2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Alabama

[If my soul was made of stone]

Anyways, after quite a bit of trying, I finally managed to get a map with a Mobile split and 2 black districts that doesn't give me the weird, borderline OCD issues

Ugly as hell, but I guess so is going to be any map. The population distribution and geography really make it hard. Every time you seem close to a solution a district ends up way under/over populated or the populations just don't match



https://davesredistricting.org/join/f95c6b0b-1fd9-42fc-ab28-396c8b8355c1

District 7 is 45.8% black, 45.7% White CVAP and Biden+27
District 1 is 49% black, 43.8% white CVAP and Biden+15

I still can't fully explain what makes this better than the previous proposals (I want to say it's the water contiguity issue but still not fully sure) but anyways. This is going to be subjective I suppose

The rest of the Black Belt is sitting on its hands wondering why you put white Mobile suburbs/exurbs in the seat instead of them...

[If my soul was made of stone]

If SCOTUS upholds the decision that most likely intimidates Louisiana Republicans into allowing a second black district too, which would be amazing.

Unlike AL, you can't draw two "compact" 50% BVAP CD's in LA, so no. Gingles does not trigger the drawing of a second black performing CD in LA.

Wrong. You can.

So it would appear as to the 50% element of the test, and we do have racially polarized voting, so that just leaves the compact element to litigate. 

https://davesredistricting.org/join/8bfa1863-ed2e-466e-9d9f-90b35e656962

You can still make it to 50% without going all the way to Shreveport, by making use of Winnfield, Ruston, and Monroe. That might be a bit more agreeable by compactness standards by virtue of not stretching across so much of the width of the state.

It's also advisable to ditch the easternmost parts of New Orleans, which are far less Black than the city as a whole and would also make the 1st road-contiguous if included in that seat.

[If my soul was made of stone]

If SCOTUS upholds the decision that most likely intimidates Louisiana Republicans into allowing a second black district too, which would be amazing.

Unlike AL, you can't draw two "compact" 50% BVAP CD's in LA, so no. Gingles does not trigger the drawing of a second black performing CD in LA.

Wrong. You can.

So it would appear as to the 50% element of the test, and we do have racially polarized voting, so that just leaves the compact element to litigate.  

https://davesredistricting.org/join/8bfa1863-ed2e-466e-9d9f-90b35e656962

You can still make it to 50% without going all the way to Shreveport, by making use of Winnfield, Ruston, and Monroe. That might be a bit more agreeable by compactness standards by virtue of not stretching across so much of the width of the state.

It's also advisable to ditch the easternmost parts of New Orleans, which are far less Black than the city as a whole and would also make the 1st road-contiguous if included in that seat.

Yeah, he's trying to gaslight yah. Those two seats need not be tentacles: they can be sensible seats that follow the Red and Mississippi rivers and the pattern of settlement therein. And I just threw this together quickly, it can be made better. Some don't consider the Red River seat compact, even though it makes sense given human geography.

Now is this needed? Nope. The New Orleans seat can be performing with a much lower BVAP, probably closer to the low 40s as long as it still has the plurality. And if compacted, the second AA seat has infinitely more options for potential configurations, some that don't go into north Lousiana.

I drew a Louisiana map with three majority-minority seats (one being Black-majority) a while back that's in the Louisiana thread, and it has far less border gore than either the two Black-majority seat map I just drew or Torie's balderdash.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=346330.msg8362907#msg8362907

[If my soul was made of stone]

Let’s say by some miracle this decision stood. Would such a rational be applied to other southern high African American states with GOP gerrymanders? How many seats could that net Dems?

At most, 2. LA and NC (and the NC map is already in front of courts).

I’m still gonna insist it’ll have some affect on SC. At the very least a new minority influence seat could very easily be argued for, if not two majority minority seats outright

Idk about that--spent some of last night playing around with 2 minority influence districts in SC and it's frankly pretty challenging to do. Would be interesting in seeing your map, but my suspicion is that only 1 district meets the Gingles test.

If we take that one seat must be Black-majority as a given, it's patently impossible. Two minority-influence seats also seems like a pointless task, given how small and diffuse the population of other minorities is.