It works great for African-American and Latino representatives. With a majority/plurality from their ethnic group their re-election is virtually guaranteed. In some states this is a big positive for Democrats. Right now the only districts Democrats have in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina are minority majority. Democrats are having trouble appealing to Whites and don’t have to worry about trying in these states in order to win some districts.
The VRA also helps Republicans. By combining Blacks in Selma, Tuscaloosa, and Birmingham the remaining districts become very difficult for the Democrats to win. If AL-7 were 40% African-American instead of 62%, there could be enough Democrats in another district to make them more competitive.
Missouri is going to lose a congressional seat. Right now there are three Democratic districts, one of which is majority minority and a second one that is 30% Black/Hispanic. These districts will need to add people in redistricting. The 1st district is currently heavily Democratic and could easily add Republicans and still be an easy win for the Democrats. If they did, however, there’s no guarantee the person elected would be Black. In order to make sure the Republicans give the 1st and 5th as many African-Americans as possible, Black Democrats will sacrifice Russ Carnahan’s seat. Republicans will take that trade.
New York will lose two seats in redistricting, one of which will be in the New York metropolitan area. There are currently 17 districts, 15 of which are Democratic and only 2 Republican. You’d think that after redistricting it’d be 14-2 Democratic. Maybe. Maybe not.
There are currently 8 majority minority districts in the metropolitan area and 2 districts that are largely in Manhattan. Since Republicans hold a majority in the state senate they’ll probably tell the Democrats they can gerrymander New York City and Long Island however they want as long as they a) Keep as many Republicans in Peter King’s district as possible b) make sure all of Staten Island is in the 13th.
Even if they try to put as many Republicans as they can in these two districts, they’ll still run into a problem. They’ll have to create 8 majority minority districts. These districts, on average, will need to increase in size by 65,000 voters. In order to maintain majority minority status, they’ll have to grab as many minority voters from surrounding Democratic districts. That’ll make the other districts less Democratic.
I used Dave’s redistricting App. I eliminated the 4th district since a Democratic district will need to be eliminated. By maximizing the minority make-up in the 8 majority-minority districts, this is what I came up with:
I wasn’t attempting to make the districts more Republican. By gerrymandering the districts to keep minorities in the other eight districts, almost all of these districts go more Republican. The 8th and 14th are the New York City districts. There may be a way to have the 8th grab less Democrats, but there are four majority minority districts in Queens and Brooklyn bordering Manhattan. They could grab some Republicans from the 9th or 13th, moving them a little bit toward the Democrats. Any way you cut it, however, the Democratic 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 9th will likely have to become more Republican. This is after eliminating the Democratic 4th and maximizing Republicans in the GOP held 13th and 3rd. Democrats failed to get to 60% in 3 of the 4 remaining districts. None of the 2010 candidates were part of the GOP’s Young Guns program. So they were neither a top candidate nor got help from the NRCC. If these districts become more Republican, however, they could be in play in 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment