2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Virginia

[Stuart98]

Drew this about a month ago, tweaked it today:

1st - Loses the Richmond suburbs, gains more NoVa. This pushes it a point or two to the right currently, though by the end of the decade it's probably more left than its current iteration would have been.
2nd - Loses Hampton and Williamsburg, gains Chesapeake. This pushes it about a point to the right. I'm not sure if Luria lives in this or not?
3rd - Gets pushed north a bit compared to the current district, becomes about 1.5 points less black and less Democratic (but not enough to matter)
4th - Loses whiter parts of the Richmond metro to gain rural black areas, becoming a majority black district and also being slightly more democratic.
5th - Loses NoVa and some rural black areas in exchange for Roanoke and Lynchburg. Becomes slightly more democratic as a result (Tim Kaine won it by a point in 2018) but probably has less favorable trends than the old district?
6th - Loses Roanoke and Lynchburg while gaining the western outskirts of NoVa. Shifts a couple points to the left as a result. I doubt it would be competitive by the end of the decade nonetheless.
7th - Loses most of its rural areas, refocused around the Richmond metro. This shifts it to the right by less than a point. Spanberger would still have won it in 2018 and 2020, though it would have been closer.
8th - Contracts a bit and is reconfigured slightly to take in whiter areas. Shifts right by about 8 points, but obviously that won't matter.
9th - Expands a bit but is mostly unchanged.
10th - Becomes a D vote sink that is shifting rapidly left, having voted for Clinton by 20 points in 2016.
11th - Becomes a majority minority seat by total population (CVAP: 48% white, 14% hispanic, 24% black, 13% asian; total population: 38% white, 25% hispanic, 24% black, 15% asian). It loses whiter areas in Fairfax but gains more minority heavy areas in Fairfax and Prince William to achieve this.

[Stuart98]

I don't think a compact map can do it; my VA map puts Roanoke in the district and it's still at best lean R. You'd have to do something silly like also include Blacksburg and also give some rurals to Spanburger while pushing much harder into NOVA. Not possible with the new commission.

[Stuart98]

Not a fan of splitting Shenandoah in two like that.

[Stuart98]

tbh, I assumed that from the start. Particularly in a state where Republicans just lost control over redistricting, creating a commission where they could deadlock the process and having maps be drawn by a court whose members they appointed seemed like a textbook case of gaming the system. Even in a situation without the VASC, they probably would never reach an agreement anyway. There's just way too many conflicts of interest and self-interest at play.

I honestly think independent commissions and the way they operate/are stacked are one of the most egregious examples of bad-faith and ill-intentioned "gerrymandering reform," and they’re the main reason why I prefer even the current system to this kind of reform. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but it always baffles me when so-called "independent" commissions act in a more partisan manner than even state legislatures/governors (we see this in states like MT/NJ/etc. as well). It’s a shame because it’s in both parties' interest to genuinely tackle gerrymandering at this point (it’s also the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, obviously, but electoral calculations will always take precedence over moral arguments in most politicians' minds) rather than just creating another (this time ostensibly 'non-partisan') thinly veiled gerrymander.

I’m completely opposed to those commissions in any state.

Partisan/bipartisan commissions are bad. I'd like to see a federal law rolling redistricting into another arm of the census bureau, with districts drawn by non-partisan bureaucrats with public input. I don't want a single elected official getting a say in the process beyond that of any other citizen.

[Stuart98]

tbh, I assumed that from the start. Particularly in a state where Republicans just lost control over redistricting, creating a commission where they could deadlock the process and having maps be drawn by a court whose members they appointed seemed like a textbook case of gaming the system. Even in a situation without the VASC, they probably would never reach an agreement anyway. There's just way too many conflicts of interest and self-interest at play.

I honestly think independent commissions and the way they operate/are stacked are one of the most egregious examples of bad-faith and ill-intentioned "gerrymandering reform," and they’re the main reason why I prefer even the current system to this kind of reform. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but it always baffles me when so-called "independent" commissions act in a more partisan manner than even state legislatures/governors (we see this in states like MT/NJ/etc. as well). It’s a shame because it’s in both parties' interest to genuinely tackle gerrymandering at this point (it’s also the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, obviously, but electoral calculations will always take precedence over moral arguments in most politicians' minds) rather than just creating another (this time ostensibly 'non-partisan') thinly veiled gerrymander.

I’m completely opposed to those commissions in any state.

Partisan/bipartisan commissions are bad. I'd like to see a federal law rolling redistricting into another arm of the census bureau, with districts drawn by non-partisan bureaucrats with public input. I don't want a single elected official getting a say in the process beyond that of any other citizen.

That sounds even worse than a commission tbh.

The only way to truly get partisanship / gaming the system out of redistricting is to give it to the computers. We will set allowable deviations by population, compactness, etc. and then let the computers draw the maps.

The only question would be VRA compliance and who decides on the algorithm, but those questions could be handled nationwide and not on a state by state basis. Regardless, this is the only framework that will ever be fair in any sense of the word.

I have yet to see an algorithm that can create better fair maps than a human can. It's probably possible to make one, but it takes a lot more work than any advocating for robomandering has put in. Even if you turn everything over to an algorithm, it's still using weights for criteria determined by a human. You're not eliminating bias; you're obfuscating it.

The census bureau should draw the maps because no group has a better idea of how our communities are connected and divided than they do, and therefore they're the organization best-positioned to draw maps that keep communities of interest together.

[Stuart98]

It's not a coincidence that this is the one commission that has broken down (not including the essentially joke pro forma commissions like Ohio or the nonbinding ones in Iowa and Utah).

Utah's actually hasn't broken down (yet). The crazy Rmander that some of them drew has lost the support of 2/3 of its authors and I'm decently confident that the maps the commission ultimately submits to the legislature will be fair (if somewhat weird). Whether the legislature adopts any of them or not is another manner entirely, to be sure, but I wouldn't count it out just yet.

[Stuart98]

Have to wonder at this point if the VAGOP is going to end up in a worse position than if they had never pushed the fake redistricting commission to begin with. Would Democrats have been able to get a gerrymander through before they lost the house and governorship?

[Stuart98]

I have the shapefile, uploading it into DRA now.

[Stuart98]

DRA link for the congressional map.

Working on uploading the senate and HoD maps.

6-5 by Pres 2016, 7-4 by Gov 2017, Sen 2018, and Pres 2020.

[Stuart98]

Senate Map

Pres 2016: 23D-17R
Gov 2017: 24D-16R
Sen 2018: 26D-14R
Pres 2020: 24D-16R

House Map

Pres 2016: 52D-48R
Gov 2017: 56D-44R
Sen 2018: 68D-32R
Pres 2020: 60D-40R

[Stuart98]

Does John Edwards have a good seat to run in here?

They compromised on a much milder gerrymander that brings his seat to Trump +7 in 2016 and Trump +0.6 in 2020. He probably couldn't hold on in this political environment but could still in 2023.

In total, how many Biden districts in the House and how many in the Senate, under these lines?

Senate Map

Pres 2016: 23D-17R
Gov 2017: 24D-16R
Sen 2018: 26D-14R
Pres 2020: 24D-16R

House Map

Pres 2016: 52D-48R
Gov 2017: 56D-44R
Sen 2018: 68D-32R
Pres 2020: 60D-40R