2020 Texas Redistricting thread

[Torie]

I  drew a less “lite” Pubmander of the Texas metroplex, that entails a “sex-chop” of Dallas County, but tried to respect municipal lines, and not go too wild elsewhere with chops and erosity. I am curious if anyone has an opinion as to its dummymander potential. I still have avoided the cardinal sin of cross chops between counties, unless perhaps driven by the VRA (not applicable here).

The idea as always with the party controlling the lines is to try to draw something that does not look ridiculous that would generate blowback and be a poster child used to jettison the process and/or the map at the earliest opportunity. That of course is not a thing in New York, where the voters are used to being abused, and expect the worst, and often get it, and sometimes get off on the chutzpah of it all (cf the existing CD map for the NYC area which was actually drawn by a court, but I digress). I still wonder if the GOP will be foolish enough to try to snatch the Hamilton County, Ohio based CD from the Dems. If they do, they should be punished, and then punished some more. I’m also awaiting the Dem map in Illinois outside of Chicagoland. That I suspect while also be suitable for framing as a poster child for reform.




I also played around with the Rio Grande Valley to make a "Pub-nap" of my TX-08 more likely, again while still making the map still look "reasonable." The "solution" there was to add to TX-08 some rural counties, in order to keep the City of Matamoros [Brownsville] at once  together and not in the Cameron County portion of the TX-08 (i.e., to try to max the Dem vote sink efficacy of the adjacent TX-07, which included at the margins giving some of the more Pub areas of Hildalgo to TX-06, although that CD was not a prime target).

Addendum: I modified the Rio Grande part of the map to lose the county split of San Patricio, and with that, Trump 2016 lost TX-08 by 1%, and Trump 2020 won it by 4.5% (I manually calculated the numbers for 2020 in the TX-08 share of Cameron County). I also made the lines more erose to make TX-37 more Hispanic, in an effort to make it a performing Hispanic CD.  It is on the cusp with the stale 2015 census estimates. The whites and blacks and Hispanics are oddly arrayed, with some drastic variations, where the lines get erose.

[Sol]

TX-07 might be an illegal latino pack?

[DC Al Fine]

What does "cross chop between counties" mean?

[Tintrlvr]

What does "cross chop between counties" mean?

He means two districts that both include parts of the same two counties. (I personally don't think they are necessarily wrong in all circumstances; it's more like a good rule of thumb to avoid them but in some circumstances they are justified or even the ideal solution, since counties themselves are not always logical units of community interest.)

[Torie]

What does "cross chop between counties" mean?

In two adjacent counties, both CD's are in both counties.

In response to Sol, all the Hispanics are along the River, all are performing Hispanic CD's by the numbers and otherwise (including my TX-08), there is 80 miles of empty land until we find human habitation again, so no harm, so foul. So I don't see a VRA risk myself, but if you do, we can just agree to disagree on that. I don't think those hideous Fajita strips were ever required by the VRA in fact.

[Torie]

I put the same map up, with mostly the same comments, at RRH, for comment, and one regular referred me to his map, which generated this response back from me, for your entertainment.

The one below? That map I would file away into the “poster child” file, although we both channeled the bisection of Cameron County as part of the Pub-nap of the CD along the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea is when the other party says hideous gerrymander, I am as made as hell, it’s time to lash back, and I am going to sue, get something on the ballot, etc., the party holding the pen, parries that thrust with what on earth are you talking about? We don’t see a gerrymander here at all, it’s a good government map, it’s all about respecting COI’s (we have our talking points for every line on the map, we respected municipal lines, and see we gave you a bone here (c.f., Ft. Bend County in my map), because we, as always, are fair and balanced, unlike what you predatory jerks would be like if you controlled the lines).

So far, I don’t think I am making much progress as to my little project with you guys, but I accept full responsibility for my miserable fail at that. I actually like all my character flaws at this point in my life. It is like your smelly old shoe, that you still wear, because it is just so comfortable a fit 🙂

Trump 2016 lost my TX-08 by 3 points by the way, close to a neutral PVI for that election. It will be interesting to find out down the line how Trump 2020 did within those lines when the data becomes available.

https://i.imgur.com/ubxUrKf.png

[Former President tack50]

For fun, here is a fair State Senate map



https://davesredistricting.org/join/1c80cadb-d180-44ce-bc34-b87a286a3e93

There are per DRA 14 Republican districts, 9 Democratic districts and 8 competitive districts

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I put the same map up, with mostly the same comments, at RRH, for comment, and one regular referred me to his map, which generated this response back from me, for your entertainment.

The one below? That map I would file away into the “poster child” file, although we both channeled the bisection of Cameron County as part of the Pub-nap of the CD along the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea is when the other party says hideous gerrymander, I am as made as hell, it’s time to lash back, and I am going to sue, get something on the ballot, etc., the party holding the pen, parries that thrust with what on earth are you talking about? We don’t see a gerrymander here at all, it’s a good government map, it’s all about respecting COI’s (we have our talking points for every line on the map, we respected municipal lines, and see we gave you a bone here (c.f., Ft. Bend County in my map), because we, as always, are fair and balanced, unlike what you predatory jerks would be like if you controlled the lines).

So far, I don’t think I am making much progress as to my little project with you guys, but I accept full responsibility for my miserable fail at that. I actually like all my character flaws at this point in my life. It is like your smelly old shoe, that you still wear, because it is just so comfortable a fit 🙂

Trump 2016 lost my TX-08 by 3 points by the way, close to a neutral PVI for that election. It will be interesting to find out down the line how Trump 2020 did within those lines when the data becomes available.

https://i.imgur.com/ubxUrKf.png

This map has the looks of a continuity map of sorts from the 2010s map, like how the 2003-2005 map had the looks of a continuity map from the 1997-2003 one.

[beesley]

https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::ce5db554-f503-450d-8419-cc3f7d66b22b

Could I ask what people think of this 2022 scenario? I'm not sure that it's legally compliant. It will never happen, but I think this is a fair map according to my definition of fair. The partisan figures are 2016 President, so 32 should now be Dem and 27 probably GOP now. Van Duyne, Nehls and Cuellar would probably be worst hit by this map.

[Brittain33]

Is that two Hispanic districts in Houston - 29 and the blue one with two lobes on top of 18?

[beesley]

Is that two Hispanic districts in Houston - 29 and the blue one with two lobes on top of 18?

Yeah - 29 is maj Hispanic, while 37 (the other one) is only plurality Hispanic CVAP. Interestingly it's a McCain-Obama-Clinton-Biden district.

[WIResident]

I drew up a map of Texas, trying to add more competitive districts.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/45b94b38-2be3-40c7-b42b-9c1fe1ba0106

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Thoughts on the choices this map made and the overall impact this had on the map overall?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/886aa4fd-4622-4a21-a446-14f9354f8f04

[beesley]

I drew up a map of Texas, trying to add more competitive districts.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/45b94b38-2be3-40c7-b42b-9c1fe1ba0106

I counted 8 competitive districts, was that right?

Thoughts on the choices this map made and the overall impact this had on the map overall?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/886aa4fd-4622-4a21-a446-14f9354f8f04

I don't know what your choices were that led to this but I feel there are a lot of districts that just hoover up the remaining space with no real COIs or anything. Having said that I think your map is similar to mine in a lot of ways.

[Torie]

After contorting the lines, and then contorting them some more, I was able to squeeze out a clearly performing Hispanic CD entirely within Dallas County (36.5% HCAVP, with a 30% Trump 2016 vote in TX-37), and a second clearly performing Hispanic CD in Houston (40.7% HCVAP with a 25% Trump 2016 vote in TX-20). A bonus point is that revised the boundaries between TX-21 and TX-18 to follow more naturally municipal and geographic boundaries (e.g., a river), so that it would not be deemed an illegal Hispanic pack not created to create a performing minority CD elsewhere. That got the HCVAP percentage in TX-21 down to 50.5% HCVAP from about 61%.

Under my interpretation of the current iteration of the VRA, if one does not stay close to Goldilocks (only gerrymander to help minorities and not to waste their votes for partisan reasons), you ran a substantial risk of going down in legal flames. Thus, I think the borders between black and Hispanic CD’s can be contorted within a relative compact area to create another performing CD for one or both groups, but if you have an excess minority population next to a white CD, you had better have lines between them that hew to non- partisan criteria, or revise them to so hew at least to the point that the pack is removed.   That is my grand unified theory of it all.

Yes I was incentivized to tackle this matter because another poster above got close to drawing a second performing Hispanic CD in Houston which was a wake up call. To the extent other data sets are used to draw minority CD's under the VRA, to the extent that allows smoothing out the lines, that should be. As it is, the contortions are necessary given the current data set used by the DRA redistricting tool.






Below is another iteration of Houston that does a better job of cleaning out the lines.

[Sol]

Here's a pic from the Houston area from a fair map I've been playing with:



link (ignore the rest of the map--it's not finished yet and I want to draw several different versions with different VRA districts)

The Green District is 55% Latino on CVAP and nearly 70% on total VAP, the periwinkle is 41% Latino on CVAP (plurality) and majority on total pop.

Purple is a Black influence district (strong majority on CVAP, plurality on total numbers) and red is an extremely diverse (maybe the most in the country?) coalition seat which is plurality Black.

Yellow is minority-majority and narrowly Trump 16, while orange is a Clinton 2016 district by a fair amount.

Everything else is safe R (though cyan is technically majority minority)

[beesley]

Here's a pic from the Houston area from a fair map I've been playing with:



link (ignore the rest of the map--it's not finished yet and I want to draw several different versions with different VRA districts)

The Green District is 55% Latino on CVAP and nearly 70% on total VAP, the periwinkle is 41% Latino on CVAP (plurality) and majority on total pop.

Purple is a Black influence district (strong majority on CVAP, plurality on total numbers) and red is an extremely diverse (maybe the most in the country?) coalition seat which is plurality Black.

Yellow is minority-majority and narrowly Trump 16, while orange is a Clinton 2016 district by a fair amount.

Everything else is safe R (though cyan is technically majority minority)

Quite similar to mine, if you scroll up. The main difference is that all of maj-min Fort Bend + Waller is in the one district in mine.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I don't know what your choices were that led to this but I feel there are a lot of districts that just hoover up the remaining space with no real COIs or anything. Having said that I think your map is similar to mine in a lot of ways.

Any districts that specifically come to mind here?

[beesley]

I don't know what your choices were that led to this but I feel there are a lot of districts that just hoover up the remaining space with no real COIs or anything. Having said that I think your map is similar to mine in a lot of ways.

Any districts that specifically come to mind here?

District 19 from the coast, through Bryan to past Waco. I know I had a district that went from the coast to near Austin, and another from the coast to Hays county, but it seems a bit far. I also didn't like how parts of Bexar county were attached to districts 35 and 38, which left other areas being attached to 31 and 32. It depends what your upper limit for Hispanic CVAP is, I suppose. If you had kept Travis to two districts it would've been more logical in my view, then 34 could've hoovered up North Bexar and 35 eaten into 16. The final one I'm not as keen on is District 8. If you have to go northwards I would've put the rest of Tarrant into a district with parts of Denton and the remaining parts of Denton with the OK border, or mixed it all up with District 12 and had another Tarrant only district.

I hope I haven't been too critical! I'm sure you could find objections to my map.

After contorting the lines, and then contorting them some more, I was able to squeeze out a clearly performing Hispanic CD entirely within Dallas County (36.5% HCAVP, with a 30% Trump 2016 vote in TX-37), and a second clearly performing Hispanic CD in Houston (40.7% HCVAP with a 25% Trump 2016 vote in TX-20). A bonus point is that revised the boundaries between TX-21 and TX-18 to follow more naturally municipal and geographic boundaries (e.g., a river), so that it would not be deemed an illegal Hispanic pack not created to create a performing minority CD elsewhere. That got the HCVAP percentage in TX-21 down to 50.5% HCVAP from about 61%.

Under my interpretation of the current iteration of the VRA, if one does not stay close to Goldilocks (only gerrymander to help minorities and not to waste their votes for partisan reasons), you ran a substantial risk of going down in legal flames. Thus, I think the borders between black and Hispanic CD’s can be contorted within a relative compact area to create another performing CD for one or both groups, but if you have an excess minority population next to a white CD, you had better have lines between them that hew to non- partisan criteria, or revise them to so hew at least to the point that the pack is removed.   That is my grand unified theory of it all.

Yes I was incentivized to tackle this matter because another poster above got close to drawing a second performing Hispanic CD in Houston which was a wake up call. To the extent other data sets are used to draw minority CD's under the VRA, to the extent that allows smoothing out the lines, that should be. As it is, the contortions are necessary given the current data set used by the DRA redistricting tool.

Was that me you're referring to? If it was, your map is probably better for CVAP numbers, just depends whether you can better configure 24. I think yours is more likely to be compliant than mine anyway.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

District 19 from the coast, through Bryan to past Waco. I know I had a district that went from the coast to near Austin, and another from the coast to Hays county, but it seems a bit far. I also didn't like how parts of Bexar county were attached to districts 35 and 38, which left other areas being attached to 31 and 32. It depends what your upper limit for Hispanic CVAP is, I suppose. If you had kept Travis to two districts it would've been more logical in my view, then 34 could've hoovered up North Bexar and 35 eaten into 16. The final one I'm not as keen on is District 8. If you have to go northwards I would've put the rest of Tarrant into a district with parts of Denton and the remaining parts of Denton with the OK border, or mixed it all up with District 12 and had another Tarrant only district.

I hope I haven't been too critical! I'm sure you could find objections to my map.

I think the source of those districts was ultimately me amping up my usual tendency to segregate urban and rural, combined with my tendency to want CDs solely within Fort Bend, Denton, and Collin. I also found a whole county CD combination taking in Central Texas, so that pushed the Williamson CD south into Travis.
I was wanting to create a ring of exurban districts around the major suburban counties, so I had a northern one, a western one, and a southern one.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

thoughts on this take on Southeast Texas?
https://davesredistricting.org/join/0271fb4f-bd99-4bd4-810a-903bf5279b79

[Torie]

Your minority CD's are certainly nicely shaped, but that Cyan CD that you had and that lime green chop into Harris from the east disturbed me, so while I kept your  most aesthetically pleasing minority CD shapes, I did mischief around them. Those north Harris suburbs near the Woodlands in Montgomery County should really be together with the Woodlands, and thus that I think is where the major chop in to Harris should occur personally.

It of course is not going to be drawn that way by the Pubs, since it "unnecessarily" gives away the Dems the high SES Houston west side CD, and makes the CD in the NW corner of Harris too marginal. The Pubs' quota for the Dems this time is 14 seats.  While trying to minimize VRA risk, I had trouble meeting that goal myself with my don't make it too ugly maps, and my Pubmander of the south coast CD only had Trump 2020 winning by 4 points, meaning it is at most only tilt Pub. It sure would be nice to have a crystal ball, and know where high SES white votes, Hispanic and Asian voters are going to trend going forward. In Houston by the way looking at the 2020 swing map, it seems that not only the Hispanics, but also the Asians swing to Trump 2020, as the high SES whites decamped.

[ProgressiveModerate]

My attempt



Majority Hispanic:

15, 16, 18, 21, 23, 28, 29, 34, 35

Majority Black:

9, 30

Majority Minorirty:

7, 22, 17, 33

Closest R Districts using 2016 numbers:

23: Trump + 13.2
15: Trump + 14.5
27: Trump + 15.5
21: Trump + 15.6
10: Trump + 16.3
22: Trump + 16.9
17: Trump + 19.7
11: Trump + 20.7
6: Trump + 20.8
4: Trump + 22.7
25: Trump + 22.7
39: Trump + 22.8
26: Trump + 23.4
3: Trump + 24.8
31: Trump + 25.2
14: Trump + 27.6
5: Trump + 27.8
2: Trump + 28.0
24: Trump + 28.4
------------------
Everything beyond this point will be safe for the decade

Dallas and Houston zoom-ins:





Overall, I'm happy; I do think I could make RGV a bit better and would like to try to reduce the bacon strips in North Dallas. I think it might honestly be worth it to concieve a 4th seat to Ds in Dallas; it's a  small reward big-risk sort of thing for the GOP

[Sol]

Here's a pic from the Houston area from a fair map I've been playing with:



link (ignore the rest of the map--it's not finished yet and I want to draw several different versions with different VRA districts)

The Green District is 55% Latino on CVAP and nearly 70% on total VAP, the periwinkle is 41% Latino on CVAP (plurality) and majority on total pop.

Purple is a Black influence district (strong majority on CVAP, plurality on total numbers) and red is an extremely diverse (maybe the most in the country?) coalition seat which is plurality Black.

Yellow is minority-majority and narrowly Trump 16, while orange is a Clinton 2016 district by a fair amount.

Everything else is safe R (though cyan is technically majority minority)

Quite similar to mine, if you scroll up. The main difference is that all of maj-min Fort Bend + Waller is in the one district in mine.

Yeah, I think we have a similar philosophy--I just kept Waller out of the Houston area as it's my understanding that it's a bit more of the fringes of the Houston area compared to Montgomery, Fort Bend, or Brazoria.

[lfromnj]

The Texas GOP originally had a plan with only 1 DFW sink, it actually would have worked as only TX 32 flips but every other district would stay R.