Maps we need to see!

[Verily]

Here's a fun incumbent protection gerrymander of NM.

NM-01 is 56% Hispanic and 63% Obama.
NM-02 is 59% McCain.
NM-03 is 41% Hispanic, 36% White, 19% Native and 67% Obama.

[Verily]

Regarding the NY map above, it looks pretty good, but the GOP will no doubt insist on beefing up the grey district, by moving over some GOP votes from the red district.

Problem is that all of the areas around the border of the red and grey districts are Democratic-leaning (50-55% Obama). You'd have to do a pretty intense gerrymander.

[Verily]

Haven't looked at incumbent residences yet, but 27-9 should be doable.  Dems are safe in El Paso (1), San Antonio (1), Austin (1), Houston (3), Dallas (1), and McAllen/Rio Grande Valley (2), plus two Hispanic-majority seats that the GOP has won and can probably keep with the right lines.  

DOJ is likely to force a Hispanic district in DFW. Also, the GOP doesn't get to "keep" the two Hispanic majority seats it won. They're VRA-protected, so the GOP only gets to keep them if they can consistently win a majority of the Hispanic vote in those seats (not likely). The GOP would want to make another South Texas seat to make Farenthold safe, anyway.

25/24-11 is probably the best possible result for the Republicans.

[Verily]

Here's Florida. No partisan data, but the Tallahassee-Jacksonville-Gainesville district is majority black, as are two districts in South Florida. There are three Cuban districts in South Florida as well. The Osceola and southern/eastern Orange County district is less than majority white, and the Orange/Seminole district is only 54% white.

There should be 10 Democratic seats (Corrine Brown's new seat, the St. Petersburg seat, the Tampa seat, the Orange/Seminole seat, the Orange/Osceola seat, and five seats in South Florida) and 13 Republican seats (the two Panhandle seats, the two Jacksonville suburbs seats, the Hernando/Pasco/Citrus seat, the two Tampa suburbs seats, the Lake/Orange seat, the Brevard seat, the Fort Myers seat, and the three Cuban seats) as well as three competitive seats (the Daytona Beach seat, the Sarasota seat and the St. Lucie/Martin/northern Palm Beach seat).

[Verily]

I don't think under the new Florida redistricting law, erose black districts not tying together communities of interest, can be drawn unless otherwise mandated by the voting rights act, and they are not. So that map above is not legal, I don't think.

Pretty sure they're forced to keep creating the black and Cuban districts, or at least the courts will interpret it that way. But, if not, I could redo the map.

[Verily]

I don't think under the new Florida redistricting law, erose black districts not tying together communities of interest, can be drawn unless otherwise mandated by the voting rights act, and they are not. So that map above is not legal, I don't think.

Pretty sure they're forced to keep creating the black and Cuban districts, or at least the courts will interpret it that way. But, if not, I could redo the map.

No, not if they don't tie together communities of interest, and Corrine Brown's district is  not a majority-minority district in any event, and thus is not in any way protected by the voting rights act, which is why she is so upset, and is suing. Her district is l'histoire, and she is l'histoire.

Not sure she's doomed. Jacksonville is way bigger than a district. You could create a 35% or so black seat in Jacksonville that would reelect a Democrat, although maybe not Brown.

[Verily]

I don't think under the new Florida redistricting law, erose black districts not tying together communities of interest, can be drawn unless otherwise mandated by the voting rights act, and they are not. So that map above is not legal, I don't think.

Pretty sure they're forced to keep creating the black and Cuban districts, or at least the courts will interpret it that way. But, if not, I could redo the map.

No, not if they don't tie together communities of interest, and Corrine Brown's district is  not a majority-minority district in any event, and thus is not in any way protected by the voting rights act, which is why she is so upset, and is suing. Her district is l'histoire, and she is l'histoire.

Not sure she's doomed. Jacksonville is way bigger than a district. You could create a 35% or so black seat in Jacksonville that would reelect a Democrat, although maybe not Brown.

The GOP won't do that.

Ah, but central Jacksonville is a community of interest that you would be splitting up, and one of the rules says no partisan considerations.

[Verily]

It's Mario who is suing, not Lincoln, FWIW.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/59532388/Corrine-Brown-Mario-Diaz-Balart-Lawsuit

[Verily]

Playing around with the app I see that if the majority black seat in north Florida is eliminated A DISTRICT CAN BE DRAWN THAT ALAN GRAYSON COULD WIN! YES! YES! YES! YES!

Toss Brown. Throw her to the dogs. Forget her, she is useless. Goodbye to that useless wench. Sacrificing corrupt trash like her for people like Alan Grayson is FAR worth it.

As my earlier map shows, you could create a majority black district without going south to Orlando regardless.

[Verily]

coalition district

?

White plurality but minority-majority. The Supreme Court has ruled that states are not bound to gerrymander to create such districts, but they are also bound not to gerrymander to destroy such districts if they consist of reasonable communities of interest.

[Verily]

VRA districts can't just be drawn to be majority X. They have to also guarantee that the preferred candidate of group X will be elected in all but freak elections. Since Hispanics (and blacks) are always strongly Democratic (except the Cubans in South Florida), this effectively means that VRA districts have to be Democratic-voting as well. A 54% McCain district will never meet VRA standards despite being majority Hispanic.

[Verily]

Which current districts are VRA districts?  23, 27, 28 are R+4, R+2, R+0 in PVI - does that mean they're not?  

They all are. Their PVI is deceptive and somewhat irrelevant, since PVI only measures Presidential vote and includes Bush's overperformance in South Texas. They usually elect Democrats to Congress (two of them not this year, but that's unimportant--what matters is that they routinely elect the preferred minority-group candidate in most years; occasional hiccups like Cao in LA-02 are acceptable).

Also, TX-23 was drawn by the courts to minimally disrupt the rest of the map to undo part of the Perrymander that diluted Hispanic voting power too much. It is therefore probably the absolute most Republican any court would allow a VRA district to be, and on this year's results might be considered still a VRA violation by a court reanalyzing the issue.

[Verily]

Which current districts are VRA districts?  23, 27, 28 are R+4, R+2, R+0 in PVI - does that mean they're not?  

They all are. Their PVI is deceptive and somewhat irrelevant, since PVI only measures Presidential vote and includes Bush's overperformance in South Texas. They usually elect Democrats to Congress (two of them not this year, but that's unimportant--what matters is that they routinely elect the preferred minority-group candidate in most years; occasional hiccups like Cao in LA-02 are acceptable).

Also, TX-23 was drawn by the courts to minimally disrupt the rest of the map to undo part of the Perrymander that diluted Hispanic voting power too much. It is therefore probably the absolute most Republican any court would allow a VRA district to be, and on this year's results might be considered still a VRA violation by a court reanalyzing the issue.

Wait, come to think of it TX-23 had a Republican representative between 1994 and 2006.  Doesn't that by definition make it a non-VRA District?

He may have been winning a majority of the Hispanic vote. I don't know. The reason the courts redrew the seat in 2005 (and Bonilla then lost) was because it was considered an unfair dilution of the Hispanic vote. The district was much more Democratic until 2004, when Laredo was taken out of the seat when DeLay redrew the Texas map, so it may have been considered acceptable back then.