| At first glance, the GOP appears to be doing as well as it can in TN. They control the governor's mansion, state leg, both senate seats, and every house seat outside of the two in Memphis and Nashville. But the seemingly ironclad Democratic stronghold of Nashville is actually possible for the GOP to crack. TN-05, which encompasses the city, has a PVI of D+3, which is low enough that it can be split among the heavily Republican precincts surrounding Nashville without doing too much damage to the GOP reps in those districts. And TN-05 is also 70% white, so the VRA does not provide an obstacle. I have attempted to draw a map that successfully cracks Nashville, giving the GOP 8 reps, without weakening the surrounding districts (especially the 8th, held by potentially vulnerable freshman Stephen Fincher, aka the gospel singer from Frog Jump).
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Nashville Area:
Memphis Area:
The first step is to take the 9th and turn it into a Democratic vote dump, stretching it out to eat up some African American areas in the rural areas around Memphis. The 8th then comes down and takes the suburban Memphis areas currently in the fifth as well as most of the white areas currently in the 9th (leaving out the more liberal white areas). The new 9th is 23% white, 69% black whereas the old district was 36% white, 60% black. The idea here is to make the districts surrounding Memphis more conservative so that they can take Democratic parts of Nashville.
Nashville itself is split between the 8th, the 7th, and the 6th here. The 5th now encompasses only a small part of Nashville and now includes many more conservative suburban and rural counties. The 8th now stretches along the border of the state from Memphis to Nashville, having given up many rural areas to the 7th to make up for the 7th losing some of the Memphis suburban areas (more on why I did this trade-off later). Likewise, the 4th now stretches much further west into territory previously in the 7th to make up for the population that was taken out of the 4th and given to the 5th. The 6th is probably the least changed of all the districts used to split Nashville. It is still relatively compact and composed mainly of the northern suburbs of Nashville with some of urban Nashville thrown in. All three districts in the east are basically unchanged.
Demographics for all changed districts:
TN-09: 23% White, 69% Black, 5% Hispanic (Previously 36% W, 60% B, 3% H)
TN-08: 73% W, 20% B (Prev 75% W, 22% B)
TN-07 80% W, 12% B (Prev 85% W, 12% B)
TN-06 83% W, 11% B (Prev 90% W, 6% B)
TN-05 79% W, 10% B, 7% H (Prev 70% W, 24% B, 4% H)
TN-04 90% W, 6% B (Prev 93% W, 4% B)
Of all these districts, the one that needed to be protected the most was the 8th. The 8th was the most Democratic district in TN outside of Memphis or Nashville before, and the demographic changes seem to suggest that it has most a point or two more to the left with this redistricting. However, it has also become much more suburban and much less rural. This is very important, because while the rural areas have a very long history of electing blue dog democrats, the suburbs around Memphis are much more conservative and are solidly GOP at a local and national level, unlike the rural areas where Democrats still compete locally. Overall, the PVI of this district probably hasn't changed too much, but I would suspect that it is now a good deal safer for Fincher.
I'm not actually sure that the GOP will do something like this, even though they probably could. It is a pretty atrocious looking map, and even though no majority-minority districts are split, it has looks a lot like something that would have happened in the pre-civil rights era south. There's also not that much to be gained here; it's only one congressional seat that we're talking about. In the end, something like this, while possible, is probably not going to happen. But that doesn't make it any less fun to draw. :) |
