2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Mississippi

[If my soul was made of stone]

Only two counties are split here (Clay and Panola), and all incumbents are protected:



MS-02 is 60.6% Black VAP.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Good map honestly. Nothing worth criticizing. Of course the GOP's hands are tied by the VRA here.

I think this map is bad based on COI, but is a wash politically. If I were drawing the map based on COI without consideration to partisanship, there would be 2 Safe R seats, and 2 Swing seats, the swing seats being around Biden + 2.2 and Biden + 2.5. It would have the potential to either double or nothing Black Representation in the state, depending on how strong their turnout was in any given year.

Well, I'd say that the risk of having no Black congressional representation at all from the nation's Blackest state vastly outweighs concerns about COI or partisanship or the possibility that there might be more (which would surely require an environment where a larger-than-average share of the white population is voting Democratic given likely differences in turnout).

[If my soul was made of stone]

Lower Black turnout dictates that a functioning Black seat should be well more than 50% VAP at any rate, so unpacking the 2nd and drawing a compact Metro Jackson seat (which I can't manage to make Dem-leaning without giving it significant portions of the Delta and thus requiring the Black seat to cross over and take in Meridian and such) is clearly not up to VRA snuff. The Jackson metro is de-facto segregated enough that it's probably worse COI to keep it whole at any rate.

[If my soul was made of stone]

This is the map I am talking about ftr:



Neither of Delta area nor the Jackson Metro are split.

Putting Starkville in a Metro Jackson seat is a clear Dem gerrymander that isn't justified by minority concerns, since Oktibbeha County is less than 40% Black.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I managed a modest improvement on my prior map:



MS-02's Black VAP increases a hair to 61.4%, and now only a single county (Lowndes) is split.