2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Virginia

[Skill and Chance]

https://www.vacourts.gov/courts/scv/districting/2021_virginia_redistricting_memo.pdf

Here's their memo.

This leads to our second point: In consultation with the Court, we have rejected calls to
actively educate ourselves further on the residences of incumbents. Incumbency protection is, as
many have pointed out, frequently listed as an allowable consideration in redistricting. S

As stated the court wants to ignore incumbency so this system will work more like Washington next time.

I think the VA system will inevitably just deadlock every time until/unless there are new amendments proposed at some point.  But if this is how the deadlock gets resolved, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Unless you are imagining a deal where R's let D's draw the congressional map in exchange for keeping the median legislative districts well right of the state (especially downballot)?
 

[Skill and Chance]

9-2 Democratic gerrymander in VA: https://districtr.org/plan/128946.

Try 10-1!

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::ef5e4627-31fe-4598-bf3f-fd19bb78c372

Nice. The only problem is how convoluted and weird looking the district lines are, but I suppose that can’t be helped and is necessary to achieve 10 blue seats.

The courts map actually create a pretty effective R sink in VA-09. It’s really unpacking 3 and 4 which is challenging without violating VRA.

Yes, now that VA-09 is as R as VA-08 is D, there isn't too much of a statewide bias anymore.  NOVA is so uniform now that it's a borderline natural D gerrymander, but Richmond/Hampton Roads is a natural R gerrymander like other smallish Southern cities. 

[Skill and Chance]

If Virginia does gain a district, it may be possible to draw an Asian-plurality district in west Fairfax/east Loudoun counties by 2030. Would be very interesting - the first such district outside of Hawaii, California and NYC, and the first truly new Asian-interest seat since Grace Meng’s created in the 2010 cycle.

Across the south there is lots of potential for Asian plurality/majority seats in the future. Georgia south of Cumming and Texas in Denton and Sugarland you can almost draw one as is. Heck even North Carolina you can draw a majority asian state house seat

I’d be surprised if there isn’t atleast one after 2030 somewhere in the house

Given the current SCOTUS, it's pretty likely that VRA requirements to draw majority-minority districts will end before 2031.  So I guess it would come down to what the legislature wants and in some cases, state constitutional language (VA and FL that I know of).

[Skill and Chance]

Wow, this is interesting!

On paper, the median district got slightly more Republican (Biden +9ish 1st draft to Biden +7ish final draft), but Democrats would probably prefer a setup where Spanberger, with her track record of winning highly competitive elections, can run in the median district instead of Wexton, who severely underperformed Biden?  Note Clinton actually did better in 2016 in final draft VA-07 than in 1st draft VA-10.

Final draft VA-02 is still Biden +2ish, as in the 1st draft.  Luria is probably out of luck in 2022 unless the national environment dramatically improves.   

VA-05 takes all of Charlottesville and Albemarle, but is still just safe enough to stay Republican for the decade (Trump +11 2016 to Trump +8 2020). 

Final draft VA-01 is now much more suburban dominated and looks like a Dem flip waiting to happen (Trump +14 2016 to Trump +7 2020).

Looks like the state legislative map changes were minor?  According to the document, median district partisanship stayed almost exactly the same in both chambers, meaning the state senate slightly favors Democrats on paper and the HoD slightly favors Republicans on paper vs. statewide results.

This held up very well.  Wexton would very likely have lost the 1st draft VA-10 to Cao while Spanberger landslided in the 1st draft VA-07 with all of Prince William in it (assuming she didn't lose the primary to a Prince William Dem).  Wexton and Spanberger had nearly the same margin of victory on the final map. 

VA is also interesting in this regard because the state house is a rapidly decaying R favorable map (largely because of outer NOVA and Richmond seats that are still narrowly R downballot) while the state senate is a D favorable map that is also probably decaying over time (largely because Hampton Roads is spread too thin).  It's entirely possible that both chambers flip in 2023 or 2027.