North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[Oryxslayer]

All on the line NC says there is a map that seems to be 12-2. Obviously that would violate the VRA and/or be a dummymander, but what would that even look like?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1449037318757752834.html

CMT-9 is something akin to a Laser-eyes partisan twitter nerd would draw. It attempts to carve of charlotte of all seats, and is very aggressive in how it targets the other areas. Besides being illegal, it also fails partisan wise, with  the Charlotte seats being close or Biden wins - so the GOp persuing such a plan would be a fast suicide.

[Oryxslayer]

Southern Coalition, in tandem with alligned groups like NAACP and Common Clause, have pre-emptively filed the expected suit against the redistricting process at a Wake court today.

[Oryxslayer]

I was wondering if NC-02 could be drawn in a way that got if over 50% BCVAP, thus potentially triggering Gingles if deemed compact. The answer is yes, barely, with a lot of contortions. The odds that a federal court deems it compact enough to trigger Gingles is probably fairly low, but if triggered, the issue is then whether a 2% Biden margin CD is deemed a black performing CD. Perhaps, since the black incumbent would have run way ahead of that, but it is a close call. So there is some VRA risk with the Butterfield CD, but if called on it by a court, it can with another chop or two, be made more Dem, so it probably is not an imprudent Pub risk to take.

Butterfield actually ran behind Biden by 0.1%. He faced a C/B tier candidate just like  Vicente Gonzalez did instead of the regular no namer. A lot of incumbent overperformances are fairly paper thin.

That surprises me, but OK, then the compact issue becomes more salient. The voting must be very racially polarized.

In most of the NE NC counties we are talking about, it is racially polarized to a degree comparable to other parts of the deep south. You have to go into the cities of Greensville, or the much larger ones of Raleigh and Durham for large crossover voting. This is the issue with cutting NC-01 like republicans are attempting: the district is still majority-minority, can be maintained majority minority, and the degree of racial polarization in the region means that a seat 49% White by CVAP is performing - and very strongly. All their proposals make the seat majority white despite the state getting more diverse, so regression then comes into play.

[Oryxslayer]

Whoever's suing the state had better get on it, seeing as how the most pressing issue for its success seems to be whether it gets to the NCSC before or after 2022.

Case was filed two weeks ago in Wake. I believe I posted it in this thread.

[Oryxslayer]

Funny how overall NC-6 is actually pretty compact and clean except for the bottom part which is absolutely horrendous lol. From what I've heard though it's more for the sake of roughly following some city lines rather than for real partisan reasons.

This is why after a certain point following these lines to a tea really ain't worth it IMO.

Yeah it also makes it such a headache for election administrators as each split precinct is a pain to deal with. It definitely is going to be the new earmuffs if the lines stand.

And weirdly, if the court case is successful, we'll probably get earmuffs 2.0 with a Durham-East Raleigh majority-minority seat since you can do this now while still nesting NC-02/NC-05 inside Wake.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/TravisFain/status/1468702686388408334?s=20

BTW here is the full order details. We are not going to get delays it appears, and if there is a remap there will be time for it.

[Oryxslayer]

SNIP

Technically if you are willing to cut 5-7 precincts you can get a compact Gastonia seat <50% White by population. Obviously not VRA protected given the VAP and the electoral results demonstrating the need for a higher minority%, but if you are drawing a compact seat, why not go all the way?

[Oryxslayer]

So today we find out what the courts have to say right?

Yes, but no matter what happens it could get appealed up the the NC supremes. Certainly if the ruling is unfavorable to Dems, perhaps also if it's unfavorable to the GOP and the leg is willing screw with the justices.

[Oryxslayer]

The North Carolina Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on February 2nd in the appeal of the trial court ruling upholding NC congressional and legislative plans.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/NCCourts/status/1488198462936125443?s=20&t=qRdkvB_46LEap...

Oral arguments begin today, stream link in tweet.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/lekhashupeck/status/1488882549871063049?s=20&t=qRdkvB_46...

Liveblog of hearing.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/JoshStein_/status/1489735069422002180?s=20&t=q6eTRJrhaVa...

The quickest and most expected of turnarounds. New maps must be drawn in the next two weeks.

[Oryxslayer]

Shocker. So does the map go back to the legislature?

I am trying to find the order. Please hold, this is just the press statements on twitter atm. The Legislature has two weeks, though the contours beyond that are missing.

[Oryxslayer]

Read the full order here.

Will update with finer points.

- Legislature has till Feb. 18 to draw plans in compliance with this order. After which the court will select maps by the 22nd. The parties can submit maps.

- Primaries May 17. Candidate filing on the 24th.

- "When, on the basis of partisanship, the Assembly (mappers) enacts a plan that diminishes or dilutes a voters opportunity to aggregate with likeminded voters to  elect a governing majority - that is when a districting plan systematically makes it harder for one group of voters to elect a governing majority than another group of voters of equal size -  the Assembly unconstitutionally infringes upon that voters fundamental right to vote." This is ordering use of the efficiency gap

- Cites mean-median difference analysis, efficiency gap analysis, close votes, close seats analysis, and partisan symmetry analysis in assessing whether mappers followed neutral principles in reflection of the states geography. A plan is fair if it passes some combination of these metrics and gives both parties opportunity proportional to the expected state lean.

- Incumbent protection is fine if applied to all and consistent with the above.

- RPV must be done before anything else and districts must be drawn that therefore follow Section 2. NC-01 is back.

[Oryxslayer]

I never want to hear again how the gop has a systemic bias in its favor

NY can have a 22-4 map and get away with it

Oregon can get away with its bs

Illinois can get away with its bs

These rulings always go in one direction. Always.

To be clear, gerrymandering by both parties is bad.

Agreed. But the reason why these tend to go in one direction is cause of race. If you don't dilute the power of minorities, then a case is much harder, and Dem gerrymanders these days tend to expand that access.

[Oryxslayer]

Where would a sixth Dem seat come from? I count one in Charlotte, one in Raleigh, one in Durham/Chapel Hill, one in Greensboro/Winston-Salem and one in the Northeast black belt (that's trending R).

Some ideas:

- Sandhills, though perhaps paired with parts of the triangle.

- Separate Chapel Hill and Durham. Pair Durham with the PoC in east Charlotte for minority access, nest the Wake seat in the remaining territory. Chapel hill easily outvotes the territory in between the the two metros if paired with the right adjacent counties.

- OR Wake is large enough to anchor two seats if paired with the right stuff. Durham + Chapel go west, Wake gets 2.

- Cabarrus + parts of Mecklenburg + other suburb = 2 seats. RPV will no doubt find that you can toss some GOP whites with the cities PoC, so a second dem seat can emerge.


And reminder, per the above order, if the court doesn't like the legislatures map, they'll do there own thing after the 18th - likely selecting an Elias map based on the text of the order. Leg can't F around and find out.

[Oryxslayer]

I never want to hear again how the gop has a systemic bias in its favor

NY can have a 22-4 map and get away with it

Oregon can get away with its bs

Illinois can get away with its bs

These rulings always go in one direction. Always.

And yet the national map is a lock to have an overall Republican slant.

It's not really a lock at all.

The redistricting experts on Twitter seem to think otherwise, that a 50-50 national House popular vote split in 2022 will almost certainly lead to a Republican controlled House.

You obviously are out of the loop cause Dave Wasserman and Nate Cohn, among many others, now expect the House to probably be a bit to the left of the 2020 popular vote. This is still a slight R bias compared to if the entire nation were mapped using the same standards: just as the median senate seat was 4 points to the right of the 2020 popular vote, the median House seat would probably be something like 3 points to the left. This is just what happens when parties focus on the easiest path to the presidency, and one parties path doesn't involve winning the popular vote.

Now, what you may be confused by is when other situational factors, like retirements, funding, candidates - and how a handful of incumbents are in mismatched seats by partisanship - that go beyond the overall topline analysis. But the GOP will have to take seats Biden won to get a majority, whereas the Dems in 2018 could just walk Clintons path to victory. And its easy to imagine a Dem majority in 2024, unless the topline is a landslide.

[Oryxslayer]

No matter, we will surely impeach those radical judges. Poor idiots, did they really think they could get away with it?

I'm sorry you hate fair maps and black people.

Also, forgive me if I am wrong, but Impeachment threats only mattered before a case to recuse Justices. There aren't the votes to convict of any accused crimes in the Senate. What purposes would that serve now that the verdict is decided besides create living martyrs. Court retention elections often have some of the highest comparable crossover voting - even in NC where this only means 2-5% - so giving the Justices prominence when the GOP's goal should just be to win the 2022 elections is peculiar at best.

Frankly, it appears someone has only been paying attention to the buzzwords.

[Oryxslayer]

Here's my attempt at an equitable map for NC. Note - I use the word equitable not fair. A equitable map looks to state's lean - in this case a marginal swing state - and the efficiency gap and corrects for imbalances. A fair map would need to do neither of those things cause every state would be using the same criteria to avoid gerrymandering.

As it should be aware by now I view the goals of minority access and opportunity to be paramount, especially in Southern States, and I also always get the map down to 0 deviation after DRA released block edits.



Lets look at the map East to West, numbered based on the old system.

NC-01: Biden+14, Clinton+16.1, Cooper '20+19.2, Lewis Holley+13.4.

Goal here is a seat that is plurality African American by population without using the Triangle. And while DRA says this seat is 46.4% AA to 43.1% White, that is a distortion of the truth. Civil Rights groups when analyzing seats prefer to use the data DRA calls "NH Race" where the Others and Two+ Races categories are their own separate thing. This is because those groups cannot be easily measured to behave like the single-race electorate. DRA does something in the backend with the PL-94 171 files to distribute the respondents with mixed races between the minority groups. Downloading the files from the redistrictingdatahub and using GIS dissolve reveals that under a single race analysis that treats mixed and other groups separately, this seat is 43.9% African American to 43.1% White by Population. Also obviously remains majority-minority VAP, but also by CVAP.

NC-07: Trump '20+19.4, Trump '16+23.5, Forest+13.1, Robinson+21.2.

This should be the standard seat for this region, given that the six whole counties in the seat are only 188 population short of a single seat, and it keeps the core Wilmington metro whole.

NC-03: Trump '20+28.3, Trump '16+30.2, Forest+22.5, Robinson+29.6.

The White seat between two minority seats. One could best describe the seat as a mid-belt seat, covering the are between Fayetteville, Rocky Mount, Raleigh, and the Ocean, extending out to the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds. However, it has to also take in the White counties South of VA beach, cause they are too lily-White for a minority seat.

NC-09: Biden+2.3, Clinton+5.5, Cooper '20+10.1, Lewis Holley+3.4.

Obviously a majority minority seat given the presence of the Lumbee, but it likely wouldn't be an easily performing. The majority of the Lumbee are now likely to prefer the GOP, whereas the African Americans and Hispanics prefer the Democrats. A competitive and minority seat though is desirable given equitability. Bishop might hop on over here rather than risk a primary, given his decent Lumbee appeal, but of course he will be facing Charles Graham - an actual Lumbee.

NC-04: Biden+38.6, Clinton+37.8, Cooper '20+43.2, Lewis Holley+37.2.

New Research triangle minority access seat that pairs East Raleigh with Durham via South Franklin. Majority Minority by VAP and likely a plurality AA Democratic primary electorate given the presence of a few GOP White areas.

NC-02: Biden+22.9, Clinton+15.7, Cooper '20+28.6, Lewis Holley+18.4.

Nested Wake County White seat. Wake Forest is in this seat even though it should be in NC-04 since adding it in and dropping East Raleigh diverse areas would make the seat majority White by VAP.

NC-14: Biden+10, Clinton+7.5, Cooper '20+16.4, Lewis Holley+7.6.

Somewhat marginal Dem seat between the two metro areas. Dem votes mainly come from Chapel Hill, Chatham, and the mainly-Apex slice of Wake. GOP areas are mainly in the west. That said, this is a diverse area politically and only Chapel Hill can be said to be entirely for one party, and that is reflected in the topline.

NC-06: Biden+27.9, Clinton+25.1, Cooper '20+33.5, Lewis Holley+25.2.

All Cities of the metro area in one seat, and why wouldn't they? Together they are less than 100K away from a seat, and that 100K is obtained through linking them together. Also made sure the seat was majority-minority by VAP, but the Dem primary electorate is likely plurality African American anyway.

NC-13: Trump '20+41.1, Trump '16+42.2, Forest+32.6, Robinson+42.4.

Lily-White suburban-exurban central NC Republican seat. The compacting of the Charlotte suburban seats inevidably leads to the emergence of something like this central seat.

NC-08: Trump '20+2.1, Trump '16+9.2, Cooper+2, Robinson+5.8.

This seat could be made into a version that voted for Biden, but it isn't. This is because of equitability. Instead it is drawn as a mirror to NC-09 with both seats +2 for their party. This seat is moving towards the Dems, NC-09 towards the GOP.

NC-12: Biden+45.2, Clinton+40.5, Cooper '20+47.3, Lewis Holley+41.8.

Obvious majority-minority Charlotte seat is obvious, though this version is drawn so that it takes in some of the whiter south city - so as to given NC-08 some minority precincts and become marginal - but not too many so as to prevent the seat from being majority-minority by CVAP.

NC-10: Trump '20+29.4, Trump '16+33, Forest+23.9, Robinson+31.4.

Not much to say about the White west suburbs seat other than it compacts down into a neat and geographically sensible 4 county + North Charlotte block.

NC-05: Trump '20+46.9, Trump '16+46.9, Forest+37.7, Robinson+46.

Western NC or non-Mountain White Appalachian Republican seat. Reflects the human Geography of the region better than a version with Iredell.

NC-11: Trump '20+7.2, Trump '16+12.4, Forest+1.4, Robinson+9.

The mirrored version on NC-14 is the Western NC Appalachian mountain seat, obviously made competitive by Ashville. This collection of counties up to Boone is only overpopulated by 3K, so only a single precinct cut is needed and it should be the obviously alignment. Adding in Boone also produces political competition - once again equitability. Cawthorn will have to run back here if he doesn't want to primary a fellow Republican.

DRA link for those that desire it.  

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/NCCapitol/status/1490798277431906317?s=20&t=XmuZ1nlsNIlp...

So there will be some maps on the Justice's desks for them to potentially toss aside.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1493389564580446214?s=20&t=32n3rmQnjmzTa8E5...

One can now read the full (longer) opinion on the previous decision to strike down maps at the link above.

[Oryxslayer]

[T]here are multiple reliable ways of demonstrating the existence of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Mean-median difference analysis; efficiency gap analysis; close-votes, close-seats analysis; and partisan symmetry analysis may be useful in assessing whether the mapmaker adhered to traditional neutral districting criteria and whether a meaningful partisan skew necessarily results from North Carolina’s unique political geography.”

From the opinion, what does this even mean?

Those are all various metrics that an be used to determine the equity of districts when compared to the expected partisan distribution based on statewide results. This line was in the initial shorter order as well.

[Oryxslayer]

Senate redistricting committee will meet tomorrow afternoon to consider the new maps (which have not been made public yet).
https://twitter.com/Lynn_Bonner/status/1493692940144676865?s=20&t=mgN55ejFlG...

House to reconvene on the same issue at 11am tomorrow.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

[Oryxslayer]

Here is the proposed new House map.

Supposedly:

 62-58 Trump (R)
65-55 Tillis (R)
63-57 Cooper (D)


I would like to see a DRA upload and measure the marginality of the seats myself though.