2020 Texas Redistricting thread

[Florida Man for Crime]

Someone can do the math on this but it pretty much cancels out

I was curious and I like math, so...

The mean expectation from your numbers is +2

[Florida Man for Crime]

It works for me, but that might be because I saw it pretty much as soon as it was announced and loaded the data files for Texas in particular.

The single most striking thing so far to me is that a "natural" compact Congressional district in Collin County (basically everything southwest of McKinney) is not only Biden +5, but also majority-minority - even with including Allen.

Remarkable how much that area (and Texas suburbs generally) have changed even in just the last 10 years.

I think the TX State House map may end up being in some ways the most interesting and important part of this redistricting cycle. With all the population loss in rural areas as well, not only have areas such as Collin County swung and changed dramatically, but they will also be gaining seats removed from safe R rural areas. If those trends are anything more than purely a reaction to Trump and Trump alone, it should be pretty tough for the GOP to gerrymander a safe sustainable state legislative majority. It's easier to gerrymander Congressional districts due to their larger size.

[Florida Man for Crime]

How much time will it be until Texas maps will actually be able to be made?

If you are having trouble getting the website to load, try setting an alarm clock for 3-4 AM tonight or so, and probably there will be less people trying to load the data then

[Florida Man for Crime]

A map that does not have a district that can more or less reliably elect the Latino candidate of choice in El Paso County is illegal.

Sure, it is illegal under existing law, but Republicans have seized partisan control of the Supreme Court. So similarly as to how abortion will now suddenly no longer be a protected right, now it will be perfectly legal to dilute the Hispanic vote. This will be rationalized in various ways, e.g. "Trump narrowly won Zapata county, therefore anything is fine." Between Roberts/Gorsuch/Kavanaugh, they can certainly come up with a rationalization to kill off what is left of the Voting Rights Act.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Just on pure aesthetics, I LOVE the shape of district #31. Just beautiful stuff. Ultimate barbell district. And it is not even directly partisan gerrymandering for that district. It is just completely ridiculous and absurd for non-partisan reasons. 

[Florida Man for Crime]

The TX GOP Congressional proposal is patently absurd in terms of the district shapes. It is hard to say whether TX-04, TX-33, or TX-10, is the craziest. I'll go with TX-33 I think. Gotta love that wrap-around...

But in terms of the partisan effects, it is probably about the best that TX Dems could realistically hope the Republicans would draw, because they didn't go *as* crazy as they could have. They didn't go after TX-32, TX-7, or try to dismantle VRA seats, so there is at least some acknowledgement of demographic reality there. Possibly TX-38 might also be competitive-ish by the end of the decade. Probably not, but at least possibly. And I am not sure TX-22 and TX-24 are totally out of the woods, but realistically should remain pretty easily R for a decade.

Of course, the reason for that is not a sudden appreciation for good government or scruples against gerrymandering, rather it is just to protect incumbents (for example, the "community of interest" good government redistricting of TX-13 taking in Denton).

[Florida Man for Crime]

Both swing district dems get safe seats, though Fletcher is out likely through a primary to a minority candidate. Also new Austin seat OFC. New Districts 38 and 7 really should trade numbers, cause 38 is a clear successor, and it's probably why the GOP was pushing for Wesley Hunt to run again.

You can tell their desperate and recognize the state is falling, what with the narrow linkages needed to maximize packing and cracking potential. Things like 35 getting narrower between the cities, 10 squiggling around Austin, the alternating tendrils of 33 and 6, and whatever the hell 4 is trying to do.

Regarding Fletcher, I do not agree that she is likely to lose to a minority candidate in a primary. It is possible, sure, but there is no particular reason to think so.

Her district still has a lot of the high education, high income, high turnout heavily white areas Around Bellaire that used to vote R but have flipped to solidly Dem in the Trump era. At least as importantly, it also has added to it white liberal areas that were NOT in the previous (current) TX-07 and were in the old TX-02 instead. Namely the Montrose area nearby Rice University, which is very heavily Dem, high turnout, and white liberal. That area has one of the highest Dem vote margins proportional to population of anywhere in the Houston area, even beating out a lot of African American areas (due to the high turnout). That provides a lot of voters who will turn out in Dem primaries and are likely to be happy with Fletcher.

Secondly, it is true that this new TX-07 has a lot of minority voters, but those minority voters are very diverse, a good mix of African American, Hispanic, and Asian. A hypothetical minority challenger would be one specific minority. There is no reason why e.g. an African American primary challenger would be expected to appeal more than Fletcher to Hispanics and Asians (and likewise for hypothetical Asian/Hispanic challengers).

Thirdly, the district is geographically fairly split up. Even if a hypothetical primary challenger had particular appeal in one area, they probably wouldn't have it in the rest of the district. It is pretty non-compact, so you would have to have a candidate with pre-existing appeal throughout a broad swathe of the west Houston metro area.

Fletcher is also pretty likely, I would think, to appeal in the Fort Bend parts of the newly drawn district for the same reasons that she appeals in her current district. There are a lot of similar sorts of voters there, and she is unlikely to have a particular problem appealing to Dem voters in places like Sugar Land etc.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Here's a better link to the GIS version of the plan where you can really zoom in a lot more and also see roads etc.

https://dvr.capitol.texas.gov/Congress/14/PLANC2101

[Florida Man for Crime]

Yes, mine was a much better Pubmander, and legal. It is almost always a mistake to try to get inside the heads of TX Pubs, much less assume that they have some modicum of rationality.

A good share of the ridiculousness is pretty obviously because of incumbent concerns and incumbent self-interest/demands winning out over what would be a more rational but equal/more effective configuration. For example, TX-04 is the way it is because Rockwall County is in the current district and they apparently want that to stay due to incumbency there, but they also want to help take Dem votes from TX-03 to keep TX-03 safely R, hence the ridiculous dual tentacles to Rockwall on the one hand also to Biden-voting Dem-trending parts of Plano/Frisco on the other hand.

Similarly, TX-10 ridiculously goes through a narrow strip to get to combine West Austin and a bunch of rural areas to the east of Austin. The reason for that is to take in Mike McCaul's home in west Austin, while also including the rural areas that he currently represents and which are the parts that make it safely R. Actually, tbh it looks like the new proposed TX-10 is actually more of a rural district than a suburban district at this point (not only having very little of Austin, but also having entirely exited Harris County now). If McCaul were to retire, this district would end up getting represented by a rural R I am pretty sure.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Well, the Texas Pubs clearly did not take my advice, and yes, they should be sued, and then sued some more (probably for precisely the opposite reasons Gass has in mind but whatever). The below image has to be competitive with MD in insane erosity. I get that TX-33 was an attempt to do a crude Hispanic pack, but what is TX-04 all about?  

TX-04 is basically about taking a lot of the more Dem trending areas of the north Dallas area and sinking them into rural areas so that the Dem trending areas votes don't count and they are disenfranchised.

Specifically, it takes a lot of the more Dem parts of Plano (which also tend to have higher Asian populations), so that the less Dem and generally more white parts of Plano can be kept in TX-03 and keep TX-03 safely Republican.

It also looks like it includes a lot of Frisco, which is very diverse, extremely fast growing, and rapidly Dem trending (similar to Fort Bend County in the Houston area, with a large Asian population as well as rapidly growing black (and Hispanic) population). And since it is suburban, it is also relatively high turnout. In other words, it is exactly the sort of area that is increasingly toxic for the GOP.

A sort of somewhat comparable area is the Bear Creek part of West Houston, which flipped Dem earlier than the more white parts of West Houston which turned against Trum, and which look like they are now mostly in the proposed TX-08 so that Wesley Hunt can win the proposed TX-38.

So they all get stuck in TX-04 with a bunch of non-college unvaxxed white rural voters who would sooner commit suicide by COVID (and in fact have been doing so over the past few months) than even consider voting Dem.

That is what TX-04 is all about, thanks for asking! 

[Florida Man for Crime]

Exactly my question too. Why not give Hunt to TX-4 and Rockwell to TX-3?

Because Rockwall could theoretically trend/swing Dem. Rockwall is a (far out) Dallas suburb. Rockwall is sort of similar to somewhere like Forsyth County, Georgia, in the sense that it is heavily white and traditionally very Republican, but also very fast growing, which means that it may change and become more like the further-in Dallas suburbs and parts of Collin County that are Dem trending.

Whereas Hunt county is way too exurby/rural to trend/swing Dem over the next 10 years. The population growth in Hunt County will be basically only exurban white Rs, whereas you may start to get some minority creep and white urbanish Dem creep into Rockwall.

[Florida Man for Crime]

This map is very much incumbent-driven. It's perhaps the spiritual successor to the 2013-2023 MD map in that regard.
You have a good point on the 10th. Eyeballing it, about 50% or so of the population is in rurals outside of Travis and Williamson? Which is a sizable shift.

It is more like 2/3 of the district is outside Travis and Williamson. Whereas before the rural areas of TX-10 helped it to stay R, but a big part of the contribution was also made by Harris County. Whereas it is obviously way too risky now to keep a Travis + Harris + some rurals seat now and expect it to stay R, even though the part of Harris that was in his district was R, it was Dem trending like the rest of the TX suburbs, so they not only made the Travis portion a lot smaller, but also entirely dumped the Harris portion.

[Florida Man for Crime]

I did the math and I'd guess about 2/3. Holy moly.
This sure is the Micheal McCaul Lifetime Employment Act.

It is probably not a coincidence that McCaul was the lead Congressional Republican coordinating the map between TX Congressional Rs and state legislative Rs that were drawing the maps and the fact that he managed to end up with a much more rural (but rural areas that know him) and safe district which will re-elect him as long as he wants, whereas a lot of the other vulnerable TX suburban Rs still have relatively more suburban districts that should be pretty safe, but where it is at least theoretically possible they may not be by the end of the decade (TX-24, TX-3, TX-22).

[Florida Man for Crime]

So, there are only 2 single districts left in this map which are purely rural R districts. TX-01 in east TX, and TX-19 in West TX.

Every single other White Republican district is involved in some way or another in cracking some sort of Dem urban/suburban area.

Here are the Dem/Dem trending areas that each of the white R districts is directly involved in cracking/overwhelming:

TX-02 - Houston north/east fringes
TX-03 - Collin County
TX-04 - Collin County
TX-05 - Dallas County
TX-06 - Dallas/Tarrant counties (mostly Irving, a bit of Arlington)
TX-08 - West Houston Bear Creek Park area
TX-10 - Small part of Austin and also Dem trending College Station
TX-11 - Killeen/Fort Hood
TX-12 - Fort Worth
TX-13 - Denton
TX-14 - Galveston & Beaumont
TX-17 - North Austin/Round Rock
TX-21 - San Antonio and a small amount of Austin
TX-22 - Fort Bend County and Pearland
TX-24 - North Dallas
TX-25 - Arlington
TX-26 - Lewisville
TX-31 - Williamson County
TX-36 - South-East Houston
TX-38 - West Houston

They really went pretty much all in on the cracking. The only way they could have done more would to have been to make some incumbents less safe, and the incumbents wouldn't want that.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Mike McCaul may be a Pubmandering genius, but I don't see a second performing Hispanic CD in the Houston area, that our very own Tim Turner was able to draw at 50% HCVAP, thus triggering Gingles. Instead, Chairman Mike left Sheila Jackson Lee alone, when her district should have been converted to a performing Hispanic CD, like I did. LULAC should sue immediately!  

You can keep her district as a performing African American opportunity district and also add a 2nd separate Hispanic district. So yes, they should sue, but that would realistically mean TX-38 would become the new Hispanic district, not TX-18, while TX-29 would take more Hispanics that are mostly cracked and outvoted by white Rs in TX-36 and TX-2, both of which include a lot of Hispanic majority areas on the fringes of the eastern part of Houston.

I think I may edit the map in DRA to show how that can be done.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Unless TX-07 becomes the second performing Hispanic CD, that means the Dems are getting an extra seat, no?

If the lawsuit were successful, yeah, the Hispanic seat would basically combine the northern part of TX-29 with heavily Hispanic areas that are currently split mostly between TX-18 and TX-38 on the north/western side of Houston, and wouldn't cross over at all into the areas taken in by TX-07 (although it could theoretically if you wanted it to, it doesn't have to).

But I wouldn't expect the lawsuit to be successful though, even if it were successful in lower courts probably SCOTUS would reverse it out of partisanship. Also it is possible that if it were the Rs would go back and try to draw out Fletcher to compensate for it. Although that could be risky for the Rs, because White college educated Dems in Montrose/Bellaire/etc are a lot more dangerous to Republican incumbents, because they turn out to vote at a MUCH higher rate.

Basically there is something hidden about the proposed TX-29, which is that it is actually a lot less Hispanic than it can be, because in this proposal it is drawn to include a lot of majority white areas in Downtown/West Houston (the Houston Heights and areas to the immediate west of downtown) that don't have many Hispanics.

[Florida Man for Crime]

OK, I made some slight edits to the proposed map proposed by the Republicans to add a 2nd Hispanic seat in the Houston area.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/1264ee5e-e452-4e1a-93db-1df2d96ee694







TX-29: 69.4% Hispanic, compared to 71.7% Hispanic in the official proposed map. Obviously you are not having to significantly dilute TX-29's Hispanic supermajority to be able to draw a new Hispanic district, and TX-29 will be just as likely to perform for the candidate of choice of Hispanic voters (and actually it will be MORE likely to perform as a Hispanic district, since it includes fewer of the White liberals in west Houston).

TX-38 - 64.4% Hispanic (and 12.7% White, 17.5% Black, 5.7% Asian, 3.4% Native). Instead of being a Republican district gerrymandered to elect Wesley Hunt, it reflects the fact that most of the population growth has been Hispanic and other minorities as a new Hispanic VRA seat.

TX-18 - The edited district is 37.7% Black 32.7% Hispanic, 23.6% White, and 5.8% Asian. The official proposal is 35.5% Black, 50.4% Hispanic, 9.9% White, 4.6% Asian. So my edits actually made the African American population go UP. So it is also not the case that the African American VRA performance of the district is in any way weakened by making a new Hispanic district.


I also made very minor changges to TX-07 and TX-22, but this was a very small number of precincts and doesn't make any real difference to anything. My edited TX-09 is 38.8% Black, 36.7% hispanic, 13.6% White, and 11.5% Asian. Whereas in the official proposal, it is 40.9% Black, 34.9% hispanic, 13.6% White, and 11.2% Asian. So no real change to that either. All I did was very slightly lower the Black population in TX-09 to add a bit more Black Population to TX-18. But seeing as the TX-18 I edited is actually MORE heavily African American than the official proposed one, I probably didn't even need to do that at all, lol, or at least not as much. TX-18 also still has a lot of white liberal areas near Downtown Houston that could more sensibly go in TX-07, but I wasn't really trying to mess with TX-07 other than minor incidental changes which I made just to equalize population of TX-09 since I took that small South Houston African American area from TX-09 to put into TX-18. You could do essentially this same map while only editing TX-02, TX-08, TX-36, TX-38, and TX-29.


The main change is really just that TX-36 and TX-02 are more safely Republican and less Hispanic, because they are diluting a lot less Hispanic votes in Pasadena, Baytown, etc which are instead put in TX-29, which frees up Hispanic population in the northern part of TX-29 to fill up TX-38 and make TX-38 into a new Hispanic VRA seat on the north/west sides of Houston.

I guess if the TX Republicans who drew the official proposal were to say anything against creating a new Hispanic seat while also keeping TX-18 as a performing Black VRA seat, maybe they might try to say that TX-18 is a Hispanic seat as they drew it, since it is 50.4% Hispanic (47.2% Hispanic VAP). Of course, we all know the reality is the proposed TX-18 is really a black VRA seat and will easily elect the candidate of choice of Black voters, not a Hispanic one. But maybe that is what Republicans would say in response to the lawsuit. And probably John Roberts and the other partisan Rs on SCOTUS will buy it and ignore the reality.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Basically, there doesn't seem to be enough Latinos that there's a ironclad argument for a second seat.
There will be one in 2030, but in 2020 it's more unclear. TX GOPers have the space to defend the map they have made.

There are plenty of Latinos in the Houston area for 2 Hispanic seats (there were actually plenty in 2010 as well!). See the map I just posted. I could have gotten the Hispanic population %s even higher if I were spending more time on it, changing more districts and drawing a map from scratch rather than just editing a few districts in the R proposal. Probably the way to get the highest Hispanic population percentage on the new west-side Hispanic VRA district would be to include some of the heavily Hispanic areas in southwest Houston which are currently in TX-09 & TX-07, which I left entirely untouched. And I was still able to easily draw 2 2/3+ Hispanic districts in a very short amount of time with no real effort required.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Simple amendment to make TX-15 a bit more favorable for the GOP

who proposed this amendment?

No one in the TX leg,  it looks like it's just a PDF someone made.

The only justifiable modification that can be made to TX-15/TX-34 in terms of the VRA is to unpack TX-34.

The proposed TX-34 is 90.3% Hispanic.
The proposed TX-15 is 81.4% Hispanic.
The proposed TX-28 is 75.3% Hispanic
The proposed TX-23 is 62.7% Hispanic.

Which of those things isn't like the others? It is that TX-34 is over-packed with Hispanics in order to reduce the Hispanic population in the other districts so that in the other districts it is easier/more likely for white Rs to outvote the Hispanics.

There is also the issue of the very large Hispanic population in Corpus Christi being disenfranchised and stuck into a white dominated district. I don't understand how that can be legal. But it was also allowed for some reason in 2010 (when before it was in a VRA seat). This was a retrogression in Hispanic voting rights that was allowed to sneak by.

The proposed TX-27 is 53.6% Hispanic. There are a heck of a lot of wasted Hispanic votes in TX-27, where they get outvoted by rural white Rs. Meanwhile Texas Rs gerrymander to stuff extra white voters into districts like TX-23 and TX-15 to try to help the White Rs in those districts to out-vote the Hispanics so that the seats no longer perform as VRA seats electing the Hispanic candidate of choice. That is why e.g. TX-23 includes a large area of far north Bexar County that is strongly majority white (some precincts up to 70% white or more), rather than including more Hispanic areas that could have been included instead.

Which really just goes to show what we have known all along. Republicans don't care about the VRA and they don't want anyone to vote or for their vote to count for anything other than white Republicans.