2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: South Carolina

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

some big questions out of the Palmetto state here - what to do with Joe Cunningham? How would the black VRA seat change? Will variable population growth between regions (or lack thereof) have any impact on the lines?

[iceman]

I think It's fairly easy to make a 6-1 Gerrymander of SC. Just remove a little bit of the democratic areas in Charleston County then move Georgetown county into SC-01. Add more black precincts to SC-07 since Horry can outvote all counties in that district.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/39d778e2-6378-4d83-b537-ff9385d8bdb1
I made this effort at a fair map. SC-06 is still under the functional control of the black community, though it takes a massive PVI hit. SC-07 takes in Charleston suburb areas as SC-01 takes in some black belt areas and all of Beaufort County, becoming R+1.45 and voting Clinton by 1 and a half points. SC-05 is converted into a Democratic leaning district at D+3.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I think It's fairly easy to make a 6-1 Gerrymander of SC. Just remove a little bit of the democratic areas in Charleston County then move Georgetown county into SC-01. Add more black precincts to SC-07 since Horry can outvote all counties in that district.

Complication: what happens to SC-06? Turns out it takes in white areas in Charleston County, which leads to it has to give up most of its share of Richland County, which means that said county has to be carved up or else you put Joe Wilson in danger. Moreover, the areas that SC-06 does have to take in in Richland are overwhelmingly black or else it is no longer black majority, which is not something the GOP would want. So this means that white liberals are no longer placed with black Dems, which has another nasty cascading impact for GOP incumbents.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/c1f1fa2f-8666-476d-9a06-95b67cf30018

[voice_of_resistance]

Yeah I think Cunningham is in a better position redistricting wise than most would think. To the northeast, he's boxed in by Myrtle Beach/Horry, where they have wanted their own seat for a while, and won't like it very much if they tentacle their way to Charleston suburbs. To the west, he has the black district SC-06 that can't lose too much AA population otherwise there would likely be a court challenge and would likely endanger other GOP incumbents as Punxsutawney Phil has said. And finally, to the south, is the Atlantic Ocean which is a hard wall for his seat. All I think they can do is maybe get rid of some of the Dem parts of Charleston and snake it in to majority-white rural precints in SC-06.

[lfromnj]

Yeah I think Cunningham is in a better position redistricting wise than most would think. To the northeast, he's boxed in by Myrtle Beach/Horry, where they have wanted their own seat for a while, and won't like it very much if they tentacle their way to Charleston suburbs. To the west, he has the black district SC-06 that can't lose too much AA population otherwise there would likely be a court challenge and would likely endanger other GOP incumbents as Punxsutawney Phil has said. And finally, to the south, is the Atlantic Ocean which is a hard wall for his seat. All I think they can do is maybe get rid of some of the Dem parts of Charleston and snake it in to majority-white rural precints in SC-06.

Yeah I could see some shifts(population mostly) that help out the GOP here but I don't think it will be Safe R by the end of the 2020's if trends continue.

[Oryxslayer]

Yeah the GOP is in a difficult situation regarding SC01. The entire state south-east of Columbia has a democratic geographic advantage. This advantage is solidified by Myrtle Beach having it's own incumbent who would like keep a seat dominated by the GOp parts of Florence+Horry. The present SC01 is therefore trapped between a rock - the VRA seat, and a hard place - the ocean. This leaves the GOP with four options regarding the seat:

1) Charleston is too dangerous to be kept whole. Horry+Republican half of Florence+Marion+Georgetown take in as much of their side of Charleston and her suburbs as they can. Then the rest gets sent to Beaufort then up through the Belt to Aiken. This doesn't necessary improve the partisanship of either seat for the GOP, but the reorientation makes both base vote dominated by polarized Whites and AAs, rather than waffle-y suburbs.

2) Keep the same seat, but just get more picky. Drop a number of the blue precincts in Charleston into the the 6th, and pull in some red precincts from her neighbors. This scenario would make everyone's borders a lot worse. There's no guarantee though if the 1st would remain Safe R, and this is essentially the GOP banking on Cunningham being a one-off.

3) Screw the wishes of Rice, Charleston Needs a GOP anchor. This option would be far easier to sell if Cunningham holds on, and there is no GOP rep in Charleston to scream that they are getting drawn away. The AA seat now leaves Charleston from the left rather than the right. It would be very much a Twin Cities seat, rather than a Belt+cities seat. Florence would be pulled out of the 7th. Beaufort would be thrown in one of the north seats via a arm along the border.

In all three of the above scenarios, the inland CD's would have to get more 'strippy' as they head down to the belt to take in more AAs. This is because the 6th in both scenarios would be expected to take in more voters in Charleston than she is dropping elsewhere. The GOP desperately wants that 6-1 after all.

4) In the event Cunningham holds on, and the GOP cannot find a way to square the circle in a way that is acceptable to all interests and can survive a court challenge, there is always the concession. This could occur in the form of a GOP-leaning battleground seat, or they could draw a second AA seat that kills Cunningham off in the primary. I should stress though that this is the last case scenario, and will not occur unless 1 through 3 fail to satisfy GOP politicos. It is only an option because SC is a horrible state to map because of the population distribution and polarization between the Coast, Belt, and Highlands.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Yeah the GOP is in a difficult situation regarding SC01. The entire state south-east of Colombia has a democratic geographic advantage. This advantage is solidified by Myrtle Beach having it's own incumbent who would like keep a seat dominated by the GOp parts of Florence+Horry. The present SC01 is therefore trapped between a rock - the VRA seat, and a hard place - the ocean. This leaves the GOP with four options regarding the seat:

1) Charleston is too dangerous to be kept whole. Horry+Republican half of Florence+Marion+Georgetown take in as much of their side of Charleston and her suburbs as they can. Then the rest gets sent to Beaufort then up through the Belt to Aiken. This doesn't necessary improve the partisanship of either seat for the GOP, but the reorientation makes both base vote dominated by polarized Whites and AAs, rather than waffle-y suburbs.

2) Keep the same seat, but just get more picky. Drop a number of the blue precincts in Charleston into the the 6th, and pull in some red precincts from her neighbors. This scenario would make everyone's borders a lot worse. There's no guarantee though if the 1st would remain Safe R, and this is essentially the GOP banking on Cunningham being a one-off.

3) Screw the wishes of Rice, Charleston Needs a GOP anchor. This option would be far easier to sell if Cunningham holds on, and there is no GOP rep in Charleston to scream that they are getting drawn away. The AA seat now leaves Charleston from the left rather than the right. It would be very much a Twin Cities seat, rather than a Belt+cities seat. Florence would be pulled out of the 7th. Beaufort would be thrown in one of the north seats via a arm along the border.

In all three of the above scenarios, the inland CD's would have to get more 'strippy' as they head down to the belt to take in more AAs. This is because the 6th in both scenarios would be expected to take in more voters in Charleston than she is dropping elsewhere. The GOP desperately wants that 6-1 after all.

4) In the event Cunningham holds on, and the GOP cannot find a way to square the circle in a way that is acceptable to all interests and can survive a court challenge, there is always the concession. This could occur in the form of a GOP-leaning battleground seat, or they could draw a second AA seat that kills Cunningham off in the primary. I should stress though that this is the last case scenario, and will not occur unless 1 through 3 fail to satisfy GOP politicos. It is only an option because SC is a horrible state to map because of the population distribution and polarization between the Coast, Belt, and Highlands.

Do you think that this, https://davesredistricting.org/join/c1f1fa2f-8666-476d-9a06-95b67cf30018, is a "clean" variant of option 2?

[EastAnglianLefty]

In the unlikely event the Republicans did decide to concede a second seat, would they prefer drawing a second black district or a winnable battleground seat?

The latter runs the risk of creating a platform for a white Democrat to run statewide, but the former would be much more difficult to get rid of in future.

[voice_of_resistance]

I think that they would probably draw a second AA seat if they had to do it. It locks in the delegation at 5-2, and prevents SC-02 or SC-05 from ever flipping if they draw a safe Charleston seat to complement the Columbia + belt seat. Furthermore, GOP people have drawn majority black districts to weaken overall Dem power where white Dems are the only statewide potential. Cunningham is a very strong candidate, and if they want to get rid of him, easier to do so with an AA who has no shot statewide vs leaving Cunningham there to build his name brand and expand the SC Dem party beyond its AA base.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I think he'll be back.  He's very charismatic and only lost by 1% in a bad year for House Dems.

That was before the coming gerrymander.

Making the district considerably more Republican than the current SC-1 is a Herculean task.

It is not. The seat is overpopulated, while the neighboring Safe D seat is underpopulated. It makes a lot of sense to take the Democratic parts of this seat and just give them to Clyburn.

This runs head-long into VRA issues - taking in the more Dem parts of the current SC-01 would make SC-06 less black.

SC-6 would still be black enough to be in conformity with VRA

I've tried making a more R version of SC-06 in DRA, using 2018 population and I've struggled mightily making an SC-01 than is considerably more R than the current version.
There's no obvious direction to go and any direction you go makes SC-06 more and more non-black, very fast.
Any further discussion on this ought to be in the Demography board, fyi.

As of now the aim of SC-6 is to grab as many black people as possible, the problem is that the district is not populated enough, it needs to grow, so by definition the share of black people is probably going to decrease.

I decided to test it out again. This is what I got. At best for Rs, this is a PVI movement one point and a half to the right on 2012/2016 figures.
Biggest problem for Rs making SC-01 more R is the fact that it is growing quite fast, so you cannot even dream of putting all Dem-trending, competitive areas in SC-06 even if you wanted to.

[lfromnj]

Fair SC map.
Does split the Charleston metro but Beaufort fits pretty decently with it and keeping a clear black belt seat was important IMO. 2 Clear Coastal districts. One Columbia + Lexington district and One Black belt seat. All the upstate seats are Safe GOP.
Surprisingly Favorable to the D's overall a bit as D's can get 3 Districts. The Columbia and Charleston districts both already voted for Clinton and are trending leftwards. The black belt seat is only Clinton +9 and trending right again though.
Now actually the Charleston metro is almost perfectly 1 seat just like the Columbia metro. In an ideal world I would certainly keep that together. However that means Beaufort and Horry are  effectively going inland into the Black belt and other areas. So I decided to give up on that and just create 2 coastal districts as I found the coastal counties + a bit more was exactly 2 districts.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Fair SC map.
Does split the Charleston metro but Beaufort fits pretty decently with it and keeping a clear black belt seat was important IMO. 2 Clear Coastal districts. One Columbia + Lexington district and One Black belt seat. All the upstate seats are Safe GOP.
Surprisingly Favorable to the D's overall a bit as D's can get 3 Districts. The Columbia and Charleston districts both already voted for Clinton and are trending leftwards. The black belt seat is only Clinton +9 and trending right again though.

I would add Fairfield to the Richland district instead of taking from Aiken

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Richland always gets carved up since we started having a VRA district and it always will be. Back in the 90s when I was a USC grad student, I lived in the 2nd District in downtown Columbia and I could move in a straight line north, south, east, or west to reach the 6th.

[lfromnj]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2ddb8465-02ff-454e-b516-63c3569ed3af
Took the current map and secured the 6-1
Its fairly easily to atleast take care of SC 1 under current trends/coalitions for atleast the first half the decade. SC 1 is pretty much as overpopulated as SC6 is underpopulated.

The harder part is actually SC02 IMO.
SC05 has to take a decent bit of Columbia.

The other option is perhaps take a few black belt counties and then have SC06 take in the most white lib parts of Columbia.

I looked at the old redistricting thread for SC and it seems Horry county is becoming quite a bit Parochial so I don't think the GOP would use it to shore up Charleston.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2ddb8465-02ff-454e-b516-63c3569ed3af
Took the current map and secured the 6-1
Its fairly easily to atleast take care of SC 1 under current trends/coalitions for atleast the first half the decade. SC 1 is pretty much as overpopulated as SC6 is underpopulated.

The harder part is actually SC02 IMO.
SC05 has to take a decent bit of Columbia.

The other option is perhaps take a few black belt counties and then have SC06 take in the most white lib parts of Columbia.

I looked at the old redistricting thread for SC and it seems Horry county is becoming quite a bit Parochial so I don't think the GOP would use it to shore up Charleston.

I thought your map was quite a bit elegant but I wanted to see if the 2nd could be made more "least-change".
https://davesredistricting.org/join/6ec8803e-1b20-4dad-b8f6-52d284af28a9
this is what I got. I even got rid of two county splits along the way.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/9e25bdf0-ec81-480b-9e3d-28470cebcd13
This is the most Republican SC-01 can get without getting a) horridly uncompact, b) threatening SC-07, or both.
SC-01 has became 54.5-45.4 McMaster and 55.7-38.9 Trump. SC-07 remains safe GOP, despite it takes on more of the black belt.

[Sol]

A coastal configuration worthy of a little consideration imo, even if it isn't perfect by any means:

[Sol]

link

[Thunder98 🇮🇱 🤝 🇵🇸]

I was able to make 3 Dem leaning seats for SC based on 2020 Prez data.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/0183d373-f177-4c23-b46f-84e8c970e1fb

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/f4f2a0f8-7166-4d36-b1f1-8a9faf6782e9
tried to gerrymander a Dem majority state senate. I was not successful.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/45e54dec-a01f-43d9-b6ed-8e77e46381a6

Since I forgot this thread existed here's an old map of mine. It's a 4-7 dem gerrymandered map for South Carolina The 4th is a majority minority, and there is even a dem seat in the upstate

[Tekken_Guy]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/9e25bdf0-ec81-480b-9e3d-28470cebcd13
This is the most Republican SC-01 can get without getting a) horridly uncompact, b) threatening SC-07, or both.
SC-01 has became 54.5-45.4 McMaster and 55.7-38.9 Trump. SC-07 remains safe GOP, despite it takes on more of the black belt.

Will the legislature throw Rice under the bus to shore up Mace as much as possible.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/9e25bdf0-ec81-480b-9e3d-28470cebcd13
This is the most Republican SC-01 can get without getting a) horridly uncompact, b) threatening SC-07, or both.
SC-01 has became 54.5-45.4 McMaster and 55.7-38.9 Trump. SC-07 remains safe GOP, despite it takes on more of the black belt.

Will the legislature throw Rice under the bus to shore up Mace as much as possible.

Possible.
Depends on how many allies either has in the legislature and whether the two are mutually hostile at all.

[Nyvin]

I think Republicans will go something along this route -





https://davesredistricting.org/join/030162be-1a7f-4626-85ad-9de540d05b64

The map probably does have dummymander potential later in the decade with SC-1, SC-2, and maybe even SC-4 eventually flipping, but that'd all be like 2026 or later at best.

I got SC-1 to Trump+10 and SC-2 is Trump+13 (2020 numbers).

Does anyone else find South Carolina incredibly annoying to draw?  Pretty much nothing outside of Greenville gets anything resembling a COI, everything ends up a mishmash of population.