North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[Mr.Phips]

Based on the shapefile I got, Biden won 58/120 seats on the new map. Clinton won 51/120, and Cooper (2020) won 64/120.

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::df281e24-3b57-4e83-9d65-df812eed1787

So assume this makes Republicans getting a supermajority (3/5ths) a lot harder?

[Mr.Phips]

https://twitter.com/BryanRAnderson/status/1493987911192260619

Winston Salem,Fayettville both split in 2, Democrats get 5 safe seats from Charlotte. Map is pretty close to a D gerrymander arguably, not sure why the GOP wouldn't just let the special masters draw it at this point, and redraw after 24. Not sure how much worse it could it get.

The state legislature maps can’t be redrawn mid decade.

[Mr.Phips]

Yeah 12-2 is basically impossible now. The northern Wake seat only barely went to Trump and voted for Cooper in 2020.

It’s been pretty much impossible for the last decade, which is why Republicans didn’t do it in 2011.

[Mr.Phips]

New York, it’s your turn.

[Mr.Phips]

This is what I think will happen:

Congressional: Likely 3-1-10, with the swing seat being a predecessor to the current NC-01 the GOP counts of continuing to shift right. Map is likely similar to the one that was originally overturned, but makes some minor changes now that there's different sets of incumbents and we've seen another cycle of political shifts.

State Sen: Honestly, it's not hard to lock the GOP into a supermajority without doing anything too absurd; the GOP already won a supermajority in 2022 with just a slightly R favorable year. I expect a map similar to the current one that just makes some optimizations so in your average year, the GOP gets to about 32 seats, and basically locks in a supermajority. I don't expect them to be super aggressive with cracking up suburbs of Charlotte and Raliegh, especially given the 2022 results; I think most emphasis will be on the black-belt and more mid-sized cities like Fayetteville, Greensboro, and Wilmington.

State House: This is honestly more difficult to *lock-in* a GOP supermajority, but you can do it so the GOP should be favored in a normal cycle. Again, I expect the biggest point of contention to be the black-belt seats and seats around smaller D-leaning communities. Especially on the state House level, I doubt we'll see GOP aggressively try to bacon-strip out suburbs, but def try to shore up incumbents (rmbr County-splitting rrule is still in place too, so it's literally impossible to squeeze much out of Mecklenburg and Wake Counties).

This seems right to me, though there's some speculation that they might try and overturn the county splitting rules with the newly favorable court.

Wasn’t it actually a Republican controlled court that originally put the county splitting rules in place?

[Mr.Phips]

Since I'm a masochist, I've been playing around with a maximalist NCGOP gerrymander.

The landscape for NC redistricting post-Allen v. Milligan is interesting -- Republicans have pretty much obliterated most previous constraints on their gerrymandering, except now they can't get rid of NC-01 like they wanted. I figured they might go with a map which shores up NC-01 instead.

link



It's 10-3-1, with NC-06 as a narrow Trump district, functionally Lean R.

You could probably tighten this up more, especially with 14.

Actually a not a bad map and it doesn’t pull crap like splitting Greensboro and Winston Salem.

[Mr.Phips]

Somebody or several bodies needs to read the Allen v. Milligan decision with more care, assuming they have read it at all.

Here is the cleanest map I can draw that I had the skill to draw that turns NC-01 into a Gingles CD. It was tough going.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/fe568442-204c-48a4-be07-54e2969d0fff

Can we stop with the splitting of Guilford and Forsyth counties?  I understand that they don’t need to be put in the same district, but at least keep them whole.  Something like the 2016 map is fine in this area, but just keep Guilford whole this time.

[Mr.Phips]

Somebody or several bodies needs to read the Allen v. Milligan decision with more care, assuming they have read it at all.

Here is the cleanest map I can draw that I had the skill to draw that turns NC-01 into a Gingles CD. It was tough going.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/fe568442-204c-48a4-be07-54e2969d0fff

Can we stop with the splitting of Guilford and Forsyth counties?  I understand that they don’t need to be put in the same district, but at least keep them whole.  Something like the 2016 map is fine in this area, but just keep Guilford whole this time.

If you want to do an effective Republican gerrymander splitting Guilford is basically mandatory.

Another reason why the first order of business of Dems in their next trifecta needs to be to pass a national law mandating that counties and cities cannot be split unless a district(s) is a already fully contained within that county or city and the remainder doesn’t not have enough population to house another whole district.  Would solve the problem here and in Jacksonville FL and SLC Utah.

[Mr.Phips]

Somebody or several bodies needs to read the Allen v. Milligan decision with more care, assuming they have read it at all.

Here is the cleanest map I can draw that I had the skill to draw that turns NC-01 into a Gingles CD. It was tough going.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/fe568442-204c-48a4-be07-54e2969d0fff

Can we stop with the splitting of Guilford and Forsyth counties?  I understand that they don’t need to be put in the same district, but at least keep them whole.  Something like the 2016 map is fine in this area, but just keep Guilford whole this time.

If you want to do an effective Republican gerrymander splitting Guilford is basically mandatory.

Another reason why the first order of business of Dems in their next trifecta needs to be to pass a national law mandating that counties and cities cannot be split unless a district(s) is a already fully contained within that county or city and the remainder doesn’t not have enough population to house another whole district.  Would solve the problem here and in Jacksonville FL and SLC Utah.

This is the Ohio rule and we already know it doesn't solve the problem because, uh, Ohio. Counties are bad proxies for COI. Just require partisan proportionality based on contested federal races and opportunity districts, and a requirement that metro areas not be split if it's unnecessary to achieve the prior objectives.

No this isn’t the Ohio rule.  Ohio has needless exceptions to allow certain counties to be split and doesn’t have language requiring districts to be wholly contained within a city or county if population allows for it.

[Mr.Phips]

Somebody or several bodies needs to read the Allen v. Milligan decision with more care, assuming they have read it at all.

Here is the cleanest map I can draw that I had the skill to draw that turns NC-01 into a Gingles CD. It was tough going.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/fe568442-204c-48a4-be07-54e2969d0fff

Can we stop with the splitting of Guilford and Forsyth counties?  I understand that they don’t need to be put in the same district, but at least keep them whole.  Something like the 2016 map is fine in this area, but just keep Guilford whole this time.

If you want to do an effective Republican gerrymander splitting Guilford is basically mandatory.

Another reason why the first order of business of Dems in their next trifecta needs to be to pass a national law mandating that counties and cities cannot be split unless a district(s) is a already fully contained within that county or city and the remainder doesn’t not have enough population to house another whole district.  Would solve the problem here and in Jacksonville FL and SLC Utah.

This is the Ohio rule and we already know it doesn't solve the problem because, uh, Ohio. Counties are bad proxies for COI. Just require partisan proportionality based on contested federal races and opportunity districts, and a requirement that metro areas not be split if it's unnecessary to achieve the prior objectives.

In states like NV, MA, WI, WA etc you have to gerrymander to achieve Partisan proportionality

Probably CA and CT too.

[Mr.Phips]

The state legislature is worth keeping an eye on here too; the Congressional map is fairly predictable but the state legislative map less so.

Under current interpretations of NC state law, the legislature is required to minimize county splits to the maximum degree possible, a rule which sometimes results in kind of awkward districts but which severely constrains gerrymandering. If the legislature colors within these lines, the maps will be certainly gerrymandered (especially in the House) but Democrats would likely still be within striking distance of breaking the supermajority in a good year, even if it's a bit harder.

However, given the current Republican majority in the State Supreme Court, it seems likely to me that they may jettison these rules and draw freely with the understanding that the court would back them up. In that case, it would lock in a Republican supermajority with 100% certainty for the rest of the decade.

Keep in mind that it was originally a Republican state Supreme Court that came up with county cluster rule.

[Mr.Phips]

Here's a sort of updated version of Republicans original gerrymander that tries to account for recent shifts and clean some things up around the margins. I think the biggest question is how risky does the NC-GOP want to be with NC-01? (Since changing NC-01 too much could spark a lawsuit).

Especially after seeing the 2022, some have argued the GOP should do more to shore up NC-11, but honestly I think Trump + 10 should be sufficient and cracking doing some sort of arm into Asheville is just going to be too awkward for the benefit it provides.

If only the state Supreme Court had used the county cluster rule for the congressional districts as well.  Seeing Guilford county keep getting split makes my head explode.

[Mr.Phips]

Btw, didn't NC Democrats screw themselves sometime in the 90s or 2000s by taking away the governor's power to veto maps?

Not only did they do that, it was arranged by Roy Cooper.

Woof. These maps are disgusting and I don't support gerrymandering regardless of which party does it, but it's very hard for me to feel bad here.

They didn’t take away the veto power, it’s just when they added the power they explicitly made redistricting exempt.

That doesn't really make it any better; it was still intended as a little trick to weaken the other party, since North Carolina Republicans had managed to win governor's seats plenty of times in the late 20th century, but were seen as having no shot at winning the legislature. It's the same kind of stuff that NCGOP does now.

That doesn't mean that any party should be screwed over in this way, which is why I care a lot about this issue, but you can't deny that certain elements of NC Republican misrule are just photo negative versions of how NC Democrats used to govern.

I don't understand how Democrats thought they would have no shot at losing the legislature, given that they lost the state House in 1994 and 1996 and only had a 5 seat majority in the Senate in the mid 1990s.  Also, Dole and Bush almost certainly won a majority of seats in both houses of the legislature.  Even if they screwed this up, they had a chance to rectify it by putting independent redistricting on the ballot in 2010 (they controlled the legislature and could have voted to put it on the ballot via their majorities) when polls ACTUALLY SHOWED THEM LOSING THE MAJORITIES IN BOTH CHAMBERS OF THE STATE LEGISLATURE.  

[Mr.Phips]

Ok Senate passed map.

Let’s see if House makes any modifications. Probably a pretty solid 10-1-3 map. Don Davis I’d an overperformer but low black turnout can easily kill him.

I think he can win in 2024, but 2026 is another story, especially if Biden is re-elected.  This map would be almost tolerable if they had not split Guilford county, even if they attached it to Randolph and part of Davidson to make NC-06 as red as possible.