Northern vs Southern Georgia
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  Northern vs Southern Georgia
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walleye26
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« on: May 30, 2020, 10:30:49 PM »

Both Northern Georgia (I’m looking most specifically at places like Georgia 9th, but also northwest of Atlanta as well) and Southern Georgia (southwest of Savannah and along the FL border) are hugely Republican (in some classes I think maxed out, a few counties Dems get single digits percentage wise). I have a few questions here:
1) What are the differences between these two regions? Is the South more agricultural? Retirement based? Evangelicals?
2) What types of people live here? Educated? Wealthy? Etc.
3) is there any foreseeable changes in either places? (A large growing city? More tech jobs? Etc)
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2020, 11:35:15 PM »

North Georgia is ancestrally Republican to some extent, it is rather mountainous and the terrain did not lend itself as well to slavery as the coastal plain in the South. The R-friendly nature was masked until quite recently because of politicians like Zell Miller who could win over conservative whites. I think that some counties up here supported the Union in the Civil War. Nowadays, though, North Georgia is ruby-red, and GA-09 is over R+30, which is why they have such hardcore conservatives like Doug Collins. Beautiful mountains though.

South Georgia on the other hand is a large coastal plain, and was Democratic up until quite recently. Until the old post-64 coalition of blacks and poor rural whites collapsed, South Georgia was usually more Democratic than North Georgia. This is also because South Georgia has more black people, a relic of the huge slaveocracy that used to run the region. There is still some Democratic strength, but it runs through the Black Belt, which is a strip of counties going from Columbus and the surrounding counties to the south, across the state to Macon, Milledgeville, and Augusta.

I'd say they probably have more agriculture in the south than they do in the north, but lots of cows in the north vs. large fields of peanuts/cotton/tobacco in the south. Jimmy Carter is from Southwest Georgia, where his peanut farm was. Probably both equally evangelical I would say. On average, north Georgia is wealthier, as there are some Atlanta suburbs and exurbs that sprawl out into the Piedmont and the base of the mountains. In the south, though, it's acre upon acre of farmland until you hit the coast, where you have Savannah and some retirement communities that are growing at a decent clip (Brunswick is Glynn County, this is where Ahmaud Arbery was tragically killed), all the way down to the St. Mary's River at the Florida border, next to the Okeefenokee swamp.

Politically speaking, both are solid red right now. The north Georgia districts are the Atlanta ones, as well as 9,10,11, and 14. All four of those are solid red, but 11 could become light red with Atlanta's suburban growth. 14 is too red, anchored with rural northwest Georgia, and 9 is pretty much mountain towns and cows outside of Gainesville. 10 has Athens and some Black Belt counties from Middle Georgia but the surrounding counties in the north are uber-red and thus make it not a good bet.

South Georgia is more interesting though. Currently Democrats hold the 2nd district in the Southwest anchored around Columbus, and in theory the Savannah-area district (1) could become competitive down the line, with a little bluing of the city and its surrounding suburbs. The 12th district has Augusta and its suburbs in it, which make for a fairly evenly divided seat, but are then swamped with dark red South Georgia counties (many of which used to be Democratic about 20 years ago) to keep it out of play. Finally, there is the 8th which takes in a swath of southern Georgia from Macon and Warner Robins to Valdosta on the Florida border.

Fundamentally, when you think of North vs. South Georgia, there's two types of South at play. North Georgia is "twang", and South Georgia is a "drawl". Hope this helps
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Sol
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« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2020, 12:26:00 AM »

Voice of Resistance has it down. Essentially Northern Georgia is Republican Upland South in the vein of East TN or the Shenandoah valley, while the highly Republican parts of Southern Georgia (and there are Democratic parts, look at Albany for an example) are super racially polarized white majority lowland south areas. In the rural lowland deep south there's usually a pretty tight correlation between race and voting, and these happen to be some of the whiter counties in the area.

Also I'm not a Georgian, but I think South Georgia is usually considered to be the areas south of the fall line, which would sort of exclude Macon, Columbus, and Augusta.

in theory the Savannah-area district (1) could become competitive down the line, with a little bluing of the city and its surrounding suburbs.

I'm a bit skeptical tbh. Savannah is not really that big and although it's attractive to creative class types to a certain extent it's also highly attractive to upper-class southerners who are not really a demographic for the Democrats even now. Also the rest of the district is moving more Republican anyway. It is ofc possible that a hypothetical evolved Georgia puts Savannah in a district with Augusta though.
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TML
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« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2020, 12:27:06 AM »

In southern GA, it is theoretically possible to create another strongly D-leaning district by combining Augusta and Savannah in the same district.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2020, 01:54:02 AM »

Yes, this was John Barrow's old GA-12. They cracked those rural Middle Georgia Black Belt counties between the 10th and 12th, and then lumped in Columbia County and some of Southeast Georgia's Trump 85%+ counties to finish him.
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Mr.Phips
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« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2020, 07:05:32 AM »

Yes, this was John Barrow's old GA-12. They cracked those rural Middle Georgia Black Belt counties between the 10th and 12th, and then lumped in Columbia County and some of Southeast Georgia's Trump 85%+ counties to finish him.

I still don’t get why Obama’s DOJ precleared this.  Republicans basically eliminated a black opportunity district.
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Sol
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« Reply #6 on: May 31, 2020, 12:41:26 PM »

Yes, this was John Barrow's old GA-12. They cracked those rural Middle Georgia Black Belt counties between the 10th and 12th, and then lumped in Columbia County and some of Southeast Georgia's Trump 85%+ counties to finish him.

I still don’t get why Obama’s DOJ precleared this.  Republicans basically eliminated a black opportunity district.

Obama's DOJ played 2010 redistricting pretty conservatively, probably to prevent something like Shelby County v. Holder from happening. That was futile, of course.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #7 on: May 31, 2020, 12:50:21 PM »

Yeah. The minute the Senate goes blue, they pass HR1, and then we bring back districts like GA-12 to elect more moderate Dems.
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Sol
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« Reply #8 on: May 31, 2020, 01:35:51 PM »

Yeah. The minute the Senate goes blue, they pass HR1, and then we bring back districts like GA-12 to elect more moderate Dems.

Would a commission necessarily draw Augusta and Savannah together though? I get the impression that Savannah is more of a CoI with the other coastal counties.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #9 on: May 31, 2020, 03:35:00 PM »

you don't need a safe D seat. Savannah and Coast is GA-01. GA-12 is Augusta/central GA Black Belt counties, you can get it to be like Clinton +1.
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Sol
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« Reply #10 on: May 31, 2020, 05:21:08 PM »

you don't need a safe D seat. Savannah and Coast is GA-01. GA-12 is Augusta/central GA Black Belt counties, you can get it to be like Clinton +1.

True, though you might have to use Athens too.
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Solid4096
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« Reply #11 on: May 31, 2020, 06:06:41 PM »
« Edited: May 31, 2020, 06:11:27 PM by #Solid4096 »

Here is how I would have drawn Southern Georgia Districts for the 2010 census:



The 2nd is a Black VRA District that would have been Safe D for this decade.
The 8th would have been Safe R for this decade.
The 1st is in the outer range of competitiveness potential, but still would have been R at the US House level all decade most likely.
The 12th is a very competitive District that went for McCain, then for Obama in 2012, both by less than 0.5%, then for Trump by just under 5% in 2016, but John Barrow, who won it in the 2018 general, probably could have held it all decade for the Ds if he wanted to, though it probably goes R without him.
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Sol
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« Reply #12 on: May 31, 2020, 06:43:09 PM »

Why exclude Columbia County?
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Solid4096
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« Reply #13 on: May 31, 2020, 07:02:07 PM »

I excluded Columbia County from GA-12 in this map because there was no good way to include it while still keeping the total population of the Districts close to equal.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #14 on: June 01, 2020, 02:45:20 AM »

Adding Columbia to the 12th makes it much more difficult to draw a proper COI-based district in East Georgia that is Dem-leaning.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2591876f-608d-47c7-93b9-8514c62d4b53

That is my take on what a fair South Georgia would look like, although the ATL metro is a bit of a Democratic gerrymander.

CD-1: Savannah/North Altamaha, Trump 55-42, Kemp 55-44
CD-2: Columbus and Southwest, Clinton 49.3-48.9, Abrams 50.9-49.1 (50.2 white/44.1 BVAP)
CD-3: Western Georgia, Trump 67-30, Kemp 67-33
CD-4: DeKalb/central Gwinnett, Clinton 72-25, Abrams 76-23 (40.3 white/42.5 BVAP)
CD-5: Atlanta, Clinton 85-12, Abrams 89-10 (67% BVAP)
CD-6: Cobb County, Clinton 49-47, Abrams 54-44
CD-7: north Fulton/Johns Creek, Clinton 51-45, Abrams 55-44
CD-8: Warner Robins, Valdosta, South Georgia/South Altamaha, Trump 68-30, Kemp 69-31
CD-9: Northeast Georgia, Trump 75-22, Kemp 76-23
CD-10: Athens, Winder, east Atlanta, Clinton 48.8-48, Abrams 53-46
CD-11: Forsyth/Hall/north Gwinnett, Trump 68-28, Kemp 67-32
CD-12: Augusta/Macon/East Georgia, Clinton 49.2-48.7, Kemp 49.9-49.5
CD-13: south Atlanta suburbs, Clinton 59-38, Abrams 64-36 (42.7 white/46.5 BVAP)
CD-14: Bartow/Cherokee/Northwest Georgia, Trump 75-21, Kemp 76-23

This new 12th is the only Clinton/Kemp district in the state but Barrow would easily hold it as it is virtually even and current GA-12 is Trump +15 or so.
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Sol
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« Reply #15 on: June 01, 2020, 08:19:43 AM »

Adding Columbia to the 12th makes it much more difficult to draw a proper COI-based district in East Georgia that is Dem-leaning.

Well if we're trying to draw fair districts shouldn't we prioritize CoI over partisan interest? Columbia and Richmond are incredibly interlinked and putting them together is very necessary to actually reflect CoI imo.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #16 on: June 01, 2020, 12:28:27 PM »

yes, but the key part of that sentence is the "Dem-leaning" bit. Adding Columbia forces the 12th to go into either Savannah, Macon, or Athens up north which are both outside the general East Georgia COIs.
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Sol
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« Reply #17 on: June 01, 2020, 12:55:35 PM »

yes, but the key part of that sentence is the "Dem-leaning" bit. Adding Columbia forces the 12th to go into either Savannah, Macon, or Athens up north which are both outside the general East Georgia COIs.

That doesn't track--your proposed GA-12 already dips into Macon.

Edit: Ahh, I understand now. I guess my personal preference is that if you're drawing fair districts to focus on logical lines rather than specific partisan outcomes. That corner of Georgia is a Lean R area and a Lean R district reflects it well.
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Sol
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« Reply #18 on: June 01, 2020, 01:01:20 PM »

yes, but the key part of that sentence is the "Dem-leaning" bit. Adding Columbia forces the 12th to go into either Savannah, Macon, or Athens up north which are both outside the general East Georgia COIs.

That doesn't track--your proposed GA-12 already dips into Macon.

Edit: Ahh, I understand now. I guess my personal preference is that if you're drawing fair districts to focus on logical lines rather than specific partisan outcomes. That corner of Georgia is a Lean R area and a Lean R district reflects it well.

Though actually, now that I consider it closely, putting Athens in isn't the worse thing? It's sort of its own CoI, separate from Northeast Georgia, Exurban eastern ATL, and the Augusta area, and putting it with the latter doesn't seem much worse than putting it with either of the former.
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Sol
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« Reply #19 on: June 01, 2020, 01:09:25 PM »

Here are a couple options for an East-Central GA district:

Without Athens:


With Athens:


The former district is pretty much safe R, the latter is very slightly Republican--Trump and Kemp both won there very narrowly, and Kemp only won by a few hundred votes.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #20 on: June 01, 2020, 01:25:07 PM »

Yeah, one could obviously draw a fairly Dem-leaning seat in East Georgia, but it'd take a lot of gerrymandering. I think your maps are great, but putting Athens in the 12th dilutes the voting power of some of those Belt counties that are not in the 12th, like Twiggs and Wilkinson. Athens changes the anchor of the district from Augusta/Belt to Augusta/Athens and decreases the voting power of rural black Georgians. That said, though, a fairer map statewide would probably include Athens because if they don't it's fairly easy to draw GA-10 as a tossup seat with some of eastern Atlanta suburbs. In all honestly, Barrow could probably win any seat up to a Trump +8 seat.
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Sol
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« Reply #21 on: June 01, 2020, 02:07:42 PM »

Yeah, one could obviously draw a fairly Dem-leaning seat in East Georgia, but it'd take a lot of gerrymandering. I think your maps are great, but putting Athens in the 12th dilutes the voting power of some of those Belt counties that are not in the 12th, like Twiggs and Wilkinson. Athens changes the anchor of the district from Augusta/Belt to Augusta/Athens and decreases the voting power of rural black Georgians. That said, though, a fairer map statewide would probably include Athens because if they don't it's fairly easy to draw GA-10 as a tossup seat with some of eastern Atlanta suburbs. In all honestly, Barrow could probably win any seat up to a Trump +8 seat.

That's fair. The tricky thing is is that the black population south of Metro Atlanta isn't really so huge; two Black influence districts in the area is pretty difficult. After all, in the map you made both the 12th or 2nd have a Republican average. And the black population in rural Georgia is declining by a fair amount so those numbers will probably get worse for representation. A GA-12 with Athens in it is probably the best chance those counties have to get represented.

I guess you could make the 12th the Black VRA district, or put the rural black counties in it (Washington, Hancock, Jefferson, etc.) in the 2nd though.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #22 on: June 01, 2020, 05:23:43 PM »

Yeah, it's complicated. If Dems did even 5 points better with the whites in the area, like around 2008-levels, then drawing 2 seats would be extremely easy. The other thing about GA-12 with Athens is it makes GA-10 into an extremely weird-looking seat. It's definitely tough for sure, but I can see good arguments for it.
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Sol
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« Reply #23 on: June 01, 2020, 06:08:32 PM »

Yeah, it's complicated. If Dems did even 5 points better with the whites in the area, like around 2008-levels, then drawing 2 seats would be extremely easy. The other thing about GA-12 with Athens is it makes GA-10 into an extremely weird-looking seat. It's definitely tough for sure, but I can see good arguments for it.
To be honest I don't think we should take into account current districts if we're trying to draw fair ones. The current 10th is a bit of a hash of exurban Atlanta, Athens, and Augusta, splitting all three. It's not the worse district every but there are cleaner ways to do it.
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voice_of_resistance
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« Reply #24 on: June 02, 2020, 12:21:01 AM »

In attempting to create a "worst possible" map, I have now made a 10-4 Democratic gerrymander, where 3 out of 4 South Georgia seats are D-leaning. I incorporated your suggestion about merging Augusta/Athens metros into one CD.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/4006eb58-74da-4b81-b5dd-2ea8a2947139

CD-1: SE Georgia, Trump 71-27, Kemp 73-27
CD-2: SW Georgia/Valdosta, Clinton 50-48, Abrams 51-48
CD-3: west Georgia/Warner Robins, Trump 67-31, Kemp 68-32
CD-4: downtown ATL/DeKalb, Clinton 91-7, Abrams 94-6!!!
CD-5: South Fulton/Douglas/Paulding, Clinton 63-35, Abrams 68-32
CD-6: Cobb/Buckhead/central Fulton, Clinton 53-42, Abrams 58-41
CD-7: Cumming/Dunwoody/Lilburn, Trump 50-46, Abrams 49-48
CD-8: Macon/Savannah/Statesboro, Clinton 49-48, Abrams 50-48
CD-9: NE Georgia, Trump 79-19, Kemp 80-19!!!
CD-10: Winder/Gwinnett/south Forsyth, Trump 51-45, Abrams 51-48
CD-11: Cherokee/Sandy Springs/Clarkston, Trump 49-47, Abrams 50-48
CD-12: Augusta/Athens/Belt, Trump 48.6-48.5, Abrams 50-49
CD-13: McDonough/Conyers/Monroe, Trump 49-48, Abrams 53-46
CD-14: Rome/Bartow/NW Georgia, Trump 75-22, Kemp 76-23

Clinton/Abrams: 2,4,5,6,8
Clinton/Kemp: none
Trump/Abrams: 7,10,11,12,13
Trump/Kemp: 1,3,9,14

Most of these seats are trending D, and even for the ones that aren't we have plenty of good incumbents/strong candidates. Bishop regularly overperforms in CD2, Jim Marshall could legitimately win this CD-8, and Barrow would be fine in CD12.
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