2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Florida

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If Florida only goes +1, is a 28 CD map easier or harder to soft gerrymander?

generally fewer seats means easier to gerrymander.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

is FL gaining 2 new seats a certainty?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Idaho Conservative, I’m curious if your map cracks The Villages or keeps it in one district.

from the looks of it, The Villages is whole in the green district with all of Sumter County in it. You can even see the boundary of Sumter County on its borders with both the Pasco CD and the northern Seminole CD.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Honestly thinking the FL GOP Could go as far as 8-21 .
Cut FL  5th(I hardly doubt either supreme court thinks FL 5th follows Gingles as a compact community and keep the Likely R Tallahassee seat and try to make a lean to Likely Jacksonville and one like the current FL 4th.

2 Orlando/ 1 Tampa to St Petersburg/ 5 SE FL sinks for D's and try to shore up all Cuban seats to vote for Desantis/Scott.

A lot of seats will be thin, but I can't see anywhere where another sink would massively help R seats. Lastly out of the 3 white D SE Fl seats you could try creating a swing seat from the beaches?

8-21 with maybe a 22nd seat in the cards if it doesn't hurt any other.
The one sink that I could really see helping is maybe the old Corrine Brown district but that would be too controversial to make IMO.

Sorry to necro the thread.

Would Republicans really risk a legally dubious map when they could just draw two safe Republican seats and be done?

I know that state supreme court is a majority conservative now and there's a good chance they approve the map but why even risk it?

No necro-related apology needed, this is the established thread anyway.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

My attempt at a fair Florida map



https://davesredistricting.org/join/572ada0d-d373-462a-99f5-275fff14b580

FL-01: Trump+37, R+21
FL-02: Trump+11, R+6
FL-03: Trump+29, R+15
FL-04: Trump+0, R+2
FL-05: Trump+15, R+7
FL-06: Trump+33, R+18
FL-07: Trump+26, R+12
FL-08: Trump+16, R+7
FL-09: Clinton+5, EVEN
FL-10: Clinton+23, D+9
FL-11: Clinton+25, D+11
FL-12: Trump+19, R+8
FL-13: Trump+18, R+9
FL-14: Trump+3, R+3
FL-15: Clinton+17, D+7
FL-16: Clinton+3, D+2
FL-17: Trump+12, R+6
FL-18: Trump+15, R+8
FL-19: Trump+2, R+1
FL-20: Clinton+51, D+25 (41% black, 37% white, 18% hispanic by CVAP)
FL-21: Clinton+22, D+10
FL-22: Clinton+13, D+4
FL-23: Clinton+17, D+11 (44% Hispanic, 36% white, 14% black by CVAP)
FL-24: Clinton+62, D+31 (49% black, 29% hispanic, 20% white by CVAP)
FL-25: Clinton+5, R+2 (90% Hispanic by CVAP)
FL-26: Clinton+24, D+9 (55% Hispanic, 28% white, 14% black by CVAP)
FL-27: Clinton+30, D+11 (64% Hispanic, 21% white, 13% black by CVAP)
FL-28: Trump+27, R+14
FL-29: Trump+20, R+11

The median seat is R+3. Not bad for a fair map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A fair Florida map. I did focus a bit on reducing county splits and improving compactness, per usual, but I also maintained long-standing minority seats, including the Alcee Hastings district and the northern Miami-Dade black district. One major change was the creation of a dedicated north-central inland FL seat. There are 15 Republican-leaning seats and 14 Democratic-leaning ones, on 2018 gubernatorial numbers.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/e6d2d5f4-26a6-40db-9028-0e8001f40966

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anyone else find the precincts in Tampa really annoying to work with?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anyone else find the precincts in Tampa really annoying to work with?

Yes, definitely. Every other precinct you color activates some more blocks on the opposite side of the county, and ironing out the exclaves takes ages when done by hand. Lee County has a similar problem in Ft. Myers and the surrounding areas.

It'll probably be fixed as he puts in the 2020 Election Data (which he is currently uploading for different states).

Interesting. Thanks for the heads-up. I did not know Lee County had similar problems, as I simply tend to draw a single CD taking in all by 7k or so people there, wholely within the county.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I created a map for South Florida that has 4 Majority-Latino and 1 Majority-Black Congressional Districts under CVAP (Link on Dave's Redistricting App):



I plan to expand this later.


Opinions?

I like the clean districts. I generally don't really like having so much crossing between Miami-Dade and Broward but it works in context.
A question arises as to what happens with Collier but I assume the most logical course of action is simply splitting Lee in 2.
This arrangement also makes for an Okechobee district to be made.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/b22b7093-1230-4b24-8d6e-997ab7f521d6
FL map I've made just now.
It was inspired by Abdullah's map, though far from identical to it. I have two black seats in Miami-Dade and Broward. I also drew a minority-influence district in Palm Beach County. Thankfully the math allowed me to avoid county splits at some key areas. I was able to nest 6 in Hillsborough+Pineallas+Pasco+Polk and 3 in Lee+Collier+Charlotte+Sarasota+Hardee+DeSoto+Manatee, as well as 3 in Orange+Seminole+Osceola. I also was able to create a whole-county CD in North-Central FL taking in Ocala and Gainesville.
There are 15 DeSantis and 14 Gillium districts, which is quite fair to me. The median district is the 13th, that rings around a Tampa district drawn to be minority influence as well, much like the current seat. It is pretty much the successor to the old 15th district on the court-drawn map of the 2010s.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So I was asking myself - how can you avoid a disrict going from Collier to Miami-Dade and nest 3 seats solely within Miami-Dade+Monroe, all while protecting Latino voting power?
In Miami-Dade, there are fajitas to avoid a 90% Latino CD being drawn and overconcentrating the Latino vote. To test this and make sure, I drew a "natural" arrangement with all of Monroe and then moving north from Homestead until I reached quota. After filling in 2 more CDs, my hypothesis was proven correct.
So I thought on how this could be avoided, and turns out it is possible by "cracking" the (relatively) less Latino areas in the southern parts of Miami-Dade and splitting NW Miami Dade into 2 districts. It looks a bit wonky but it does its job, with 3 districts that are 76%, 71%, and 76% respectively, according to 2019 total population figures. If CVAP is your preferred metric, they also perform - 71%, 68%, and 72% respectively. I tried to avoid municipal splits whenever feasible.
I also was able to preserve a black CD, drawn out of the rest of Miami-Dade and neighboring areas of Broward.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is the rest of the map.
Pasco+Pinellas is perfectly placed for exactly 2 districts, a black-plurality CD is drawn completely within Broward. A district was drawn wholely within Broward that to the greatest extent feasible avoided black precincts while being compact, to allow the creation of the aforementioned CD. A minority-influence CD is drawn in Palm Beach County. In Central Florida, FL-09 (renumbered as the 11th), retreats from Polk County and gains a substantial part of Orange, in turn pushing the 10th into Lake. Ocala and Gainesville are paired together to create a R-leaning but competitive CD in inland northern and north-central Florida. The current FL-05 is dismantled, replaced mainly by a strongly Dem-leaning all-Duval CD that voted for Gillium by 13, and a FL-02 that voted for DeSantis by 7. The rather awkward shape of the new FL-07 is due to the break-up of FL-05 as it is currently constituted in combination with the new Ocala-Gainesville CD.
Trump, Clinton, DeSantis, Gillium, Scott, and Nelson all won 14 seats under these boundaries in their 2016 and 2018 races.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/203ffc97-5f6f-4428-afc1-7421912332d1

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Excellent job. Thank you for keeping the inland South counties together! I also must say I'm impressed that you got the mint-colored district, FL-23, near majority-Black! And thank you for not lumping Miramar in with Palm Beach! And I like a bunch of other stuff too, this map is awesome.

One thing I find interesting is that you pushed the red exurban Jacksonville district into the Deep South rather than going farther into St. Johns. Was that the last district you did (or among them)?

I actually drew FL-01 last. Exurban Jacksonville moved into the inland rural Deep South because I kept existing FL-09, and since I prefer to have districts running along the coast and I drew an Ocala-Gainesville CD, this meant that the most-of-Volusia CD had no choice but to run up to St. Augustine, which forced the exurban Jacksonville CD to run west.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Screw the Tampa precincts honestly.
I won't be making any more state maps for Florida until DRA fixes that issue, really, it's such a pain.

The last time I went through it took me over an hour to just get them right (and this is me going into the block tool to fix the contiguity of districts).

My method is to use area tool to mass-color precincts in a well selected area and then methodically split each precinct as needed. To save my time I always try to spend as little time as is feasible doing this.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Another question I've got: Click poll link

Please discuss


To me, I think the answer is having four VRA majority-Hispanic districts. Three being based in Miami-Dade County and one being based in the Orlando metro area (around Osceola County).

However, if the GOP gets to fajita-ing I can realistically see five VRA majority-Hispanic districts, four being based in Miami-Dade County.

Merging together SW Broward with a little bit of Northwest Dade gets you a Hispanic majority pretty quickly, so it seems quite realistic.

I wonder when Miami-Dade gets a 4th Latino CD, if at all.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Another question I've got: Click poll link

Please discuss


To me, I think the answer is having four VRA majority-Hispanic districts. Three being based in Miami-Dade County and one being based in the Orlando metro area (around Osceola County).

However, if the GOP gets to fajita-ing I can realistically see five VRA majority-Hispanic districts, four being based in Miami-Dade County.

Merging together SW Broward with a little bit of Northwest Dade gets you a Hispanic majority pretty quickly, so it seems quite realistic.

I wonder when Miami-Dade gets a 4th Latino CD, if at all.

Miami-Dade only has population for 4 districts before you leave the county and is already the base for an African-American district, so it seems unlikely it will be the base for 4 Hispanic CDs.

Oh I know. In essence I am asking "when does Miami-Dade get 5 CDs"?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Map #2:

Image Link

The Villages sticks out like a sore thumb on this map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/de08607c-4346-44af-b0ed-0190a4643aa7
This is an effort at a GOP-mander that doesn't fall afoul of the Fair Districts Amendment.
16 seats that at least lean-likely GOP in a neutral year, and 2 tossups in Miami-Dade.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/de08607c-4346-44af-b0ed-0190a4643aa7
This is an effort at a GOP-mander that doesn't fall afoul of the Fair Districts Amendment.
16 seats that at least lean-likely GOP in a neutral year, and 2 tossups in Miami-Dade.

This is one of the better looking Florida maps I've seen. Well done.

Thank you for the kind words.
One thing I did not anticipate was Brevard+Indian River being perfectly equal to a district.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Unrelated question: how Hispanic are you allowed to make the Hialeah seat without running afoul of the VRA? Trying to draw a fair map of Florida.

As high as you want as long as the other two/three Hispanic seats have comparably similar HVAP/HCVAP. The issue here is not adequate seats - geography forces them to be majority Hispanic - but equal opportunity in every one.

Say you have two neighboring Black belt seats. One is >80% AA and safe, one is 53% and marginal. That would seen as dilution and a point of attack for civil rights groups since you could have two seats over 65% and safe.

Isn't there also an upper limit where any percentage can be considered a pack?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The map posted earlier that makes Murphy's seat Trump +4 wouldn't even help Sabatini. He lives in Lake county which would not be in the district, he would have to run against Webster which would be an uphill battle

GOP be like: Yeah, lets have maps that are fair to Dems. Only one thing matters to us. Screwing over Sabatini.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

They aren't going to kill FL-05, a VRA district.

They could still nuke the Tallahassee-to-Jacksonville arrangement, but they'd have to have 1 black-controlled CD in far northern Florida no matter what happens. The DeSantis map does not have such a district, and as such it's flagrantly illegal by default.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/MaryEllenKlas/status/1483529296652255233
Florida Senate is proceeding with its plan. We'll see what happens in the House I suppose.

DeSantis' plan is an embarrassment only created to satiate a bunch of loudmouth conservatives. It never was going to pass the legislature.

The FL Senate sees the plan exactly as what it is and gives it as much respect as it deserves.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/MaryEllenKlas/status/1483529296652255233
Florida Senate is proceeding with its plan. We'll see what happens in the House I suppose.

DeSantis' plan is an embarrassment only created to satiate a bunch of loudmouth conservatives. It never was going to pass the legislature.

Agreed but it's interesting to me that they didn't even make any changes to Tampa or Orlando in response. I never expected the FL-05 chop or the silliness in South Florida to fly but those seemed like the areas where they would compromise with the governor if they compromised at all.

Probably either the Governor's influence on his legislators is weaker than it looks, or the map is too off-the-wall to get any sort of credibility whatsoever in any of its specifics, or both.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

By the way I was looking at 2016 data for a Duval seat and saw how well Rubio did in Duval. Obviously large parts were due to white overperformance but I also noticed that he did really well with the black vote . Are there any reasons why ?
He was getting like 13 % of the vote in the core black area compared to like 5% max for anyone else. This black ovdrpeformance was only happening in Duval.

Only in Duval?
That's a total  mystery.
Does he have any connections to Jacksonville?