Florida Redistricting Part 1

[Nyvin]

The Florida Supreme Court declared that the GOP's congressional district maps are unconstitutional and need to be redrawn a while back. The court ordered quite significant changes to three general areas. I thought I'd try to draw a legal and compliant map that somewhat predicts what the GOP legislature in Florida will do. Obviously they will want to limit partisan change as much as possible, but they will be pressured to comply with the court's requests.

The basis of the FL Supreme Court's decision is in the Fair District Amendment passed by popular vote in 2010 with 62% of the vote. The amendment has a section devoted to Congressional Districts which was used by the Supreme Court:

Amendment 6:

Congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Districts must be contiguous. Unless otherwise required, districts must be compact, as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries.

Florida Congressional District Boundaries Amendment 6 2010 - Ballotpedia

The amendment is tiered in that the first requirements of not showing partisan intent, not denying racial minorities representation, and the district needing to be contiguous supersede the requirements of compact districts, equal population, and using political or geographical boundaries. All the requirements apply unless there is conflict with a higher tier (or the VRA), at which point the higher tier's requirements win over.

The Supreme Court found that the Republican Legislature created the maps with partisan intent and compacted minorities into certain districts unfairly, and also created too many county splits without reasoning.

The Two districts in the northern half of the state called out are FL-5 and FL-13.

FL-5 was found to be a gerrymander that was created to safeguard surrounding GOP held seats while packing in as many African Americans as possible without due reasoning. The district ignored too many political boundaries and a 50%+ African American population was not needed. The court mandated that an east to west district (probably going from Jacksonville to Tallahassee) would serve the African American community better.

In FL-13 it was found that chopping off a heavily African American populated section of St Petersburg in Pinellas County went against amendment six and mandated that FL-14 would be contained entirely within Hillsborough County.

In Dave's Redistricting App I created districts which are legal, compliant, and also have districts I THINK the Republican Legislature will favor to safeguard their incumbents.

Northern Florida:

image hosting

Breakdown:

FL-1: Unchanged, R+21
FL-2: R+19
FL-3: R+10
FL-4: R+17
FL-5: D+10
FL-6: R+3

The court's mandate that FL-5 be east to west instead of north to south gives generally two options, either Jacksonville to Gainesville or Jacksonville to Tallahassee. These two popuation centers are the only way you can create an African American Majority-Minority district in the north. I'm thinking the Republicans will favor the Jacksonville to Tallahassee district over the Gainesville district for two reasons:

1. FL-5 taking up Tallahassee and the heavily African American Gadsden County ensures that FL-2 will become an insurmountably red districts similar to FL-1, and that spells doom for (D) Gwen Graham who is the current rep for FL-2.

2. Having FL-5 take up most of Alachua County's population forces FL-3 outward which would lead it to taking up more of the heavily conservative northern counties, which in turn would make other districts in the area more prone to being swingy (especially FL-6). Having FL-5 go to Tallahassee does not cause this to happen at all really.


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Breakdown:

FL-7: R+6
FL-8: R+7
FL-9: D+7
FL-10: D+4
FL-11: R+11
FL-12: R+6
FL-13: D+3
FL-14: D+8
FL-15: Mostly Unchanged, R+7
FL-16: R+5

This is probably the area where Democrats will see the gains from this court ruling. FL-13 is probably the most predictable since there is almost nothing else to do but give FL-13 the rest of St. Petersburg and flip it from being an R+1 swing district to a lean Dem D+3 district. FL-16 to FL-13's south is not Republican enough to absorb St Petersburg without flipping or at least becoming swingy, and the court mandated that FL-13 be entirely within Pinelass County.

FL-9 is a mostly unchanged (VRA Protected) hispanic majority-minority district that maintains it's heavy Dem lean. With FL-5 retreating to the north FL-10 will be shifted mostly into Orange County to become a second Dem vote sink.

Creating a vote sink for the Dems might not seem like a good idea for the GOP but actually if you look around the map there isn't much else for them to do. Deltona city and Seminole county both have heavy amounts of Democrat voters, Polk county is generally swingy already, and Lake county must mainly go to FL-11 or it distorts all other districts in the area too much. Any options of cracking Orange county would most likely result in either violating Amendment 6 or endangering neighboring GOP districts. This can be seen from the PVI scores which are all significantly less Republican then what you'd find in the north (except the rural FL-11).

There are other court ordered changes in the Miami-Dade and Palm Beach districts, but I figured I'd start with this.

 

[Two Thumbs]

this again?

your weeks late

and you can look at any state map and see just how nuts the districts are, every state should do what fl did, but they wont

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

"The Supreme Court found that the Republican Legislature created the maps with partisan intent and compacted minorities into certain districts unfairly, and also created too many county splits without reasoning."

Much of what republicans do is without reasoning.

 

[Nyvin]

this again?

your weeks late

and you can look at any state map and see just how nuts the districts are, every state should do what fl did, but they wont

The court ruling was actually July 9th

I have a life outside of this forum you know, sheesh.

 

[Two Thumbs]

this again?

your weeks late

and you can look at any state map and see just how nuts the districts are, every state should do what fl did, but they wont

The court ruling was actually July 9th

I have a life outside of this forum you know, sheesh.

well there is a thread on this already.

every state is like this, you should see the crap in Il, it's truly bizarre.

 

[Nyvin]

this again?

your weeks late

and you can look at any state map and see just how nuts the districts are, every state should do what fl did, but they wont

The court ruling was actually July 9th

I have a life outside of this forum you know, sheesh.

well there is a thread on this already.

every state is like this, you should see the crap in Il, it's truly bizarre.

My post was informative and lengthy enough to warrant another thread since there isn't another thread titled specifically for predicting Florida's districts, which is what this is for.

Also there are districts around the country like this, but no other state has had it's districts ruled unconstitutional by the State's Supreme Court...

 

[Two Thumbs]

this again?

your weeks late

and you can look at any state map and see just how nuts the districts are, every state should do what fl did, but they wont

The court ruling was actually July 9th

I have a life outside of this forum you know, sheesh.

well there is a thread on this already.

every state is like this, you should see the crap in Il, it's truly bizarre.

My post was informative and lengthy enough to warrant another thread since there isn't another thread titled specifically for predicting Florida's districts, which is what this is for.

Also there are districts around the country like this, but no other state has had it's districts ruled unconstitutional by the State's Supreme Court...

ok, you added a line, mad props

and only FL has cared enough to bother looking. Any glance at any other state and you'd have to assume the same is true there.

it's just pols trying to keep their jobs.

 

[Nyvin]

The FL Legislature released a preliminary district map today:

H000C9065 - The Florida Senate

Looks like FL-13 and FL-14 went pretty close to what I was thinking. The Republicans ceded FL-13 to the Dems.

It's looking as if they are splitting the African American vote and Puerto Rican vote in Orange County between FL-10 (African American) and FL-9 (Puerto Rican), so that will be two safe Dem seats in the area (ceding FL-10 to the Dems).

FL-5 was pretty predictable as well, stays an African American majority minority.

Hard to say how the Miami area seats changed, probably not much.


I *think* FL-7 would have a slight Republican lean, but not much of one. John Mica lives in Deltona so interesting to see what happens there.

End result seems to be the Democrats picking up 2 seats.