US House Redistricting: Georgia

[krazen1211]

If you really want to engage in some monstrosity-making, you can actually take the 2nd and run it from Albany to Columbus to Macon to Augusta to Savannah and create a ~60% black district. It ends up looking like a horseshoe and cuts the state in half; you can do this while leaving 3 CD's worth of population under the cut.

Instead, though, I think they keep the existing 2nd and just put Macon/Valdosta into it. That bumps it up to ~54% black.

[krazen1211]

There's really no excuse not to make Bishop's district majority black now that it is very possible to do so. Don't think the Republicans will be able to get away with anything less.

Yep, I can't imagine them not wanting to do this.

img689.imageshack.us/img689/258/georgian.png


New CD-2 is 56% Black.


New CD-12 runs much farther north and is 28% Black. Whether this dislodges Barrow the way it did Marshall, I am not sure.

New CD-14 is 24% black and runs from Gwinnet County south.


What I am not sure about is the exact boundaries between CD-5 and CD-6 as well as CD-4 and CD-7.

Does it make more sense to run 6 and 7 deeper into Dekalb/Fulton, and run 4 and 5 deeper into Cobb/Gwinnett? Or should 4 and 5 remain in Dekalb/Fulton counties? I'm not sure where the stronger Dem areas are.

[krazen1211]

Broun lives in Athens, and that's where Barrow used to live, so you probably don't want to run an Athens-Savannah district, besides the usual non-compactness reasons.  

The reason I wasn't sure about how many blacks the GOP would want to pack into Bishop's district is that none of the bordering GOP reps need much help, plus they don't want to completely destroy their chances of picking him off if any additional ethical improprieties surface.  Plus it gets pretty ugly if you want to get it much higher than 50%.  

I wouldn't run the GOP districts too far in - you get white liberals and Georgia Tech if you do that.  If I had run them any farther into north Atlanta and inner DeKalb in my map, I would have been picking up areas which were Obama 55%+.  Better to have 20% minority + white conservatives than a district that's 5% minority but white moderate/liberals.  But these are minor details.  

I don't think the idea is to take him out so much as it is to keep him voting the way you want him to vote, and keep the seat heavy Republican if it opens or in the next 2010. Where you run him to is up for debate.

Between weakening Jack Kingston and drawing noncompact lines it probably makes sense to draw noncompact lines. Broun certainly can take all of Augusta and be in a stronger district than, say, Westmoreland and Kingston. And he doesn't have the clout that Kingston does anyway.

With Bishop, I figure you might as well pack him in. If/when his ethics violations bite him in the rear, you can do a Joseph Cao and lease his seat for 2 years.

The trick to forming a really strong map will be unlocking the excess strength in the 9th.

[krazen1211]

The other option:

Pack Barrow's district and crack ethically challenged Bishop's.

This might actually be a better solution since Bishop doesn't have the same 'moderate' tendencies that Barrow does, and it might lead to a primary challenge on Barrow and oust him anyway.




You get the numbers within 1-2% of what you get with the Barrow Configuration. Westmoreland goes up from 22% to 24%, same as Kingston. Bishop's district is 33-34% black depending on how badly you want to draw the lines.



Between Savannah, Augusta, Columbus, Albany, Macon, you seem to have to choose 3. Later I am going to try to draw a Savannah-Albany-Macon district, ditching Augusta entirely into Broun's district. Savannah-Albany-Macon puts the bases of all 3 Dem Congressman in the same district.

[krazen1211]

This is the f you map.



New gold 14th crafted for Senator Bill Cowsert, who happens to be Vice Chair of Redistricting.

Mike Keown lives in the new 2nd, which is about 15 points more Republican. Bishop might actually live in the new 55% black 12th.

Every other district should be absolutely ironclad. Gwinnett County, even if it goes blue a bit, is split amongst several districts.

[krazen1211]

Hmm, maybe they should go after Bishop,  not Barrow.  You might even get Barrow to vote to repeal ObamaCare in exchange for a promise to give him the safe district.  Wouldn't want to give him too many African-Americans, though, lest he lose a primary challenge from the left.  50%+1 should be adequate.  

It actually made more sense to me, since on that side of the state, you don't have to weaken any existing powerful incumbents (IE Kingston). Westmoreland has to take in Columbus, but he is compensated for it.

Why should only 1 guy get North Georgia?

[krazen1211]

Bishop lives in Albany, which you split between the 2nd and 12th.

The problem with trying to make Barrow safer is that he's already vulnerable to a primary challenge; that black state Senator who raised no money got about 40% running against him last year. Heck, putting Macon in the district could cause Jim Marshall to run and split the white vote.

I'm not really trying to get rid of or the other. If Bishop wants to run in CD-12 he is more than welcome to. The idea is to limit the Democrats to 1 district here, I don't care who comes out of it.

I figure you put the bases of all 3 congressman (Savannah, Macon, Albany) in mostly the same district and let the chips fall wherever they put them.

With Barrow, if you try to knock him off, you can get a redux of Chet Edwards/Jim Marshall with this guy holding onto an R+10 district. I figure if you do this, though, yeah, he is screwed in a primary. But that's his problem, isn't it?

I think scholarship Bishop is less likely to hold onto an R+10 district (the 2nd in my map) than Barrow is (the typically drawn 12th in most people's maps).



It is, somewhat, meanness for meanness sake, but it is also a great map, imo. I can probably work the 12th deeper into Albany if I want to.

[krazen1211]

The 11-3 map.



I ran the 13th down rather than sideways. It's not overly hideous.

The 2nd here is about 36% black. Probably winnable for the right candidate, but should keep Sanford on his toes.

The existing 12th is utterly dismantled.

The new 14th is probably a 56% or so McCain district, just eyeballing it.

[krazen1211]

I highly doubt the DOJ would approve that map.

Shrug. It's not like the existing 13th is a clean district. I haven't thought much about running it south rather than north.

The 9th is just sitting there begging to pick up some blue precincts.

[krazen1211]

That wouldn't make it through the assembly's redistricting committee. Nobody wants Texas-style fajita strip districts, nor is it really neccesary for an 11-3 district. Legislators from the north would go mad seeing that map.  assuming the state wants a fight with the Feds to get that 11th district anyway (though the combative signals from the new Secretary of State and Attorney General make it seem possible), this map wouldn't be it.

I doubt Graves (Hall) and Broun (Clarke) would really like being in the same district, and you're making Westmoreland's district unneccesarily marginal. The new district could tilt with demographic change too.

I won't be at a computer until tomorrow (posting on my phone now) but I'll try my hand at a 11-3 map when I get the chance.

Per his facebook, Tom Graves lives in Gordon County. Nathan Deal I believe lived in Hall County.

I would not call that fajita stripping, though. Is it abolishing a VRA seat? That depends on whether you think the new 13th is significantly less compact than the old 13th, which wrapped around 7 counties.

The 14th is, as I said, somewhat marginal, but I think that could be helped by shifting precints in Gwinnett to the 7th. I think I made the 7th excessively strong since it has Forscythe.

The existing 2nd is not a VRA district, is it?

Westmoreland's district isn't even close to marginal.

Fayette, Coweta, Heard, Carroll are all 66% counties. Troup is 59%, then he has the White section of Muskogee, Douglas (50/50), and 30k people on the southern tip of Fulton.

[krazen1211]

Why wouldn't the second district be protected by the VRA? And maybe you're thinking of the 2002-6 version of the thirteenth or something.

Well, its a plurality, not a majority district.

The old 13th obviously was a pretty ugly mess and I have it in the back of my mind. The new 13th still chops through counties and wraps, although the perimeter is obviously lower.

[krazen1211]

Why wouldn't the second district be protected by the VRA? And maybe you're thinking of the 2002-6 version of the thirteenth or something.

Well, its a plurality, not a majority district.

I thought we'd been over that... random cutoff points have no real relevance to the Voting Rights Act. The relevant question is whether South Georgia has enough Blacks to "deserve" a Representative of their choice, and whether the district boundaries are drawn in such a fashion as to give it to them. There are no two plausible answers on either question.

Didn't the Supreme Court decline to require such a district in South Georgia in the 90s?

[krazen1211]

How Republican are South GA Whites, BK? 75%? 80%?

Or another way of to approach this would be to ask if you know the McCain versus Obama number on your maps in what would be Kingston's district especially, since it was mentioned, yet again off board, that he could lose in a bad year if you target Barrow.

Chatham County is about 40% black and went 57% Obama. Simple math suggests the nonblack portion is about 70-75% Republican.

[krazen1211]

Here's an evil idea- putting the black parts of Albany, Columbus, Macon, AND Augusta  all in the 2nd district. I've been toying around with it on the app and it can actually be done pretty easily; it can be done in two ways. First, it could cut across the northern edge of the black belt all the way from Alabama to South Carolina and fit three full districts south of it (with an extension the width of a single county cutting down to Albany). Alternatively, you could give Bishop more of his old territory and a cleaner-looking district, but it would require one of the south districts to awkwardly skim the SC border through Augusta and take in the white suburbs to the north. Either way, it eliminates Barrow, prevents a Marshall comeback, and provides a ~55% black VRA district for Bishop (and with enough of his old territory that he'd be pretty safe from a primary challenge by someone more liberal).

Will post maps.   

That's precisely why I drew the same thing with Albany, Macon, Augusta, and Savannah instead. It has the same effect, and Columbus is easy enough to swallow in the 9th.

[krazen1211]

What are the VRA requirements for an area to need two such VRA districts? And what line would the Supreme Court take on them?

Pretty much 8 justices rule to favor their party, and Kennedy figures out what he wants. It really depends on how hard both sides want to play.

[krazen1211]

Okay, I've toyed around with the 2010 data for a few minutes in Dave's app; it looks like making either the 2nd or 12th into a 50% black VAP district will require a pretty ugly gerrymander.

However, a glimpse at the Atlanta metro gives me the impression that drawing four black districts there could be done a great deal more simply than with the ACS data- possibly with the districts even looking somewhat clean.

When I wake up tomorrow I'll try a map.

It almost seems to me like the 12th should be dissolved entirely and relocated. There's a lot of population loss in South Georgia.

[krazen1211]

It almost seems to me like the 12th should be dissolved entirely and relocated. There's a lot of population loss in South Georgia.

Have you tried to do this? I wonder what the outcome would be. 1+2+8+12 = almost exactly four districts at the current target, but I could see moving some of the 8th's northern territory into an Atlanta exurban district and having it and the 10th take up much of what remains in 12 while moving the rest of Savannah in to the 1st. Paul Broun and Austin Scott wouldn't be reps for life, but it could be safe enough.

Vaguely. The inital idea I had was to just loop through counties from Savannah to Augusta to Macon to Albany. It turns out that the connecting counties have lost too much black population for such a district to be 50% black VAP anymore without hacking precincts.

Instead, I started toying around with running the 8th east rather than north. Scott and Kingston would split Savannah and each would end up with a ~65% white 28% black district. The new 12th becomes an Atlanta exurb/Augusta based district that also goes sidewards and sits in the center of the map; also ending up at about 65/28.

Macon just slides into the 2nd, or if you really want to push the envelope, the 13th. It ends up looking like something like Bacon posted in reply 16.

[krazen1211]

With the Southern part of the state losing population, one of the four existing districts down there will basically be pushed northwards as the other districts take its territory. The above map turns the 8th district into a black majority district by losing all the territory south of Macon and pushing a bit into the Atlanta metro.

It's then very simple to create three other black majority districts in the Atlanta area, thus fulfilling GA's four "expected" VRA districts, allowing the 2nd and 12th to be easily taken from their incumbents.

I'm not sure if this map messes with any Republican incumbents; the lines might have to be moved a mile or so around Lawrenceville (Gwinnett) for Woodall and in Marrietta (Cobb) for Gingrey, but that wouldn't be a problem.


VAP%:

dark green
50.0% black (actually 50.013% so passes Gingles)
37.8% white
7.9% hispanic

light green
50.7% black
33.7% white
9.9% hispanic

yellow
51.1% black
24.5% white
15.6% hispanic
6.9% asian

gray
50.1% black
42.1% white
4.4% hispanic


I'm gonna try to turn this into a full map now.

The Dark green district could probably snake down through the 2 black counties down to Columbus rather than taking Westmoreland's Republicans.

[krazen1211]

This is my new aggressive map.






Writeup here. I'll retype it later.

http://www.redracinghorses.com/diary/228/georgia-redistricting-1031

[krazen1211]

Thanks for the comments.

Per the 2000 census data, that area around Buckhead (and to the north) between I-75 and I-85 was always predominantly white and wealthy. It's still like that 10 years later, I believe, or at least it was last year when I visited.

The Hall County thing bothered me, too, but it could be solved with an uglier Gwinnett chop. The entire scheme of splitting Gwinnett in half and anchoring with Forscythe and Hall can remain; you just have to put Lawrenceville in the Forscythe district.

Good point about Graves though; at second glance, that county split is probably unnecessary even if it exists now. I swapped some Cobb precincts and put Gordon county entirely in the 9th.

As it stands, I weakened Broun enough such that he might lose. That district is only 58% McCain; same with the 12th.

Keep in mind that Section 2 has never required the maximum number of minority districts. I certainly don't believe in needlessly giving away a 4th district when it doesn't exist now, and Democrats can easily be packed into 3.

[krazen1211]

Section 2 isn't the issue here; Section 5 is Georgia's not passing preclearance with only three minority districts, not when a fourth can be so easily created.

The way I see it: Deal, Kingston, Gingrey, Norwood, Price, and Westmoreland all really, really hate section 5 and tried to get rid of it in 2006. They'll sue.

[krazen1211]

Oh, I don't doubt they'll try, but do realize it almost certainly won't work.

I remember Westmoreland getting extremely excited in 2009, saying that it looked like Section 5 would soon be on the way out, and then two weeks later the Supreme Court decided 8-1 that the 2006 Section 5 extention was constitutional. Doubt a lawsuit would work for Deal on that front

They could try to bail out, but while it would possibly be successful it wouldn't be done in time for 2012 districts.

But yeah, let's assume that Georgia tries to submit a 3-VRA district map for preclearance because this state's Republicans really want to fight the Feds on everything. Let's also assume that most likely, after a potentially costly legal battle, Georgia will end up being required to draw a 4-VRA district map. Krazen, let's assume you are attempting to model the former while I'm attempting to model the latter

Also, since it seems to be only the two of us following this thread right now, do you have any comments/criticism besides the number of VRA districts? I'd like to improve this thing some more.

I think you don't have the Republican killer instinct.

Well, I think if you're going to go with 4 VRA districts, the 4th one won't be black, but rather a
Hispanic/Asian coalition type sitting in North Dekalb/Gwinnett, combined with Forscythe that a Republican is a lot more likely to win.

But given 4 black districts:

Ultimately a 4 black district map should probably retain 1 in South Georgia, imo. You had a concept for it in the old maps a couple pages back with the arching district that sucks up all the blacks outside the Atlanta Metro. It's just ultimately much easier to use North Georgia to crack areas like Cobb County. If you're going to have 4 black districts in the Atlanta metro, 1 of them shouldn't touch Dekalb/Fulton/Clayton at all. Your initial CD-8 is definitely better than your new CD-8; see if you can create a black or minority district that runs from Gwinnett (Centerville, I think?) to Bibb without touching those counties.


I think you messed too much with important people. The biggest problem with an 11-3 Georgia map is that guys like Jack Kingston will scream if you tried to give them the rest of Chatham County. Not that he couldn't win easily, but he's selfish like that. You also cut Gingrey and Price out of Cobb/North Fulton a lot. On my map, I tried to mess with the freshmen more and the veterans less.

[krazen1211]

Try something like these districts (either the gold or the purple):



The purple one maintains similar racial percentages to Sanford Bishop's existing CD-2. The gold is a coalition district.

[krazen1211]

True. Also, one could argue that your district is drawn for incumbency protection and partisanship reasons, both of which are constitutional (and neither of which applied in '92).

I don't see that district making it past the legislature; GA Democrats would love it, but for GA Republicans it submerges too many white Uber-Republicans.

If you're making a black district in South Georgia it probably makes more sense to place it where GA-12 is; I think Savannah and Augusta have some white liberals.

I'm glad you posted the original GA-13, though, it was the basis for my new GA-13.


Whether your 4 district plan constitutes 'communities of interest', well, I dunno. You obviously chop both Atlanta and Dekalb County in half, and your 4 way split of Fulton itself.


We'll have a good idea of what the Justice Department is doing with the Louisiana map. Right now, pretty much everyone in North Lousiana hates everyone in South Louisana because nobody wants to lose the axed district. Any attempt to force a 2nd district would incidentally create a common enemy as nobody wants to be represented by a Black Democrat.

[krazen1211]

This is the best I could do and the cleanest I could get it, too. 50.1% black VAP.

Try arcing it down to Albany.