| Here's the map.
In district descriptions, the percentages are for voting age population. w is non-Hispanic white, b is black, h is Hispanic, and a is Asian.
LA1 (blue): 77.6w-12.3b-6.0h-1.7a. Still mostly a suburban New Orleans seat, but it was forced to move into the Thibodaux-Houma area by the positions of the VRA districts. Safe R.
LA2 (green): 41.7w-46.5b-7.3h-3.0a. Because of the depopulation of New Orleans, this district has to extend west and then south to pick up some heavily black areas. Probably likely D to safe D, as it's still 58% minority and its white population is probably relatively moderate compared to the rest of the state. While less compact than a typical district, it's far more compact than either its current or proposed versions.
LA3 (purple): 74.0w-20.7b-2.4h-0.9a. Ugh. It's geographically impossible for it to take all of Cajun country, so it has to extend much further north. It wasn't possible for it to take everything along the west side of the state up to and including Shreveport so I had to take it practically to the northeast corner of the state to avoid splitting up the Shreveport area. The result is a sprawling, incoherent mess that takes up maybe 40% of the state's land area. Safe R.
LA4 (red): 59.8w-35.6b-2.4h-1.0a. The one clean district, the I-20 district. Likely R.
LA5 (yellow): 79.6w-13.9b-3.5h-1.7a. This ugly district with nodes in Baton Rouge and Cajun country connected by a narrow strip was necessary because the two VRA districts pass so close to each other. Safe R.
LA6 (teal): 44.6w-50.2b-2.6h-1.3a. The Baton Rouge-based majority-black district is nice and compact, but it has some community-of-interest issues as it takes pieces of Lafayette, Ville Platte, and Alexandria in addition to part of the capital city. Probably close to safe D even though it's likely only D+6 or so: it looks like it would be easy for a Republican to get to 40% but nearly impossible to get over the hump. Compare it to Sanford Bishop's current district, which is probably about as polarized as this LA6 would be but has black-white percentages that are basically the reverse of what this district has. It's D+1.
I'm pretty sure that a court would accept this proposed LA6 if the state submitted it, as courts have accepted some really ugly and incoherent districts. But here's the question: would a court compel a state to draw something like the proposed LA6--which looks ok but slices and dices some widely separated cities--if the state isn't inclined to draw it in the first place? Perhaps someone with a better understanding of the VRA can weigh in on this. Thoughts? |
