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2010 Virginia & Majority-Minority Districts

by: borodino21

Thu Feb 17, 2011 at 4:28 PM EST


This is just a quick diary playing around the new version of Dave's App and the new 2010 Census data for Virginia.
borodino21 :: 2010 Virginia & Majority-Minority Districts
My first interest in playing with the new Census data was to figure out if two African-American-majority districts are possible, as most recent estimates have indicated. They are:

Here are the stats for those districts:

As you can see, it was just possible to make those two districts majority African American.

Here are close-ups of those two districts:

I found NoVA interesting too. In my ACS version of this map, which I don't think I ever posted, VA-08 and VA-11 both fit entirely within the confines of Fairfax County and the closer-in localities, with a small amount of population left over. This ended up being true in the Census data as well.

What was different was VA-10. The ACS version took up the remainder of Fairfax County, along with all of Prince William, Loudoun, Manassas, and Manassas Park, and then also needed to go into Fauquier. The Census version not only doesn't go into Fauquier, it takes in only about half of Loudoun (geographically.)

I also thought it was interesting that of the three NoVa districts, it was actually the exurban Prince William-Loudoun hybrid that was closest to being majority-minority.

Here's a map of a true majority-minority district in NoVa -- which doesn't go into either Arlington or Alexandria(!):

The lime green district has a VRA breakdown of

41 white/18 black/25 hispanic/12 asian/0 native/4 other

The other two districts are 60% white. Obama won all three districts, even with the Loudoun County bug.

Here's a map with two majority-minority districts:

VA-08 (blue) is 46/10/21/18/0/3. VA-11 (green) is 48/18/19/11/0/4. Pink is 69% white, with Asians as the next largest group at 12%. Obama won all three of these districts as well -- interestingly, this is actual a better configuration for him. He won the pink district by about three points more in the 2 majority-minority configuration than in the single. This is primarily because much of Arlington ended up in the pink district.

Other configurations are certainly possible. I suspect, although I haven't been able to construct it yet, that a majority-minority district where Asians are the second largest group after whites is possible. So far, the best I've done puts Hispanics five points ahead of Asians.
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2010 Virginia & Majority-Minority Districts | 28 comments
Excellent
If you don't mind, I'm going to yoink those two districts out for a planned 6-5 solid D map.  
6-5?
We can do much better than that.  

Male, VA-08
[ Parent ]
I have a hard time seeing the 7th seat
We squeeze three out of NoVA, one out of the west and south central, and two out of SE.  
[ Parent ]
I'll take that as a challenge ;)


Male, VA-08
[ Parent ]
How's this for the 7th seat?

2008 PVI:D+1
Avg Dem Performance:52.4D/47.6R
I have a feeling this is even safer on a local level, as many of the Republican areas in this district are especially friendly to Blue Dogs (what does that "average Dem performance 2000-09 come from?). This draws from areas that I don't think were in any other Democratic district, so it shouldn't hurt the other districts. This, 3 districts in NoVA, 2 in Newport News, 1 in Richmond=7 Democratic districts.

Male, VA-08
[ Parent ]
If you look below
I have a district like that that's stronger D because it goes further south. I think the problem with your math is in predicting that there could be 3 SE seats. I can really only see two.  
[ Parent ]
Slide that over to the west a little bit..
and we could have CREIGH DEEDS!! in Congress, who's with me!?! crickets

32, M, MI-6, Iconoclastic Leftist
[ Parent ]
Yoink away! :-)
I'd be interested in seeing what your version of a Democratic gerrymander is -- the above map is mostly the work of a compactionist outside of the two southern VRA districts. I'm particularly interested in seeing what the western Democratic district looks like.

I've been playing around with NoVa still. I'm pretty sure that VRA considerations don't enter into it since the minority population is so diverse; to the best of my knowledge "coalition" districts aren't addressed by current jurisprudence. With that in mind, I came up with this set-up:

All three districts are right about 60% Obama. Seems to be the best use of Democratic strength in the area, and it's not even gerrymandered looking.

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.

[ Parent ]
Here's my Central/SW seat
SW Seat

And here's my NoVA:

NoVA

I could do better if we could shade by partisanship. . .

[ Parent ]
Wow
That's quite the gerrymander there for VA-05. You're using up a lot of the southside counties that I sent into VA-04 for the majority-African-American purposes. Are you still able to get two Democratic and/or majority-minority districts out of the southeast?

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.
[ Parent ]
It's a heavy lift
but these are both safe D (and minority-majority VAP):

SEVA

[ Parent ]
Here's my whole scheme:
Whole State
[ Parent ]
Effective, but incredibly ugly
That 5th district would definitely not be okay.

Male, VA-08
[ Parent ]
How Democratic is that VA-05?
This one is a 55% Obama district:



30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.

[ Parent ]
It's 54/46 average performance
And 55/45 Obama.

I draw my plans with the averages, and not with Obama/McCain.  

[ Parent ]
Averages are obviously better
I'm glad that Dave's implemented them. That VA-05 I posted is 52D/48R averaged.

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.
[ Parent ]
And it includes the home towns of three GOP Congressmen
Wittman, Goodlatte & Griffith.
[ Parent ]
You'd think I'd have done it on purpose
with the way this map picks up Wittman, but I didn't. I had no idea where Wittman lives; it's just that his home county went for Obama, so I threw it in.

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.
[ Parent ]
8 potential Dems


26, male, Dem, NJ-12
[ Parent ]
What's your definition of "potential"?
N/T

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.
[ Parent ]
between 53% and 57% Obama
except for Arlington (much higher) and yellow (just barely 50%)

26, male, Dem, NJ-12
[ Parent ]
Gray, teal, and slate blue
are the Republican districts?

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.
[ Parent ]
yes
although if Boucher had been reelected I would have tried to protect his district by adding Roanoke and Danville to it.

26, male, Dem, NJ-12
[ Parent ]
Good Job!
That is a really nice map, kudos to you. Dumping inner city Richmond, Newport News, Hampton and Norfolk into one district was a blatant dump of African-American voters into one district. They aren't even communities of interest  right next to each other. Not that I either blame the VA GOP for doing this but it would be nice if Senate Dems would be able to hold the line on this though I am skeptical. I'm sensing that the VA GOP is going to wait until after the 2011 legislative elections to draw the Congressional lines in hope that they can take back the Senate which isn't only a 22-18 Democratic advantage with only 2 seats flipping needed to flip control.  

28, Male, Democrat VA-08  
I see those two majority-minority districts in NoVA
look a lot like the districts I drew in this diary attempting to do just that. The difference is, it was much easier to draw two majority-minority districts with the new census estimates showing larger than expected minority population. Very interesting.

Male, VA-08
Thanks for posting this map
its fascinating.

VA is one of those 9 states, of note, that have split political control.  There is a huge amount of uncertainty in this state's map.  There is narrow D control of state senate while the house and Gov are securely under GOP control.  

I think predicting redistricting is very hard in VA.

I personally think we will see a standpat map in VA.  It might look a lot like protect all incumbents for the D's but leave a couple of GOP seats somewhat competitive.

That's just my guess. I think incumbents will push legislators to avoid Federal court.  

If either seat in NOVA is currently minority majority I think that status is preserved but I don't look for a seat like the one in this map above to be created by the federal courts.  I have made my views on VRA clear so I don't want to beat a dead  horse.  

So there is enough incentive to settle on a map in early summer.

Yeah, this isn't meant to be a predictive map
Just playing around with possibilities.

30, male, MI-11 (previously VA-08). Evangelical, postconservative, green.
[ Parent ]
B that's right and I knew this
was a minority majority exercise.  I almost always do that crystal ball thing.  Here's predictive for you.  I think the state senate is 22-20 with 6 AA state senators or is it 8?  Not sure.  

I think a large bloc of democratic senators will want a map very similar to this.  

[ Parent ]
2010 Virginia & Majority-Minority Districts | 28 comments

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