We’ve got a 9-2 GOP, a 7-4 GOP, and a 7-4 DEM map here.
Populations aren’t exactly equal; I kept it to a maximum of 2000 from ideal and tried to balance between regions as well; without the ability to go per-precinct I don’t see the point in getting below 200 difference.
None of these maps are perfect, the point of this is to show the range of drawable maps. I think a neutral map is probably 6R-4D with 1 swing seat, but you can go quite a ways in each direction before hitting Abgin-esque lines or obvious dummymanders.
As a reminder:
District 1: Blue, Tidewater area, incumbent (R) Rob Wittman.
District 2: Green, Virginia Beach area, incumbent (R) Scott Rigel
District 3: Purple, Richmond to Norfolk, incumbent (D) Bobby Scott.
District 4: Red, Southeast VA south of district 3, incumbent (R) Randy Forbes.
District 5: Yellow, South-Central VA and Charlottesville, incumbent (R) Robert Hurt.
District 6: Teal, Northwest VA (Lynchburg, Roanoke), incumbent (R) Bob Goodlatte.
District 7: Gray, Richmond suburbs and central VA, incumbent (R) Eric Cantor.
District 8: Slate Blue, DC Suburbs (Arlington, Alexandria), incumbent (D) Jim Moran.
District 9: Bright Blue, Western VA, incumbent (R) Morgan Griffith.
District 10: Pink, Northern Virginia (including Loudoun), incumbent (R) Frank Wolf.
District 11: Light Green, Northern Virginia (including Fairfax), incumbent (D) Gerry Connolly.
The 2nd, 5th, 9th, and 11th had partisan changes during the decade.
GOP Map: The highlight here is packing Jim Moran’s district, then cracking the rest of NOVA across 3 other districts. The other districts (excluding Bobby Scott’s) are generally balanced for 54% GOP vote as much as possible.
District 5: 55.3% McCain, 56.0% GOP. 71.1% 18+ white. No longer includes Charlottesville, but includes Petersburg instead.
District 9: 56.6% McCain, 54.4% GOP. 89.1% 18+ white. Picks up Roanoke to make it less strongly GOP, as I doubt Rick Boucher is going to come back. Western VA was the one area where Obama underperformed the past decade of Democrats.
District 6: 54.1% McCain, 55.2% GOP. 83.1% 18+ white. Gains Charlottesville, but still northwest VA.
District 2: 50.9% McCain, 54.2% GOP. 68.1% 18+ white. Delmarva peninsula, the entirety of Virginia Beach, and conservative parts of the rest of the Hampton Roads area.
District 3: 78.1% Obama, 73.6% Dem. 52.5% 18+ black. The Richmond to Norfolk district. This probably isn’t the most packed it could be, but it’s good enough.
District 4: 50.2% Obama, 52.8% GOP. 62.1% 18+ white. Once again follows the southern border of district 3.
District 7: 53.6% McCain, 56.3% GOP. 74.1% 18+ white. Rob Wittman is squeezed towards Northern Virginia, Cantor’s Richmond-area district picks up the counties on the Chesapeake Bay.
District 10: 51.0% McCain, 52.7% GOP. 71.0% 18+ white. Frank Wolf keeps all of Loudoun county, as well as some counties west of there. Takes part of Fairfax.
District 11: 52.8% Obama, 53.0% GOP. 63.4% 18+ white. This takes as much of Fairfax and Prince William as it can and draws it into the Shenandoahs. Not perfect, but much better for the GOP than it is now.
District 1: 52.5% Obama, 52.0% GOP. 63.5% 18+ white. An ugly district, taking in areas along the Potomac in Fairfax and counties west of Fredericksberg. I doubt Rob Wittman even lives here. I couldn’t get a version from Fairfax to Tidewater past 50.5% GOP.
District 8: 67.8% Obama, 66.7% DEM. 55.7% 18+ white. Arlington, Alexandria, and the most Dem parts of Fairfax I could grab. With tweaking this could probably be 70% Obama.
NEUTRAL MAP: The goal here was to draw 1 black majority and 1 minority-majority district outside of NOVA, to shore up the other incumbents (Randy Forbes is the nominal casualty). In NOVA, there is no attempt to crack anything, though Frank Wolf gets the more GOP portions of the area.
District 5: 53.3% McCain, 55.0% GOP. 73.1% 18+ white. Very similar to the current setup, though Perriello’s home is intentionally drawn out of the district.
District 9: 59.5% McCain, 56.3% GOP. 90.7% 18+ white. Much more GOP without Roanoke.
District 6: 56.5% McCain, 57.1% GOP. 84.1% 18+ white. Pretty boring.
District 7: 56.0% McCain, 59.5% GOP. 80.6% 18+ white. Another boring safe R district.
District 1: 56.0% McCain, 58.2% GOP. 77.8% 18+ white. Tidewater and the Richmond suburbs. With CD10 contracting and a Richmond to Winchester district not practical, this is the next best option. I don’t know if Wittman or Cantor would run here.
District 2: 54.3% McCain, 56.0% GOP. 69.7% 18+ white. Delmarva, most of Virginia Beach, and a few adjacent areas.
District 3: 65.9% Obama, 61.3% DEM. 49.7% 18+ white (46.1% overall). All of Norfolk, and much of the rest of Hampton Roads. Heavy black areas are pulled into district 4. Bobby Scott might run here or in CD4, I don’t know.
District 4: 70.8% Obama, 65.7% DEM. 50.5% 18+ black. Richmond, Petersburg, black parts of Hampton/Newport News, and heavily black rural counties. Randy Forbes, how do you feel about running for Senate?
District 10: 52.4% Obama, 51.6% GOP. 57.5% 18+ white. Frank Wolf is probably going to be in trouble at some point during the decade, but this is as safe as a non-gerrymandered seat gets.
District 11: 62.3% Obama, 57.4% DEM. 49.5% 18+ white. This pops out as a minority-majority district by having Jim Moran’s district go north along the Potomac. It should be safe D now.
District 8: 64.5% Obama, 63.5% DEM. 64.4% 18+ white. Only about 3% less Dem than the packed district, surprisingly.
DEM MAP: This goes for 3 Dem districts in NoVA, 1 in Richmond, 2 in the Norfolk area, and 1 in the western part of the state. (after doing the writeup, I notice deviations above 2000, but still under 1%. Whatever, this won’t happen anyhow.)
District 5: 51.2% Obama, 50.4% DEM. 78.0% 18+ white. Charlottesville, Roanoke, Blacksburg, and anything that wasn’t too Republican anywhere near there. Plus, the district kind of looks like a guy kicking a soccer ball. Not “Safe D” by any means, but pretty good considering the surroundings.
District 9: 60.9% McCain, 58.0% GOP. 87.8% 18+ white. Rick Boucher, I sincerely hope you don’t want to come back.
District 6: 59.1% McCain, 61.1% GOP. 87.7% 18+ white. Bob Goodlatte has got to be the safest GOP member going into redistricting.
District 7: 57.1% McCain, 59.9% GOP. 75.9% 18+ white. I guess Eric Cantor runs here. Randy Forbes might as well. And Robert Hurt, if he doesn’t want to run in the 5th.
District 1: 56.3% McCain, 57.8% GOP. 75.6% 18+ white. Rob Wittman is safe.
District 2: 54.8% Obama, 51.7% DEM. 62.0% 18+ white. Contains Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Chesapeake, but with their conservative and their black portions removed. Also Delmarva and a few less-R western shore counties.
District 3: 66.3% Obama, 62.4% DEM. 50.2% 18+ black. Newport News to Petersburg, with some rural counties as well.
District 4: 62.3% Obama, 57.3% DEM. 55.6% 18+ white. A compact Richmond district!
District 10: 58.5% Obama, 58.3% DEM. 63.6% 18+ white. There isn’t a law that says Arlington and Alexandria have to be in the same CD. Frank Wolf now represents the Arlington-based district.
District 8: 61.9% Obama, 58.6% DEM. 55.3% 18+ white. Jim Moran now has an Alexandria-based district. Also including Fairfax City and as many conservative precinct in Fairfax as I could grab.
District 11: 59.2% Obama, 53.1% DEM. 53.2% 18+ white. I’m not 100% sure if this is trending Dem, if Obama brought out minority non-voters, or what. Based on these demographics, I wouldn’t be too worried.
I think the shift in your 11th is real. It’s right across from DC and not far from Charles County MD, which has also seen a huge shift.
If the Dems ignore the VRA they can go for 8 districts, or at least 7-3-1.
Is pretty close to the VA map I drew yesterday. In my map, VA-11 also became majority-minority (48.1% white)… And I wasn’t even out to do that. So for everyone who doubted a compact majority-minority NoVA district could be designed, let the record show that the both of us did it! 😉
One map at a time . . .
First, on the GOP-mander, it seems that you’ve kept the 2nd and the 4th as way too competitive. I could see both going to the Dems in a strong year, like 2012.
Also, the 7th seems like it could be competitive given Cantor’s partisan high profile and apparently weakness in 2012 despite the strong GOP year.
Rob Wittman doesn’t live in the 1st in your map. The only scenario where this would be likely would be if he runs for the Senate in 2012 and it opens up a seat. Your 1st and 11th, just like the 2nd and 4th, could go Dem in a good year. So although you tried to make a 9-2, I could easily see it becoming 5-6 by the end of the decade.
You’ve also taken all of Roanoke out of the 6th, which is Goodlatte’s home. Not sure how that would go over, but he’s been a rumored retirement for several cycles but has always stuck around.
The neutral map has problems of excluding the home of Morgan Griffith in the 9th. Other problems with incumbents also makes it unlikely.
The Dem-mander is great, if there were a possibility of this ever happening. I think Perriello could have held onto the 5th in it with some work in 2010, making him much safer in other years.
I think people are missing the fact that you cannot keep three incumbents in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk area. Forbes lives in Chesapeake, Rigell in Virginia Beach, and Scott in Newport News. Growth in this area has dropped in some parts or remained stagnant. If Republicans want to make Hurt stronger then they need to get rid of Danville (48% African-American). If they push Hurt northward to Winchester, then they can still keep Charlottesville and keep Hurt safe. Hurt lives in Chatham, which is north of Danville.
If Scott was drawn all the way up to Richmond, as is current, then you would leave many African-American precincts remaining in Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach. This would require Forbes, most likely to pick up these areas. Are we then pushing forbes over to Danville (48% African-American) or Petersburg (78% African-American)? To think Republicans are going to leave Cantor further weaker by picking up the remaining African-American precincts which Scott cannot is ridiculous. Unlike Virginia Beach-Norfolk area, Richmond has growth and it will require Cantor to retain a more compact district. They are not going to exchange areas in the northern part of his district for African-American precincts in Richmond.
This is the reason why I conclude that Republicans will have no choice but to create an African-American majority district, which picks up African-American precincts in Richmond, along with Petersburg, Hopewell, Emporia, and Danville. In return, Scott will pick up African-American precincts in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk area, allowing the remaining Republican to be much stronger. Therefore, I conclude that a Forbes-Rigell primary is inevitable. Wittman and Hurt will be made stronger as a result.