US House Redistricting: North Carolina

[minionofmidas]

That little yellow snake creating some black district in the NC map above,  would  generate the third in a series of SCOTUS decisions, about the legality of black snakes in NC, with the outcome uncertain, since the first two decisions were not particularly coherent.

Is this district what the song "Crawling King Snake" is all about?

[minionofmidas]

I wouldn't call a 9 R - 4 D a Dem gerrymander. The incoming delegation is 6 R - 7 D, so a pickup of 2 or 3 looks pretty good to the GOP. Why would the GOP risk picking up only 1 by leaving too many swing districts on the map with entrenched D incumbents? At 9 - 4 the GOP can engineer at least 56% McCain in all the R districts and leave little to chance.

I was being slightly hyperbolic, but in my book "much more Republican" didn't mean moving from 54% McCain to 56%.  

To me, this is about probabilities: a 54% district gives the GOP at least an 80-85% chance of winning it in most years, I would guess.  Moving that to 56% maybe bumps that to 90-95%.  Is adding 10% insurance in 3-4 districts worth dropping GOP chances in one district from 60% to 5%?/quote]Is that a serious question? From the pov of the federal Republican house majority, probably not. From the pov of an individual congressman, the distinction between 85% chance every year and 95% chance every year is the distinction between job tenure and no job tenure. Now who do you think has more clout with his home state's legislature?

There's another odd little detail that I would like everybody to take note of: The Lumbee vote. Any plan splitting Robeson County - and possibly even one separating Scotland and Hoke from Robeson - is going to be challenged in court (where the chances of success aren't high but are, you know, extant), and more importantly is going to be a hard sell to a number of legislators. The area's current delegation even includes a Republican (and two Democrats, in the House; plus another Democrat in the Senate.) This can probably be easily worked with; but it ought to be kept in mind if the purpose is predicting the result.
And thus is another argument for making McIntyre one of the four Dems you're not going after.

[minionofmidas]

Quite, quite. Though GOPhers may be hoping that that's over for good now, at least in the south. And may have grounds for such hope.

[minionofmidas]

There are some leftists already talking about primarying McIntyre over his promise to vote for HCR repeal. If you throw him in a 60% Obama district, hopefully he party switches and runs in Kissell's district.

I think Parker Griffith's fate will serve as a remainder to any prominent Democrat not a complete uberdino - and that certainly includes McIntrye - of what party switching always brings with it... namely a credibility issue. And the chance of being ejected in the least graceful way possible.*
Not that even he could win that seat for the Republicans, of course.

*And Arlen Specter's, of course.

[minionofmidas]

Where does Shuler live? Is it possible to throw him into a 57% McCain district with an R incumbent?

[minionofmidas]

North Carolina is not a preclearance state. Suits based purely on what the last DOJ wanted aren't going to get far past the "laughed out" stage of court proceedings. Besides, the previous districts were roughly 51% Black too.

[minionofmidas]

If that 4th district is not the the ugliest non-VRA district in the history of the world, then I don't know what is.

The old Florida-22.

[minionofmidas]

No one's mentioned the actually pointless ugly cruelty yet... Robeson/Scotland/Hoke. Not only is that unjustifiable by any standard, what they did is probably not actually going to be enough to get rid of McIntyre. Mark my words.

[minionofmidas]

No one's mentioned the actually pointless ugly cruelty yet... Robeson/Scotland/Hoke. Not only is that unjustifiable by any standard, what they did is probably not actually going to be enough to get rid of McIntyre. Mark my words.

What cruelty is that, exactly?

Ever had a look at the demographics of the area?

[minionofmidas]

It continues into there (though the percentage declines), so the three counties belong together. I'd consider it stomachable if they'd just split them from Robeson rather than splitting Robeson itself, though.

(As to the rest of the map, I'd echo Al's sentiments of "what comes around goes around".  As long as no idiot tries to pretend this isn't a bad gerrymander, I cannot even manage fake outrage. But Indian issues tend to be close to my heart, and splitting Indian communities is quite rightly something that used to be "not done" in redistricting.)

[minionofmidas]

It continues into there (though the percentage declines), so the three counties belong together. I'd consider it stomachable if they'd just split them from Robeson rather than splitting Robeson itself, though.

The D's split the three counties last go-around.

Meh, must have blocked that out (even though at least they didn't split Robeson itself). Still wrong... then as now.

[minionofmidas]

This has dummymander potential considering how unpleasant many of the GOP incumbents are. McHenry for example can't be considered truly safe with Asheville in his seat, he's the type of guy who can't run in anything but the most absolutely safe districts. Coble is also notably kind of a jerk and has a far too diluted district, but he's older than dirt and my just retire anyway. Ellmers is an idiot who could end up being the next Jean Schmidt. I agree that it won't oust McIntyre. The GOP can also forget about primarying Jones like has been tried since the seat is now winnable for the right type of Democrat, but then again losing seats has never kept the GOP away from nominating idiots before.

I don't think any of the Republican incumbents will be in serious danger outside of a disastrous Republican year. I can see McIntyre holding on, but he'd probably be out in the next good Republican year.

It's only a dummymander if, at any one point, Dems win two adjacent seats beyond the three allocated to them, which would presumably mean two of the four southeastern seats (Kissell, McIntyre, Jones, Ellmers). If they'd created another safe Dem seat down there, they could have made (kept in Jones' case) the others entirely safe.

[minionofmidas]

Shuler: ... his new counties (... Avery, Mitchell) don't even vote Democrat on the statewide level.

Understatement much?

[minionofmidas]

Shuler: ... his new counties (... Avery, Mitchell) don't even vote Democrat on the statewide level.

Understatement much?

Yep...even looking at a good year like 2008:

Only once in the last 50 years has a Republican Presidential candidate received less than 60% of the vote in Avery County - and that was with Ross Perot splitting the opposition. It has not happened in Mitchell County. I suppose the pattern actually holds all the way back to 1868, though.

[minionofmidas]

Playing around with the 1st district... the best I could get it to without going into Raleigh or Durham or Chapel Hill or Greensboro or Fayetteville or Wilmington or forcing the 3rd into Wilmington is 49.7-40.8 total, 48.5-43.8 VAP, 63.6 Obama. The split between the first and third is not particularly clean, but a lot cleaner than at current.

EDIT: (just under) 50.0-41.0, 48.7-44.0, 63.6.

And what is probably my final word on the matter, 50.3-40.7, 49.0-43.7, 64.0-35.6.

...tinker tinker tinker... 50.6-40.5, 49.2-43.6, 64.2. Ugly as hell, of course.

[minionofmidas]

North Carolina is a quarter black, doesn't it need three Black-opportunity districts?



(None of which is over 50% Black VAP; the green and grey skirting very near, the yellow doing the same if you lump the Lumbee with the other kind of colored folks.)

[minionofmidas]

Note that the map is not an R gerrymander, the other districts being pretty much drawn to make as much sense as can still be made after those three monstrosities are in place. The teal is quite heavily Democratic, the pink and red are quite marginally McCain, and Shuler hasn't been targetted either, so it could conceivably elect 7 Democrats.

[minionofmidas]

Here's an attempt at a fair map if the VRA did not exist. Some areas are probably all wrong.



Before coming to a conclusion as to what map to draw, I kind of need to decide what kind of VRA district I want and how many. If it's two, Watt's Black Snake is pretty much a given (or maybe it's possible to build a Black seat out of Charlotte and points east? That urban Charlotte seat above is 43% White, 35% Black), but there's still leeway in the east. Rural? That'd be pretty much that green district from the map above, possibly with the southern end cut out somehow. Rural/Durham/Raleigh? That might be an interesting one (and your only hope if you want to draw a really solidly, like 55% and up, Black seat in NC.)

[minionofmidas]

Your fair map is interesting.

Ellmers would be drawn in with McIntyre in the red district, though he'd likely run in the purple on. Maybe Kissell would run there instead; putting all of Union county in his current district would really drive up his McCain %.

Overall, looks like 7-5-1.

Pretty clearly 6-6-1 on the presidential figures, actually, green, purple (though it's a borderline marginal), pink, cyan, grey and cornflower as R districts; Shuler's as a seventh McCain district,  but the most marginal of all 13. The red district is actually quite solidly Democratic; I doubt McIntyre would move.

The map's not guaranteed to lock out the Blacks either; Democratic primary electorate in the blue, the red and the Charlotte district would probably be majority Black. Though who knows what would happen in those circumstances. The VRA is not, after all, a perfectly pointless bit of chicanery.

Which brings me back to my question. I need pointers as to what's most preferrable regarding the VRA seats before I can start drawing my map for realz.

[minionofmidas]

60 seats where McCain got 55%+

That has a certain magic to it.

I looked at the 2008 McCain/Obama numbers and there are a number of districts that McCain barely won.  (...) SD-17 (...) come to mind.   

I'd also add SD-15 and SD-18 to that list.

Yeah, trying to take (or hold?) three out of five seats in Wake County is going to slice your margins down.

[minionofmidas]

So he kept Winston-Salem and Greensboro separate, which is reasonable. And he split Charlotte which is meh - but a solitary Charlotte seat will exclude part of the suburbs anyways so it's okay I guess. In the Northeast he drew much the same as I did, except putting South Wake in with Fayetteville - looks calculated to create an extra tossup (the one possible type of gerrymandering you very rarely see in real politics!)
And why people always do that with Robeson County is beyond my comprehension, frankly. Probably being influenced by the current map.

[minionofmidas]

It's not optimized to perfection, but Durham/Raleigh/rural Blacks gets about 54% Black (52% on VAP). Charlotte/Anson/Robeson/Fayetteville can be got to a bare Black+Native majority on VAP, though optimized more to keep Whites out than get Blacks in (matters because there's quite a few Hispanics in Charlotte).

[minionofmidas]

Whatever they say, I'm pretty sure they'd blithely ignore Butterfield's concerns if they felt certain that their map would really give them 10 seats (as opposed to, give them a chance in 10 seats). It's even possible that the mapdrawers did feel that but have since been reality-checked by R lawmakers from the proposed 7th.

[minionofmidas]

How exactly does switching from Raleigh to Durham fix whatever legal challenges Butterfield was talking about?

By allowing him to take a handful of extra rural blacks - there's five additional counties his district edges into on the east.

That new second district is hilarious.

McIntyre is now paired with Kissell in the 8th (based on residence). Which is also probably unwinnable. I suppose we all know why that is.

[minionofmidas]

I'm intrigued by the mini boundary changes to the 5th, 10th and 11th.