2020 Oregon Redistricting

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

what map are we going to be looking at in the Beaver State?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/4d69c7eb-961e-4a6d-b527-586cda2e1493
I made this map.
I hand-selected precincts in Jackson County and Lane County to make OR-04 be Dem-leaning. As a result the district retains its position as a Clinton district. DeFazio should be fine.
While the new 6th takes in a lot of red turf, it also has some specially-selected areas in Portland and is D+1. It is trending D. Schrader lives here and might choose to run here, or he might stay in the 5th, which also voted for Clinton by somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 points.
The 2nd is firm GOP as always, and the 3rd, now contained fully within Multnomah, is also firm D in even greater measure.
All the districts are compact and do not gratitiously split counties. And like under the previous map, only 1 Trump seat despite the state gaining a seat.
Also every Democratic congresscritter gets a safer district, even Blumenauer. DeFazio and Schrader go from EVEN to D+1; Bonamici goes from D+9 to D+11; and Blumenauer goes from D+24 to D+27 (not that he needs that safety).

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I redid the 3rd, 1st, and 6th. Now the new CD is D+10, pretty much safe D.
I adopted suggestion 1.
I still prefer cutting into Multnomah twice over splitting Washington so I decided instead to feed the 6th CD into western Downtown Portland.

"5. Having the 5th cut into Springfield is better than it crossing the river in Lane." That something I cannot do. I didn't hand-pick precincts in Lane County just to turn OR-04 into a Trump district due to it having more Trump-voting territory in northern Lane. (I assume that you meant to type 6th there instead of 5th)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I redid the 3rd, 1st, and 6th. Now the new CD is D+10, pretty much safe D.
I adopted suggestion 1.
I still prefer cutting into Multnomah twice over splitting Washington so I decided instead to feed the 6th CD into western Downtown Portland.

"5. Having the 5th cut into Springfield is better than it crossing the river in Lane." That something I cannot do. I didn't hand-pick precincts in Lane County just to turn OR-04 into a Trump district due to it having more Trump-voting territory in northern Lane. (I assume that you meant to type 6th there instead of 5th)

Nice. I really like what you did. This should be a pretty safe 5-1 and it doesn't cross the Cascades. I wish there were better ties between the northern and southern parts of the 5th, but that really isn't possible without cutting Washington.

Thanks for the kind words. This is what happens you hand-pick precincts. In the 2nd's share of Jackson for instance there are 0 Clinton precincts. And in the 6th's share of Lane there are only 3 Clinton precincts.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I redid the 3rd, 1st, and 6th. Now the new CD is D+10, pretty much safe D.
I adopted suggestion 1.
I still prefer cutting into Multnomah twice over splitting Washington so I decided instead to feed the 6th CD into western Downtown Portland.

"5. Having the 5th cut into Springfield is better than it crossing the river in Lane." That something I cannot do. I didn't hand-pick precincts in Lane County just to turn OR-04 into a Trump district due to it having more Trump-voting territory in northern Lane. (I assume that you meant to type 6th there instead of 5th)

Nice. I really like what you did. This should be a pretty safe 5-1 and it doesn't cross the Cascades. I wish there were better ties between the northern and southern parts of the 5th, but that really isn't possible without cutting Washington.

Thanks for the kind words. This is what happens you hand-pick precincts. In the 2nd's share of Jackson for instance there are 0 Clinton precincts. And in the 6th's share of Lane there are only 3 Clinton precincts.

Of course. However, I had to edit my earlier comment because it looks like the 5th and 6th districts are very competitive, and any map with 4+ safe D seats has to split Washington. The general design is good, but I think you'll have to do that if you want 5 Clinton+5 or higher seats.

You wind up hitting a wall past a certain point. 4 safe D seats or heavily respecting CoI - two things you have to choose between.
The map is optimized for safety while following CoI to a high degree. But one could tear up the CoI and easily get a safe 5-1, as Tack's map illustrates.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I redid the 3rd, 1st, and 6th. Now the new CD is D+10, pretty much safe D.
I adopted suggestion 1.
I still prefer cutting into Multnomah twice over splitting Washington so I decided instead to feed the 6th CD into western Downtown Portland.

"5. Having the 5th cut into Springfield is better than it crossing the river in Lane." That something I cannot do. I didn't hand-pick precincts in Lane County just to turn OR-04 into a Trump district due to it having more Trump-voting territory in northern Lane. (I assume that you meant to type 6th there instead of 5th)

Nice. I really like what you did. This should be a pretty safe 5-1 and it doesn't cross the Cascades. I wish there were better ties between the northern and southern parts of the 5th, but that really isn't possible without cutting Washington.

Thanks for the kind words. This is what happens you hand-pick precincts. In the 2nd's share of Jackson for instance there are 0 Clinton precincts. And in the 6th's share of Lane there are only 3 Clinton precincts.

Of course. However, I had to edit my earlier comment because it looks like the 5th and 6th districts are very competitive, and any map with 4+ safe D seats has to split Washington. The general design is good, but I think you'll have to do that if you want 5 Clinton+5 or higher seats.

You wind up hitting a wall past a certain point. 4 safe D seats or heavily respecting CoI - two things you have to choose between.
The map is optimized for safety while following CoI to a high degree. But one could tear up the CoI and easily get a safe 5-1, as Tack's map illustrates.

I agree. My concern is that in your map, the 5th isn't particularly safe, leaving the possibility of a 3-3 map in a R wave. Understandably, the 4th is always going to be a tossup unless you really start violating COIs.

One could reverse the placing of Clatsop in the 1st. Before then it was D+1.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

how certain is OR gaining a sixth district?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

how certain is OR gaining a sixth district?

If it still had 5 districts it would have like 840k people per district so almost certainly gaining.

So I assume OR-6 is about the 427th or so seat that is awarded and thus out of the edge zone?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

how certain is OR gaining a sixth district?

If it still had 5 districts it would have like 840k people per district so almost certainly gaining.

So I assume OR-6 is about the 427th or so seat that is awarded and thus out of the edge zone?

Yeah most likely.

If Oregon somehow missed out on a seat AGAIN, then what would the map look like?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The aim of an optimal Dem gerry, imo, in OR anyway, shouldn't be to make 5 seats safe. It should be to have all Cascades+parts of Southern Oregon to together produce R vote sink, and then make everything else at least a Clinton district.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

For fun, here is a theoretical R gerrymander of Oregon. Ends up as a 3-3 map, so it should be fair /s

In Oregon at least pure "proportional" would be 3D-2R-1S, given the state's lean towards Democrats.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/a517ad3d-3b01-4f4f-8cee-e4930b251f04
is this a good effort at a CoI-minded Dem-friendly map?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anyone else notice the raw numbers for the 2016 election are wrong?

How so?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anyone else notice the raw numbers for the 2016 election are wrong?

How so?

If you look at the vote counts, there's clearly something wrong with the 2016 data set. Deschutes county, a county with around 200K people, has almost 200K votes total, Multnomah has more votes than citizens, Lane county has 205K Democratic votes on the ledger, etc.

Ouch.
That sounds kind of bad for anyone trying to construct a Dem-friendly map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/3fed2b79-9c14-4390-8fdb-214d2070e9f8

With census data officially out, I took the opportunity to take a crack at a fair map. The population is obviously kind of scuffed - I tried to roughly match the districts with the official 2020 county numbers, making some assumptions along the way. Here's some of my rationales:

- Washington and Yamhill is 1,800 people from being a perfect district under the new numbers (a surprise), so I made that the base of this map. This seat is obviously Safe D and a layup for Bonamici.
- This also allows Portland to be kept whole and Multnomah to only be split twice - the new 3rd becomes a Multnomah-only seat. Gresham, however, became too big to take out of the seat whole, so it gets split (with the bulk ending up in the 5th).
- I took Salem (city) out of the 5th as the population roughly lined up for that to make sense. Unfortunately this means some of Salem's outer locales/Keizer are in the 5th but it's better than splitting the city outright or dropping the 5th into Linn. This new 5th is about three points more Republican, but trends mean it's probably Lean D outside of GOP wave years.
- The 6th takes coastal Lane and Veneta-Junction City for population equality. Clinton wins this district narrowly (and, it moves left in 2020), but this is a pretty good fair fight seat.
- The 4th picks up the rest of Josephine, Ashland, and some scraps in north Jackson. Slightly partisan decision here but it's pretty justifiable (keeps Medford and Center Point whole) and can be seen as a concession to Ds who probably won't like the risks associated with this map. Barely Trump in 2016, moving slightly right from DeFazio's old seat.

Splendid stuff.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

Yeah, OBD did make a masterpiece.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

I checked DRA stats for House District 22. It's crazy.
Total Population 2019

Pop   %
Total   69,326   100.0%
White   29,752   42.9%
Hispanic   34,777   50.2%
Black   1,789   2.6%
Asian   1,450   2.1%
Native   3,978   5.7%
Pacific   826   1.2%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop   %
Total   37,371   100.0%
White   24,056   64.4%
Hispanic   10,477   28.0%
Black   899   2.4%
Asian   884   2.4%
Native   698   1.9%
Pacific   209   0.6%

This is a part of the state changing very rapidly demographically.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

I checked DRA stats for House District 22. It's crazy.
Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 69,326 100.0%
White 29,752 42.9%
Hispanic 34,777 50.2%
Black 1,789 2.6%
Asian 1,450 2.1%
Native 3,978 5.7%
Pacific 826 1.2%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 37,371 100.0%
White 24,056 64.4%
Hispanic 10,477 28.0%
Black 899 2.4%
Asian 884 2.4%
Native 698 1.9%
Pacific 209 0.6%

This is a part of the state changing very rapidly demographically.

This is true, although Woodburn has long been a majority Latino City, and historically there has been an extremely large Latino population in Northeast Salem as well for decades now, so in some ways perhaps not as surprising as it might initially appear.

Overall the population of Salem grew by 14% between '10 and '20 (+21k pop) and Woodburn 8% (+2k Pop), and I would not be surprised if much of this growth was disproportionately Latino.

One other item which sometimes slips under the radar is that even in many rural parts of the Central Willamette Valley there has also been a significant growth in Latino population, including in the rural belt in OR HD-22 which stretches from North of Salem to Woodburn along I-5, and although it hasn't yet really been visible yet much in terms of changing voting patterns within these areas, I would not be surprised to see that become a bit more evident over the next decade in places like Polk, Yamhill, and rural Marion counties.

Some other HDs:

HD-20

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 70,262 100.0%
White 52,957 75.4%
Hispanic 11,584 16.5%
Black 1,397 2.0%
Asian 2,705 3.8%
Native 1,689 2.4%
Pacific 608 0.9%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 49,978 100.0%
White 42,182 84.4%
Hispanic 4,604 9.2%
Black 671 1.3%
Asian 1,413 2.8%
Native 964 1.9%
Pacific 137 0.3%

HD-19

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 71,444 100.0%
White 53,069 74.3%
Hispanic 11,938 16.7%
Black 1,389 1.9%
Asian 2,698 3.8%
Native 3,701 5.2%
Pacific 1,296 1.8%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 51,558 100.0%
White 42,483 82.4%
Hispanic 5,202 10.1%
Black 729 1.4%
Asian 1,217 2.4%
Native 1,263 2.4%
Pacific 487 0.9%

HD-23

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 69,310 100.0%
White 59,048 85.2%
Hispanic 6,769 9.8%
Black 590 0.9%
Asian 1,199 1.7%
Native 2,527 3.6%
Pacific 160 0.2%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 52,308 100.0%
White 46,811 89.5%
Hispanic 3,076 5.9%
Black 331 0.6%
Asian 658 1.3%
Native 1,316 2.5%
Pacific 17 0.0%

HD-18

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 67,045 100.0%
White 54,046 80.6%
Hispanic 10,282 15.3%
Black 541 0.8%
Asian 1,236 1.8%
Native 1,189 1.8%
Pacific 300 0.4%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 47,968 100.0%
White 42,107 87.8%
Hispanic 4,164 8.7%
Black 285 0.6%
Asian 777 1.6%
Native 605 1.3%
Pacific 34 0.1%

Interestingly, the biggest increases in Latino %, relatively, actually seem to be in coastal Oregon.

HD-32

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 68,483 100.0%
White 57,964 84.6%
Hispanic 6,509 9.5%
Black 954 1.4%
Asian 1,560 2.3%
Native 1,913 2.8%
Pacific 598 0.9%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 53,131 100.0%
White 47,607 89.6%
Hispanic 2,710 5.1%
Black 372 0.7%
Asian 839 1.6%
Native 1,127 2.1%
Pacific 129

HD-10

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 67,050 100.0%
White 54,519 81.3%
Hispanic 6,224 9.3%
Black 1,055 1.6%
Asian 1,482 2.2%
Native 4,125 6.2%
Pacific 292 0.4%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 53,377 100.0%
White 46,314 86.8%
Hispanic 2,657 5.0%
Black 697 1.3%
Asian 853 1.6%
Native 2,680 5.0%
Pacific 99 0.2%

HD-59 also saw pretty massive growth:

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Total Population 2019

Pop %
Total 69,210 100.0%
White 51,742 74.8%
Hispanic 10,162 14.7%
Black 678 1.0%
Asian 802 1.2%
Native 6,322 9.1%
Pacific 483 0.7%
Citizen VAP 2019

Pop %
Total 51,771 100.0%
White 42,668 82.4%
Hispanic 4,087 7.9%
Black 332 0.6%
Asian 370 0.7%
Native 4,055 7.8%
Pacific 108 0.2%

Reminds me of Central Washington, tbh.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I drew a nasty 3R-3D GOP gerrymander of Oregon. Bonamici and Blumenauer get sinks in the Portland area. Bentz gets a few precincts in Portland to make Blumenauer's district even bluer after losing Bend and Ashland. DeFazio gets a sink of Salem, Eugene, Corvallis, and Bend. Schrader's district is converted to safe R. The new rural southwestern district is also safe R.



Partisanship by 2018 gubernatorial election.

That is a quite effective 3R-3D map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

Lol, the Rs got owned so hard. Wow.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

Lol, the Rs got owned so hard. Wow.

Our Political Scientists are better than theirs, especially when they try to ship in out of state Carpet Baggers, who apparently have no idea of OR Election law!

Suspect there are some PUB Atlas Posters w/o the gravitas of a PhD, who could have presented a more competent argument.

TJ on Cleve would have done a better job than whatever counsel they got. If he was chosen, the map might actually been very likely to be struck down, for all we know.