2020 Texas Redistricting thread

[Stuart98]

But doesn't this get rid of the Hispanic district straddling San Antonio and Austin?  So it's not a net gain in Hispanic opportunities. 

This particular map does, but it's definitely possible to keep the four fajita set-up here while preserving something like the old 35th and having a San Antonio centered Hispanic majority district.

[Stuart98]

Is Texas likelier to have 39 seats or 38?

My estimate a couple days ago suggests that Texas is more likely to have 39 seats, with seat #39 being the 432nd seat apportioned.

430. CA-52
431. IL-17
432. TX-39
433. MT-02
434. FL-29
435. AL-07
____
436. NY-26
437. MN-08
438. OH-16
439. CA-53
440. RI-02
441. ID-03

[Stuart98]

Is Texas likelier to have 39 seats or 38?

My estimate a couple days ago suggests that Texas is more likely to have 39 seats, with seat #39 being the 432nd seat apportioned.

430. CA-52
431. IL-17
432. TX-39
433. MT-02
434. FL-29
435. AL-07
____
436. NY-26
437. MN-08
438. OH-16
439. CA-53
440. RI-02
441. ID-02

Do you mean ID-03?

Whoops, right.

[Stuart98]

Tried making a nasty R gerrymander.

Seems VRA compliant from what I can tell, though probably lumps a bunch of incumbents together and would be non-viable for that reason.

Insets:
Austin/San Antonio:


Houston:


DFW:


Clinton carried 15 districts, Trump carried 24 in 2016. Pretty sure Trump carried the 15th in 2020 but Biden still carried the 37th.

6th and 3rd might not last the whole decade but given DFW's trends that's unavoidable. The D vote sink in Austin was necessary to prevent the whole area from turning into a dummymander. All districts other than the 6th and 3rd (and maybe the 15th and 37th, with whatever the hell is going on in the RGV) should be safe for the whole decade.

[Stuart98]

Does anyone think this map is a gerrymander?

Yes.

Why does the 31st contain Wise instead of more of Denton? Why does the 34th contain Rockwall instead of more of Dallas? Why is the purple district going outside of the immediate DFW metro when there's plenty more of Collin it could take? Why is the 37th snaking the way it is when you don't need to be nearly that snakey to be >60% hispanic by total population and plurality hispanic by CVAP (and I'm not sure that 37th is even plurality hispanic, for that matter).

This is not only a gerrymander, but an extremely transparent one at that.

[Stuart98]

RIP literally everyone's maps

[Stuart98]

Any chance the republicans don't draw an Austin Sink, maybe hoping for a post-trump suburban trend reversion ?

If they want to dummymander, then yes.

The current lines in metro Austin would cost the GOP literally five seats in 2024 if left unchanged.

[Stuart98]

Fair map, which DRA currently lists as the most proportional and best minority representation map anyone's published for the state.



President 2016



DFW


Houston


Austin/San Antonio


Districts that shifted significantly in 2018 and/or 2020 (using the DRA extender):

3rd: Trump +13.8 -> Cruz +2.5 -> Biden +0.2
7th: Trump +2.5 -> Beto +2.8 -> Biden +3.8
12th: Trump +14.5 -> Cruz +6.5 -> Trump +7.6
15th: Clinton +32.7 -> Beto +30.6 -> Biden +13.6
20th: Clinton +11.1 -> Beto + 17.8 -> Biden +17.4
24th: Trump +14.5 -> Cruz +4.1 -> Trump +2.9
25th: Clinton +18.7 -> Beto +30.9 -> Biden +26.8
26th: Trump +23 -> Cruz +11.9 -> Trump +11.8
28th: Clinton +8.6 -> Biden +5.6 -> Trump +7.4
29th: Trump +4 -> Beto +0.7 -> Trump +5.7
31st: Trump +13.2 -> Cruz +1.9 -> Trump +3.2
32nd: Trump +2.1 -> Beto +6.6 -> Biden +8.8
34th: Clinton +20.2 -> Beto +16.0 -> Biden +1.4
37th: Clinton +0.5 -> Beto +7.9 -> Biden +6.0

District that surprisingly didn't shift?

23rd: Clinton +2.9 -> Beto +8.7 -> Biden +4.3

[Stuart98]

Worth noting that the 15th in my fair map is kinda awkwardly shaped but it manages to be under 90% hispanic by total population, if you're looking for an exclusively urban RGV seat that does that.

[Stuart98]

I completed my revisions to Britain33's map, but I won't post it now in case he or others want to do they own map and try to be more effective for the Pubs. I will post the stats in a moment.

Voila. The goal of course was to get the competitiveness score down to zero, but alas I fell short with a 3 score. Zero I think is possible with a bit more work however, perhaps by adding another county split or two, and a smidgen of more erosity. Alas when the Trump 2020 numbers are available, that zero even if achieved will go away. Sad!

Will the Pubs be up to this task? Inquiring minds want to know. I have faith in their brutality and avarice however.

What's the partisanship of your districts when you run them through the DRA extender (or just the NYT precinct map)?

[Stuart98]

This is very galaxy brain, but would Republicans be able to get away with cracking El Paso between three 60% hispanic double digit Trump seats?


...I need to wash my hands, that was so disgusting to make.

[Stuart98]

https://twitter.com/evanasmith/status/1435367198952931328
Governor Abbott has announced a redistricting special session towards the end of the month.

What is the absolute bare minimum number of seats they can draw for democrats? 8-30?

Well, you need at least two Democrats in Dallas, probably three, and at least one of those is VRA mandated (whether or not 33 is mandated is more iffy), for Houston, you need three VRA seats, and maybe a fourth Democratic sink, in the south you need three Hispanic seats, at least one of which would likely end up as Democratic, you need a VRA seat in El Paso, you need a VRA seat in San Antonio, and at least one sink, preferably 2 on the San Antonio-Austin corridor. The bare minimum seems to be 29-9, but that looks like a pipe dream and would probably involve many seats that turn into instant dummymanders. 27-11 or 26-12 are realistically the max that they'd go, and even that could be iffy. My personal guess is somewhere between 26-12 and 23-15.

I’m very curious as to how the maps get laid, as I honestly think it’s going to be very difficult to gerrymander any democrats away without creating a squid monster map. Then again Texas Republicans are going scorched earth tactics so I wouldn’t put it past them to try an insane map and ignore VRA districts to force a court challenge.

Yeah why would we assume any different.  It's exactly what they did with abortion.  Texas Republicans really seem to be bottom of the GOP barrel in terms of integrity.

It is quite silly to behave as though the TX abortion law has any bearing or gives any clue to how they might behave in redistricting. What is clear is that TX has a long-standing tradition of gerrymandering, in both parties.

The point in bringing up the abortion law is that this session of the Texas Legislature shows they are not afraid of court challenges and fighting precedent

It's a pretty weak argument. It'd be more pertinent to talk about the history of litigation in regards to TX redistricting.
In which case, the most recent precedent on that suggests they won't do very much, if it has any weight at all. (Their post-2012 map preserved VRA districts while drawing some in particularly advantageous manner for Rs - see TX-23)
What does "ignore VRA districts" even mean? Draw a 95% Latino pack along the Rio Grande? Place Midland in TX-23? Precisely how is "insane map" even being defined as?

Things like breaking up Fort Worth and El Paso to an extreme, packing the RGV, splitting El Paso, things like that. And an “insane” map as in a dozen or less democrats

If that's the definition, then I don't see anything happening along those lines. (I'm least confident about the RGV packing - I think it's a possibly plausible thing, unlike all the others)
Fort Worth doesn't need to be broken up for an effective gerrymander, El Paso has NEVER been broken up or split on US House level, and packing the RGV still has a lot of legal uncertainty (something TX GOPers probably want to avoid - the only time a GOPmander that a general election had been held under, was partially struck down due to the RGV aspects of it).
D gains in Texas' suburbs, the necessity of maintaining Hispanic VRA seats, and the need to accomodate incumbents make a realistic map keeping Ds to 12 seats or less very hard to attain. It'd be very stupid for GOPers to split up El Paso anyway. All that would do is make TX-23 more D. In fact, I did do a Dmander that sent TX-16 all the way to Odessa, which I used to make TX-23 Lean D at worst. Splitting up El Paso is a D gerrymander sort of thing - the GOPmander thing to do is to pack it, because it is a big repository of (effectively wasted) D votes.

I literally posted an effective El Paso crack earlier on this page.

If the TX GOP had the will, they could pass an 8-30 map. Some seats might fall later in the decade to be sure, but they'd probably rather take the risk. The only D seats that need to be drawn are one sink each in Austin, San Antonio, and the RGV; two seats in DFW; three seats in Houston. Everything else can be cracked with the rurals.

[Stuart98]

I literally posted an effective El Paso crack earlier on this page.

If the TX GOP had the will, they could pass an 8-30 map. Some seats might fall later in the decade to be sure, but they'd probably rather take the risk. The only D seats that need to be drawn are one sink each in Austin, San Antonio, and the RGV; two seats in DFW; three seats in Houston. Everything else can be cracked with the rurals.

A map that does not have a district that can more or less reliably elect the Latino candidate of choice in El Paso County is illegal. 60% Hispanic is not a meaningful threshold for anything.
The most likely outcome in the real world if TX GOPers cracked El Paso would be the GOP map getting thrown out with the court drawing its own map and imposing it on the state.

Texas pubs haven't exactly shown themselves to be risk averse, they've got friendly courts, and they've got an argument that El Paso just being one part of a continuous swathe of majority Hispanic counties means it shouldn't be treated as a differently entity from the more conservative Hispanic areas adjoining it. They can even argue that they create a new Hispanic opportunity district in the process.

[Stuart98]

And the Supreme Court has held since Wesberry v. Sanders that congressional districts have to be of as close to equal population as possible. Any map which tries to overpopulate Democratic districts is being instantly struck down. Texas Republicans are evil, but they aren't stupid.

[Stuart98]

And the Supreme Court has held since Wesberry v. Sanders that congressional districts have to be of as close to equal population as possible. Any map which tries to overpopulate Democratic districts is being instantly struck down. Texas Republicans are evil, but they aren't stupid.

Do we actually think SCOTUS has any integrity at this point?

They are not so brazen as to throw out one person one vote because they feel like it. It's a partisan court to be sure, but they're not that far gone yet.

[Stuart98]

Good map for dems compared to what we could have gotten. Also an incredibly ugly gerrymander.

[Stuart98]

One consequence of this map: Jessica Cisneros' chances of unseating Cuellar are alive and well (and stronger than on the old map, perhaps). Really thought they were gonna remove TX-28 from metro San Antonio to shore up Cuellar in the primary.

[Stuart98]

https://twitter.com/zach_solomon1/status/1442507576512552968
Direct DRA link