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A Democratic Mississippi

by: Alizarin

Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 7:45 PM EDT


This map creates two Democratic districts with a PVI of at least D+10 and two Republican districts with a PVI of at least R+30, which would be the two most Republican in the country.

The districts are contiguous, even when they don't really look like it, including a narrow strip along the gulf shoreline for the fourth district.

As always I crunched the actual precinct data to produce these maps. However in this case, to my horror, I could have saved a week of transcribing scanned county records and just maximised the minority districts since they produce almost exactly the same map. Nevertheless at least this way we have precise voting totals for each district.

1st(Blue): 63.2% Obama 37.8W 57.3B
2nd(Green): 66.2% Obama 36.1W 59.1B
3rd(Dark Magenta): 22.4% Obama 79.6W 16.0B
4th(Red): 22.3% Obama 78.8W 15.1B
Alizarin :: A Democratic Mississippi
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A Democratic Mississippi | 37 comments
Fantastic work.
I think this has to go up there with abgin's 27-0 New York map. Truly a sight to behold.

überliberal Democrat, male, OH-12 (college), NJ-09 ("home"), Mets, Jets
Hear, hear
If abgin's was a baconmander, then this map looks like a bunch of bacterial colonies duking it out with each other in a petri dish.
[ Parent ]
Alas
Abgin drew a 28-0 map--can't use it now!
[ Parent ]
Do Democrats still control the Mississippi legislature?
If so, this looks like sweet payback for being forced to eat that terrible "compromise" or whatever it was with Lt. Gov. Bryant.

20, center-left independent, Auckland Central resident, MD-05 voter, OR-01 native
Partially,
they control the House (barely), the lost the Senate and do not control the governorship.  

Democrat, MD-08 (Home), MD-05 (School)
[ Parent ]
nice work!
now here's the real question:
can you make 3 districts that are 50%+ Obama?

26, male, Dem, NJ-12
If you wanted 3 50% Obama districts
The last one would need to be .241 Obama... which fits with current results.

So you could just keep the red district alone and divide the purple one with the blue/green one and get three 50% Obama districts. They wouldn't be that safe, but it's doable. Definitely not VRA though.

[ Parent ]
Oh my
That is simply the best map I have ever seen on this sight. Brilliant.

18, Dem, PA-7
Gerrymandering pushed to the limit?)))
That's why i am for independent redistricting comissions in all 50 states. And for minimal county splitting everywhere where it's possible too)))
I do not agree
With the county part anyways. Counties are often weirdly shaped and the different parts of the county are culturally different than the bordering counties.

18, Dem, PA-7
[ Parent ]
You are entitled to it))
I said - where possible... But i still prefer heterogenious counties and healthy competition to snake-like districts, crossing half-state (in some cases - more, i still remember with shudder Z-shaped district in Louisiana in 90th..)
[ Parent ]
Tobler's law
Compact districts create large republican biases. See http://stochasticdemocracy.blo... .

Aiming for proportional representation is a better goal, even though it often requires ugly districts. See http://stochasticdemocracy.blo... .

[ Parent ]
May be
But i am non-paetisan, and, i would even say, "anti-partisan" in some aspects. For me that's tolerable.. I suppose - for Independent comissions - too..  
[ Parent ]
Can you get anything like that keeping county borders?
If so, Obama should push the DOJ for 2 VRA districts
This is, sadly, the most compact 2-VRA district map I could make

Blue: 53.1 black total, 50.1 black VAP
Green: 53.4 black total, 50.0 black VAP (barely over the hump)

I'm sure someone else could do a better job though.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/

[ Parent ]
It's a lot more
compact then some of the districts in existents.

19, Self Appointed Chair of the SSP Gay Caucus (I claimed it first :p), male, Dem, IN-09 (College IN-09) (Raised IL-03, IL-09)
[ Parent ]
The two VRA districts look fine
And you'd have no problem recreating the Palazzo/Taylor seat on the Gulf. But MS-03 would be really, really ugly, connecting the Memphis suburbs to Jackson by that paper-thin strand along the Alabama border.

20, CD MA-03/NH-01/MA-08
[ Parent ]
If there's a case for these districts
anywhere in the country, it's Mississippi. The Republicans would go apeshit!  
[ Parent ]
Those would be razor-thin districts
Seeing how racially polarized MS is, Dems would barely have a grasp on those two seats, a black Dem even less so. Even the current MS-02, which is like 63% black, is "only" D+12. Still those are impressively compact.  

20, Democrat, KY-01
[ Parent ]
Thanks.
if the Republicans were ordered to draw two VRA districts, one would imagine they'd try to get away with drawing districts that are vulnerable in years with lower black turnout.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
Looking at racial stats vs. O%..
White Democrats exist in Mississippi!

23, liberal democrat, SSP Gay Caucus Majority Whip, IN-02 (home), IN-03 (birth), SC-03 (early childhood), IN-09 (college);   DKos: HoosierD42
And how much?

[ Parent ]
Some
I live just over the line in Tennessee's Memphis suburbs, and while there are definitely white Democrats in MS (see Billy McCoy), they are a dying breed.

17, Male, Conservative Republican, TN-07 born and raised

[ Parent ]
And even they are different from "national standard"
McCoy is a sort of populist on economy, but i remember his last campaign for speaker, whre he stressed something like "if you want a speaker, who stands for life and traditional families - Billy McCoy is your candidate"... )))
[ Parent ]
Typically about 10% of whites in MS
vote D at pres level.

Higher at local levels, usually.

[ Parent ]
I knew that (so my question was rather retorical),
but thanks nevertheless. Not too much, isn't it? And, regretfully, it seems that that percentage continues to fall..
[ Parent ]
It was
11%.  And I doubt it can possibly go any lower.  In PPP's poll, 16% of Caucasians in MS approve of Obama.

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!
[ Parent ]
As i always say in such cases - we will see
And there is a difference between approving somebody ("he is a good guy") and voting for him. The general tendency of 2000's in Deep South was umistakable: less and less whites voted Semocratic on all levels. Now the numbers are so low that they really can't go down much, but i don't expect them to grow substantially either.  
[ Parent ]
I didn't say they'd grow.
Just that the national Democratic Party has probably already hit the floor there and can't go lower.  May tick up one or two points, but that's it.

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!
[ Parent ]
Here i fully agree
After all - there is a tradition in some families, there are few (but still) liberals in urban areas and university cities, and so on. So, it will not fall below 8 or 9 percent..
[ Parent ]
There's no chance
This is a a good map, a piece of art, really, because is worse than the original 2000s Georgia map. Also, on the subject of creating two black-majority VAP seats, have you guys ever heard of Bill Marcy? He was the black Republican who ran against Bennie Thompson in 2010. He only got 37.6% of the vote, but if he had been running in a 50% black VAP seat instead of the 63.5% black one he was in, he could have won. In fact, he would be a slight favorite if Jackson wasn't in the district and/or it was an open seat. The absolute last thing that Mississippi Democrats want is a black Republican congressman from their state. The DNC wouldn't like it either, seeing as they already have to deal with Tim Scott from Charleston. The only sure way to hold a district like that for the Dems would be running a white Democrat a la G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) who could get heavy support from other white Democrats. However, that scenario defeats the purpose of a VRA VAP black-majority seat.

17, Male, Conservative Republican, TN-07 born and raised

I don't think
the DNC is in a tizzy over Tim Scott.  He's not going to be a big star like J.C. Watts as he himself has said.  He said he doesn't want to stand for anything big and bold, he just wants to be a representative, not a figurehead.

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!
[ Parent ]
You forgot an example in your own backyard.
Steve Cohen. ;)

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!
[ Parent ]
GK Butterfield is black, dude (eom)


21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
We all make mistakes.
I didn't know until recently that Doug Wilder is black (I was a baby when he was governor).

Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo!
So little time, so much to know!
[ Parent ]
Butterfield may look it
But I do not believe he is white.  He is in the Congressional Black Caucus, which rejected Steve Cohen's bid, probably on racial grounds.  Butterfield may have a mixed-race background, but I believe he is considered (and considers himself) an African-American.

30, male, Democratic, CO-01
[ Parent ]
He does look slightly blacker than Harold Ford FWIW...
at least in my opinion.

21, dude, RI-01 (registered) IL-01 (college)
please help Japan. click "donate funds" in upper right and then "Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami." http://www.redcross.org/
[ Parent ]
A Democratic Mississippi | 37 comments

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