With the Louisiana redistricting map one of the first to emerge intact from the sausage-making process, it's time to crunch the numbers and see just what kind of districts we wound up with. (Notice that I'm not saying the map is a done deal... the Obama DOJ might still weigh in and shake things up, as they could conceivably push for a second African-American plurality district under the VRA.) Our resident data guru, jeffmd, has sliced and diced the shapefiles on the state House's website, overlaid that onto the VTDs available from the Census Bureau, matched the VTDs to 2008 and 2010 election results available from the Louisiana SoS website, and voila:
District
Obama #
McCain #
Obama %
McCain %
Fayard %
Dardenne %
Melancon %
Vitter %
LA-01
81,515
233,789
25.34
72.68
25.30
74.70
24.89
69.79
LA-02
235,554
81,703
73.36
25.44
73.01
26.99
70.38
24.72
LA-03
111,831
210,951
34.06
64.25
39.36
60.64
31.40
62.55
LA-04
126,899
187,020
39.94
58.86
45.78
54.22
36.29
57.54
LA-05
124,119
209,705
36.69
61.98
40.04
59.96
32.98
60.31
LA-06
103,071
225,094
30.90
67.49
33.04
66.96
32.45
62.02
The full precinct-by-precinct dataset, courtesy of Google Docs, is available here.
If you aren't familiar with the contours of the new map, you can take a look here. In a nutshell, the 1st remains the New Orleans suburbs, the 2nd remains New Orleans proper (although now it reaches into Baton Rouge's African-American neighborhoods as well), the 4th is still centered on Shreveport, the 5th is still Monroe and Alexandria, and the 6th is still centered on Baton Rouge (even if its core is now missing). The big difference is the 3rd, which now mostly occupies what used to be the 7th, across Lake Charles and Lafayette; the old 3rd, in Cajun country south of New Orleans, has been parceled out to the 1st, new 3rd/former 7th, and also the 6th and 2nd.
As you can see, the redistricting result is very, very likely to result in a 5-1 map. The friendliest district for Dems, after the 2nd, is now the Shreveport-based 4th, but even it didn't even see Barack Obama hit 40%. That's not much different from the current setup (where he did hit 40%); the old 6th was the friendliest for Dems, but barely more so (with 41% for Obama).
Greg Giroux has some other interesting tidbits available on how the 3rd district (which is now poised to become a battleground between incumbent GOPers Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry) got neatly dismantled: Boustany represents 575K of the 3rd's residents, while Landry represents only 180K of them, a nearly 3:1 advantage for Boustany. Of the old 3rd, 29% of it wound up in LA-01, 28% in new LA-03, 24% in LA-06, and 18% in LA-02. (The Daily Kingfish has picked up on this, and speculates that Landry might be better off challenging Steve Scalise in the 1st instead.)
A few days ago in the discussion of the proposed Louisiana map someone drew a map with two majority-black districts but nothing else filled in. I drew this map to see (a) if I could get the New Orleans district to be more compact and (b) what the other districts would look like. As it turns out, the answer to (a) is yes, but it's plurality black as opposed to majority black, and the answer to (b) is ugly.
It seemed way too easy to make 2 VAP (Voting Age Population) black districts in Louisiana. I feel like even if there wasn't 3 VAP districts, there could easily be two with another heavily leaning Dem district, making the new delegation a 3-3 split with LA losing one seat this year.
As I gerrymandered through New Orleans, Baton Rouge and LaFayette, I realized I didn't even have to really go to Shreveport to Monroe for 2 districts, and it seemed there were quite a few black precincts left so I decided to try to make 3 VAP districts. It took a lot of maneuvering and one area of water contiguity over the lake, but I did it! It's the most horrible map, though, and would never obviously be drawn.
My other goals were to not use touch-point contiguity, which I did not, and also not use water contiguity, which I failed to do, but oh well.
All racial numbers are VAP, if it was simply out of all population, the black percentage numbers are a few points higher in all districts. Also, the biggest deviation from target population is the blue district, which has 5,691 more than the target.
I realize that this map is probably not politically feasible. It would undoubtedly create two seats - perhaps even three - where Democratic candidates would stand a very good chance of winning. But I drew it because I wanted to see a map made, using actual 2010 census data, that stayed as close as possible to the spirit of the VRA. The VRA is not designed to ensure the election of particular minority candidates; it is to maximize the electoral chances of minority voters, where it is possible to create compact districts (part of the Gingles test), to choose candidates of their choice. I believe this map does this with the 2nd and 4th districts. I also wanted to see whether the already VRA-protected 2nd district needed to go to Baton Rouge as has been talked about a lot ever since it became apparent in the aftermath of Katrina that Louisiana would almost certainly lose a congressional seat. It turns out that the answer is probably not - I say probably because I am not sure whether a VRA district needs to have just 50.0%+1 of total population be black or 50.0%+ of the voting age population. If the latter is the standard, I am sure the districts can be tweaked somewhat to comply. Follow me in the jump over to look at the six districts individually.
Drawing from a rather long comment I had on a previous diary, I've decided to expand my one part diary on redistricting in the Bayou State to two.
The first part will run through recent developments in state politics and who controls the redistricting process, while the second will include my proposed map for Louisiana's 6 congressional districts.
Now that it's 2011, the redistricting games will soon begin in earnest, with more detailed Census data expected in the coming weeks and some states holding spring legislative sessions to deal with drawing new maps. Long ago I planned to do state-by-state rundowns of the redistricting process as soon as 2010 election results and Census reapportionment were clear. Now that time has arrived, and it's time to look at Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, and Maryland.
As devoted Swingnuts are aware by now, the Census Bureau has produced its first batch of redistricting-level data. Because Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia all have state-level elections this year, they get bumped to the head of the line. So that means we now know the current population of each congressional district as presently drawn. While the Census Bureau didn't exactly make this data available in the most accessible format, the greasemonkeys down in the Skunkworks at SSP Labs have crunched the numbers, and here's what they look like. Note that the "Deviation" column means how far off each current district is from the new ideal (and in the case of LA and NJ, we divided by their new seat totals of 6 and 12 respectively):
After the jump, I present a survey of maps that are demographically possible if political improbable. They are presented mostly for holiday slow-time discussion fodder. The states covered are Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Virginia. Republicans will control the process in Alabama; the Democrats control a single house of the legislature in the other three states. So the Democrats are unlikely to get maps as good as these. My redistricting instincts tend towards "good government" aesthetics, so these maps are about what's possible with relatively compact districts.
The race to fill the position of Lt. Gov. is heating up here in the Pelican State.
The winner fills the seat now held by Lt. Gov. Scott Angelle, a Democrat who was appointed by Gov. Bobby Jindal to replace Mitch Landrieu, now Mayor of New Orleans.
The position has very few powers, but it provides a clear path to higher office and is first in the line of succession to the governor's office. Specifically, the job of Lt. Gov. is "to promote culture, recreation and tourism," according to The (Baton Rouge) Advocate.
To fill the seat, Louisiana will use a jungle primary. If none of the eight candidate receive a majority of the vote, then the top two vote getters, regardless of political party, will enter a runoff held on Nov. 2.
Swing State Project came down with a rare case of Saturday Night Fever over the weekend, with regularly scheduled primaries in Louisiana and the Senate special primary in West Virginia.
• Louisiana: For a brief moment there, back in June, David Vitter vs. Chet Traylor looked like it was going to be a fascinating GOP primary. In the end, though, Traylor's failure to raise money or increase his profile, along with Louisianans' decidedly laissez-faire (or is it laissez-les-bons-temps-rouler?) approach to their politicians' peccadilloes, let Vitter escape with an 88-7 victory. That's actually better than Charlie Melancon's 71% against no-name opposition.
Two House races also had some drama. In LA-02 the question was more one of whether state Rep. Cedric Richmond could avoid a runoff against Juan LaFonta, rather than whether he could get the most votes. In the end, he did, winning 60-21 -- despite a late financial onslaught from a deep-pocketed LaFonta-backing attorney, Stuart Smith, who created an anti-Richmond PAC called Louisiana Truth PAC -- and will face endangered GOP accidental incumbent Joe Cao in November. In LA-03, former state House speaker Hunt Downer was the presumed frontrunner, but barely even squeaked into a runoff with attorney Jeff Landry; Landry got 49.6% to Downer's 36%. Maybe it's not that surprising, as Downer got in late and Landry had been running and fundraising all cycle; also, Landry had the teabagger cred while Downer was dragged down by the twin lead zeppelins of "establishment" and "former Democrat." Downer has shrugged off calls for him to withdraw and avoid prolonging the fight, so the battle in the runoff (for the right to face Dem Ravi Sangisetty) will be for those 14% of voters who went for fellow teabagger Kristian Magar.
• West Virginia: Not much drama was expected here, and none was to be found. Gov. Joe Manchin won the Democratic nomination against a challenge from the left from former Rep., former SoS, and former Truman (!) administration official Ken Hechler, 73-17. He'll face John Raese, whom you may remember spending millions of his own money in 2006 to finish in the mid-30s against Robert Byrd. Raese won the 10-person GOP field, drawing 71%. (The only other GOPer to break double-digits, at 15, was Mac Warner, last seen losing the WV-01 primary this spring.)
