US House Redistricting: New York

[minionofmidas]

Bronx, New York (Manhattan), and Kings (Brooklyn) counties are required to preclear (those bad old liberals had a literacy test, and Blacks didn't vote in as large numbers)

Oh, lol. Didn't know that.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah. What of the map can be preserved must be. When changing things at all, they're obviously not allowed to gerry.
However, the more I look at it... I guess the 9th can in fact be preserved and the 12th pretty much cannot without getting ever more erose. And that is indeed something a federal court should not be interested in. So I guess Torie wins that part. His Long Island stuff though is right out, obviously. I wonder if a merger of the 9th and 8th Brooklyn parts' isn't in the pipeline.

To put another way: When drawing the minority seats first, it was a grave mistake to begin with the Black ones - a mistake comparable to Torie's ignoring the 12th at all... oh dear.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, so I arrive at something not too dissimilar in the parts that really matter, except I did it the hard way. A district for Turner in Southwest Brooklyn (and a little bit of Queens) does indeed make sense.
I'm not running the Queens-Brooklyn (now very much Queens) district up into the Bronx, though. Nosirree. And adding McCarthy's district to the stew is not necessary for VRA compliance, is disruptive to old districts/disregarding legislative intent, is not going to be popular with anybody, and - and this is a new argument - it doesn't even help the Republicans, either!

[minionofmidas]

But why!?

[minionofmidas]

I guess you could disentangle the 3rd/4th just a wee bit? And same with the (former) 9th Brooklyn part? Oh, and why is Maloney extended to the West Side?
Otherwise... if Nadler and Rangel agree, as they probably should, this is where it's probably heading. Basically merging Crowley and Ackerman and letting Velazquez pick up their most Hispanic Queens bits.
Maloney taking Greenpoint and parts of Williamsburg is what it takes to keep Velazquez' recognizable while pushing her above 50%, is it? Oh well, so be it then.

[minionofmidas]

Well, 3 and 4 are merely gerrymandered to put all the Republicans in Peter King's district.

Yes, yes, I figured that much.

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100k of them? Are you sure? Just how Republican is your version?

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That is what I would do.

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Crowley doesn't care whether he gets Whites or Hispanics, as long as it's not, say, 60% or whatever of them. Crowley decides who Queens Democrats get to vote for.

Is Velasquez going to be happy with a 50% Hispanic CD?  Is Meeks going to be happy with 47% black? 

Why the hell shouldn't she? That's more than she's ever had, and she's safe as houses. (Now, whether that stops a court... different story. You can always point to Rangel's and Crowley's district not electing any Hispanics on similar shares.) And Meeks' district is 50% Black that way. As you know. And again, he too is safe as houses.

[minionofmidas]

Krazen says his Meeks CD is 47% black.

Non-Hispanic Black Only I presume.

[minionofmidas]

Krazen says his Meeks CD is 47% black.

Non-Hispanic Black Only I presume.

Whatever number the DRA generates I presume, which does not make this distinction does it? Does it count Hispanic blacks as black or Hispanic or both? If both, then the answer is presumably no.

As Hispanic. We've been over this two pages ago in this thread IIRC.

[minionofmidas]

Krazen says his Meeks CD is 47% black.

Non-Hispanic Black Only I presume.

Whatever number the DRA generates I presume, which does not make this distinction does it? Does it count Hispanic blacks as black or Hispanic or both? If both, then the answer is presumably no.

As Hispanic. We've been over this two pages ago in this thread IIRC.

IC. And nobody knows how the courts will count them I presume. Do they vote as blacks or Hispanics?  Or is it not possible to tell?

And isn't the black or Hispanic thing just self identification in the census? In other words, the black Hispanic can - and must - pick one or the other? Or does the census provide for picking both?

The census does, of course, provide for picking both. Which is why we have a figure for them at all.
And the courts count them as Blacks for Black-opportunity districts and as Hispanic for Hispanic-opportunity districts. As they should. (They also count the people who check multiple races including Black. New York just is the only place where it makes more than a percentage point or so of difference. At least on a level as far up as congressional districts.)

The Census asks two questions (as you should know since you recently filled one out) - which and how many of these races do you identify with? Black, White, Native, etc? And secondly and independently, are you of Hispanic Origin?

[minionofmidas]

if you want to make this fair move (jewish) Far Rockway to the 4th

Yeah, there's a funny six-precinct or so enclave of 90%+ Hasidic precincts ... that's split in two by the city line. I always thought that detail hilarious.

[minionofmidas]

I have zero memory as to what was on the census form.  

Thanks for the reply. That was very informative Lewis.

I hope you understand now why moving all the partly Black areas in Long Island out of McCarthy's district is not going to happen unless the judge is either a complete Republican hack who also has no ties to Long Island, or is someone who has a personal axe to grind with McCarthy (who, from all I hear, is not exactly a particularly valuable member of congress.)

The DRA figures are set up the way they are because nobody can make up heads or tails on why which Hispanics identify as White or Other. Obviously Latin American Whites, that Anglos would recognize as White, identify as White. But so do many Mexican Mestizos... and people who're probably European but look swarthy enough for Anglos to class them as "Browns" (think Ciro or Grijalva). While others of the same color identify as Other. So the White (Hispanic or Not) figure is quite useless wherever there are many Hispanics around, and doesn't correspond to a reality on the ground.
Meanwhile, where there are Dominicans or Afro-Cubans or also on some southwestern reservations, what the DRA does creates a problem as it makes it appear as if the people who check Hispanic origin are not Black / Native. (On most Southern Arizona reservations, there are more people checking both Native and Hispanic than there are who check neither. In many of these places, Spanish was used as the lingua franca to communicate with the surrounding anglo world for several generations, and Spanish skills are still very widespread even though English skills are near-universal now.)
Meanwhile, the question is set up the way it is on the Census because when Hispanic is considered a "race" (or called something else but asked in the same breath anyways) Latin American Whites don't check it, and hey presto, there's far fewer Hispanics in the US than there really is.

[minionofmidas]

There's a census data set of "Hispanic; and not Hispanic by race". Dave just seems to have used that. Obviously you could include layers of information about what different races Hispanics and mixed-race people checked... but I guess nobody's pointed the issue out to Dave in time, and it would be a fair bit of work to implement now.

[minionofmidas]

if you want to make this fair move (jewish) Far Rockway to the 4th

Yeah, there's a funny six-precinct or so enclave of 90%+ Hasidic precincts ... that's split in two by the city line. I always thought that detail hilarious.

Orthodox most of it is not Hasidic.

Meh, I always figure that when they vote en bloc. 

[minionofmidas]

Whatever became of Charlie's ethic troubles btw?

[minionofmidas]

I assume that most of the Hispanics that also identify as black are in the Bronx, as you have large blocs of mixed Black-Hispanic precincts there.

Yes. As in, even more of them than in the areas discussed so far.

Bronx
53.5% Hispanic incl. 21.6% Puerto Rican, 17.4% Dominican, 5.1% Mexican (easily the largest three groups anywhere except in Queens)
36.5% Black alone, 39.1% Black alone or in combination
30.1% Non-Hispanic Black alone, 30.8% Non-Hispanic Black alone or in combination

Manhattan
25.4% Hispanic incl. 9.8% Dominican, 6.8% Puerto Rican, 2.6% Mexican
15.6% Black alone, 17.2% Black alone or in combination
13.0% Non-Hispanic Black alone, 13.7% Non-Hispanic Black alone or in combination

Brooklyn
19.8% Hispanic incl. 7.0% Puerto Rican, 3.8% Mexican, 3.5% Dominican
34.3% Black alone, 35.8% Black alone or in combination
31.9% Non-Hispanic Black alone, 32.8% Non-Hispanic Black alone or in combination

Queens
27.5% Hispanic incl. 4.6% Puerto Rican, 4.2% Mexican, 3.9% Dominican... 4.4% Ecuadorian, 3.2% Colombian. This (along with the age of the Hispanic communities' existence, but that is related) explains why there's Hispanic representatives from Brooklyn and the Bronx but not from Queens, of course.
19.1% Black alone, 20.7% Black alone or in combination
17.7% Non-Hispanic Black alone, 18.8% Non-Hispanic Black alone or in combination

Now let's have a look by (current) district...
Ackerman's
25.6% Hispanic incl. 5.2% Mexican, 5.2% Ecuadorian, 3.9% Dominican
4.8 / 5.5 / 4.1 / 4.3 (Black alone, Black alone or in combination, nhb alone, nhb alone or in combination)

Meeks'
19.0% Hispanic incl. 4.6% Puerto Rican, 3.2% Dominican, rest is sort of scattered with Ecuadorian and Did Not State tied for third at 1.6%
51.8 / 54.8 / 49.5 / 51.9
The sizable non-Hispanic part-Black population here is also Caribbean I think. Haitian maybe - I know many of them check "Black" and "Other" in Florida? (Yet another source of non-Hispanic Other Races in South Queens are the Arabs.)

Crowley's
44.4% Hispanic incl. 15.8% Puerto Rican, 7.0% Dominican, 5.7% Mexican, 4.5% Ecuadorian
19.8 / 21.5 / 16.3 / 17.0

Towns'
17.2% Hispanic incl. 7.8% Puerto Rican, 3.7% Dominican
62.1 / 64.0 / 58.4 / 59.6

Clarke's
13.2% Hispanic incl. 4.1% Puerto Rican, 2.6% Mexican, 1.8% Dominican
56.1 / 58.0 / 53.1 / 54.4. Clarke herself is the daughter of Jamaican parents rather than from the Southern US like Towns (born in NC) or her predecessor Owens (born in TN) or Charlie Rangel (born in Harlem, mother born in VA). No idea where Meeks' (also born in Harlem) people came to NY from.

Velazquez'
44.6% Hispanic incl. 15.5% Puerto Rican, 9.2% Dominican, 7.8% Mexican, 4.5% Ecuadorian
10.9 / 12.4 / 8.2 / 8.8

Rangel's
46.1% Hispanic incl. 21.9% Dominican, 9.9% Puerto Rican, 4.9% Mexican
31.8 / 34.6 / 26.4 / 27.4

Serrano's
66.5% Hispanic incl. 24.9% Dominican, 23.3% Puerto Rican, 6.9% Mexican
35.9 / 39.0 / 27.9 / 28.6
Almost 30% of South Bronx Blacks are Hispanic Blacks! And that, of course, is assuming full reporting.

Engel's
25.6% Hispanic incl. 8.6% Puerto Rican, 6.8% Dominican, 3.1% Mexican
32.7 / 34.6 / 30.0 / 31.0

[minionofmidas]

Ho hum. Totally pointless to chop McCarthy's district. As pointless as McCarthy's very existence.

[minionofmidas]

Buffalo is "volatile"? More like fiercely loyal to its incumbents no matter what party they're from.

[minionofmidas]

And the answer would depend on how well either option works out for the Erie districts.

[minionofmidas]

On Turner's district? Nah, the numbers beat me, not you.
On the LI carve? Nah. Nobody ever thought it implausible, no one but you will ever think it remotely reasonable.

[minionofmidas]

District 6: 84% Obama, 85.5 Dem; 17.2% White/45.5% Black/17.1% Hisp./12.8% Asian.  Meeks' district has to expand, and it's impossible to keep it AA-majority and also entirely within Queens.  

Incorrect.

You've become yet another victim of the distinction between Black and non-Hispanic Black Only.

[minionofmidas]

Why would a court dismantle Turner's district instead of some combination of Ackerman, McCarthy, and King?

False dichotomy. There is no reason to do either. Basically take train's 9th, 10th and 11th and align nw-ne-s instead, fiddle with the perimeter a bit, and hey presto, two Black districts and an Orthodox district.

[minionofmidas]

No map yet?

[minionofmidas]

From way up when in this thread.

[minionofmidas]

No Muon, that this is quite unjustifiedly bizarre. Quite frankly everything from 18 to 23 there is Wrong with a capital W.

[minionofmidas]

That's kind of exciting. Like California. Are there two AA districts in Brooklyn?

I'm certain 8 is still AA majority, and 9 probably is as well.

There are three BVAP majority districts, but only one HVAP majority, with two plurality. I'm not sure why the Latinos would be happy with that.

I think you missed Rangel's district- there are two HVAP majority (Rangel and Serrano), and two HVAP plurality (Crowley and Velasquez).

Also of interest: NY-6 (which is presumably where Ackerman would move to, but also where Rory Lancman probably wants to run) appears to be plurality Asian, but whites have a higher VAP?

Thanks, that makes more sense. I was getting up the post and missed the new 13. I wonder if 55% HVAP is considered high enough to elect a candidate of choice?

Charlie Rangel basically is a Hispanic candidate of choice.

Lol, so he cut into Long Island without screwing McCarthy in the process? Hilarious.