North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[Sol]

I think the secret sauce for making attractive NC districts is shifting the 1st district westward. That gives the 3rd and 7th room to maneouver without having to dip into exurban Raleigh or the Sandhills, and makes for decent districts in the Triangle and Piedmont.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I think the secret sauce for making attractive NC districts is shifting the 1st district westward. That gives the 3rd and 7th room to maneouver without having to dip into exurban Raleigh or the Sandhills, and makes for decent districts in the Triangle and Piedmont.

You're not wrong, just there's a bit of a white wall you hit once you get past Granville County. There's some black population in Caswell and Person, but usually taking a lot out of that looks terrible. The only significant black communities in that region are in Raleigh and Durham. I don't know if other people have this issue but North Carolina is one of the hardest states for me to try and make district for. It's population geography is all weird.

[Sol]

I think the secret sauce for making attractive NC districts is shifting the 1st district westward. That gives the 3rd and 7th room to maneouver without having to dip into exurban Raleigh or the Sandhills, and makes for decent districts in the Triangle and Piedmont.

You're not wrong, just there's a bit of a white wall you hit once you get past Granville County. There's some black population in Caswell and Person, but usually taking a lot out of that looks terrible. The only significant black communities in that region are in Raleigh and Durham. I don't know if other people have this issue but North Carolina is one of the hardest states for me to try and make district for. It's population geography is all weird.

Yeah NC is frustrating--it's population is incredibly evenly spread so when you make a cut it's pretty difficult.

What I tend to like to do is something like this--take in Franklin and Granville, plus Person and Caswell, and then compensate by only taking the most heavily Black portions of Eastern NC.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I think the secret sauce for making attractive NC districts is shifting the 1st district westward. That gives the 3rd and 7th room to maneouver without having to dip into exurban Raleigh or the Sandhills, and makes for decent districts in the Triangle and Piedmont.

You're not wrong, just there's a bit of a white wall you hit once you get past Granville County. There's some black population in Caswell and Person, but usually taking a lot out of that looks terrible. The only significant black communities in that region are in Raleigh and Durham. I don't know if other people have this issue but North Carolina is one of the hardest states for me to try and make district for. It's population geography is all weird.

Yeah NC is frustrating--it's population is incredibly evenly spread so when you make a cut it's pretty difficult.

What I tend to like to do is something like this--take in Franklin and Granville, plus Person and Caswell, and then compensate by only taking the most heavily Black portions of Eastern NC.

Person and Caswell are the bane of my existence, no matter where you but them they don’t feel like they fit. I say we let Virginia have them

[kwabbit]

My first attempt at NC Fair map. Came out ok I think, but COI could probably be paid more attention. I don't know how Black districts can be secured; there are plenty of Black voters, but there does not densely concentrated for a majority Black district.

[Sol]

I think that 13th is probably legal. That's a pretty decent map; as always I'm gonna gripe about Durham and Chapel Hill.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So like for a “fair map” how do we feel about county splits? I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is part of the reason for my 2/7 split.) I noticed at kwabbit’s map there’s a lot of county splits, but still a good map.

[cvparty]

So like for a “fair map” how do we feel about county splits? I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is part of the reason for my 2/7 split.) I noticed at kwabbit’s map there’s a lot of county splits, but still a good map.

i mean the issue with fishing for perfect county groupings is that they basically only exist for a year, so you’re going to have to reconfigure your entire map when you have the 2020 census numbers. on the other hand, when you draw with a less hardcore emphasis on county splits and more on immutable characteristics, the resulting map is far less tenuous

edit: also, putting county lines at the forefront typically forgoes compactness and communities of interest, which imo is a poor trade-off

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So like for a “fair map” how do we feel about county splits? I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is part of the reason for my 2/7 split.) I noticed at kwabbit’s map there’s a lot of county splits, but still a good map.

i mean the issue with fishing for perfect county groupings is that they basically only exist for a year, so you’re going to have to reconfigure your entire map when you have the 2020 census numbers. on the other hand, when you draw with a less hardcore emphasis on county splits and more on immutable characteristics, the resulting map is far less tenuous

edit: also, putting county lines at the forefront typically forgoes compactness and communities of interest, which imo is a poor trade-off

Yea, I've noticed that happening. I just try to avoid unnecessary once, but I end up erring too much on the "absolutely no splits" side too much

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So I've made a pretty solid VRA district in Mecklenburg, a little bit under par to give it some room to grow.

[Sol]

IIRC that does split the towns of Mint Hill and Matthews though--shockingly precincts are pretty close to town lines there.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

IIRC that does split the towns of Mint Hill and Matthews though--shockingly precincts are pretty close to town lines there.

You're not wrong, but I feel that's almost expected for a VRA district

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This is my next attempt at a fair map using the comments people have made so far. I like the new south Wake, as it's fairly good in terms of keeping a same community together. It's now a dem trending swing seat. 1, 2, 6, 7, 10 are all safe dems, with the rest being safe red. 3 is nice and 4 is.. ok. I'd like it more inland. 5 could be made a second swing district is I added Fayetteville to it, but that would take some finagling. I made the Mountain district much more mountain focused, and now is only R+7. Overall I think its a fairly decent map with nice, but compact districts.

[kwabbit]

So like for a “fair map” how do we feel about county splits? I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is part of the reason for my 2/7 split.) I noticed at kwabbit’s map there’s a lot of county splits, but still a good map.

I usually don't like county splits, but NC would be a mess without them. Sometimes you get favorable setups where you can make no split districts, but in NC a least split map is going to be hideous. Like I distinctly wanted to avoid districts that were too 'long' for the sake of avoiding county splits.

[palandio]

So like for a “fair map” how do we feel about county splits? I try to avoid them whenever possible (which is part of the reason for my 2/7 split.) I noticed at kwabbit’s map there’s a lot of county splits, but still a good map.

i mean the issue with fishing for perfect county groupings is that they basically only exist for a year, so you’re going to have to reconfigure your entire map when you have the 2020 census numbers. on the other hand, when you draw with a less hardcore emphasis on county splits and more on immutable characteristics, the resulting map is far less tenuous

edit: also, putting county lines at the forefront typically forgoes compactness and communities of interest, which imo is a poor trade-off

Yea, I've noticed that happening. I just try to avoid unnecessary once, but I end up erring too much on the "absolutely no splits" side too much

Keep in mind that we are drawing districts on 2015 numbers or extrapolated population numbers. Like cvparty said, it doesn't make a lot of sense to fish for perfect county groupings when they will be gone in 2020 anyways.

That being said I think that the following criterion makes a lot of sense: Take a piece of paper and draw a point for each district (marked with the district's number) roughly arranged geographically. If two districts share a county, draw a connection between their points. (If they share two or more counties, draw two or more connections.) If three (or more) districts share a county, draw a small unnamed point between these districts and connect it to each of the three districts. Once you are finished you have a planar graph. This planar graph should not contain any circles (or geometrically speaking polygons). The absence of circles is a sufficient criterion for a map that doesn't split too many counties, at least until final population data are out. Exceptions are allowed, but they need a very good justification.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So I wanted to try a least county split map just to try and it actually isn't horrible. Far from good, but not as bad as I was expecting. There are only two (!!) county splits outside of Wake and Mecklenburg (Davidson and Forsyth). The greatest deviation is in the 6,000s which isn't too terrible so a least split map.

• NC-01 - POP. 727,089 Clinton 40.4 (37.3% Black)
• NC-02 - POP. 726,100 Clinton 22.1 (44.4% Black)
• NC-03 - POP. 724,487 Clinton 15.5
• NC-04 - POP. 731,432 Clinton 31.8
• NC-05 - POP. 727,111 Clinton 10.1
• NC-06 - POP. 719,610 Trump 20.4
• NC-07 - POP. 731,794 Trump 3.9
• NC-08 - POP. 722,264 Trump 9.5
• NC-09 - POP. 725,341 Trump 27.0
• NC-10 - POP. 720,763 Trump 10.3
• NC-11 - POP. 727,867 Trump 36.4
• NC-12 - POP. 726,399 Trump 16.6
• NC-13 - POP. 719,282 Trump 37.8
• NC-14 - POP. 726,059 Trump 15.1

[Sol]

I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of legal rules with population deviation, but that deviation is awfully high--I think states usually shoot for extremely low deviations to minimize possible legal challenges. I personally usually use +/-1000 as the max deviation, and IIRC that's wildly generous.

Also that 9th district is a yikes!

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of legal rules with population deviation, but that deviation is awfully high--I think states usually shoot for extremely low deviations to minimize possible legal challenges. I personally usually use +/-1000 as the max deviation, and IIRC that's wildly generous.

Also that 9th district is a yikes!

Yea this isn’t a realistic map, but that 9th is just so bad. The 7th ain’t much better. This map is certainly pushing the limits of deviation (which is hard push down more due to county splits).

[palandio]

This map is based on an actual extrapolation of recent population estimates on the county level. You can see that the Triangle, metro Charlotte and the Southern shore (Wilmington) are growing, while some rural areas are shrinking.

Apart from using new population estimates, the general arrangement of districts is similar to some maps that I proposed earlier. In my opinion this map comes quite close to an ideal map.

[Vern]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

Seems pretty good all things considered. 4 and 6 could be reworked to look nicer, but I know how annoying that region is. The biggest thing I don’t like is the east/west split of Davidson. It’s more fitting for a north/south split. (Overall I personally would like less county splits).

However, I am deeply disappointed and concerned that the small democratic towns in the western part of the state COI has been grossly ignored. It’s truly the absolute top priority when districting there state

[lfromnj]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

Seems pretty good all things considered. 4 and 6 could be reworked to look nicer, but I know how annoying that region is. The biggest thing I don’t like is the east/west split of Davidson. It’s more fitting for a north/south split. (Overall I personally would like less county splits).

However, I am deeply disappointed and concerned that the small democratic towns in the western part of the state COI has been grossly ignored. It’s truly the absolute top priority when districting there state

How is that the absolute top priority lol?  Anything excluding an Asheville split in Western NC is fine.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

Seems pretty good all things considered. 4 and 6 could be reworked to look nicer, but I know how annoying that region is. The biggest thing I don’t like is the east/west split of Davidson. It’s more fitting for a north/south split. (Overall I personally would like less county splits).

However, I am deeply disappointed and concerned that the small democratic towns in the western part of the state COI has been grossly ignored. It’s truly the absolute top priority when districting there state

How is that the absolute top priority lol?  Anything excluding an Asheville split in Western NC is fine.

It totally is and anyone who says otherwise is 100% a trumpian Republican hack who wants to gerrymander every map for republicans. Any map where Hendersonville and Greensboro aren’t in one district are totally unfair and should be throw out

[palandio]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

Generally good. It looks relatively similar to mine, which might be a reason why I like it. Also shows that there actually exists at least one satisfying 14-seat map for North Carolina where every single district makes more or less sense.

That being said 2020 population numbers will pose a few new difficulties:
- The NE corner of the state (1st and 3rd district) will have suffered further population losses that need to be compensated by taking in more territory. A part of that can come from the growing 7th, but that still leaves ca. 40k population missing. And the Sandhill district is over 20k short as well.
- The Research triangle districts (your 2nd, 4th, 14th) will have a surplus of over 60k. And if the 1st went even further into metro Raleigh, you would completely change its character, which you probably don't want to. (Your 1st cutting into Johnston county is in my opinion the most that is still tolerable.) On the other hand the exact position of the Triad seat (your 6th) is relatively delicate. I you shift it eastwards to take in population from the 4th, you will at some point have to cut deeply into Winston-Salem. (That's also one of the points where I was uncomfortable when drawing my own map.)

Finally as leecannon_ already said, the east-west split of Davidson is ugly.

[Vern]

He is my map of trying to make a fair map. What do you guys think?

Generally good. It looks relatively similar to mine, which might be a reason why I like it. Also shows that there actually exists at least one satisfying 14-seat map for North Carolina where every single district makes more or less sense.

That being said 2020 population numbers will pose a few new difficulties:
- The NE corner of the state (1st and 3rd district) will have suffered further population losses that need to be compensated by taking in more territory. A part of that can come from the growing 7th, but that still leaves ca. 40k population missing. And the Sandhill district is over 20k short as well.
- The Research triangle districts (your 2nd, 4th, 14th) will have a surplus of over 60k. And if the 1st went even further into metro Raleigh, you would completely change its character, which you probably don't want to. (Your 1st cutting into Johnston county is in my opinion the most that is still tolerable.) On the other hand the exact position of the Triad seat (your 6th) is relatively delicate. I you shift it eastwards to take in population from the 4th, you will at some point have to cut deeply into Winston-Salem. (That's also one of the points where I was uncomfortable when drawing my own map.)

Finally as leecannon_ already said, the east-west split of Davidson is ugly.

I can't wait until we get the 2020 numbers so we can make better maps. I do need to work on the Davidson split.