2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: California

[Oryxslayer]

On to serious discussion


The California Redistricting Commission has selected the final 60 names: 20 of each pool from which the final commissioners will be selected. You can access the lists here:

Republicans
Democrats
Unaffiliated

With these fairly detailed lists, we can begin to discern the shape of the commission. The most common characteristic of everyone is their comfortable income. This is unsurprising - those most willing to participate in redistricting are stable enough to give up time to political activism.

Demographically, the ethnic distribution is what one would expect but with some exceptions. The democrats have more minorities than whites, and the opposite is true for the GOP. The biggest demographic standout is in the Indie group, which is very diverse. It also has a lot of Asians, and we know how that group has moved in the past 4 years. It leads on to potentially conclude that there are D-leaners in both the GOP group and especially in the Indie pool considering the nature of the coalitions. This however should be unsurprising given California's Trend.

The most interesting thing though are the cross-cutting geographic identities selected by the California commission. There are A LOT of Bay Area Republicans, and Los Angeles dominates the democratic pool. This has seems to have been done to temper partisan attachment to ones home region - Bay Area republicans have nothing to present for the GOP in the region, and LA democrats are surrounded by more democrats and will be more concerned with ethnic communities. The problem I am sensing though is that the playing field is not level; this is California and the California Democratic Party has more tools at their disposal. If the Republican contingency is dominated by NorCal, then they won't have the on-the-ground knowledge that would help them preserve Red opportunities in Orange and her environs. I you only have a birds eye view then you may just see a Blue OC and consider it lost.

[Oryxslayer]

It was also noted online that there are only two selected individuals from the Monterray/Central-Coast region: one Dem, one Unaffiliated - both Hispanic. The analysis noted that one of those two will likely be selected in order to ensure that region has a voice.

Glancing over the lists it also appears there are only two selected individuals from the 'Jefferson' part of the state: one Republican from Shasta and one Unaffiliated from Humboldt. One will probably be selected. Considering that unaffiliated voter is almost certainly a 'too hippy for the Democratic Party' (given Humbolt's tradition for this sort of thing) that's probably a vote of support against a Republican plans. This is what I mean by the CA dems having an unequal amount of resources and influence because of their size, meaning that a Bay Area GOP delegation might end up outplayed.

[Oryxslayer]

For all those who use this thread, posting any ideas/requests you have for dealing with the multitude of CA threads in the 2020 master thread (linked in quote) would be appreciated.

Finally got around to getting the directory up to date. Again, if I missed something, please let me know.


Also, we probably need to do something about the mess that is the California threads. At the moment I can find at least two general "California redistricting" thread, an OC thread, an LA County thread, and a "Southern California redistricting" thread. At the minimum, I think, we don't need both CA general threads separate; for the specific ones either combine them all into a SoCal thread or get rid of the SoCal thread and split its posts between the LA and OC threads.

Will flag this to the mods shortly but would appreciate input about how people would like this organized.

I dunno what should be done, but ERM64man should be discouraged from starting new threads (they are mostly all his) when the point of a master thread is to serve as an umbrella for all covered topics.

[Oryxslayer]

On to serious discussion


The California Redistricting Commission has selected the final 60 names: 20 of each pool from which the final commissioners will be selected. You can access the lists here:

Republicans
Democrats
Unaffiliated

With these fairly detailed lists, we can begin to discern the shape of the commission. The most common characteristic of everyone is their comfortable income. This is unsurprising - those most willing to participate in redistricting are stable enough to give up time to political activism.

Demographically, the ethnic distribution is what one would expect but with some exceptions. The democrats have more minorities than whites, and the opposite is true for the GOP. The biggest demographic standout is in the Indie group, which is very diverse. It also has a lot of Asians, and we know how that group has moved in the past 4 years. It leads on to potentially conclude that there are D-leaners in both the GOP group and especially in the Indie pool considering the nature of the coalitions. This however should be unsurprising given California's Trend.

The most interesting thing though are the cross-cutting geographic identities selected by the California commission. There are A LOT of Bay Area Republicans, and Los Angeles dominates the democratic pool. This has seems to have been done to temper partisan attachment to ones home region - Bay Area republicans have nothing to present for the GOP in the region, and LA democrats are surrounded by more democrats and will be more concerned with ethnic communities. The problem I am sensing though is that the playing field is not level; this is California and the California Democratic Party has more tools at their disposal. If the Republican contingency is dominated by NorCal, then they won't have the on-the-ground knowledge that would help them preserve Red opportunities in Orange and her environs. I you only have a birds eye view then you may just see a Blue OC and consider it lost.

You're making a lot of assumptions here. Don't you think that someone who signs up for a redistricting commission would know a lot about the state and be interested enough to know these things?

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-democrats-fooled-californias-redistricting-commission
Its mostly boomer retirees.

Yes. When one is signing up for the role of a commissioner, it is essentially glorified Jury Duty. The people who are going to self select themselves need to have both time and money available. Unlike Jury Duty though nobody starts in the pool, you have to add your own name. One needs to want to be a commissioner, which requires some level of political engagement.  These criteria have led to older, wealthier, and more educated commissioners than the average citizen.

Commissioners though are not all knowing. In fact, the state explicitly removes anyone like us with detailed knowledge of the state's politics down to the granular level. Political activism means that you have donated to candidates and probably joined a protest, but the only knowledge one probably possesses of the state's electoral geography are the maps on wikipedia and the regions with competitive races that you donated to.

[Oryxslayer]

There's been a lot of discussion about SoCal, but I've been playing around a bit with Northern California on a 52-district map and I was wondering if folks had any input.

I've been particularly struggling with the configuration of CA-02. The current district stretches from Del Norte County to Marin, with a chomp out of Sonoma around Santa Rosa. It seems to me that Marin, as a Bay Area suburban county, might be better suited to be excised from a North Coast district. I've been playing with a map which does that, but I've found figuring out what to do with the rest of Marin difficult. Getting the remainder of Sonoma and Napa seem pretty intuitive, but getting the rest of the population is hard. Jumping over to SF is very ugly, but putting any of Solano into it also seems like a bad CoI since Vallejo is pretty different in terms of class, race, etc. and the rest of the county is more remote from the Bay Area.

Input is much appreciated as I do not know California well at all!

My explorations with NorCal and the Bay have basically come to the conclusion that Solano and it's anchored seat are going to turn inwards towards the bay, since the Northern seats need population. Once Solano and west Sacramento are lopped, you are left with near enough population for three district north of SF, Sacramento, and their surrounding communicates. 

The question then becomes what COIs should have preference. When concerning the CA02, Mendocino, Humbolt, Trinity, and Del Norte are it's core. The first three make up the Redwoods/Emerald Triangle COI and the latter only connects south by road. They are separated from the east by mountains and parks, so it makes sense to head south. CA05's main COI appears to be Wine County in Lake and Napa, but it cannot take in all of the COI's Sonoma for pop reasons. If we accept that CA05 is a Wine Country seat, it makes little sense to put Marin in the district and instead one should go for as much of the Sonoma wine cities as possible.

Marin does not go with SF, both for pop reasons and for COI stuff. SF has the communities and people for a individual district, which means the hypothetical Marin-SF seat would then have to go down the peninsula and probably be the successor to Eshoo's or Spier's seat. While there are some parts of San Mateo that are similar in community to Marin, they lack the population and the district would weird connecting three counties by the Golden Gate.

Now how you sort out the rest of the northern block is up to you. Right now my 52 district CA map has CA05 (03 actually) go north through Yolo and up the agricultural valley - a decision based on the fact Ag regions would want to be with Ag regions. It is also because nearly all of Yuba and Sutter's population centers are inseparable from each other, making the northern lines all that more complicated.

[Oryxslayer]

My preference on that alignment is to draw one district that is Marin and enough of Sonoma to reach a full district, then another district that is the Coast region, the rest of Sonoma, all of Napa and maybe extending to inland Solano (I don't recall exactly what is needed to reach full population). I think that respects communities of interest better than the current map, keeping one district that is wealthy SF suburbs and one district that is clearly rural/remote areas. That is, you start with drawing the Marin-Sonoma district and then you draw the Coast district around it.

I also think Siskiyou could plausibly be put into the Coast district without issue. It's mountainous and not agricultural at all (more of a logging/fishing/hunting/tourism-type area, like the Northern Coast), thus very different from Redding and points south and fits as well into the Northern Coast COI as it does into the Northern Central Valley COI.

Doesn't that kind of cut weirdly across the terrain though? IIRC it does need a good bit of population, even if you have fairly generous allocations up north. (i.e. Trinity and Del Norte in the district)

See the map I just posted in my edit: It actually works out perfectly with Fairfield/Vacaville to leave Vallejo and the other Bay-adjacent parts of Solano available for an East Bay-based district.

Not totally ideal but Fairfield-Vacaville are pretty closely tied to Napa, which in turn is pretty closely tied to the Northern Coast. It's not totally ideal, but I think it's better than Marin with the Northern Coast, and there is no obvious alternative population-wise.

Considering there are other more vital COI's getting busted in your map (Sutter+Yuba, The Yolo bit of Sacramento and Sacramento City) it's probably better to keep CA02 going into Marin. even if the coastline COI is weak, it plus Wine County and the other two mentioned are better than the presented alternative.

[Oryxslayer]

My preference on that alignment is to draw one district that is Marin and enough of Sonoma to reach a full district, then another district that is the Coast region, the rest of Sonoma, all of Napa and maybe extending to inland Solano (I don't recall exactly what is needed to reach full population). I think that respects communities of interest better than the current map, keeping one district that is wealthy SF suburbs and one district that is clearly rural/remote areas. That is, you start with drawing the Marin-Sonoma district and then you draw the Coast district around it.

I also think Siskiyou could plausibly be put into the Coast district without issue. It's mountainous and not agricultural at all (more of a logging/fishing/hunting/tourism-type area, like the Northern Coast), thus very different from Redding and points south and fits as well into the Northern Coast COI as it does into the Northern Central Valley COI.

Doesn't that kind of cut weirdly across the terrain though? IIRC it does need a good bit of population, even if you have fairly generous allocations up north. (i.e. Trinity and Del Norte in the district)

See the map I just posted in my edit: It actually works out perfectly with Fairfield/Vacaville to leave Vallejo and the other Bay-adjacent parts of Solano available for an East Bay-based district.

Not totally ideal but Fairfield-Vacaville are pretty closely tied to Napa, which in turn is pretty closely tied to the Northern Coast. It's not totally ideal, but I think it's better than Marin with the Northern Coast, and there is no obvious alternative population-wise.

Considering there are other more vital COI's getting busted in your map (Sutter+Yuba, The Yolo bit of Sacramento and Sacramento City) it's probably better to keep CA02 going into Marin. even if the coastline COI is weak, it plus Wine County and the other two mentioned are better than the presented alternative.

West Sacramento is not going to go with Sacramento when you can draw two districts entirely within Sacramento County.

I agree on Sutter-Yuba but that's not an essential split; I did it because I prefer Placer with Davis.

Looking at it from a COI perspective, there isn't that strong a case to keep the various Sacramento County suburbs paired with each other instead of other suburban counties.

Yes West Sacramento is not a suburb, it is more or less part of the city, even though municipal lines cut them in twain. It is also the only part of Yolo connected to Sac, though other rural areas may be necessary for pop. Sac has suburbs to the east that can also be pared fine with the extraneous pop. Think of it like Lansing, a multicounty COI that takes precedence over county lines.

Reminder, counties are default COI but most anything else will take precedence over them.

It's literally paired with Sac on all current statewide district maps, even though on all of them Sacramento county then gets cut in the east.

[Oryxslayer]

Guess I'll post what I got so far for NorCal...California is slow to map because every now and again the map fails to save to server and I have to refresh to save my work.

Now there are a few things that guide this from the start. The Bay Area (SF + San Mateo + Santa Cruz + Santa Clara + Alameda + Contra Costa + Solano) along with Monterrey, San Benito, and San Joaquin are very near a round 11 districts when combined. So near in fact you can just grab the delta arm from Sac like presently and it comes to a whole.

Locking at counties to the north of this grouping, they are also very near a nice round total. Everything to the North of the Bay, Sacramento, Placer, and the COI towns of Truckee (should be with Lake Tahoe) and West Sacramento (with Sac) comes close to 3 CDs. The problem is that there is about 11-12K which can't neatly be removed. Cutting deeper into Yolo requires piercing the towns, and American canyon in Napa is 19K pop. The choice then is a cut in eastern Nevada.



The Second Remains coastal but takes in Rural Siskiyou which could be seen as part of the greater Triangle COI. Adding Siski to the first also neatly squares the First's circle, allowing it to be compact. Sutter is cut, but none of the essential precincts connected or around Yuba City are in the Third. The Third's COI is mostly agriculture; North Valley farms and Wine Country near the bay.



The other reason why I like this alignment is what happens in Sacramento. Look at how neatly the lines work out. Every near suburb can fit in the Seventh, and all the unincorporated land goes in the fourth. The only ugly bit is the fact that there is a 9k pop precinct that reaches way out of Elk Grove and into the unincorporated land...but precinct cuts would clean up all the municipal lines.

[Oryxslayer]

This is my first time doing this and this is what I came up with for a 52 district map: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::3f4e8b37-a2a7-400b-8587-91dff40799b1

I tried to just alter the current districts for the most part. Are the districts supposed to be similar in size because I made them that way which is why some look weird?

I can't access your map, check the link. Either way, I can answer your Question: districts are supposed to be as close as possible to the same population numbers, usually maps in place are very near zero though they use precinct cuts which cannot be done on DRA. Districts should not be equal land size, land does not vote, people vote. Some districts will be tiny, others will be huge.

Since this is your first map, here's some beginner tips that people often aren't aware of. If you know this stuff, just ignore this.

- There are check boxes for counties and city lines in the lower left. You should be mindful of these if you are making fair or reasonable maps, especially in CA.
- Make sure you selected the 2018 data at the start. You can change the colors of your districts and the partisan data displayed anytime with the gear in the upper left, use it to your advantage.
- The VRA is a thing and accessibility districts are expected. Do your research beforehand and if a seat is not 50% white, chances are it should be kept that way. Also, especially in CA, you tend to get brownie points for making more minority districts and minority access districts where a minority can control a primary. Obviously VRA districts should be sensible, don't tentacle between communities just to get a high minority%.
- In certain states it pays to go on wikipedia and take notes of where incumbents live.
- Water continuity is illegal in 95% of circumstances. Similarly, a road connection between all parts of the district is necessary, be it by bridge, trail, highway, or pass. This sounds obvious, but sometimes neat county pairings are separated by a national park with no through roads.

[Oryxslayer]

Question for other mappers: is it possible the court goes for a second Asian majority/near majority seat in the south bay? The numbers are there, if you use all of Union City, Fremont, and  Newark, while selectively removing precincts with the Palo Alto white seat and the Monterrey 'Strawberry Fields' Hispanic seat. The issue though is that too much population ends up south of Union City, 160K to be precise. The only way to continue to remove precincts is either release pressure on the peninsula by having the present CA15 cross the Hayward bridge or use the massive Pacific Coast Range precinct and connect CA15 via the small Calveras road - both bad options.

If one was to say no to the asian seats and go for the more natural alignments with one asian seat, the results are also bad. SF+San Mateo+the remainders of Santa Cruz don't take in enough population, and the Monterrey+San Benito seat doesn't help. You end up about 80K over the dual district threshold, which necesitates an ugly cut of Fremont of the Livermore/Pleasanton COI. The current map does just such an ugly cut of Fremont. 27.5K can be removed using the SLO+SB seat if you want to cut Monterrey from the south and grab the wealthy coastal white precincts on the way up towards Pebble Beach, but that still doesn't deal with the problem in totality.

Here's a summery of the situation: The present version in Blue and described alternatives in Red.

[Oryxslayer]

This is my first time doing this and this is what I came up with for a 52 district map: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::3f4e8b37-a2a7-400b-8587-91dff40799b1

I tried to just alter the current districts for the most part. Are the districts supposed to be similar in size because I made them that way which is why some look weird?

I can't access your map, check the link. Either way, I can answer your Question: districts are supposed to be as close as possible to the same population numbers, usually maps in place are very near zero though they use precinct cuts which cannot be done on DRA. Districts should not be equal land size, land does not vote, people vote. Some districts will be tiny, others will be huge.

Since this is your first map, here's some beginner tips that people often aren't aware of. If you know this stuff, just ignore this.

- There are check boxes for counties and city lines in the lower left. You should be mindful of these if you are making fair or reasonable maps, especially in CA.
- Make sure you selected the 2018 data at the start. You can change the colors of your districts and the partisan data displayed anytime with the gear in the upper left, use it to your advantage.
- The VRA is a thing and accessibility districts are expected. Do your research beforehand and if a seat is not 50% white, chances are it should be kept that way. Also, especially in CA, you tend to get brownie points for making more minority districts and minority access districts where a minority can control a primary. Obviously VRA districts should be sensible, don't tentacle between communities just to get a high minority%.
- In certain states it pays to go on wikipedia and take notes of where incumbents live.
- Water continuity is illegal in 95% of circumstances. Similarly, a road connection between all parts of the district is necessary, be it by bridge, trail, highway, or pass. This sounds obvious, but sometimes neat county pairings are separated by a national park with no through roads.

Thanks. I did try to keep cities together. I'll be honest some of mine probably breaks the rules. Does this link work: https://davesredistricting.org/join/665b4ab7-db3a-4d59-870e-bd5087931ccb

CA-45 is quite ugly extending into southern Riverside County.

If it's actually his first map then I'm cutting some slack.

[Oryxslayer]

Question for other mappers: is it possible the court goes for a second Asian majority/near majority seat in the south bay? The numbers are there, if you use all of Union City, Fremont, and  Newark, while selectively removing precincts with the Palo Alto white seat and the Monterrey 'Strawberry Fields' Hispanic seat. The issue though is that too much population ends up south of Union City, 160K to be precise. The only way to continue to remove precincts is either release pressure on the peninsula by having the present CA15 cross the Hayward bridge or use the massive Pacific Coast Range precinct and connect CA15 via the small Calveras road - both bad options.

If one was to say no to the asian seats and go for the more natural alignments with one asian seat, the results are also bad. SF+San Mateo+the remainders of Santa Cruz don't take in enough population, and the Monterrey+San Benito seat doesn't help. You end up about 80K over the dual district threshold, which necesitates an ugly cut of Fremont of the Livermore/Pleasanton COI. The current map does just such an ugly cut of Fremont. 27.5K can be removed using the SLO+SB seat if you want to cut Monterrey from the south and grab the wealthy coastal white precincts on the way up towards Pebble Beach, but that still doesn't deal with the problem in totality.

Here's a summery of the situation: The present version in Blue and described alternatives in Red.

It's easy to do an Asian majority and an Asian plurality seat in the South Bay:



CA-15 is 53% Asian and CA-12 is 40% Asian. If you want to try and shore that up and make some lines messier, there are heavily Asian precincts in Southeast San Jose but otherwise, I think something like this is the best you can manage.

But you aren't solving the situation. Yes it is easy to do it, the numbers are there, that was the point of the opener. The solution you took though has cascading ripple effects which is what I am trying to avoid. Your version carvers up Monterrey really bad because of the pop fiasco, which in turn necessitates a cut in SB and then necessitates multiple cuts in Ventura... I'm not saying it's bad - I think if you clean up Monterrey and Santa Cruz like on the State House map you could get a better HVAP seat. Monterrey + San Benito + Watsonville + whatever grouping doesn't break 40% citizen Hispanics (though does break 50%).

The issues is that you succumbed to "for want of a neat Fremont, we cut Monterrey. For want of Monterrey...etc" This is something I would prefer to avoid.



In addition to the above two choices in my original post, there is also the choice of removing San Benito from the Strawberry seat and giving it to the valley, but that is probable a worse COI violation.

[Oryxslayer]

For example, I threw this together in 5 minutes, so don't criticize the chosen groupings. It just shows off what is possible in precinct numbers. However, if I was going to expand on your idea, I would transform the region into a far grander version of the current Yin-Yang State Legislative seats. CA-20 (purple) becomes a very white coastal seat. Then CA-19 becomes a very Hispanic seat using the Ag towns in both Santa Cruz and Monterrey, connecting them through San Benito, and then pairing them with San Jose Hispanics. This does clean up Fremont, but the 281K added to the Bay block would have it's over ripple effects either in Conta Costa or Solano, effects that I didn't bother to explore in the 5 minutes I threw this together.

[Oryxslayer]

Oryxslayer, do you start at the top of the state and work your way down or how do you do it?

My maps tend to be longer projects because I don't start right from any one spot. First, I outline my goals. If it's incumbent protection, I immediately color all incumbent residencies. Then I search for sensible multi-county groupings in most parts of the state. Obviously this doesn't work in smaller states with few districts or in large counties like LA. For example, you will go back a few posts you will see I make note of the fact that a Bay Area+ group has nearly 11 districts exactly. In smaller fair district maps, I grab all multi or cross-county COIs first like say Lansing's 3 counties. In Incumbent protection plans, I start with incumbent bases of support be they counties or cities as the initial building blocks. In gerry's I start with the most necessary packs, like Milwaulkee in Wisconsin. From there I start building out, expanding usually within the bounds of established communties.

So, it's complex, but the truth is I start everywhere. For example, my CA-in process map started with me creating the northern, valley, and Bay Area groupings. I then added or removed from the groups when it was best. When I came to the valley, I needed to also needed to delineate the Imperial Valley and San Diego regions, since those effect the bottom of the valley. 

This is very time consuming, so you need a bunch of free time (surprise it's corona season which I why I am attempting CA) but it's how most of the redistricting firms view maps. A simpler option is just to retrain your preservative - don't think of one district as preceding another, think of each district on it's own and that it needs to stand independently. It's easy to tell who thinks in the former way and who in the latter, since the latter tends to have cascading county or community cuts from their initial starting position.

[Oryxslayer]

So I had what can only be described as a revaluation last night, staring at the awkward county connections I had going in south of the state. The South Hills of OC have a lot of people - it's the counties main source of growth since the north is mostly experiencing turnover. However, the problem was that there were no good pairings to get the South Hills all the way to a district. Irvine is too big, and Newport Beach doesn't finish the job meaning you need to cut another town like Huntingdon, Costa Mesa, or Irvine. However, I thought 'Why not just add Henderson? The military base is connected to the South Hills, and nobody should raise an argument to a small cut to SD that adds JUST the base.' Turns out the pop numbers are near perfect, so I think this is an ideal pairing.

[Oryxslayer]

Question: Which OC alignment do people think is better? The former preserves cross-county COI's, the latter focuses on the county line between OC and LA. The former has a Asian Belt seat, the latter has to drop some of the belt in not just LA to take in Huntington Beach. I can vouch that Long Beach and Huntington do share some similarities and a pairing makes sense, even though their partisanship differs. But it's not a perfect grouping.

[Oryxslayer]

There's simply no justification. And "being Asian" is not a valid COI,

Here is a map with 3 heavily Asian districts that still respects COI.

I mean this map carves up the San Gabriel communities like they are butter, without much care for the municipal lines. It also probably would produce headaches for the Hispanic seats in that reason. Therefore, it only works as a demonstration map. However, I get what you are saying.

It should be remembered though that the commission has a hard on for ethnic communities (partially because of it's guidelines) and shared ethnicity will decide most LA districts.

[Oryxslayer]

Question: Which OC alignment do people think is better? The former preserves cross-county COI's, the latter focuses on the county line between OC and LA. The former has a Asian Belt seat, the latter has to drop some of the belt in not just LA to take in Huntington Beach. I can vouch that Long Beach and Huntington do share some similarities and a pairing makes sense, even though their partisanship differs. But it's not a perfect grouping.

Long Beach shouldn't be in the Garden Grove district because it looks ugly and OC residents don't really like LA County.

Neither district paired LA and GG.... If anything, both cases trying to prevent the ethnic carve up by putting whites with whites, Asians with Asians, Hispanics with Hispanic, etc. I don't think anyone wants the CA47 arm to return, and you should know this since you have made limitless posts on it.

[Oryxslayer]

The commission is not going to care much about municipal lines, especially in a major metropolitan area.

I'm sorry, but this is perhaps one of the most ill-informed sentences I have ever read about redistricting. If you actually believe this statement then let me state some obvious facts.

Community, city, or neighborhood lines are perhaps the most well known COIs any citizen ever comes in contact with. Even if a person is totally disconnected and doesn't care about govt they know where they bought/rented their home or where they were raised. These community lines are the building blocks of the commission. It is up to the commission to pair said communities.

There are only really ever two times when the commission breaks this rule of thumb. 1 - population numbers sometimes gives citizens the middle finger. 2 - when ethnic communities are more powerful than municipal lines, such as the Hispanic v White relationship in the Central Valley or the AA community in West La county, and those assume precedence. The most obvious community cuts are in Fresno and Bakersfield, both cases where the Hispanics got their own seat.

In such a populous county with different interests like LA it is MOST CRITICAL community lines are preserved. Here's some evidence:



Look how often the Black (municipal lines) and Red (CDs) coincide. And when they don't it is mostly because the district is inside the massive LA City where neighborhoods have more predominance or are carving across empty precincts.

[Oryxslayer]

The commission is not going to care much about municipal lines, especially in a major metropolitan area.

I'm sorry, but this is perhaps one of the most ill-informed sentences I have ever read about redistricting. If you actually believe this statement then let me state some obvious facts.

Community, city, or neighborhood lines are perhaps the most well known COIs any citizen ever comes in contact with. Even if a person is totally disconnected and doesn't care about govt they know where they bought/rented their home or where they were raised. These community lines are the building blocks of the commission. It is up to the commission to pair said communities.

There are only really ever two times when the commission breaks this rule of thumb. 1 - population sometimes gives citizens the middle finger. 2 - when ethnic communities are more powerful than municipal lines, such as the Hispanic v White relationship in the Central Valley or the AA community in West La county, and those assume precedence. The most obvious community cuts are in Fresno and Bakersfield, both cases where the Hispanics got their own seat.

In such a populous county with different interests like LA it is MOST CRITICAL community lines are preserved. Here's some evidence:

Look how often the Black (municipal lines) and Red (CDs) coincide. And when they don't it is mostly because the district is inside the massive LA City where neighborhoods have more predominance or are carving across empty precincts.

You misunderstand me, or perhaps I wasn't very clear. The commission is not going to rank municipal lines over more important criteria. For example, there is absolutely nothing wrong with splitting Anaheim Hills from the rest of Anaheim, or even splitting the white section of Santa Ana off (both of which I did). When I have computer access I can show you how my map follows municipal lines really well.
Ultimately, you're going to have to make some cuts, which are easier to do the larger the city is. There was no reason for the commission to split Torrance, for example.

Yeah, you weren't very clear, sorry about that. I think we agree here. Keep to the building blocks unless there are other more overriding factors, in which case it might be best to treat it as 2+ blocks like in Anaheim. That's a community which is divided in way more ways than it's politics. The best example of this is not in CA, but in MS. There the court carved up both Madison and Hinds between the wealthy white suburbs and the AA's because the two had clear divergent interests. This is despite the fact that partisanship and overall district demographics wouldn't have been affected by leaving both counties whole.

Also...there's a white part of Santa Ana

[Oryxslayer]

Yeah, 60% is often a good Hispanic% if you wish to maintain a VRA seat. DRA added citizen VAP which in 90% of circumstances is a good indicator, so just try for 47%+ on that number. However there are two exceptions. One, even if you can't get near 50% on the citizen VAP in the allotted area, getting as high over 50% population as possible is in itself a worthy goal, as shown by CA31. Two, the true voting percentage of Hispanics is even lower than citizen VAP in the south valley for a variety of reasons. CA21 is 71% Hispanic by population but in 2010 it's voter pool was only a bit over 50% Hispanic.

[Oryxslayer]

Is that a 52 or 53 district map?

It's a state house map.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do with CA25 there, other than revive to 2000 era incumbent-and-screw-hispanics-mander. I know you are adamant about certain things like OC, but you shouldn't fear, in fact you should be eager to go back and alter old districts to make new ones better.

In other news I finished my 52 district map and am now cleaning it up in GIS for presentation.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do with CA25 there, other than revive to 2000 era incumbent-and-screw-hispanics-mander. I know you are adamant about certain things like OC, but you shouldn't fear, in fact you should be eager to go back and alter old districts to make new ones better.

In other news I finished my 52 district map and am now cleaning it up in GIS for presentation.

What? My map isn't incumbent protection at all (I eliminated Porter and Lowenthal's districts so I could split Orange and San Diego counties each no more than once; Lowenthal probably retires too). What's the 2000 era thing? I gave both Pete Aguilar and Norma Torres majority-Hispanic VAP districts (Aguilar's current real district is only plurality Hispanic). My IE map has two majority-HVAP districts (the current real IE map has just one).

I was just pointing out how your CA25 looks awfully like it's old 2000 era line under that map, and how the 2000 lines were drawn to protect white democrats, and by the end of the decade, more republicans than the state should have had.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do with CA25 there, other than revive to 2000 era incumbent-and-screw-hispanics-mander. I know you are adamant about certain things like OC, but you shouldn't fear, in fact you should be eager to go back and alter old districts to make new ones better.

In other news I finished my 52 district map and am now cleaning it up in GIS for presentation.

What? My map isn't incumbent protection at all (I eliminated Porter and Lowenthal's districts so I could split Orange and San Diego counties each no more than once; Lowenthal probably retires too). What's the 2000 era thing? I gave both Pete Aguilar and Norma Torres majority-Hispanic VAP districts (Aguilar's current real district is only plurality Hispanic). My IE map has two majority-HVAP districts (the current real IE map has just one).

I was just pointing out how your CA25 looks awfully like it's old 2000 era line under that map, and how the 2000 lines were drawn to protect white democrats, and by the end of the decade, more republicans than the state should have had.

It does closely resemble the old CA-25. I made Aguilar's district majority-Hispanic instead of his current plurality-Hispanic one. I also kept Torres' district majority-Hispanic. I didn't draw my map to protect white Democrats (It likely takes down a fair amount of incumbent white Democrats; I drew out Lowenthal and Porter to keep Orange County mostly whole; anticipating Lowenthal's retirement due to age, my CA-44 was drawn to help elect Asian Democrats).

Sigh....your not getting it. I'm not comparing anything anything about the map besides the shape of your CA25.