North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[Sol]

North Carolina is a hard state to draw--it's population is both dense and even and as a consequence you kind of have to screw over some areas. IMO the best approach is to draw most districts as being just slightly off from optimal in order to most closely draw to communities.

Here's an example for yall. Has some drawbacks due to OMOV and stuff ofc; hate splitting Greenville and Goldsboro and IMO NC-1 goes too far west but I did this quickly to illustrate what I meant.

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Putting Randolph into that district isn't optimal either!

[Sol]

Anyways because an image is better, here is my attempt at a fair map. Surprisingly it is quite partisanly proportional, being 7R-5D-2S (functionally equivalent to 8-6). And 1 of the R districts are not 100% safe in fact. Then again one of the swing districts is a hard lift for Dems.



NC-01: Clinton+12, D+5 (45% black)
NC-02: Clinton+12, D+7
NC-03: Trump+29, R+14
NC-04: Clinton+33, D+13
NC-05: Trump+34, R+17
NC-06: Trump+0, R+2
NC-07: Trump+9, R+4
NC-08: Clinton+23, D+10
NC-09: Trump+18, R+12
NC-10: Trump+44, R+22
NC-11: Trump+15, R+8
NC-12: Clinton+46, D+22 (43% black)
NC-13: Trump+33, R+18
NC-14: Trump+7, R+4

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2c71aaf6-40b1-4630-8cb7-03fde0e81f7b

And because I think if you draw a fair map, it is important to say the "COI" involved, so here is my attempt at identifying the COI involved:

NC-01: Mandatory rural northwest black district
NC-02: Raleigh
NC-03: Eastern NC (admittedly a bit of a leftovers district but the VRA forces an ugly district here instead of a much cleaner north-south one)
NC-04: Durham & Cary
NC-05: Western Charlotte Suburbs/exurbs
NC-06: Winston-Salem
NC-07: Wilmington / Southeast NC
NC-08: Greensboro
NC-09: Eastern Charlotte Suburbs/exurbs
NC-10: Northwest rural NC
NC-11: "Panhandle" / Asheville area
NC-12: Charlotte (mandatory VRA district?)
NC-13: Rural central NC
NC-14: Fayetteville & Goldsboro

The part I like the least about my map is the Greensboro and Winston-Salem districts, but I think those are often going to be awkward, or have a cascade effect on the rest of the map.

I agree with your ideals, but I don't love this map--Greensboro and Chapel Hill have very little in common. IMO the best way to handle the Triad is to draw one urban district with Winston-Salem and Greensboro--splitting the two isn't terrible, but putting the Greensboro suburbs and exurbs in with Winston-Salem doesn't really fit with that intent. Plus of course the slice of the Triangle in with Greensboro doesn't make a lot of sense.

The big trick with NC IMO is how you draw NC-01. If you put it too far east, it forces NC-03 to contort and steal territory from NC-07, which forces an awkward split of Fayetteville from its hinterlands.

[Sol]

My unpopular opinion is that the 5-2 court becoming a 4-3 one doesn't change much here, I'd expect all D seats to be preserved and probably one additional D seat (likely in the Sandhills) on a map handed down from the court.

This is a rough idea of what they could do: https://davesredistricting.org/join/ec2e10ca-645b-43d7-87d4-20241b263810, the county borders on this map obviously need to be cleaned up, but I don't have the luxury of splitting precincts for population equivalency (so I need to awkwardly pick up precincts to get population equivalency), while the drawers will (also this makes the new seat a tossup seat spanning multiple metros, which is an approach I don't think they'll take, but then again this is a rough idea)

IMO Republicans would probably put all of Orange into the 4th and then give the counties north of Durham to the 14th, since the 4th is a vote sink taking in swingy and even Republican territory on your map. Plus since Chapel Hill fits pretty logically with Durham, people probably won't be that mad.

[Sol]

My unpopular opinion is that the 5-2 court becoming a 4-3 one doesn't change much here, I'd expect all D seats to be preserved and probably one additional D seat (likely in the Sandhills) on a map handed down from the court.

This is a rough idea of what they could do: https://davesredistricting.org/join/ec2e10ca-645b-43d7-87d4-20241b263810, the county borders on this map obviously need to be cleaned up, but I don't have the luxury of splitting precincts for population equivalency (so I need to awkwardly pick up precincts to get population equivalency), while the drawers will (also this makes the new seat a tossup seat spanning multiple metros, which is an approach I don't think they'll take, but then again this is a rough idea)

IMO Republicans would probably put all of Orange into the 4th and then give the counties north of Durham to the 14th, since the 4th is a vote sink taking in swingy and even Republican territory on your map. Plus since Chapel Hill fits pretty logically with Durham, people probably won't be that mad.

Apologies, misread this and thought it was a GOP map.

[Sol]

Fair does not mean taking an arm to gaston to get a 2 D- split of Charlotte.

Or that weird af carveout of Winston-Salem.

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This is my attempt to make a better looking dem fixed map that includes the crucially important and neglected "Democratic voting towns in the Western part of the state" COI that is totally legit and should be ignored no longer!

hahaha

I especially enjoy the fact that that district has a semi-decent chance of electing a pol from Winston-Salem.

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The purpose of the arm to Gaston is obviously not to make it more D, but to make it plurality black. Northern Mecklenburg county is probably more D than the arm to Gaston. Still unnecessary, since the 12th already elects Black congresswoman without the arm to Gaston.

You can actually draw a plurality Black district just in Mecklenburg.

[Sol]

Edited to resolve the identified issues:


This made the 8th a bit more democratic (from Clinton <1 to Clinton +3.5) while the 9th shifted ~2 points to the right (to Trump +14) and the 7th shifted from about Trump +8 to Trump +21.

EDIT: Tuned the 2nd and 7th a bit to improve the compactness of the former.

Sorry to nitpick--but I have a few:

- It looks like you're splitting Greensboro--easily avoidable if you send suburban Guilford into the 14th instead of the city.
-New Hanover to Johnston on the current map is a gerrymander designed to prop up Rouzer--Johnston belongs in your green district
-I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but Chapel Hill and Durham belong together on any fair map. If you do put the 1st district into Durham, which does have some benefits elsewhere, you should take advantage of those--you can make the 7th stay on the coast.
-Chatham goes with the Triangle, ideally.

[Sol]

This is my somewhat terrible attempt at a "fair map". I like most of it, but the center of the state could be better. This would breakdown to a 5 democrats (1,3,4,5,10), 1 swing ( 8 ), and 8 republicans (the rest). I like District 14 being the "Mountain" district and I like 2 being almost exclusively the Outer banks. The 3rd is a plurality black (by literally just 300 people). 6, 9, and 11 are really awkward though. There was an iteration of this map where 11 was a ring district around Winston-Salem & Greensboro, with the 9 being a northern counterpart to the 8th. (I have the map saved if anyone is interested in seeing that mess)

That's not terrible! The 14th-12th boundary is a bit rough--a lot of the counties in the NE portion of the 14th are actually more Foothills than Mountains proper--you could trade McDowell, Burke, Caldwell, and Wilkes for Buncombe and Henderson and it'd be a lot more sensible. I don't know if the 2nd-7th boundary makes much sense--better to draw North-South rather than inland-coastal.

[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.

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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.

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

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

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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!

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Didn't realize it but in a fair map(and not the incumbent protection/ local D gerrymander as currently) Buncombe county Ds are pretty badly distributed.  The County is exactly 3 state house seats and one would be a very D Asheville seat and then there would be 2 Tilt R east and west suburban seats that are both Trump +5 in 2016 although I imagine Biden won both.



Not super harmful for Democrats to win a majority in the state house but still hurts them and is probably a major reason  why the local legislative gerrymander's  might continue but the GOP can draw some 10-4 map congressionally.

The current map I believe was imposed by the state court a few years ago--before then there was one Asheville district and two outer districts, but dems had all three anyway.

[Sol]

I made a rough pass at a 10-4 map:



link

This map is uglier than it should be, because there are incumbent considerations at work--Hudson, McHenry, Adams, and Bishop all live quite close together and need to get their own districts--plus Tim Moore might want his own district based in Cleveland County.

Here's a cleaner alternative:



link

[Sol]

Which are the Democratic districts? Obviously Charlotte, Durham, and Raleigh, but I can't judge whether NC-1 or Greensboro is now R.

NC-01 is Dem--the 6th is a narrowly McRory 2016 district.

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Who cares though? Still earns you a term or two in the worse case scenario.

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It's not great CoI in my opinion to draw the Charlotte district out of Mecklenburg County, or to slice up the Triangle in that way, which kind of looks like Democratic gerrymander.

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Here's a rough pass at a fair map.

link

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Here's a rough pass at a fair map.

link

Did Biden win your NC-14?

I believe he just barely lost it.

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Someone sent this map in a Discord I'm in, saying it's a leak of the draft NC map for 2022. I have no idea if it's legitimate or not, as they haven't provided a source.

Lol if that's their intended map, it's so sloppy in addition to being a gerrymander.

It doesn't seem that implausible though tbh, especially since Republicans in the NCGA appear to be misunderstanding the judicial decisions wrt: NC-01 and think that it can just be drawn any kind of way. NC-10 makes sense here too as a seat drawn explicitly for Tim Moore. And tbh the NC Republicans are kind of into being really sloppy at mapping.

The formatting also looks a lot like NCGA maps, not that that means anything.

[Sol]

Someone sent this map in a Discord I'm in, saying it's a leak of the draft NC map for 2022. I have no idea if it's legitimate or not, as they haven't provided a source.

Pretty sure that’d get struck down rather quickly

That should be true--and it might would happen--but that district actually isn't too different from the current one in terms of racial composition because the rural white areas are plucked out in exchange for Chapel Hill and Durham.

[Sol]

If Republicans are really wanting to do elaborate gerrymanders, why not something like this?