2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: Florida

[Sol]

Would splitting the Florida Keys from the Everglades part of Monroe County be legal?

Is there much of a point to doing that? The Keys have to go into mainland Miami-Dade, so it doesn't look particularly bad, and nobody but crocodiles lives in mainland Monroe.

[Sol]

Playing around with a fair map of Florida. Not happy with the Orlando area but whatevs. Here's the link







Has 5 Latino majority districts (FL-10, FL-25, FL-27, FL-28, FL-29) and 2 Black influence districts (FL-03 and FL-26). FL-24 is a coalition district which is extremely diverse but plurality Black, so would probably elect Hastings or his successor.

I'm a bit concerned that FL-25 is in violation of the VRA; it's majority Latino by a fair amount but Latinos are quite politically divided with Republicans in Hialeah and more liberal Latinos in Broward. Non-Latinos are pretty vociferously D, so I'm concerned that this district may be suppressing a majority Republican Latino electorate. Not sure how to fix this, recommendations welcome.

[Sol]

I did two Republican gerrymanders of Florida a while back, using 2016 Senate Results (in Miami-Dade) and 2018 Gov. results (outside of South Florida) to simulate something close to 2020. It's obviously rather extreme, so I'm planning on drawing a "lite" version at some point.

Extreme Gerrymander

Moderate Gerrymander (except in South Florida)

I figured gaining an extra Latino seat in Miami-Dade meant that drawing an extra vote sink would be a good deal for the GOP--thus FL-28, which is safe D. The other Miami-Dade seats probably all voted Trump; FL-28 and FL-25 are Clinton-Trump seats which would be swingy, while Curbelo's seat is safe.

Did you know you can draw a another Republican seat in Broward/Palm Beach?

Ugh this sucks I need to absolve my sins

[Sol]

Fair map:

Sorry to necro, but could you add a link or an image with the counties and cities? It's pretty hard to judge maps without having local government boundaries.

[Sol]

You can easily draw 4 majority Latino districts in South Florida, fyi.

[Sol]

Also if announcing partisan data just for the knowledge, please use 2018 governor for Florida.

Though 2016 Senate is probably the closest to 2020 for Miami-Dade.

[Sol]

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

That's a clever way to handle Miami-Dade--I like that approach of sending the Black district deeper into Broward instead of the 4th Latino district.

[Sol]

I have a few of nitpicks, because I'm a jerk:

-IMO Jacksonville is one of those occasions were a donut district is a decent choice. If you don't agree though, I'd suggest avoiding crossing the St. Johns River more than one in Duval County since that's a pretty major divide.

-South Florida IMO is a little questionable--you can easily draw 4 Latino districts (majority CVAP) and 1 Black (majority CVAP) district there, but you only have 3 Latino district--don't think that passes muster.

-The 20th district is a little questionable for going between major pop. centers on both coasts.

-The deviation is a little high

I quite like your central florida though!

[Sol]

snip

That's a clever way to handle Miami-Dade--I like that approach of sending the Black district deeper into Broward instead of the 4th Latino district.

So this ended up not really working when I played it out in my map drawing (the Black VRA district isn't Black enough), but it got me thinking about other ways to configure South Florida. Going over to Collier is kind of awkward, so what about sending the excess population into Broward instead of going over the Everglades?


link

All four Miami-Dade districts are majority Latino by CVAP.

The lines certainly aren't fixed--I need to do some reshuffling I think, and in the link the lines outside of Miami aren't certain at all--but the basic concept is interesting and probably better CoI than going all of the way to Naples.

The one issue I could imagine is potentially VRA-wise, so I tried to push more Democratic Latino areas into Broward so those votes weren't getting diluted. Still, I could imagine Democrats winning my 25th in 2020 but losing the Latino vote.

[Sol]

Made a full map. A bit dissatisfied with it, but pleased that I managed to avoid a nasty district crossing from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic. Figured it was better to share this and get feedback rather than continuing on it forever.







link

4 majority Latino districts by CVAP, one plurality (FL-25, FL-27, FL-28, FL-29, and FL-09 respectively). FL-24 is plurality Black and FL-26 is majority Black.

I might work on a version with a Tallahassee-Jacksonville district in case that would be found to be required.

[Sol]

Also--I accidentally edited over my original version with the Tallahassee-Jacksonville district--will fix later. Nothing is different except districts 2-5.

[Sol]

I'm not sure what you mean by questionable. I quite like it that the rural areas of inland Southern Florida have their own district, and it was one of my main goals when creating the map. I've always thought they're quite culturally and economically distinct from the surrounding coastal urban areas in the Miami Metro and SW Florida. I did need to add some of the suburbs in Lee County to make the population of the District viable, but as the population inland expands, eventually there'll be no need for that.

What I was referring to with that is the slight dip into more densely populated territory on the east coast--I do agree, figuring out how to deal with those inland counties is hellacious.

I think y'all will find that the population map is a little tricky for an Inland districts+Collier/Lee setup if you aren't dipping a latino district into collier--it tends to create a domino effect which FUBARs the Tampa/Orlando area if you aren't careful.

[Sol]

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 Dave puts in the 2020 Election Data (which he is currently uploading for different states).


I created a map for Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe Counties that has 4 Majority-Latino and 1 Majority-Black Congressional Districts under CVAP (Link on Dave's Redistricting App):



All figures are from 2017 (or the 2019 5-Year ACS, which most accurately reflects 2017 figures)

Opinions on the map?

This looks really good! You can also do a little precinct trading as well, which will help cut down on municipality splits.

The only reason why I didn't draw Miami that way was because putting Hialeah in with Broward made me a little nervous, since one is basically drawing a Democratic Latino majority seat where the candidate of choice for the Latino community is probably a Republican.

[Sol]

Inspired by TimTurner's innovative approach to the Okechobee problem, here's a map which adopts that and marries it with a few other considerations:


link

[Sol]

I don't see them dropping the FL-5 AA seat.  Minority access seats pretty much never go away.   Even with the R State Supreme Court it'll exist in some fashion somewhere.  The optics of drawing it out to replace it with a bunch of 55% R seats is absolutely horrible.

Yes because the current fl5th looks so clean and nice on the optical side to the average voter.

The much more moderate GA gop was also willing to draw out the similarly non sensible Ga 12th even if it was a minority access seat.

Democrats could argue for a seat purely based in Jacksonville and that had a chance in a lawsuit. I do not see current courts requiring Fl 5th in current form.

Pretty shape of a district < Denying Blacks representation

I'm not sure GA-12 is fitting the role of "minority access" either.  It was a new seat when they drew it and only lasted two elections.   If it was it was a really terrible one.

Its not just the shape. Its the fact that Tallahassee and Jacksonville are 2 separate cities quite far apart. Just like how the old GA 12th in the 2000s originally went from Savanah to Augusta to Athens. The GOP made it drop Athens in 2006 and in 2010 they dropped Savanah .  To most people they would vote for an improved fair amendment only if the districts are ugly as those are easy to propagandize. Leaving FL 5th as is,increases the chances of a ballot measure succeeding if anything.

I agree it's hard to justify FL-05 from a VRA/state law equivalent perspective . It's almost impossible to justify FL-05 while opposing LA-02 and agreeing that the 2011 VA-03 and NC-12 were unconstitutional. 

At the same time, it's not crazy to think R's would benefit strategically from keeping FL-05 this decade.
 Northeast Florida has significant dummymander potential for R's down the line and the backlash to drawing out a black congressman would only accentuate that. 

The worst case scenario for Republicans if they draw out FL-05 is a swingy seat in Jacksonville electing a Democrat, which is still better than a safe seat electing a Democrat.

I guess they might be worried about a Gwen Graham doppleganger in FL-02, but that seems fairly unlikely to me. Even if that was a major risk, having 2 seats for most of the decade and 0 seats for like 2 years at the worst seems like a better deal.

[Sol]

To be honest I do think that FL-05 would likely get struck down in federal court today--conservatives in the 11th circuit and on SCOTUS would probably have a field day with it. Hope I'm wrong though.

[Sol]

Something which IMO is underdiscussed is how crummy the Collier-Miami-Dade district is. Obviously it makes sense from a Republican POV, but it's actually extremely egregious under fair redistricting principles. It's a pretty straightforward example linking two unconnected areas since the Everglades in between the portions are basically unpopulated.

The argument that it's needed in the same way as the Texas Fajitas, to unpack a packed minority, doesn't hold water--there are lots of white and Black areas near heavily Latino parts of Miami-Dade that are much more connected to Hialeah than Naples.

IMO fair maps should all have something like this (give or take specific line finagling)

[Sol]

Something which IMO is underdiscussed is how crummy the Collier-Miami-Dade district is. Obviously it makes sense from a Republican POV, but it's actually extremely egregious under fair redistricting principles. It's a pretty straightforward example linking two unconnected areas since the Everglades in between the portions are basically unpopulated.

The argument that it's needed in the same way as the Texas Fajitas, to unpack a packed minority, doesn't hold water--there are lots of white and Black areas near heavily Latino parts of Miami-Dade that are much more connected to Hialeah than Naples.

IMO fair maps should all have something like this (give or take specific line finagling)

I drew something like this a few years back when Florida was going to get seat 29 - and spoiler that seat would be a new Hispanic seat. With one seat already going south to the Keys, one to the West, and one to the eastern shoreline, going north seemed like the easy option. Well, after talking with MCI, that door quickly shut itself.

The truth is that DRA's Hispanic column doesn't accurately capture the diversity of Hispanic groups in M-D, nor those groups which are mixed between Hispanic and Black like Afro-Caribbean populations. Going north would be intolerable based on these divergences, whereas going west makes sense from the same justification as a Fajita: block voting means one group has control rather than several bickering internally.

Not sure who MCI is. This guy? 

You can definitely finagle those lines in Miami-Dade if the concern is balancing various ethnic and partisan CoIs--iirc it's possible to do one where the Latino communities in M-D are more D-favoring if the concern is that the Cuban vote in Hialeah is being drowned out.

The issue more is that the link over to Collier isn't really possible to justify under my (or most people's) fair redistricting criteria--even if there are suboptimal elements about linking Broward to Miami-Dade, it's more than outweighed by geographic dissonance in a Collier--Miami-Dade district. The nearest comparison I can come to is crossing the Cascades, except in Florida, unlike WA or OR, it's actually possible to draw a map without crossing the Cascades.

In any case, I think Collier actually is equally risky as Broward to the ability of Latino communities to elect candidates of choice depending on swings in voting preferences. Democrats were quite competitive in the Latino vote in the mid-2010s, for example. Díaz-Balart is entrenched so this didn't happen, but if he had won a competitive election in FL-25 he likely might have won without winning the Latino vote. This actually happened with the 2016 presidential vote--FL-25 voted for Trump but subtracting Collier and Hendry gives you 52-45 Clinton margin. Given the diversity of political opinion between and within different Latino communities in South Florida, it's hard to guarantee that the candidate of choice of a specific community or subcommunity can win an election.