like" south central LA. The LA basin(except for the coast) is just one big ghetto.

There are no black majority CD's now. There are a couple where those who vote are black majority.

[Torie]

The black population is also declining, except for the middle class. The most black census tracts now are mostly middle class in LA County. The Hispanics are driving them out. It's the imperative of economics at work.

[Torie]

Voila.

[Torie]

Voila.

The Census needs to talk to the Census. While the ACS is showing a decline, their estimates page is showing a very, very slow increase.

Ya, numbers are all over the place.