2020 Texas Redistricting thread

[Torie]

I don't think this fajita thing is where the action is  myself. The Pubs can snatch that seat on the Gulf (TX-34), without VRA risk, and presumably will. However, they need to give the Dems another Hispanic seat in Bexar. So it's all sound and fury signifying nothing to me, unless the Pubs do something to test the limits of the VRA. Whether the Dems get 12 or 13 seats depends on whether the Pubs are willing to go ugly (very ugly but legal), to snatch TX-07 away from the Dems in Houston. And that has nothing to do with fajita strips. I guess we will know soon what is in the heads of the TX Pubs.

[Torie]

I don't think this fajita thing is where the action is  myself. The Pubs can snatch that seat on the Gulf (TX-34), without VRA risk, and presumably will. However, they need to give the Dems another Hispanic seat in Bexar. So it's all sound and fury signifying nothing to me, unless the Pubs do something to test the limits of the VRA. Whether the Dems get 12 or 13 seats depends on whether the Pubs are willing to go ugly (very ugly but legal), to snatch TX-07 away from the Dems in Houston. And that has nothing to do with fajita strips. I guess we will know soon what is in the heads of the TX Pubs.

I would say this map suggests they are going after TX-07 on the congressional map while leaving the same number of Hispanic Dem seats as last decade.  

It is definitely a plausible scenario, them going after TX-07. They'll almost certainly have to use TX-09 to take in Dem areas to undercut Lizzie Fletcher.

Right now I'm thinking Fletcher's seat still exists, but she is drawn out as part of the semi-unintentional "no white dem electeds." A case of the white Libs going in one of the AA seats, the white Pubs going in a R seats, and then the reconfigured seat is built out of Fort Bend and Alief and is very diverse.

I agree Fletcher still exists most likely. My "likely scenario" map has TX-07 being turned into a majority-minority CD.
But I do think Rs could still plausibly try to target her district for a flip, and uber-pack the 18th, 9th, and 29th. It would be a dumb move probably, but it could still happen.

My map is butt ugly along the Ft Bend/Harris border, but I fail to see what is "dumb" about it. The Pubs get a strong lean R seat out of TX-07 (Trump 2020 by 7.5%), that should hold for awhile (maybe longer if they continue to make gains with Hispanics), and the rest of the Pub seats in the area were all carried by Trump 2020 by 18 to 21 points. There seems to be no political downside for the Pubs to just go for it.

[Torie]

I don't think this fajita thing is where the action is  myself. The Pubs can snatch that seat on the Gulf (TX-34), without VRA risk, and presumably will. However, they need to give the Dems another Hispanic seat in Bexar. So it's all sound and fury signifying nothing to me, unless the Pubs do something to test the limits of the VRA. Whether the Dems get 12 or 13 seats depends on whether the Pubs are willing to go ugly (very ugly but legal), to snatch TX-07 away from the Dems in Houston. And that has nothing to do with fajita strips. I guess we will know soon what is in the heads of the TX Pubs.

I would say this map suggests they are going after TX-07 on the congressional map while leaving the same number of Hispanic Dem seats as last decade. 

It is definitely a plausible scenario, them going after TX-07. They'll almost certainly have to use TX-09 to take in Dem areas to undercut Lizzie Fletcher.

Right now I'm thinking Fletcher's seat still exists, but she is drawn out as part of the semi-unintentional "no white dem electeds." A case of the white Libs going in one of the AA seats, the white Pubs going in a R seats, and then the reconfigured seat is built out of Fort Bend and Alief and is very diverse.

I agree Fletcher still exists most likely. My "likely scenario" map has TX-07 being turned into a majority-minority CD.
But I do think Rs could still plausibly try to target her district for a flip, and uber-pack the 18th, 9th, and 29th. It would be a dumb move probably, but it could still happen.

My map is butt ugly along the Ft Bend/Harris border, but I fail to see what is "dumb" about it. The Pubs get a strong lean R seat out of TX-07 that should hold for awhile (maybe longer if they continue to make gains with Hispanics), and the rest of the Pub seats in the area were all carried by Trump 2020 by at least 18 points. There seems to be no political downside for the Pubs to just go for it.

If your map works, it does so because it represents almost a platonic ideal unspoiled by things like incumbent concerns.
I feel that in practice TX Rs will not be able to make it work effectively and/or will be driven by factors not purely decided by partisan gain.
Of course I wouldn't rule out them passing a map along the lines you made because it is still quite uncertain and we don't know what map they will propose.

I actually worried a lot about Pub incumbent concerns and put a lot of thought into that, including where the Pub incumbents live, and district coherency. Whether I did a reasonable job at that is another matter, but I tried. I spent more time on TX than any other state, by far. I was fascinated by the interplay of the VRA, TX trends, incumbent care and feeding, and district coherence. I considered it a worthy challenge for me. I also tried where it did not unduly degrade the efficacy of the Pubmander, to minimize county and municipal chops.

[Torie]

They can split the baby by making TX-7 Trump+2 or something, leaving the other districts at Trump+17 or so.  Whichever district is on the east side of Harris County (Pasadena, Baytown etc.) can be a bit closer than that since the Hispanic population over there is trending right. 

[Torie]

"They shouldn’t need to push everything to extremes."

Even if it were not TX, where they think big, surely you jest. You know that is not how the game is played.

Actually, the gerrymandering diet in general, and certainly in TX, is for a gourmand (right up to but not including the point of vomiting),  not a gourmet. You devour everything you legally can that does not have a substantial potential of causing one to lose more down the line than is gained now, that has district coherency. In TX, district coherency is tricky. You need to try to separate high SES urban whites from rural and small town crazies, so the latter don't control Pub primaries in CD's with a lot of the former. That requires some care and thought.

Crenshaw would be the perfect Pub candidate for TX-07 btw (he actually lives in the CD in an apartment rather than in the CD he represents, TX-02). TX-07, as I drew it, I call the gated golf course communities CD - it has a lot of them. The Hispanics who pad out the CD will like his eye patch.

[Torie]

Well, the Texas Pubs clearly did not take my advice, and yes, they should be sued, and then sued some more (probably for precisely the opposite reasons Gass has in mind but whatever). The below image has to be competitive with MD in insane erosity. I get that TX-33 was an attempt to do a crude Hispanic pack, but what is TX-04 all about?  

[Torie]

I think it’s interesting how horrendous visually DFW is while Houston is actually pretty clean, though neither are fair. This definitely isn’t the most extreme gerrymander we could’ve gotten, but things can still change and it is still a gerrymander at the end of the day

Yes, mine was a much better Pubmander, and legal. It is almost always a mistake to try to get inside the heads of TX Pubs, much less assume that they have some modicum of rationality.

[Torie]

Yes, mine was a much better Pubmander, and legal. It is almost always a mistake to try to get inside the heads of TX Pubs, much less assume that they have some modicum of rationality.

A good share of the ridiculousness is pretty obviously because of incumbent concerns and incumbent self-interest/demands winning out over what would be a more rational but equal/more effective configuration. For example, TX-04 is the way it is because Rockwall County is in the current district and they apparently want that to stay due to incumbency there, but they also want to help take Dem votes from TX-03 to keep TX-03 safely R, hence the ridiculous dual tentacles to Rockwall on the one hand also to Biden-voting Dem-trending parts of Plano/Frisco on the other hand.

Similarly, TX-10 ridiculously goes through a narrow strip to get to combine West Austin and a bunch of rural areas to the east of Austin. The reason for that is to take in Mike McCaul's home in west Austin, while also including the rural areas that he currently represents and which are the parts that make it safely R. Actually, tbh it looks like the new proposed TX-10 is actually more of a rural district than a suburban district at this point (not only having very little of Austin, but also having entirely exited Harris County now). If McCaul were to retire, this district would end up getting represented by a rural R I am pretty sure.

This map is very much incumbent-driven. It's perhaps the spiritual successor to the 2013-2023 MD map in that regard.
You have a good point on the 10th. Eyeballing it, about 50% or so of the population is in rurals outside of Travis and Williamson? Which is a sizable shift.

The current TX-10 takes in a chunk of Travis, and then goes to Houston to take in a chunk of real estate there. It is basically an urban district, comprised of 2 nodes. The way I drew the map, I put McCaul's home in TX-27, shoved the TX-27 incumbent living in Victoria who would be a poor fit for Houston, much less Austin, in TX-34, and and then gave the new TX-27 a bunch of rural territory. My TX-10 was a new CD in Houston that covered much of McCaul's existing TX-10 Houston node. Right next door to his precinct in Travis was the jut in to Travis by TX-25, that does not have an incumbent (the 75 year old incumbent lives outside his district as it is, which lies elsewhere from the new TX-25. So in essence, I gave McCaul a choice of three CD's to run in, TX-10, 25 or 27.

[Torie]

In Tarrant, it looks like they drew TX-24 for Van Duyne, then they drew TX-32 and TX-33 as Dem sinks around it, but they were left with too much territory south of TX-33 for just TX-6 so that’s why you have those disastrous tentacles and two districts coming in. Just my guess.

About half a district worth of "excess" territory. Classic gerrymander. You combine a lot of marginal territory with solid territory to create a safe CD, rather than smaller bits of very hostile territory. With very hostile territory it gets very inefficient and exhausting (c.f.,  the quin chop of Travis).



The Torie metric of trying to make gerrymanders look as pretty as possible was just not in play here now, was it? 

[Torie]

I did the math and I'd guess about 2/3. Holy moly.
This sure is the Micheal McCaul Lifetime Employment Act.

It is probably not a coincidence that McCaul was the lead Congressional Republican coordinating the map between TX Congressional Rs and state legislative Rs that were drawing the maps and the fact that he managed to end up with a much more rural (but rural areas that know him) and safe district which will re-elect him as long as he wants, whereas a lot of the other vulnerable TX suburban Rs still have relatively more suburban districts that should be pretty safe, but where it is at least theoretically possible they may not be by the end of the decade (TX-24, TX-3, TX-22).

I was not aware that McCaul was the lead coordinator, but it does make a lot of sense. Merely looking at the map, it's pretty clear that Micheal McCaul looked out for the interests of Micheal McCaul.
Also, I joked earlier about this being 1990s gerrymandering tactics being back, but then, I saw the lines in Denton County...
What goes around does come around.
The precinct in which I lived for 8 years is now in a CD that borders New Mexico.

All roads lead to Rome, and via the Brazos notch to boot.

[Torie]

Mike McCaul may be a Pubmandering genius, but I don't see a second performing Hispanic CD in the Houston area, that our very own Tim Turner was able to draw at 50% HCVAP, thus triggering Gingles. Instead, Chairman Mike left Sheila Jackson Lee alone, when her district should have been converted to a performing Hispanic CD, like I did. LULAC should sue immediately!  

[Torie]

Mike McCaul may be a Pubmandering genius, but I don't see a second performing Hispanic CD in the Houston area, that our very own Tim Turner was able to draw at 50% HCVAP, thus triggering Gingles. Instead, Chairman Mike left Sheila Jackson Lee alone, when her district should have been converted to a performing Hispanic CD, like I did. LULAC should sue immediately!  

You can keep her district as a performing African American opportunity district and also add a 2nd separate Hispanic district. So yes, they should sue, but that would realistically mean TX-38 would become the new Hispanic district, not TX-18, while TX-29 would take more Hispanics that are mostly cracked and outvoted by white Rs in TX-36 and TX-2, both of which include a lot of Hispanic majority areas on the fringes of the eastern part of Houston.

I think I may edit the map in DRA to show how that can be done.

Unless TX-07 becomes the second performing Hispanic CD, that means the Dems are getting an extra seat, no?

[Torie]

Basically, there doesn't seem to be enough Latinos that there's a ironclad argument for a second seat.
There will be one in 2030, but in 2020 it's more unclear. TX GOPers have the space to defend the map they have made.

There are plenty of Latinos in the Houston area for 2 Hispanic seats (there were actually plenty in 2010 as well!). See the map I just posted. I could have gotten the Hispanic population %s even higher if I were spending more time on it, changing more districts and drawing a map from scratch rather than just editing a few districts in the R proposal. Probably the way to get the highest Hispanic population percentage on the new west-side Hispanic VRA district would be to include some of the heavily Hispanic areas in southwest Houston which are currently in TX-09 & TX-07, which I left entirely untouched. And I was still able to easily draw 2 2/3+ Hispanic districts in a very short amount of time with no real effort required.

Oh, I don't doubt it's possible.
But whether or not such a seat can be drawn is different than if such a district will be drawn. It is possible to draw an extra black seat in Mississippi even in 2010, but I don't see such a district on the map today, and the drawing of such a district in 2020 is a very dubious proposition unless the votes for it exist in the legislature (Translation: it's not happening).
Overwhelming numbers of a group is enough to oblige the drawing of such a district, even over the wishes of the state government; the critical mass to force an R trifecta into drawing a second Latino seat will be there in 2030, but it's far from a certain bet in 2020.

I know no instance where a Gingles seat could be drawn (a "compact" 50% CVAP minority seat), that was not due to a gerrymander screwing the subject minority out of a seat. Do you?
If one blows off that metric, one is betting that either the Blacks v. Hispanics case will not be litigated, or SCOTUS will water down Gingles. The thing is, is that per Gingles, in Houston the blacks are legally entitled to but one seat, and Hispanics two. The Pub map is the opposite. That seems crazy to me. I don't know what I am missing.

[Torie]

Basically, there doesn't seem to be enough Latinos that there's a ironclad argument for a second seat.
There will be one in 2030, but in 2020 it's more unclear. TX GOPers have the space to defend the map they have made.

There are plenty of Latinos in the Houston area for 2 Hispanic seats (there were actually plenty in 2010 as well!). See the map I just posted. I could have gotten the Hispanic population %s even higher if I were spending more time on it, changing more districts and drawing a map from scratch rather than just editing a few districts in the R proposal. Probably the way to get the highest Hispanic population percentage on the new west-side Hispanic VRA district would be to include some of the heavily Hispanic areas in southwest Houston which are currently in TX-09 & TX-07, which I left entirely untouched. And I was still able to easily draw 2 2/3+ Hispanic districts in a very short amount of time with no real effort required.

Oh, I don't doubt it's possible.
But whether or not such a seat can be drawn is different than if such a district will be drawn. It is possible to draw an extra black seat in Mississippi even in 2010, but I don't see such a district on the map today, and the drawing of such a district in 2020 is a very dubious proposition unless the votes for it exist in the legislature (Translation: it's not happening).
Overwhelming numbers of a group is enough to oblige the drawing of such a district, even over the wishes of the state government; the critical mass to force an R trifecta into drawing a second Latino seat will be there in 2030, but it's far from a certain bet in 2020.

I know no instance where a Gingles seat could be drawn (a "compact" 50% CVAP minority seat), that was not due to a gerrymander screwing the subject minority out of a seat. Do you?
If one blows off that metric, one is betting that either the Blacks v. Hispanics case will not be litigated, or SCOTUS will water down Gingles. The thing is, is that per Gingles, in Houston the blacks are legally entitled to but one seat, and Hispanics two. The Pub map is the opposite. That seems crazy to me. I don't know what I am missing.

There were cases of black Democrats in state legislatures teaming up with Republicans to add VRA seats, but I don't know to what extent that is applicable here, because some of that history precedes the decision that put in place the Gingles test.

Adding VRA seats is different than not adding VRA seats, but allocating them to the "wrong" minority.

[Torie]

It "should" have converted a black seat into an Hispanic one. It is a painful process given history. But the Charlie Rangel black seat is now gone in NYC, converted to an Hispanic one. That is going to happen more and more, outside the South. When Hispanics move in, blacks tend to move out, to make what I think is an accurate if not politically correct statement.

This has been a "thing" for a long time. 30 years ago I remember an article perhaps in the WSJ but maybe not, about some politically blacks in Miami being distressed that Cubans were moving in en mass. Their perceived path to "progress" on which a launch  had been made was being slammed shut, was their perception.

Michael Barone I think had it right as he predicted 30 years ago. As time goes by, the more Hispanics seem to be like Italians. It is almost uncanny.

[Torie]

The Hispanics should file a VRA suit with the following counts, listed in order of likelihood of success on the merits:

1. The failure to draw a second performing Hispanic CD in Houston that is triggered by Gingles.

2. The drawing of an Hispanic CD (TX-35) running from SA to Austin, in lieu of a second nested Hispanic CD in Bexar County (Gingles CD's that can be drawn compactly must be drawn compactly and not gerrymandered to take in disparate communities of interest.

3. The TX-28 and TX-15 Fajita strips again were drawn in lieu of compact CD's thereby unnecessarily taking in disparate communities of interest, and should be struck for the same reasons as TX-35.

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/alexazura/status/1450201263535271943

Currently there are 33 districts with a majority HCVAP.

28 are underpopulated by a total of 558K, equivalent to almost three districts.

Five are overpopulated by 144K. 81K of this in in HD-117 on the far west side of San Antonio. HD-124 in San Antonio is also slightly overpopulated by 3K. The other five HCVAP majority districts in San Antonio are underpopulated by 61K. HD-117 is stripped of the northern part of the district increasing the HCVAP by nine points. The most populous Bexar districts under the plan are HD-121 and HD-122 in the northern part of the county (and not majority HCVAP). An argument that majority HCVAP districts were overpopulated deliberately or otherwise does not hold water.

Only one of the 13 districts in South Texas is overpopulated (HD-40 in Edinburg). South Texas should lose a district, but instead the districts are underpopulated in the House plan. This is a systemic underpopulation of HCVAP majority districts.

HD-32 is dropped from 50.6% HCVAP to 42.0% because it is partially pushed out of Nueces County.

HD-76 is eliminated in El Paso because El Paso is not entitled to five representatives.

To the extent that some majority HCVAP districts are overpopulated it is because the legislature failed to comply with Texas Constitution and all districts in the county are overpopulated, but the districts are not out of line relative to other districts in the county.

There seem to be a lot of Pub unforced errors here. Dumbasses.

[Torie]

The suit is frivolous.

[Torie]

Bexar can certainly have two Hispanic CD's nested in Bexar and arguably the VRA requires that rather than an Hispanic seat running from Austin to San Antonio.



https://davesredistricting.org/join/f1b8563b-df97-4a1b-b068-99cca48613e4