This is my first shot at this, so be gentle 🙂
Meant to create:
1 Heath Shuler: 11
4 blue districts: 1, 4, 7, 12
8 red districts: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13
http://img413.imageshack.us/im…
NC-1 (dark blue): Butterfield (D)
Obama 59%.
Mostly the same as before. The way I drew it, its only plurality black, not majority black. It could probably be tinkered with easily to be majority black though.
NC-2 (bright green): Ellmers (R)
McCain 55%
Loses Raleign and Chatham county, and most of Cumberland county. Picks up some nice R areas elsewhere.
NC-3 (purple): Jones (R)
McCain 58%
Pretty ugly. This was the leftover territory district for me.
NC-4 (red): Price (D)
Obama 72%
Congrats David Price. Obama vote dump. Loses carefully chosen sections of Chatham, Durham, Orange,and holds all of Chapel Hill and Raleigh.
NC-5 (yellow): Foxx (R)
McCain 55%
Absorbs a piece of Guilford county and the Greensboro area. Probably weaker than before.
NC-6 (olive green): Coble? (R)
McCain 55%
Not sure where Coble lives:
Covers most of Davidson, Rowan, Cabarrus, a bit of the Charlotte suburbs, and another piece of Guilford county.
NC-7 (grey): McIntyre (D)
Obama 58%
Another Democratic voting dump. Retains a piece of New Hanover and keeps Fayetville. All these counties voted for Elaine Marshall over Burr for Senate this year.
With a bit of fancier line drawing this can probably hit 60% Obama easily.
NC-8 (purple): Coble (R)
McCain 55%
See 6.
Yields territory to the new 6th and grabs Chatham and a piece of Wake County. Less Repbulican than before. Either 6 or 8 gets a new Republican.
NC-9 (teal): Mynick (R)
McCain 55%
Mostly unchanged.
NC-10 (pink): McHenry (R)
McCain 58%
Absorbs half of Buncombe. Picks up some of the 5ths territory.
NC-11 (bright green): Shuler (D)
McCain 56%
Breaks Buncombe in 2. Grabs some territory from the 5th and 10th. Shuler can win this anyway, though. A future Democrat probably can’t.
NC-12 (pale blue): Watt (D)
Obama 68%
Mostly unchanged. Picks up some more Dem territory at both ends, but maintains the general 2 city and corridor structure. Almost certianly less than 50% white at this point.
A professional could probably hit 70% Obama with this, and shore up the new 6th.
NC-13 (tan): Miller (D)
McCain 55%
Loses most of Raleigh and Greensboro. Grabs all of Alamance county and some areas from the old 2nd.
Designed to knock off Brad Miller.
From a Rethug perspective; I could see them doing something like this.
Basically if they want to make NC-02 and NC-08 more Republican then they will have to choose between either making the 7th or 13th district more Republican, and one of those districts more Democratic. It is possible to give Miller a safe Democratic district that has Durham and Southeast Raleigh, while giving Price the Democratic areas of Greensboro, Chapel Hill, and Fayetteville. This would leave McIntyre with a 58% McCain district while at the same time getting NC-02 up to 55% McCain.
I think that the Republicans would rather get rid of McIntyre since his district has more potential to go Republican (a lot of the state legislative seats that flipped were in Eastern NC). Plus if he is gone and it is just the very liberal Price, Miller, Butterfield, and Watt left in office then moderate voters will not feel as amenable to voting for Democrats at other levels downballot possibly. Another possible risk for the GOP if McIntyre loses though is if he decides to run for statewide office (remember the chatter about him running for Senate against Burr last cycle?). I feel like they will be more likely to go after McIntyre than Miller though personally for those reasons. Let me know what you all think though.
Not that big a deal, but you put the homes of several Republican incumbents in the wrong districts. For instance, you put Walter Jones in NC-01, Virginia Foxx in NC-11, Howard Coble in NC-05, and Patrick McHenry in NC-09.
For anyone that makes an NC redistricting map in the future, here are the precincts where the current GOP incumbents live:
NC-02: Renee Ellmers (Harnett County, Averasboro 3)
NC-03: Walter Jones (Pitt County, 8.00A)
NC-05: Virginia Foxx (Watauga County, Watauga)
NC-06: Howard Coble (Guilford County, Summerfield 4)
NC-09: Sue Myrick (Mecklenburg County, 144 (in the southern part of the county))
NC-10: Patrick McHenry (Gaston County, Cherryville 2)
Because I can’t imagine they’ll settle for 9-4.
Open the zooms up in a new browser window if you need to see them bigger.
Going east to west:
Blue – 67-33 Obama (just over 50% black)
Green – 54-46 McCain
Purple – 55-44 McCain
Red – 53-46 McCain
Yellow – 69-30 Obama
Dark Teal – 53-46 McCain
Light Teal – 54-46 McCain
Purple – 56-43 McCain
Grey – 75-24 Obama (48% black)
Magenta – 55-44 McCain
Green – 54-45 McCain
Orange – 56-42 McCain
Light Purple – 59-40 McCain
The only really egregious thing I did is split Wake County between five districts.