North Carolina 2020 Redistricting

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I kinda like the fact the new map is only 8R-5D. It's considerably less atrocious than 10R-3D and the map will only be there for just one cycle. State leg will matter however and Ds need to try their hardest to flip at least one house in 2020 lest their hand in 2022 line-drawing be weakened.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ed5b1056-1df4-4243-85e9-fbbc927477a3
this is a fair map based off 2010 data (outdated, I know)
Effort was taken to minimize county splits.
Chapel Hill and Durham were separated for compactness and to preserve the whole-county NC-13 in central NC.
A new 14th district is made that covers most of Wake County.
The 9th becomes mostly centered Charlotte McMansion suburbs and exurbs, and its eastern territory is lost to the 8th, which is now D-leaning and maj-min, with a sizable Lumbee population.
Compactness is fairly decent on this map, as is keeping CoI such as counties together. But it is not really as useful for 2020 as it otherwise would have been otherwise due to it using 2010 numbers.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ed5b1056-1df4-4243-85e9-fbbc927477a3
this is a fair map based off 2010 data (outdated, I know)
Effort was taken to minimize county splits.
Chapel Hill and Durham were separated for compactness and to preserve the whole-county NC-13 in central NC.
A new 14th district is made that covers most of Wake County.
The 9th becomes mostly centered Charlotte McMansion suburbs and exurbs, and its eastern territory is lost to the 8th, which is now D-leaning and maj-min, with a sizable Lumbee population.
Compactness is fairly decent on this map, as is keeping CoI such as counties together. But it is not really as useful for 2020 as it otherwise would have been otherwise due to it using 2010 numbers.

That is a good map. I would love see it using the updated 2018 data.

I've enabled all the possible data sets for viewing on the map. If you reload I think they would show up now?
And should I try to make an updated 2018 pop version of it?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ed5b1056-1df4-4243-85e9-fbbc927477a3
this is a fair map based off 2010 data (outdated, I know)
Effort was taken to minimize county splits.
Chapel Hill and Durham were separated for compactness and to preserve the whole-county NC-13 in central NC.
A new 14th district is made that covers most of Wake County.
The 9th becomes mostly centered Charlotte McMansion suburbs and exurbs, and its eastern territory is lost to the 8th, which is now D-leaning and maj-min, with a sizable Lumbee population.
Compactness is fairly decent on this map, as is keeping CoI such as counties together. But it is not really as useful for 2020 as it otherwise would have been otherwise due to it using 2010 numbers.

That is a good map. I would love see it using the updated 2018 data.

I've enabled all the possible data sets for viewing on the map. If you reload I think they would show up now?
And should I try to make an updated 2018 pop version of it?

Yes, that worked! I can work on an updated one.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ec158509-ff02-438d-94df-c067b8de5a98
I made an updated one but I also enjoy seeing what your version of an updated one looks like. Compare and contrast and such...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You guys care to explain why you are sending NC01 into Durham? That was ruled as a gerrymander in December, especially since AAs can get their candidate of preference fine using only the belt counties. If you really need more AAs for partisan safety, east non-Raleigh wake is readily available and closer to the belt.

NC-01 was sent into Durham because of the districts I had in Central NC were whole-county and I didn't want to disturb that.
In the updated map, it was because I didn't want to deviate too much from the original.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a0e07306-4fda-4c60-b44d-f9ac7a4e4ba1
I went out of the box with this one.
Distinctive elements:
the 12th is rooted in southern rather than northern Mecklenburg
Unlike most maps here the 6th has some of Forsyth and all of Guildford instead of vice versa
There are more swing districts
Semi-competitive R+5 CD in SE NC taking in New Hanover, Columbus, Brunswick, Bladen, Sampson, Robeson, Hoke, and Scotland counties

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

CJ Beasley is now likely to lose.  The late absentees and provisionals were surprisingly R, as they have been in other states.  So the court will be 4D/3R when it reviews the maps.  This leaves a couple of different scenarios:

1. Is one of the remaining D's known as a don't-rock-the-boat moderate?  Did any Dems dissent from or more narrowly concur in the decision throwing out the 2010's maps?  It only takes one crossover vote to defer to the legislature now. 

2.  If they are all committed liberals, they could go for broke in trying to set up the most Dem possible maps for 2022 knowing that they will almost surely lose their 1-seat majority in a Biden midterm anyway?

As of this morning Beasley is still ahead by 35 votes, but Robeson still has some provisionals.

https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1327628816345411585

Oh dear god, not Robeson again.

Titanium Tilt R Florida Robeson

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Reminder that fair map and non-partisan map are NOT the same and pro-Dem lines in the Triangle are perfectly fine if the aim is to have a map proportional to the state.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If a fair map requires placing Durham and Chapel Hill in two separate districts, so be it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is NC really gaining a seat in 2022?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is NC really gaining a seat in 2022?

It was 436 in 2012 so 100% .

wasn't MN-07 seat #435?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

On 2018 population estimates and 14 seats, you can make a whole county CD of Orange, Durham, Chatham, Lee, and Randolph counties. It would measure out to be D+11.26 on 2012/2016 PVI.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/950155b2-0f2a-47f0-9b49-283d89e455eb
quickly drew up this map.
All but the most black precincts in Wake are in the 13th. The 2nd has been made blue by the inclusion of said precincts. The 14th takes in parts of Mecklenburg and isn't too badly suited for Ted Budd. This has 6 Dem and 8 Rep districts, which is reasonably proportional to the state. The 8th is the most competitive district, at R+3 it would be winnable for either, and the two Wake districts are more Dem than the PVIs let on.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I mean putting Randolph with Orange/Durham is just a clear and obvious way to unsink those 2 counties lol and there is no reason to split Raleigh in half to get a 2nd Safe D district there. If you want to talk about a D court map, go ahead but that isn't a good map.

There is at least one good reason for splitting Raleigh I can think of - unpacking Dem votes.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No there isn't if you want a more proportional map, then do logical stuff like putting Wautauga with Western NC having the Charlotte district take in North Mecklenburg so the main suburban district can be a bit more swing, then form a last swing district in the actual Raleigh suburbs instead of that absurd gerrymander which splits a major city to form 2 Safe districts.

Unifying Raleigh forces the "rest of Wake" seat outwards and unless you put either Chapel Hill or Durham in there, you create not a swing district but a seat that is at least R+5 most likely.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No thats stupid, you can easily create a lean Rsuburban seat based on Cary/Apex instead of blatantly splitting Raleigh.

Blatantly splitting Raleigh is better if it creates an extra bona fide Democratic district as opposed to one lean/likely R seat and one solid Dem one.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

No thats stupid, you can easily create a lean Rsuburban seat based on Cary/Apex instead of blatantly splitting Raleigh.

Blatantly splitting Raleigh is better if it creates an extra bona fide Democratic district as opposed to one lean/likely R seat and one solid Dem one.

So its a D gerrymander then?

I thought we were talking proportional here? I don't mean "split Raleigh to create 8 Dem seats out of 14", I mean "Split Raleigh to bring the number of Dem seats from 5 to 6 or 6 to 7".

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

More generally I don't think of Raleigh as some kind of sacred CoI that must never be split. I see it as a strongly Dem unit that, if proportionality would be so helped, should and could be split within boundaries of reason. NC-12 already sucks up a lot of Dem votes from Charlotte, only 1 Dem district can be made from Triad, NC-11 shrinking doesn't help as much as one might hope, NC-09 winds up having to soak up heavily R turf in either Gastonia or Union counties, and SE NC isn't as Dem as it used to be, turning once might have ended up as a safe Dem seat as only lean/likely Dem at best.
Given all this, you almost have to split Raleigh if you want to have 6 real Dem seats.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Proportional isn't fair if actual districts are involved, Nothing stays proportional for 10 years, what do you do if some trends cause the map to go 10 -3 or something?

In a state like NC, I don't think I'd consider it a serious possibility for a map tailored for proportional to go 10-3 for a majority of the decade, provided the seats are safe enough for both parties (which is not hard to accomplish).

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/f6494b97-7c53-4cb9-9b53-7927bac62d52
This is an oddball map I just made that is mainly aimed not at helping either party but at creating as many minority influence seats as is plausible while keeping some level of compactness and keeping counties whole.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If fairness in this thread is being defined as essentially dividing up Eastern Europe between the Russians and the Germans, then I will stake my flag for Polish Independence.

My concerns are communities of interest and having at least some competitive seats, not a strictly proportional wall of 7 SAFE R, 7 SAFE D seats, which gives you all of the negative consequences of gerrymandering I listed in my post earlier today, but splits the difference between two bands of criminals. Not interested.

I don't think you are fairly representing my position. Also, I don't think you understand it much either.
6 Dem, 6 Rep, 2 more or less even, is perfectly fair. 6 Dem, 7 Rep, 1 even, is sufficiently fair. Why, 5 Dem, 6 Rep, and 3 more or less even, is fair, given the standings of the two parties in question.
Problem is, Dems can't rely on NC-11 and can't rely on SE NC as much as they used to, so if you want actual proportionality, it's clearly better than not at this point to split Raleigh and increase the Dem seat count by 1.
I'm not against having competitive seats. I'm against one party having a substantially larger number of uncompetitive seats leaning towards it in such a close state such as NC. And having Raleigh whole wastes Dem votes and stands in the way of fixing this.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I understand that you are an expert at subtle gerrymandering, and after a conversation with Adam years back, I take all your maps as suspect.

I'm an expert at clean gerrymandering, yes. And almost all my maps, gerrymander or not, look clean and try to keep counties whole and districts compact.
If you look at DRA's metrics of proportionality though, you'll notice that my maps here have disproportionality metrics favoring the GOP, even *if* I split Raleigh. Imagine how it would be if I didn't split it!
It would seem to me that DRA exonerates me from claims from you or anyone else I'm trying to create a Dem leaning map overall.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

from DRA, data from my second-to-last map posted in this thread:

Bias Measures
These are some prominent measures of partisan bias.

Metric Description
Seats bias 2.37% Half the difference in seats at 50% vote share
Votes bias 0.78% The excess votes required for half the seats
Declination 2.89° A geometric measure of packing & cracking
Global symmetry 1.01% The overall symmetry of the seats-votes curve
Gamma 2.45% The fair difference in seats at the statewide vote share
Efficiency gap 3.58% The relative two-party difference in wasted votes
Partisan bias 2.16% The difference in seats between the statewide vote share and the symmetrical counterfactual share
Proportional 5.05% The simple deviation from proportionality using fractional seat shares
Mean–median 1.52% The average vote share across all districts minus the median vote share
Turnout bias 0.06% The difference between the statewide vote share and the average district share
Lopsided outcomes -0.83% The relative two-party difference in excess vote shares

By convention, positive values of bias metrics favor Republicans & negative values favor Democrats.

If you assign seats to either party on basis of PVI, then Ds end up with 6 out of 14. For them to get 7 in this exactly R+3 state, they need to win the R+2.61 seat that has Fayetteville. For them to win an actual majority rather than tie, they have to take NC-11 (R+8.04), NC-07 (R+6.53), NC-09 (R+9.15), or NC-05 (R+9.96). Long-run, the 9th looks most promising but no matter what happens, Dems aren't winning that 8th seat reliably unless they have perhaps a 7%-8% advantage statewide or the 9th trends D enough.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Here's a coincidentally proportional that is also made with mostly non partisan intent map that actually plays within the bounds of communities instead of drowning out Randolph and Johnston with mega Democratic areas.

5 Safe D with 1 lean D trending R and 2 Lean/Likely  R trending D with a last likely R not trending anywhere and 6 Safe R.

Best map I have seen all day.

I think it might be the first one where Cawthorn’s seat isn’t an a R gerrymander.

Actually, I would argue running the 11th up to Boone is a subtle but real localized competitive-geared gerrymander or at least has the looks of one, while the whole-county configuration you see on the maps I posted is more of a non-partisan map kind of arrangement that has more compactness and is the vein of the shapes the district had from the 80s till 2013.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I don't care if its 4 or 5, I want a d leaning map lol
NC dems should appeal the Republicans map no matter what they draw

True. Anything less than 6 safe dem districts is completely unacceptable

I think we need to get it back down to 3, maybe 4.

Is it even possible to make a feasible, long-lasting 10R-4D in NC? For the 2020s, anyway...