North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/DallasWoodhouse/status/1494078122626633731?cxt=HHwWhsC-3d6Ih...

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/MurphinNC/status/1494074237522427906

Ross is a Democrat, Edmunds is an R, Orr is basically the Luttig of NC.

[lfromnj]

Proposed Chapel Hill district for tomorow.

[lfromnj]

Senate map with 25 Biden districts.  I don't know if some deviations are too high, I just made sure they're lower than 12k.  I kept most of the proposed map's county groupings the same.





https://davesredistricting.org/join/09fda123-ab7b-4a36-8a43-719f1bfea181

Why do you put black areas of Greensboro, Charlotte, and Fayetteville with white rural/suburban areas?

For Greensboro and Fayetteville - Because Blacks would still easily control the Democratic Primaries in those districts (literally all of them).

I didn't really change much about the Charlotte districts, I tried to just copy the proposed map, no need for any changes there.  (The Fayetteville districts are changed *slightly*)

Right, but it's also a gerrymander.

Why?  The Rockingham/Guilford district is a heck of a lot more compact that way,  the Fayetteville districts barely change (it's a difference of like 10-12 precincts) and still have the same overall shape.   There's no mandate that Black people are concentrated into districts beyond being able to elect candidates of their choice, which they can.

 A triad district is less compact than putting Guilford with Randolph and Forsyth with random rurals but its obvious why that shouldn't happen.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/EvanPerc_/status/1494327662046691334

Another map was apparently filed this morning. I quite like this one, actually.

Its ben clarks. Notice his split of Durham to really boost the suburban wake seat. He did that in his previous map.

[lfromnj]

Is it really too much to ask for this state to be normal in redistricting?

I'm pretty sure they're trolling at this point. Trends look atrocious for the GOP in 13 and 14 and pretty bad in 6 and even 8, so they wouldn't want this map beyond 2022. Probably just aiming for a court drawn map which they can easily redraw in 2022. I do wonder why they didn't do this for the state legislature; maybe they thought restricting the court legislative maps to 2 years might have been unconstitutional.

6 seems stagnant. It removes the NW corner of Guilford which is the upscale part. Its a Trump Cunningham district .

[lfromnj]

By the way folks the best indicator of trends in NC on DRA is comparing 2014 sen to either 2020 senate or presidential.  2020 senate is probably closer to where NC is downballot  although 2020 presidential does extend the trends somewhat.

[lfromnj]

For fun I drew a NC senate without the required clusters, many of them are still kept although changes were made. Overall has 22 Biden seats, (3 black belt seats) 7 in the Wake Durham Cluster as Franklin keeps the northern seat a Trump seat. 3 in Triad , 5 in Charlotte, 1 Asheville, 1 Wilmington, 1 Fayetteville , and 1 Alamance-Chatham  tilting seat to the north with the rural counties. Has 26 Cooper seats with Cooper flipping the Cabarrus, northern Wake , the rural seat north of Durham, and lastly the Lumbee seat.



edit; Alternative configuration to keep Rockingham Stokes together as they push into Western Forsyth. Instead of a rock solid 3 D 2 R map this has 2 Safe D a Lean D , a tossup and 1 Safe R. Gives Cooper 27 seats and is only 0.3 points right of the state by Cooper #s and is therefore also the median seat statewide if you include the state as a whole as a seat in the state senate due to the lt gov election.

I'll wait for Sol's response on which Triad configuration he prefers.

Main improvements from strict county based map IMO

NE black belt areas are more cohesive, Edgecombe and Nash are an obvious COI, and we now have a pure true rural black belt senate seat.

No Moore- Cumberland district.

Exurban/rural areas near the research triangle have better districts. The County clusters forced Person/Caswell into Orange County, Chatham went with Durham which is somewhat fine but Chatham overall has a pretty polarizing divide in East vs West and lastly placed the somewhat close Alamance county with 80% R areas in Randolph county.  Overall the triangle changes in my map slightly helps Republicans but mostly just creates 2 swing seats from 1 Safe R and 1 Safe D  seat and  IMO is better representative of these counties rather than the deeply polarizing Randolph/Durham/Orange being allowed to dominate these counties when it is possible not to.

Also lastly allows a cleaner Asheville suburban Henderson district without creating a near touch point contiguity district.

[lfromnj]

Of course, there's some legal question about the NCGA's ability to do mid-decade redistricting, but I assume a Republican court won't agree with this interpetation.

There's an explicit prohibition on mid-decade legislative redistricting, no? So those maps are likely final at least. This is probably why there's such a disparity between the legislative and congressional maps in terms of goofiness.

The state house seems more terrified of the court, they basically drew a D gerrymander for the state house. State senate mostly just drew a fair map, with a mild R mander in New Hanover and a D gerrymander in Mecklenburg.

[lfromnj]

The 9-5 CST22-3 map passed committee on a voice vote and will go to the full floor when the senate reconvenes at 12:30.

I assume (hope) no Democrat voted for this monstrosity?

Someone confirm that?

https://twitter.com/BrentWoodcox/status/1494387492480507905

Well they still support cracking Greensboro

but yeah no one voted for it.

Turns out failing to understand don't crack Greensboro is a bipartisan move.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1495193796698644486?cxt=HHwWjIC5qcK1_78pAAAA

Wow district 6 is actually a Obama -Trump-Trump district.

[lfromnj]

Is this the final map or does it go to the full SC now?

This was just the 3 judge panel. SC has not ruled yet.

I see. Hopefully the SC will clean it up a bit because boy this is a mess.

I'm not sure about the partisanship (although it does look like it has 5 solid D seats and a few competitive ones, which is nice), but just in terms of COIs something isn't right.

I mean if COI's are just going to be disregarded the GOP map still is pretty damn close to partisan fairness while having more competitive seats(on both sides not like Ohio) Yes it is 9 Seats but 2 of those are literally within 1 point. Im not actually sure why this is being done especially considering the state senate maps were accepted which although pretty decent on COI grounds aren't really fair on partisan fairness.

[lfromnj]

Just wondering, why is it that redistricting seems to be so exceptionally contentious and painful in North Carolina even compared to other swing states?

Well it is its entire history of politics. Its Wisconsin but on steroids.

Unlike other southern states NC has always had a relatively stable GOP base but never enough to win the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_United_States_presidential_election_in_North_Carolina
It's a deeply polarizing state

Of the other southern states only TN is similar.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/JMilesColeman/status/1496553544886980614

NC-1 is comfortably Republican-voting under the VA/NJ result paradigm, since it's only Biden+7. It looks like the southern Mecklenburg seat is probably reasonably safe for Democrats nowadays even under GOP landslide conditions (though it probably voted R under these boundaries even in 2014); the Greensboro seat has something similar going.

I'd guess 9-5 for 2022 under this map, with a small Democratic recovery being good for 8-6 and a narrow Democratic year like 2020 possibly giving 7-7.

Even Kay Hagan won the 2nd Charlotte seat.

[lfromnj]

No? If the 2016 map wasn't struck federally for tri cracking the Triad I don't see how this would get struck.

[lfromnj]

Honestly, I don't like the three judge panel map. It's like Colorado in that it reaches competitive balance (roughly matching the partisan lean of the state), but does so in a really awkward way.

Did they choose to have the D seats in Greensboro and the Triangle go to the Virginia border just to make the map look better? I don't really like the idea of splitting Charlotte. Make one seat that composes most of the county and is safe D, (Mecklenburg County has a population slightly greater than 1 million) then make a rest of Mecklenburg  + Cabarrus seat which would be a tossup. It feels like they included that southern Triangle lead D/tossup seat just so that there was a competitive seat which could be used as justification for this weird map.

https://twitter.com/decunningham2/status/1446124705325273096

Whats your opinion on a non contigious map?I saw this a while back and it seems interesting.

[lfromnj]

It occurs to me that if there's a mid-decade redistricting after 2022 (which seems feasible), whichever Democrat wins the new 14th district will most likely end up in a primary with Alma Adams when the Republicans condense Charlotte back down to one seat. Unless Adams retires in such a scenario to avoid a primary (possible given she's getting on a bit).

This year I expect there'll probably be quite the scramble for the 14th... Jeff Jackson is probably the strongest candidate if he wants to run.

He appears to be interested: https://twitter.com/JeffJacksonNC/status/1496876048176541696?cxt=HHwWgMDTxbi1_MU...

Brad Miller 2.0?

[lfromnj]

That map is almost as awesome as Illinois' and New York's.

Eh Illinois and New York were gerrymanders to maximize Democratic members, whereas this map is a compact fair map. Which you prefer depends on whether you value a pro-Democrat map or a fair map.

A properly compact fair map of NC is probably a bit more like 7-5-2 or something though--slightly better for Republicans.

6-3-5. with 1 more likely seat on each side regarding the Western seat and the Black Belt seat.

[lfromnj]

That map is almost as awesome as Illinois' and New York's.

Eh Illinois and New York were gerrymanders to maximize Democratic members, whereas this map is a compact fair map. Which you prefer depends on whether you value a pro-Democrat map or a fair map.

A properly compact fair map of NC is probably a bit more like 7-5-2 or something though--slightly better for Republicans.

6-3-5. with 1 more likely seat on each side regarding the Western seat and the Black Belt seat.

Ehh, I usually lump likelies in with the safe ones--hard to imagine either one flipping bar special circumstances.

5 safe D seems pretty straightforward then, no? NE, Raleigh, Durham, Triad, Charlotte.

Edit: Unless you're putting Democratic seats at the end, lol.

Yeah I meant to say 6R-3T-5D. Black Belt is a D and Western seat is R. I agree with putting them with their respective parties.

[lfromnj]

I really hate Republicans:

https://twitter.com/stevenmazie/status/1497334606948827138?s=20&t=F2JLfVoQLk...

If the GOP wins this case, does Ohio have to use its previously struck down map as well?

Don't they also risk allowing Dem trifectas to draw CA, CO, and WA? I think this is extremely unlikely, but if SCOTUS overturns all non-legislative drawn maps, Dems in Cali should have no sympathy.

No. A SC ruling like this would only overturn courts from drawing maps, not commissions, because commissions were ruled legislatures by Arizona.

I actually do wonder if the WA commission survives such a ruling.

[lfromnj]

Republicans won both state supreme court seats, so now have a 5-2 majority. NC is in for some brutal mid-cycle redistricting.

They have a 4-3 majority, one of the judges running was an R already.

No im pretty sure it is 5-2. Both seats were held by D's.

[lfromnj]

I wonder if they will go for 11-3 or just give Davis NC-1 and create a safe 10-4 map to avoid the risk of losing multiple seats in a future wave.

I mean the original map was 10 1 3 and davis would have lost this year in that map even against Sandy Smith.

[lfromnj]

By the way if anyone is interested , I think j miles said that NC01 was Beasly +0.2 this election.

[lfromnj]

If the Republicans are bold enough to do a mid decade gerrymander, I wonder who would likely win the primaries where Democrat incumbents get shoved together? Presumably Jeff Jackson and Alma Adams in a Charlotte district, and Wiley Nickel and Deborah Ross in a Raleigh one.

Assuming Stein runs for Governor, Jackson would likely just go for AG. Ross should be pretty favored for the Raleigh seat.

[lfromnj]

If the Republicans are bold enough to do a mid decade gerrymander, I wonder who would likely win the primaries where Democrat incumbents get shoved together? Presumably Jeff Jackson and Alma Adams in a Charlotte district, and Wiley Nickel and Deborah Ross in a Raleigh one.

Assuming Stein runs for Governor, Jackson would likely just go for AG. Ross should be pretty favored for the Raleigh seat.

Jackson is wise enough to know that he probably doesn't have a shot against Adams. I'm not sure though if Jackson wouldn't just run for Governor though.

I assume Ross would also have the strong advantage against Nickel.

Yeah Nickel might just either do best to pick something statewide or hope the GOP doesn't make the seat unwinnable which isn't an impossibility IMO as it was under the original map where they merely just put the Wake leftovers with Cumberland and JoCo. Bo Hines seems to want to run again and its not impossible Nickel could win. If I recall correctly that seat was within a few hundred votes in the 2020 gubernatorial race so a very tough pull but still a possibility.