2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Virginia

[S019]

I would probably make VA-03 take in more of Norfolk, and I've actually drawn it in such a way where you don't need to extend it west, and I'd move some of those more western parts of the 3rd into the 4th, the 4th simply went too far west, which led to the 5th being placed oddly. I actually don't have a problem with the Charlottesville to Richmond snake, but I'd shift the 1st north into your present 5th, and recreate the 5th in southern Virginia, as the 4th was pushed back to the east. Also maybe keeping the 11th compact in Fairfax/PWC avoids having to place Manassas and Fairfax into your 5th.

[S019]

A lot of people have been congratulating me on making such a good congressional map of Virginia:

Fairfax County:

District	Color	Clinton %	Trump %	Northam %	Gillespie %	Kaine %	Stewart %
1	Dark Blue	52.6	41.0	56.1	42.7	60.1	37.8
2	Dark Green	47.3	47.6	50.8	48.1	53.5	44.9
3	Dark Purple	60.8	33.0	64.3	34.5	68.2	29.8
4	Red	49.5	44.1	56.0	42.8	57.9	39.9
5	Yellow	43.2	50.7	47.9	50.9	50.8	47.0
6	Jade	31.5	64.0	33.4	65.5	36.4	62.0
7	Brown	53.6	41.9	57.0	41.9	59.4	39.1
8	Light Purple	67.7	25.5	71.8	27.2	74.2	23.3
9	Light Blue	27.4	67.7	31.7	67.0	35.4	62.9
10	Pink	45.4	48.2	49.9	49.0	53.7	44.2
11	Chartreuse	64.7	28.3	68.4	30.6	71.2	26.6

Assorted thoughts:
VA-5: Split UVA in a slightly ugly fashion, but enjoyed uniting the district with our friends at UMW and Liberty. Virginia Tech almost made it in the competitive district, but instead are condemned to VA-9.
VA-10: The failson district -- CIA/Raytheon thugs are reunited with their kids at JMU.
VA-11: Most high school rivalries are preserved.

This map is an abomination. First of all, DelMarVA basically has to pair with Virginia Beach due to road connections. I'm not sure if the 7th has enough minorities in it. Trying to pair all of Loudoun with Shenadoah would only happen in a GOP gerrymander. I'm unsure what the 5th and 6th are supposed to accomplish. Also county lines would be nice, because I can't properly analyze the 1st, the way that you drew it. Also there is absolutely no need to give Richmond its own seat and very few maps will do that. Most maps will put in either the 4th which is the Newport News  to Richmond minority seat or in the suburban Henrico based 7th. The quad cut of Fairfax just seems unnecessary, giving McLean to the 10th actually makes some sense, given how it and Great Falls are different than places like Reston, but I don't get the logic behind pushing the 1st into parts of Fairfax.

[S019]

VA Reps may push the 5-1 court to do something like this: https://davesredistricting.org/join/bce45050-8fd6-4923-9e68-81b01682d91d


5 and 7 are the leftovers, but the leftovers clearly benefit the GOP, the VRA seats are strengthened, which just happens to help shore up 2, and Albemarle honestly doesn't have a clear place to go, so I can see the 5-1 court just sticking it in Appalachia. In a vacuum, each of these decisions can clearly be justified as fine pairings, but on the broader scale, the side effects create a blatantly lopsided map, 6 might be vulnerable, but Appalachia is probably inelastic enough, 7 might also be vulnerable, but is currently D held anyways, I would not be shocked if the final map looks more like this than the quad cuts of Fairfax being proposed in this thread, and other than the NoVA seats, this map isn't even that ugly.

[S019]

VA Reps may push the 5-1 court to do something like this: https://davesredistricting.org/join/bce45050-8fd6-4923-9e68-81b01682d91d


5 and 7 are the leftovers, but the leftovers clearly benefit the GOP, the VRA seats are strengthened, which just happens to help shore up 2, and Albemarle honestly doesn't have a clear place to go, so I can see the 5-1 court just sticking it in Appalachia. In a vacuum, each of these decisions can clearly be justified as fine pairings, but on the broader scale, the side effects create a blatantly lopsided map, 6 might be vulnerable, but Appalachia is probably inelastic enough, 7 might also be vulnerable, but is currently D held anyways, I would not be shocked if the final map looks more like this than the quad cuts of Fairfax being proposed in this thread, and other than the NoVA seats, this map isn't even that ugly.

That's way too ugly and way beyond what you need for a relatively clean 5-1-5 map.

The goal here was likely/safe 6-5

[S019]

VA Reps may push the 5-1 court to do something like this: https://davesredistricting.org/join/bce45050-8fd6-4923-9e68-81b01682d91d


5 and 7 are the leftovers, but the leftovers clearly benefit the GOP, the VRA seats are strengthened, which just happens to help shore up 2, and Albemarle honestly doesn't have a clear place to go, so I can see the 5-1 court just sticking it in Appalachia. In a vacuum, each of these decisions can clearly be justified as fine pairings, but on the broader scale, the side effects create a blatantly lopsided map, 6 might be vulnerable, but Appalachia is probably inelastic enough, 7 might also be vulnerable, but is currently D held anyways, I would not be shocked if the final map looks more like this than the quad cuts of Fairfax being proposed in this thread, and other than the NoVA seats, this map isn't even that ugly.

The Virginia Supreme Court is nominally 5 republicans and 2 democrats, but of those 5 republicans, only three are partisan hacks. One of them is basically a liberal democrat, and another is a hardcore ideologue but a very weak partisan. There is no way anything like what you've drawn becomes the map.

Everyone is acting like the Virginia Supreme Court is going to draw like a 8 to 3 or 9 to  2 GOP gerrymander and that the amendment passing prevents Democrats from winning any statewide offices next year. Its getting a bit ridiculous with the takes on this amendment.

Looking at the 2020 results...would Republicans really even "want" a 8R-3D map anymore?   Republicans in eastern Virginia (east of VA-6 basically) are kinda on thin ice as it is right now.  I don't think they really have the room to gerrymander the map all that much (sane maps that a commission would draw). 

I'm thinking it's more realistic they agree to concede VA-7 in exchange for making VA-5 and VA-1 safer.  Not much you can do with VA-2 anyway.

Virginia is a state that will continue to trend Democratic. Even if Nova moderates a bit (very likely but not to the extent some Republicans think it will) the trends towards Democrats in the Richmond area are very promising and the eastern shore is shaky for the GOP at best and there is hardly any room for the GOP to grow in rural VA unless they make significant in roads with African Americans.

The whole circus about this redistricting amendment has been over blown. It probably starts at a 6 D to 5 R  map.

I mean probably given the 1st is going to be a problem by the end of the decade due to the NoVA growth spreading as far south as like Fredericksburg, and Charlottesville is a problem regardless of where you put it, so in a 6-5 R map at least one seat probably falls before the decade’s end, the safe move is to sink Spanberger by giving her a slice of NoVA (to shore up Wittman) or all of Albermarle (to shore up Good)

[S019]

A 7R-4D map can be made, albeit it'd only function in 2022 and be a dummymander for the rest of the decade.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/5735689a-0876-4256-97e0-31087e34cb7e

Not VRA compliant. That ROVA Dem district is an illegal AA pack.

Yeah that one's illegal, it's clear that 2 Hampton/Norfolk AA seats are needed

[S019]

Worth noting that even with 2 VRA districts and what not; a 7R-4D map is theoretically possible; it's just that it would be a huge dummymander by Republicans.

But here is how such a map could hypothetically look like. This map has 7 districts that voted for Gillespie in the Governor election



District 2 is Gillespie+6, Trump+12, R+7
District 6 is Gillespie+2, Trump+6, R+6
District 7 is Gillespie+3, Trump+6, R+6
District 10 is Glillespie+4, Trump+6, R+6

https://davesredistricting.org/join/7ea55af7-8cd5-42d5-808f-26016a75643c

Of course in practice this map is not really 7R-4D; more like 4R-4D-3S

With some even more extreme snakes you could make use of the southwesternmost part of the state and finally get a full 7-4 but it would be way too ugly.

Yeah, places like east Loudoun and Leesburg have gotten so blue and even the formerly Republican bastion in northern Fairfax of McLean/Great Falls has blued significantly, ceding a third NoVA seat is basically required (also because a lot of PWC is not covered by just two sinks)

[S019]

Attempted a slight Republican gerrymander/GOP favored map that looks fair: https://davesredistricting.org/join/a83fefcb-d0fc-4304-bd3d-edb4f9c60693

[S019]

https://twitter.com/gmoomaw/status/1427623170551517187?s=21

Do we know the partisan breakdown of this vote?

[S019]

This line from that Facebook post really sticks out to me:

"Are Virginia Democrats the most altruistic, public spirited state party in the country?
Or the most naive?"

A number of Virginia Democrats had warned that this would happen during the ballot initiative campaign. To any outside observer, this is completely unsurprising, the Republicans wrote the commission in a way that they could punt it to a favorable court, if they did not get the concessions that they wanted, and it very well seems that that is what is happening here.

[S019]

Hot take coming, but I anticipate whatever the commission draws is going to get tossed out if the GOP doesn't like it, if they get a bad map, they'll take their chances with a 5-1 R court, which is probably a smart gamble from their perspective.

(shaded by 2016 presidential data)
Which of the following does this look like? D gerrymander, R gerrymander, competitive-mander (gerrymander designed to produce competitive seats), fair-proportional map, fair-non-partisan map.

little bit of everything, compact in Fairfax, R gerrymander in NoVA and D gerrymander in Richmond and the Hampton Roads area. Also I wonder if that Newport News seat is VRA compliant.

[S019]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/4bbecefb-4372-49f5-8475-da5771167081 VA Senate D
https://davesredistricting.org/join/e2c62df1-6679-4500-b459-b9fd7bb07b95 VA Senate R
https://davesredistricting.org/join/06813899-7514-420c-823b-f7bfad997aed VA House R
https://davesredistricting.org/join/5faf048d-191c-4437-bf1f-e9a9d4c53dc5 VA House D
I converted all four VA map proposals to DRA by using the VA Commission's shapefiles

[S019]

It looks like they took the GOP map and just made a few minor tweeks to it.   Democrats can still easily win a majority but it's definitely a map that favors the Republicans.

Are you surprised they have apparently all agreed to this?

The Republicans had all the leverage here, since the backdrop is punting it to a Republican Supreme Court, it makes sense that Democrats exacted some concessions rather than throw it to the court, where they get none.

[S019]

https://twitter.com/vpapupdates/status/1446538402510348290

LOL good job Virginia dems, ceding this unnecessarily to the courts.

If the courts do draw an R favored map, I hope they draw Dick Saslaw into an R seat, he deserves it, since his stupidity is what allowed this in the first place, and getting rid of him would allow Virginia Dems to get an actually decent leader.

[S019]

https://twitter.com/vpapupdates/status/1446538402510348290

LOL good job Virginia dems, ceding this unnecessarily to the courts.

If the courts do draw an R favored map, I hope they draw Dick Saslaw into an R seat, he deserves it, since his stupidity is what allowed this in the first place, and getting rid of him would allow Virginia Dems to get an actually decent leader.

You do realize he represents Fall Church/Alexandria/Arlington?

Well yes, I know he's from Fairfax, and it won't happen, but my point is that he deserves it, he needs to go somehow and I'd vote for a Republican over him, at this point, just to get rid of.

[S019]

So one of the Dems on the panel stormed out and said GOP isn't working in good faith.

You voted for this Dems.  This is on you.  You are that incompetent/bad at what you do.

Not all Dems, it was just ConservaDem idiots in the State Senate ofc led by none other than....Dick Saslaw

[S019]

This map also more or less axes Spanberger's seat and replaces it with a new northern VA seat, I really don't see what she'd do in this situation, maybe she'd challenge Bob Good?