2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Virginia

[SevenEleven]

No reason Frecdricksburg can't be with Loudoun.  Exurb vs suburb is a bigger divide than highways  You care about roads so much lol.  Also, I crossed the bay to satisfy the VRA and to make a swing seat in VA beach.

Uh, do you understand how metropolitan areas work?

[SevenEleven]

Here's my Virginia fair map.

[SevenEleven]

Because the fairfax quad cut is literally a blatant Democrat Gerrymander designed to give a 4th Safe D seat in NOVA. You literally have a Shenandoah to coastal district lol and drew a 8 Safe D and 3 Safe R map.

Theres 0 excuse to split the Richmond metro but then pair VA beach with Norfolk.

VA-10 has to get population from somewhere.

Where do you want Norfolk to go if not with Virginia Beach? This is the most relevant connection to make.

[SevenEleven]

The quad-cut aside, you should drop Albemarle from the brown district and have it take in all the non-AA parts of the Richmond metro. Put Albemarle in Yellow, push the Lynchburg district north up the Shenandoah Valley, and backfill the Southside with red. That's basically how you clean this map up to make it look more reasonable.

It might look cleaner but it has the unfortunate effect of spreading out some of the rural areas.

These maps that have VA-11 circling around VA-8 are awful.

[SevenEleven]

Reston and Ashburn should be in the same district.

[SevenEleven]

Here

Main communities left is Leesburg paired with the Shenandoah for population reasons,  However half of the Loudoun split is perfectly justified due to the much more rural nature of the western part of Loudoun and how expansion is limited there anyway by the hilly terrain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catoctin_County,_Virginia

The black Richmond district is a bit low on the black population at 40.2 but if one wishes they can precint trade and split the city of Richmond for a more black district

Virginia beach should mostly take in Chesapeake due to the much more suburban nature of the latter compared to Norfolk .

Now theres an argument for 4 possible D NOVA districts depending on the split but just carving Fairfax like that into 4 is a blatant gerrymander.

Why in the world is Gainesville with Springfield? Yuck.

[SevenEleven]

You literally did the same thing in your map lol(or looks like it)



And heres a rotation if you want it, was a bit lazy with city boundaries due the huge population size for each precinct but should be easy to fix and still have a similar shape.

No, I definitely did not. And you ought to have Reston and Ashburn in the same district.

[SevenEleven]

LOL, 6 Trump districts in a Dem state and you're calling our maps gerrymanders.

"Exurbs" are not a COI, they are part of a metro and should be treated as such. Your map is ridiculous. I suggest you learn what a COI is.

[SevenEleven]

Loudoun to Charlottesville is a giant NO.

You should never have districts circling other districts unless there is a VRA requirement that mandates it.

[SevenEleven]

Ok then Loudoun to Winchester, oh wait its now Safe R and the Charlottesville seat is Likely R(Kaine won it by 0.5)

Now you can complain its a gerrymander.

Stafford County and Loudoun County should not share a district. You're entire map drawing process is partisan.

Also no one cares about your made up county.

[SevenEleven]

That's starting to look better. 🙂

When are you going to draw a California map?

[SevenEleven]

Exurban/suburban doesn't matter. Districts shouldn't loop around for no reason. Manassas should go with Fairfax.

[SevenEleven]

Looping around is never worth it. The only time it's acceptable is when mandated by the VRA. You first tried it with Springfield-Gainsville, then you tried again with Loudon-Stafford. Don't do it. It's wrong and it makes for poorly representative districts.

Edit: previous posts deleted.

[SevenEleven]

Western Loudoun having different political views does not make it a distinct community of interest. Weird that you're so upset about a reasonable split of Fairfax but are so aggressive about splitting Loudoun meaninglessly.

Tyson's should be in VA-8.

Protip: look at the roads.

[SevenEleven]

Western Loudoun having different political views does not make it a distinct community of interest. Weird that you're so upset about a reasonable split of Fairfax but are so aggressive about splitting Loudoun meaninglessly.

The split of Fairfax was obviously a partisan gerrymander and had major differences, Im literally arguing over a swing of 0.2 points here.
Infact the precincts I took from PWC county are just a tiny bit more D than the Western Loudoun precincts, there is no national political difference really. This is literally 0.2 points. Loudoun county is basically like Passiac NJ except replace the urban poor Patterson with rich suburban towns and then rural/exurban Western half. Its not political besides the local issues which is a very valid reason for it to be separate due to different interests for federal funding. On the other hand Western and central PWC both are developing quite rapidly and have the terrain to do so. Therefore they belong in a true suburban NOVA district rather than a rural/exurban mix.

The decision to put Western Loudoun with the blue district is purely non partisan.

That's not how metropolitan areas work. The suburbs and exurbs are tied to the urban core more than they are tied to each other.

[SevenEleven]

When you look at common interests and the types of people , people in exurbs are easily more connected to each other than some common road uniting them, especially considering how the exurbs themselves aren't exactly disconnected either.

Literally no one else on this forum cares about direction of road this much besides you and Blairite, I even remember the idea that somehow rurals should be mixed with Cincinatti suburbs instead of just combing one mega suburban district around Cinci. Like sure I can agree Reston and Ashburn are connected but Western Loudoun is not really connected to the rest of Loudoun culturally and demographically and terrian wise.

Putting Purcellville and Falmouth in the same district is ridiculous. The roads and highways are what connect communities together. I'm certain the reason Blairites and I have such strong opinions about this is because we have actually lived in the area. Drawing looping suburban and exurban districts is logic-defying. The entire NoVA metro starts at Arlington and spreads outward.

[SevenEleven]

Opinion of this map? Here I basically tried to make some redistricting decisions I had not really tried while still keeping the map relatively fair. Some of these include a more compact VA-04 (though I still had to get out of Richmond by quite a bit) or connecting VA-7 to the north.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/895aa991-6ed7-460e-b9df-9f748da36530

VA-01: Clinton+12, Northam+14, Kaine+23, D+4 (50% white, 20% hispanic, 21% black)
VA-02: Trump+5, Northam+2, Kaine+8, R+4
VA-03: Clinton+33, Northam+39, Kaine+44, D+17 (47% black. 42% white)
VA-04: Clinton+31, Northam+33, Kaine+39, D+14 (46% black, 45% white)
VA-05: Trump+26, Gillespie+25, Stewart+17, R+14
VA-06: Trump+9, Gillespie+5, Kaine+2, R+6
VA-07: Trump+13, Gillespie+10, Stewart+2, R+9
VA-08: Clinton+52, Northam+52, Kaine+59, D+21
VA-09: Trump+38, Gillespie+35, Stewart+26, R+18
VA-10: Trump+6 Gillespie+3, Kaine+6, R+5
VA-11: Clinton+33, Northam+34, Kaine+43, D+12

Imo this map would be 5 Safe D, 3 Safe R, 1 Likely R (6th) and 2 Lean R (2nd, 10th)

I actually like several of these districts tbh, like how the 6th is now a district within reach of the Dems (even if it would be a very heavy lift) or the 10th which makes it so a competitive district remains in the north (though there are still 3 safe D districts in NOVA)

On the other hand the new 7th is not great and the 5th was the definition of leftovers district so still not great I suppose

This is a Republican map, not a fair map.

Reston and Ashburn should be together; there is no justification for looping district 2 around district 3.

[SevenEleven]

Opinion of this map? Here I basically tried to make some redistricting decisions I had not really tried while still keeping the map relatively fair. Some of these include a more compact VA-04 (though I still had to get out of Richmond by quite a bit) or connecting VA-7 to the north.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/895aa991-6ed7-460e-b9df-9f748da36530

VA-01: Clinton+12, Northam+14, Kaine+23, D+4 (50% white, 20% hispanic, 21% black)
VA-02: Trump+5, Northam+2, Kaine+8, R+4
VA-03: Clinton+33, Northam+39, Kaine+44, D+17 (47% black. 42% white)
VA-04: Clinton+31, Northam+33, Kaine+39, D+14 (46% black, 45% white)
VA-05: Trump+26, Gillespie+25, Stewart+17, R+14
VA-06: Trump+9, Gillespie+5, Kaine+2, R+6
VA-07: Trump+13, Gillespie+10, Stewart+2, R+9
VA-08: Clinton+52, Northam+52, Kaine+59, D+21
VA-09: Trump+38, Gillespie+35, Stewart+26, R+18
VA-10: Trump+6 Gillespie+3, Kaine+6, R+5
VA-11: Clinton+33, Northam+34, Kaine+43, D+12

Imo this map would be 5 Safe D, 3 Safe R, 1 Likely R (6th) and 2 Lean R (2nd, 10th)

I actually like several of these districts tbh, like how the 6th is now a district within reach of the Dems (even if it would be a very heavy lift) or the 10th which makes it so a competitive district remains in the north (though there are still 3 safe D districts in NOVA)

On the other hand the new 7th is not great and the 5th was the definition of leftovers district so still not great I suppose

This is a Republican map, not a fair map.

Reston and Ashburn should be together; there is no justification for looping district 2 around district 3.

By your very own road argument is that the D inner 4 cities are connected by a nice done bridge circle.

No. That's not at all related to any argument I've made about roads.

[SevenEleven]

Create one district mostly based inside thats the VRA district, then create one that goes around it

No, it's already been explained to you that you don't just loop around areas without the VRA requiring it, which it does not here as the district suffices without doing such.



FairMap^TM 2.0 is now available.

[SevenEleven]

Anything over 40% is good enough for VA-3 and VA-4. I don't see a need to split Portsmouth here. This also allows black voters to make an impact in VA-2.

[SevenEleven]

Anything over 40% is good enough for VA-3 and VA-4. I don't see a need to split Portsmouth here.

So then whats wrong with one district based in Richmond thats 40.5% black?
you are running in circles to justify every gerrymandered decision.

VA-4 is a Black district based in Richmond. Richmond metro is about two districts worth of people, so I have two Richmond metro districts. Of course, being in the center of the state means that other concerns affect Richmond more easily than, say, NoVA.

Pairing Richmond with the tidewater region isn't ideal, but neither is pairing it with Charlottesville.

[SevenEleven]

The main counties in the Richmond metro + Petersburg is 900k people, you put one district based mostly in it if you are fine with 40.5% black districts.

I have it at 1.26 million, which is much closer to two districts.

[SevenEleven]

The main counties in the Richmond metro + Petersburg is 900k people, you put one district based mostly in it if you are fine with 40.5% black districts.

I have it at 1.26 million, which is much closer to two districts.

Thats including a bunch of exurban or even rural counties which you split among 3 districts lol.

I already explained that by being in the central part of the state, you end up having to make sacrifices due to other regions that are way underpopulated for their own district. It's fairly simple to understand.

[SevenEleven]

Why should Reston and Ashburn be together? They are in different counties after all, so there is certainly a COI argument to split them.

I will say I don't think partisanship should be a factor in making these maps, but generally when COIs are broken up it's usually due to partisan reasons.

Reston is where people in Loudoun go to do their shopping, take the train, etc.

[SevenEleven]

I changed it to this: