Redistricting requires tradeoffs, judgments, and compromises. Yesterday in starting their court-ordered remedial map, the North Carolina Senate released its “jump ball.”
In basketball, a jump ball is the moment when play begins. In this case, the jump ball was spun in the Republicans’ favor. But there’s a lot that can still happen ahead.
The North Carolina legislative committees for redistricting are using expert witness Jowei Chen’s randomly generated maps as a starting point for drawing their remedial maps. Yesterday, the Senate committee drew seven of these to create a single starting point.
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has obtained the shapefiles from reporter Melissa Boughton. They can be found here. (D1 and D2, for Bladen-Brunswick-New Hanover-Pender Counties, are the same.)
One set of counties comes from each map. We still have to combine those shapefiles into a single base map. In the meantime, thanks to Michal Migurski at PlanScore, we can tell you how each of these statewide maps performs, using past state Senate results:
On average, these maps are still biased toward Republicans. They have an Efficiency Gap of R+3.9%, a partisan bias of R+2.5%, and a mean-median diference of R+2.9%.
We’ll have stats on the currently-used map later.
References:
D2: Bladen-Brunswick-New Hanover-Pender Counties
Next up is the Bladen-Brunswick-New Hanover-Pender cluster base map #ncga #ncpol pic.twitter.com/fwWbaRbuAm
— Melissa Boughton (@mel_bough) September 11, 2019
D1 PlanScore (checking why there is a mismatch – we probably need D2 shapefiles)
https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190911T073815.901809859Z
D3: Alamance-Guilford-Randolph
Map: https://twitter.com/mel_bough/status/1171614997333590017
D3 PlanScore: https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190911T074703.620000706Z
D4: Duplin-Harnett-Johnston-Lee-Nash-Sampson
Next up: Duplin-Harnett-Johnston-Lee-Nash-Sampson cluster base map #ncga #ncpol pic.twitter.com/6kT9UBzxaw
— Melissa Boughton (@mel_bough) September 11, 2019
D4 PlanScore: https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190911T074803.670873351Z
D39: Buncombe-Henderson-Transylvania https://twitter.com/mel_bough/status/1171615591465127941
PlanScore: https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190911T074853.710385424Z
D116: Franklin-Wake
6 down, 2 to go… This is the Franklin-Wake cluster Senate base map #ncga #ncpol pic.twitter.com/9qHKYFEorK
— Melissa Boughton (@mel_bough) September 11, 2019
D116 PlanScore: https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190911T074935.545674024Z
D298: Davie-Forsyth
Here is the Davie-Forsyth cluster base map for the Senate remedial redistricting process #ncga #ncpol pic.twitter.com/gWnlSpVnnb
— Melissa Boughton (@mel_bough) September 11, 2019
D298 PlanScore: https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190911T075016.439066588Z
D676: Mecklenburg
This is the final county cluster base map — one more state base map to go. See Mecklenburg cluster base map for the Senate #ncga #ncpol pic.twitter.com/VhTmDonPz8
— Melissa Boughton (@mel_bough) September 11, 2019
D676 PlanScore: https://planscore.org/plan.html?20190911T075057.119301945Z
So is this the reason the Republicans have not appealed to the state supreme court (NCSC)? If they appealed to NCSC, would any challenges have gone straight back to the NCSC, but now they hope to drag their feet until they can reuse the same districts in 2020 because any review by the state courts would have to proceed through the whole court system? It seems improbable that they suddenly became responsive and contrite.
My best guess is that they know the NCSC would rule against them, and they don’t want an unfavorable precedent for the next lawsuit. For example, if there’s a lawsuit against the Congressional gerrymander, a precedent could speed that process in time for the 2020 election.
Another point: this three-judge panel is now the expert panel on redistricting in North Carolina. If the Republicans don’t file an appeal, they will keep this panel busy until the appeal date runs out. By not appealing, they are clogging the system a bit.
Thanks for reporting on the new maps. For those of us who are not redistricting experts, could you explain how Jowei Chen randomly generated the remedial maps?
Thanks for posting, and thanks to PlanScore for the data.