Tag: Florida

This area is kinda the I-4 corridor. I would say out of the 3 districts I drew which are about 780k people give or take. This is a fast growing area of Florida and this is merely a map that will focus on the communities of interest idea of this area.

Blue is for the elderly and exurban. The center of the district is The Villages|Lady Lake which looks to grow more and more and is very attractive for Republican identifiers all over the country to move to. This district if it were to be made smaller would likely remove the Lake County portion that would be more of a Daytona exurb. And some parts of Marion county that are not near The Villages into a district that would go to Gainesville or Tallahasse.

I used to live in Citrus county which is in the north and western portion of the district, the county is divided in half, using the potential extension of the Suncoast Parkway as a border. This district is very much a transition from North Florida into the I-4 corridor. I should mention that in modern Florida the plotting of major road corridors are for growth purposes by developers who run the show in this area. This blue district is quite Republican and save for the areas near Orlando it is nearly all red.

It should be noted that the growth here is in the 50+ population and perchance minority populations along State Road 50 for work in Orlando. If this district was to be split up even further the Black voters in western Orange county would probably prefer to be in the purple district; pushing that one further Democratic.

Counties: parts of Citrus, Marion, Hernando, Orange, and all of Lake and Sumter

Partisan rating: Likely Republican for awhile

Green is for the suburbanite. The center of this district is the center-right Lakeland, a city between the sprawling cities of Orlando and Tampa which in turn could make Lakeland similar to Tacoma, Washington many years down the road (Think Seattle and Olympia with Tacoma in between). The area is southern for the most part in this area and middle class.

There are areas that are well to do but down the road there is going to be a large Hispanic plurality in some communities due to farm workers. One only has to drive I-4 to see why I drew this district into Hillsborough, once it his I-75 you see the tall buildings of downtown Tampa and though Plant City appears to be a Tampa suburb it is more similar to Lakeland and Polk county in appearance as well as proximity.

Counties: part of Pasco, Hillsborough and most of Polk

Partisan rating: Lean Republican, but tossup in 10 years

Purple is for Mickey. This district is just South Orlando with all its Theme Parks and its suburbs, it is a majority minority district with Whites having the VAP plurality and Hispanics having the plurality when it comes to the population as a whole. The area is very likely to elect a Democrat. The populations in Osceola county are either Farmers (low in number but Republican), Rich Whites (who occupy the planned communities adjacent to Disney and Universal), and Minorities who very much can bring this district home for Democrats.

Counties: Orange and Osceola

Partisan rating: Lean to Likely Democrat

I felt like putting this up for all to see since I have seen some diaries that split these areas up. Mind you I do not expect everyone to conform to what I think; but I am offering this as a guide for those interested in communities of interest in the I-4 corridor. This is absent actual partisan data but just an assumption on my part as someone who has spent a great part of the past few years traveling around this area.

If wanted, I would love to post a Tampa Bay and Orlando-Daytona maps finishing the I-4 corridor for reference.

This is an attempt to draw new Florida districts based on the initiative they just passed prohibiting gerrymandering. There are three majority-Hispanic, one majority-black, and one plurality-black district all in the state’s south end, but beyond that the lines are just geography. I tried to keep counties and metropolitan areas together, and to a lesser extent cities. This map is what I think a neutral Iowa-type commission might come up with, but in practice I think the new map is likely to end up more like Michigan in that the districts will be fairly clean but more subtly drawn to favor Republicans.  

Anyway, for the districts w = Anglo, b = black, h = Hispanic, a = Asian. O = Obama, M = McCain. Numbers are voting age pop.

State map:

Miami closeup:

FL1 (blue): 77.5w-12.5b-4.6h-2.7a. Deep red. Jeff Miller (current FL1) lives here.

FL2 (green): 68.6w-23.0b-4.8h-2.8a. Should still be likely R. Steve Southerland (current FL2) lives here.

FL3 (purple): 59.2w-27.6b-7.0h-4.2a. This is nothing like the current FL3, which is plurality-black but not remotely compact. This proposed FL3 is about 1 point more black than Duval county as a whole, which is about R+4. This new version is maybe R+2 or R+3 (lean R). Corrine Brown (current FL3) probably lives here but would be too liberal to win this version.

FL4 (red): 75.9w-14.9b-5.4h-2.1a. Also deep red, not too far off the current FL4. Ander Crenshaw (current FL4) probably doesn’t live here but could run here.

FL5 (yellow): 73.8w-13.4b-8.5h-2.8a. This would be a competitive district as it includes the college town of Gainesville. It’s basically Levy (M12-O7), Alachua (O73-M47), Marion (M90-O71), and Putnam (M19-O13). Collectively that’s roughly M168-O164 or about R+4. Cliff Stearns (current FL6) lives here but could potentially lose this to a blue dog.

FL6 (teal): 79.3w-8.9b-8.7h-1.8a. Has St Johns (M69-O36), Flagler (O25-M24), and most of Volusia (O127-M113). Resembles the current FL7 whose rep John Mica does not live here. Probably likely R.

FL7 (gray): 65.2w-8.5b-20.9h-3.7a. Orlando area district with Seminole (M105-O99) and generally whiter parts of Orange (O272-M186). Lean R? Mica and Dan Webster (current FL8) both live here, and Sandy Adams (current FL24) probably does too.

FL8 (blue-gray): 43.7w-25.0b-23.3h-5.4a. Western Orange. The whole county is D+6 and this end has more minorities so it’s probably likely D to safe D. Even Alan Grayson could hold this.

FL9 (toothpaste blue): 77.1w-7.5b-10.7h-3.0a. Southern Volusia, eastern Orange, and most of Brevard (M157-O127). Should be lean R to likely R. Adams could probably run here as it overlaps with most of her current district. Bill Posey (current FL15) also lives here.

FL10 (pink): 83.4w-6.2b-7.8h-1.3a. Four very red counties containing much of the current FL5. There isn’t going to be any free for all here, because Richard Nugent has a stranglehold on this district. Safe R.

FL11 (pea soup green): 84.9w-3.3b-8.5h-2.1a. Pasco (M110-O102) and north Pinellas (O244-M207). Lean R?  Gus Bilirakis (current FL9) lives here.

FL12 (light blue): 77.6w-10.6b-7.1h-3.1a. South Pinellas, mostly St Pete. Lean D? The county is D+0 to D+1 and this is probably the more liberal end of it. I think Bill Young (current FL10) lives here.

FL13 (pink-gray): 52.3w-16.8b-25.4h-3.6a. Mostly Tampa, lots of overlap with current deep-blue FL11 whose rep Kathy Castor probably lives here. Lean D to Likely D?

FL14 (olive): 67.3w-10.7b-17.8h-2.7a. East Pinellas, north Manatee. No incumbent. Lean R to likely R?

FL15 (orange): 59.1w-12.0b-25.3h-2.0a. Maybe 2/3 of Polk (M129-O114) and Osceola (O59-M39). Toss up? Dennis Ross (current FL12) lives here.

FL16 (garden hose green): 72.5w-8.2b-16.6h-1.5a. This spacious hinterland district had to take a chunk of the coast because there weren’t quite enough people in the interior counties. No incumbent. McCain won all of these counties. Likely R to safe R.

FL17 (indigo): 85.1w-3.7b-8.9h-1.2a. Most of Sarasota, Charlotte, north Lee. Likely R? Connie Mack (current FL14) appears to live just outside.

FL18 (yellow): 74.8w-10.8b-11.7h-1.4a. South Brevard, Indian River (M40-O30), St Lucie (O67-M52), Martin (M44-O33), a little bit of northeast Palm Beach. Lean R to likely R? I think Tom Rooney (current FL16) lives in the little bit.

FL19 (money green): 64.1w-11.2b-20.9h-2.4a. Mostly the less-black parts of north Palm Beach, and  takes a contorted shape in order to make FL23 plurality-black. Probably lean D to likely D. The whole county is D+8, although the bluest parts are in FL23. Apparently no incumbent. Lois Frankel, who plans to run against West, probably lives here.

FL20 (pale pink): 70.5w-6.6b-20.7h-1.3a. Collier, much of Lee, a bit of Miami-Dade. Safe R. Mack lives here.

FL21 (red-brown): 72.2w-9.7b-13.6h-2.8a. South Palm Beach, north Broward. Ted Deutch (current FL19) lives here. Likely D to safe D?

FL22 (sky blue): 58.8w-9.1b-27.2h-3.2a. Much of southern and eastern Broward, which is D+14 overall. Probably safe D. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (current FL20) lives here, and probably Allen West (current FL22) also does. That would be entertaining, although it wouldn’t be close.

FL23 (light blue-green): 32.0w-46.0b-17.6h-2.3a. This plurality-black district would probably produce a black rep so I would guess it would be VRA compliant. It looks compact, but it’s really a big cluster in the middle of Palm Beach, another big cluster in the middle of Broward, and the smaller Pahokee and Belle Glade areas on lake Okeechobee connected together by lots and lots of empty space. No incumbent either, unless West lives here. Safe D.

FL24 (purple): 28.8w-4.9b-63.6h-1.8a. After you carve out a majority-black district, what’s left of Dade will necessarily be majority-Hispanic. This overlaps with much of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s current FL18. Lean R?

FL25 (raw hamburger): 12.1w-52.6b-31.0h-2.4a. You can carve out a nice majority-black district that looks sort of like a mini-Florida from interior north Dade and the south end of Broward. Frederica Wilson (current FL17) and Alcee Hastings (current FL23) both live here. Safe D.

FL26 (gray): 6.1w-2.1b-90.6h-1.0a. Ninety percent! Seems to overlap with much of Mario Diaz-Balart’s current FL21. Lean R?

FL27 (sea foam green): 22.7w-11.1b-63.1h-1.9a. This overlaps with much of David Rivera’s current FL25 which is R+5, but loses a piece of Collier county that is 9% black and 43% Hispanic (the rest of the county is just 3% black and 11% Hispanic) so it probably isn’t anywhere near the county’s overall PVI of R+15. Probably still lean R to likely R if its new areas in Dade county aren’t much different from its old ones.

If my estimates of these districts are correct, this map is 18-8-1 considering only the partisan lean of the districts, but about half of the “red” districts would be competitive whereas the only really competitive “blue” district is probably FL12 in St. Pete. In practice I think this map would be in the range of 17R-10D to 15R-12D in most years. The current map has just 5 districts with a PVI of +4 or less one way or the other. I think this map would have considerably more, which should make for the more competitive elections the voters said they wanted this past November.

Thoughts? I don’t know this state well at all and would appreciate any pointers about these proposed districts.  

Florida was one of the nation’s biggest gainers, both in terms of overall numbers (18,801,310, up from 15,982,378 in 2000) and House seats (up two from 25 to 27, making it the only state besides Texas to gain more than one seat). Florida’s new target is 696,345, up from 639K in 2000.

Most of the state’s gains come in what’s called the I-4 corridor, reaching from Tampa Bay through Orlando over to Daytona Beach and down the Space Coast. (Of course, that’s not consistent from district to district; the only district in the state that lost outright population is FL-10 in St. Petersburg, and Tampa’s FL-11 will also need to gain voters.) FL-05, centered in Pasco and Hernando Counties north of Tampa, is now one of the largest districts in the nation, in fact. Both of the new districts seem likely to be centered somewhere in the I-4 corridor, although there was enough growth in the Miami area that it will need to expand a little, too, shifting in-between districts like the 13th and 16th a step to the north. (Miami area growth was concentrated in FL-25 in Miami’s westernmost suburbs; the rest of south Florida, especially the Gold Coast, seemed pretty stable). Despite the GOP-held trifecta, predicting the final map right now is a bit of a fool’s errand, though, considering that the effect of Florida’s Fair Districts initiatives will probably need to be filtered through the courts and the DOJ.

Florida, as you’d expect, is one of the states showing large-scale Hispanic growth. That’s not as clear-cut in the Democrats’ favor as it is in other states, in that it has a large Cuban community, although that’s largely limited to the Miami area and Cubans are becoming a smaller percentage of the total Hispanic community even there. Hispanic growth in central Florida tends to be Puerto Rican and Central American. The state as a whole moved from 65% non-Hispanic white, 14% non-Hispanic black, and 17% Hispanic in 2000 to 58% white, 15% black, and 22% Hispanic in 2010. While the most heavily Hispanic districts, naturally, remain the three Cuban districts in the Miami area, most of the biggest increases in Hispanic percentage have come in central Florida. In particular, see FL-08 (18% Hispanic in 2000, 26% Hispanic in 2010), FL-11 (20% Hispanic in 2000, 28% Hispanic in 2010), and FL-12 (12% Hispanic in 2000, 21% in 2010). Could we see one of the new districts be a Hispanic-majority VRA district that joins Tampa, Lakeland, and Orlando? The biggest Hispanic percentage increase might surprise you, though: Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s FL-20, which went from 21% to 31%, apparently based on a lot of Cuban movement to the suburbs further north).

Georgia is gaining one seat, from 13 to 14, and with that in mind, its new target is 691,975 (up from 630K in 2000). Pretty much all decade, those in the know have been expecting Georgia’s 14th seat to fall in Atlanta’s northern tier of suburbs, where the state’s fastest growth has been in distant exurban (and virulently red) counties like Cherokee and Forsyth. The new data basically confirms that, with the heaviest gains in suburban/exurban GA-07 (worth noting: Newt Gingrich’s old stomping grounds, Gwinnett County, is now the state’s 2nd largest county, having shot past Cobb and DeKalb Counties) and GA-09.

Perhaps most surprising is the deep deficit in GA-02, the VRA district in the state’s rural South; there had been discussion of it reaching up to take in central Macon in order to make GA-08 safer for its new Republican occupant Austin Scott, and that seems even likelier now, given that may be the only way for it to retain an African-American majority. The two VRA districts in Atlanta will also need to expand outward, but third black-majority seat in the ATL area, the suburban 13th, has plenty of population to spare.

The changes in Kentucky are much less dramatic, which stays at six seats, has seen little change in its racial composition, and which probably won’t even see much movement of its current boundaries. Its current target is 723,228, up from 673K in 2000. As in many states, the truly rural districts (in this case, the west Kentucky KY-01 and Appalachian KY-05) were stagnant, and will need to gain population from districts with exurban populations (KY-02, which includes Louisville’s southernmost ‘xurbs, and KY-06, centered on Lexington).

Maps and Graphs looking at yesterday’s Mayoral Recall on a precinct level. Cross-posted at Stochastic Democracy.

In a lop-sided result that shocked most advisors, 88% of Miami voters voted to recall Mayor Carlos Alvarez (R- Miami). Some Democrats suggested parallels with the likely upcoming recall elections of Republican State Senators in Wisconsin over controversial anti-Union legislation. Republicans were quick to point out that Alverez’s recall campaign centered around the mayor’s property tax increases and perceived concessions to county employee unions.

Alvarez recall vote by precinct. Alvarez did not win a single precinct with more then two voters.

Vote for Republican Senate Candidate Marco Rubio in 2010 vs Yes vote by precinct. Statistically significant but not particularly strong relationship.

The question is what extent this recall was driven by Democrats or Republican disapproval. Nothing passes with 88% of the vote without bipartisan approval, but a deeper look at the data reveals a disproportionately Republican electorate.

Turnout for the 2011 Mayoral Recall Election by precinct

2010 Senate results by precinct, falling mostly on ethnic lines. Note spatial similarity to the previous map.

A graph confirming the seeming relation between the last two maps. Precincts where Rubio performed strongly had much better turnout relative to 2010 then Democratic districts.



Election results under different year’s precinct turnout levels.  

These factors combined to produce an incredibly Republican electorate relative to 2010, a year that had by far the best Conservative turnout in a decade. Roughly 50% of votes in the special election came from precincts where Rubio received more than 55% of the vote, these same districts made up 37% of the votes in 2010. If precincts had turned out in 2008 at 2011 levels, Obama would have nearly lost the county, traditionally a Democratic stronghold.

This isn’t bad news for Wisconsin Democrats, they seem to be doing fine. But if they prevail, it’s safe to say that their electorate won’t look anything like this one.  

This diary presents a 27-seat map for Florida using the new ACS data and the guidelines of the newly passed Fair Districts amendment. It goes very heavy on respecting local boundaries, sometimes to the detriment of minority districts; a couple of alternate area maps are presented at the end to rectify that. My hope is that this map represents the most extreme fidelity to local boundaries that’s possible, in order to serve as a baseline for other proposed maps. Please let me know if you think there’s someplace that fidelity can be enhanced.

Florida’s gaining two seats. It’s pretty easy to say that one is FL-19, based in Indian River, St. Lucie, and Martin Counties on the south central Atlantic coast. The second one is harder to discern; I think it’s best to say that the old FL-03 is gone and has been replaced by the new districts in Orlando and Jacksonville.

As drawn, the map renumbers all of the districts from northwest to southeast. Here’s an overview map.

Fair Districts

For reference, here’s the ballot summary of the Fair Districts law:

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.

Not taking political ramifications into account was actually easy. Florida’s a pretty difficult state to get elections information for. So much so that even after drawing the map, I’m having a hard time assessing it. My comments are based on existing PVIs as listed on Wikipedia and the map from Inoljit’s recent diary on the 2010 governor’s race. Feedback from those with knowledge about Florida’s politics is greatly appreciated.

Following existing local boundaries has a pretty dramatic impact on the overall map. Currently, the 10th district in Pinellas County is the only district entirely within one county. Under this new map, there are nine districts that are wholly within a single county: two each in Miami-Dade and Broward and one each in Palm Beach, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Orange, and Duval. Overall, I’m happy with my map’s compactness and respectfulness of local lines, although I’d be happy to see other attempts. Note that the only boundaries I had references for are the county lines and the incorporated cities lines available in the old version of the App. I don’t even know if Florida has something equivalent to midwestern townships, so if it does, I wasn’t able to take them into account.

Protecting the opportunities of racial and language minorities was a more difficult aspect of this map. My lay understanding of the current state of VRA law runs something like this: minorities that can be given compact districts where they’re 50% or more of the population must be given them, but it’s unconstitutional to “gerrymander” together unwieldy districts for them — although considering that NC-01 apparently passes muster, I’m not quite sure how to tell what’s too unwieldy. There’s also, I suppose, the question of to what extent the Fair Districts language goes beyond what the VRA requires.

For my main map, I decided that both Brown’s and Hasting’s districts were too unwieldy to be maintained. Dismantling Hasting’s district is probably the worse call. While ugly, it could be drawn at more than 50% African American while staying entirely within two counties; anything similar to Brown’s current district wouldn’t pass the 50% mark and would require a whole lot of county-splitting. At the same time, however, breaking up Hasting’s district allows for four of the six districts wholly or partially in Broward and Palm Beach to be majority-minority (although three of those are white-plurality.) Constructing something similar to Hasting’s current district causes four of those six districts to become white majority.

The Decision Points

Putting that another way, I really consider myself to have made only three significant decisions on this map – everything else seemed more or less dictated by the geography and demographics. Now, that might not be an accurate self-perception, but that’s how I feel about it.

Two I’ve already covered:

1) Will the plurality African American district in north Florida be maintained?

2) Will the majority African American district in Palm Beach and Broward Counties be maintained?

And then there’s the previously unforeshadowed:

3) Polk and Osceola Counties together are 150k too many people for a district. Which 150k people are they and to which district are they being attached?

For my main map, the answers are “no”, “no”, and “Kissimmee and environs are going north to the western Orlando suburan/exurban district”. I’ll talk more about this third choice in the district-by-district descriptions.

At the end of the diary, I’ve included alternate versions that look at the other answers to those questions. The map that switches the first answer to a yes is based on powera’s diary from a few weeks ago, with a Jacksonville-Tallahassee majority-minority district. The map that switched the second answer to a yes is based on the existing FL-23, altered to better suit the Fair Districts requirements. And then the final map changes the answer to the third question to “Lakeland and environs are going north and west connecting to a district in Pasco County”.

District-by-district description is after the jump.

Monroe & Miami-Dade

FL-24 – Indigo – North Miami/Miramar (VRA: B 54%, H 30%, W 13%)

FL-25 – PaleVioletRed – Miami/Miami Beach (VRA: H 61%, W 31%)

FL-26 – Gray – Hialeah (VRA: H 83%, W 12%)

FL-27 – SpringGreen – Monroe/Outer Miami-Dade (VRA: H 62%, W 24%, B 11%)

FL-27 takes in all of Monroe County and then enough of Miami-Dade to make up the balance. This roughly corresponds to the area west of the Turnpike and south of SW 216th St. The African-American blocks in northern Miami-Dade form the core of FL-24, spilling over into southern Broward. FL-25 takes in the rest of Miami proper that’s not in FL-24, and then snakes up and down the coast to hit population equality. FL-26 takes up the balance of the county.

Broadly speaking, New-27 is Old-25, New-26 is Old 21, New-25 is Old-18 and New-24 is Old-17.

To the best of my scanty ability to tell, I haven’t significantly changed the partisan of any district. MassGOP had a recent comment about how the area south of Miami is Demoractic-heavy and split up perfectly amongst the existing districts. This map (quite inadvertently) sustains that. I suppose that Ros-Lehtinen might face some trouble, since she’s picking up territory north of Miami Beach that I would assume is in Wasserman Schultz’s district for a reason. Diaz-Balart and Rivera won’t live in their districts, but they don’t now anyway. Wilson has a potential problem in that she would now have Hastings as a constituent (and therefore possible primary rival).

Broward and Palm Beach

FL-20 – Pink – Delray Beach/Boynton Beach/West Palm Beach/Pahokee (VRA: w 49%, B 25%, H 23%)

FL-21 – Maroon – Coral Springs/Boca Raton/Wellington (VRA: W 73%, H 14%)

FL-22 – Sienna – Ft Lauderdale/Pompano Beach/Deerfield Beach (VRA: W 48%, B 33%, H 16%)

FL-23 – Aquamarine – Plantation/Davie/Hollywood (VRA: W 49%, H 28%, B 17%)

Starting at the extreme south, there’s the rest of FL-24, taking in Miramar and parts of Pembroke Pines. It took experimentation to figure out how to arrange the boundaries of the rest of the incorporated localties to best fit the congressional district size while keeping all three districts minority-majority. Eventually, I hit upon this arrangement of FL-23, which to the extent that the census blocks match municipal boundaries, doesn’t involve any boundary breaking. I couldn’t find a similar arrangement for FL-22, so it ended up picking up a few arbitrary blocks of Margate from FL-21. The arrangement between between FL-20 and FL-21 is to maximize the minority population of FL-20 while respecting local lines. After the creation of these four districts, there’s about 160k leftover population in Palm Beach Gardens/Jupiter that gets sent up to FL-19.

The districts in this area were previously so intertwined that I’d have a hard time mapping them onto the new ones, but if forced, I would say that New-23 is Old-20, New-22 is Old-23, New-21 is Old-19 and New-20 is Old-22.

I believe that all four of these districts would have PVIs of at least D+8, which is sad for West. Hastings has been drawn into FL-24 with Wilson. West has been drawn into FL-23 with Wasserman Schultz. I’m guessing that Hastings would seek to represent FL-22 if he tried to stay in office, but that’s just a guess – I suppose he could take on Wilson. About West, I have no clue. Deutch lives in FL-21. FL-20 is open.

Southwest Florida

FL-16 – Lime – Manatee County/Sarasota County (VRA: W 81%, H 10%)

FL-17 – DarkSlateBlue – Lee County/Naples (VRA: W 74%, H 16%)

FL-18 – Yellow – the rest of southwest Florida (VRA: 69%, H 22%)

The ten counties that I’m calling Southwest Florida (Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Highland, Lee, Manatee, Okeechobee, and Sarasota) have about 50k too few people for three districts. Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties together came up about 55k too many for three districts, so that’s where the disparity gets made up. Sarasota County and Manatee County together are about 4k over a district, so that’s where FL-16 comes from. Lee County, on the hand, is about 100k short of being a district. I couldn’t find a 100k subdivision of Charlotte County that didn’t break municipal lines, so Lee’s FL-17 ran down the coast of Collier County through Naples to Marco Island. FL-18 takes up the rest of Southwest Florida, plus about 50k in and around Sun City Center in Hillsborough County.

Roughly speaking, New-18 is Old-16, New-17 is Old-14, and New-16 is Old-13.

All three of these districts should continue to have Republican PVIs. FL-16 should be somewhat less Republican than it was previously, since it’s losing rural territory and gaining the minority-heavy parts of Brandenton. I’d expect FL-17 to be about the same, which FL-18 is probably more Republican than previously, since it’s no longer involved with St. Lucie County. Buchanan and Mack continue to live in their districts. Rooney lives in what’s essentially a new district in FL-19, so FL-16 is open.

Hillsborough Pinellas

FL-13 – DarkSalmon – Outer Hillsborough/Pinellas (VRA: W 74%, H 14%)

FL-14 – Olive – Tampa/inner suburbs (VRA: W 49%, H 25%, B 21%)

FL-15 – DarkOrange –  St. Petersburg/Clearwater (VRA: 76%, B 12%)

FL-13 and FL-14 pretty much drew themselves. FL-13 starts at the southern tip of Pinellas County and works north, taking in most but not all of Clearwater, due to population equality concerns. FL-14 took in all but the very north reaches of Tampa (since those were needed to maintain contiguity for FL-15), and then focused on taking in as many minorities as possible to make FL-14 (just barely) minority-majority. Even after donating 50k people south to FL-18, the combined three districts are about 5k over populated. Those are donated northwards to FL-11. The exact blocks chosen for donation are entirely arbitrary – any group along the border between FL-11 and FL-13 that maintains population equality could be used.

Roughly speaking New-15 is Old-10, New-14 is Old-11, and New-13 is Old-9.

Bilirakis, Young, and Castor are all fine from a residency standpoint. I imagine, although I’m not sure, that all three Representatives have been hurt from PVI standpoint. Castor has lost the minority parts of Brandenton and St. Petersburg; Young has taken on all of St. Petersburg; and Bilirakis has lost all of his territory in Republican Pasco County. Castor and Bilirakis have some room to maneuver; but Young was already in an R+1 district. Another few points to the Democrats could flip the seat, especially if Young retires.

Central Florida

FL-08 – SlateBlue – Seminole County/Northeast Orlando suburbs (VRA: W 64%, H 20%, B 10%)

FL-09 – Cyan – Orlando (VRA W 44%, H 25%, B 25%)

FL-10 – DeepPink – Kissimmee/West Orlando suburbs/Lake County/Sumter County/western Pasco County (VRA: W 67%, H 20%)

FL-11 – Chartreuse – Citrus County/Hernando County/eastern Pasco County (VRA: W 85%)

FL-12 – CornflowerBlue – Polk County/Osceola County minus Kissimmee (VRA: W 66%, H 18%, B 13%)

Starting at the southern part of this region, Polk and Osceola together were almost 150k over populated for a single district. I briefly looked at separating them, but that resulted in far more ugliness than keeping them together entails. This resulted in the choice I referred to in my intro. There are two ways that I found to take 150k people out of the district in a way that respects local lines: attach Kissimmee and Celebration to an Orlando-based district or attach Lakeland to a Pasco-based district. I tried both and ultimately choose the first option because it better fit my subjective impression of “compactness”. The number of county splits ended up being the same either way, if I counted correctly. It was just a matter of where the county splits are. The main detriment (if it is one) is that the Disney Empire doesn’t end up in the same district as Orlando-proper.

After that, the rest of Central Florida fell into place. Coastal FL-12 takes up Citrus and Hernando Counties along with western Pasco County (roughly speaking, the area west of I-75). On the opposite side of the region, FL-09 picks up Orlando proper, along with minority-heavy areas to the east, west, and northwest – all within Orange County. Meanwhile FL-08 combines Seminole County with enough of the whiter suburbs to the east of Orlando in Orange County to make a district. It took some playing around to figure out how best to draw those while respecting local lines. In the end, the only infidelity that I know of is a couple of blocks that straddle Ocoee and Apopka. Finally, FL-10 picks up the leftover areas of the region: Kissimmee, Winter Garden-Ocoee, Sumter County, eastern Pasco County, and most of Lake County. (All of Lake County would have been 50k too many. I moved the northeast corner of the county up to FL-05.)

Roughly speaking, New-12 is Old-12, New-11 is Old-05, New-10 is Old-08, New-09 is one of the new districts, and New-08 is Old-24.

Politically, I suspect that all of these districts, except for the new majority-minority FL-09, are likely Republican. Ross and Nugent are okay from a residency standpoint. Mica now lives in the new FL-08. Webster and Adams are both listed as Orlando, so they’re both looking for new districts to run in – possibly the new open FL-10.

Atlantic Coast

FL-06 – Teal – St. Johns County/Flagler County/eastern Putnam County/most of Volusia County (VRA: W 75%, B 13%)

FL-07 – DarkGray – Space Coast/New Smyrna Beach/Titusville/Melbourne (VRA: W 81%)

FL-19 – YellowGreen – Indian River County/St. Lucie County/Martin County (VRA: W 76%, H 11%, B 10%)

Three districts hug the Atlantic Coast. Starting with the new district on the south central coast: FL-19 takes in the rest of Palm Beach County, along with St. Lucie, Martin, and all but 9k people in Indian River (which are donated north to FL-07.) FL-07 takes in those 9k in Indian River, all of Brevard, and the strip of Volusia east of I-95 and south of Daytona Beach. FL-06 then takes in in the rest of Volusia, along with Flagler and St. Johns. At that point, it’s about 50k short, so it moves inland to take about the eastern half (by area, more like two-thirds by population) of Putnam County,

Roughly speaking, New-19 is a new district, New-07 is Old-15, and New-06 is Old-07.

Politically, I’m pretty sure that these are all safely Republican; I’m least certain of that with regards to FL-19. Rooney (in the new FL-19) and Posey (in the new FL-07) have districts to themselves. The new FL-06 is open.

North Florida

FL-01 – Blue – Western Panhandle/Pensacola (VRA: W 76%, B 14%)

FL-02 – Green – Eastern Pandhandle/Tallahasee/Panama City (VRA: W 68%, B 24%)

FL-03 – DarkMargenta – Suwanee River/Jacksonville suburbs (VRA: W 78%, B 13%)

FL-04 – Red – Jacksonville (VRA: W 55%, B 33%)

FL-05 – Gold -North central Florida/Ocala/Gainsville (VRA: W 75%, B 13%)

This time starting in the west. The Pensacola-based FL-01 shrinks by three counties, taking in only the westernmost three counties and about 42k of Walton’s 50k. FL-02 therefore also shifts west, losing all but 10k of its population east of Jefferson County. Skipping down to the southern part of the region, FL-05 takes in all of Levy, Marion, and Alachua Counties, plus the northeastern portion of Lake County. That leaves it about 3k short – I decided the southern block of Gilchrist makes the “compact” addition. FL-04 stays wholly within Duval County. This is probably the closest thing to a successor to the old FL-03, so in deference to that, I drew it as minority-heavy as possible. It’s still 55% white. The new FL-03 takes up the rest.

These are a bit more straightforward to map back onto the old districts: New-01 is Old-01, New-02 is Old-02, New-03 is Old-04, if New-04 is anything it’s Old-03, and Old-05 is New-06. All incumbents are fine from a residency standpoint. I’m much less sure about electorally. I would suspect that FL-02 has gotten more Democratic, since Leon County is a bigger proportion of its population. FL-03 is, of course, substantially more white that Brown’s current district. Duval as a whole is a Republican-leaning jurisdiction, so far as I can tell, but I’m not sure what it is once you’ve removed its whitest 170k worth of Census blocks.

Alternate Maps

Here are the three alternate scenarios I mentioned in the introduction: a majority-minority north Florida district, detaching Lakeland instead of Kissimmee from FL-12, and a majority-African-American Palm Beach-Broward district.

Minority-Majority North Florida

This involves shifting around the main map’s FL-02, FL-03, and FL-04 – everything else is unchanged.

ALT-02 – Green – Eastern Panhandle (VRA: W 74%, B 18%)

ALT-03 – DarkMagenta – Tallahassee to Jacksonville (VRA: W 49%, B 41%)

ALT-04 – Red – Jacksonville suburbs (VRA: W 77%, B 11%)

This is a bare-bones version of a north Florida majority-minority district, covering Tallahassee inside the Capital Circle highway, northern Leon County to connect eastward, all but the southernmost block of Jefferson County, all of Madison and Hamilton Counties, only the northernmost block of Columbia County to connect eastward, all of Baker County, and then much of interior Duval County, where I tried to strike a balance between compactness and minority-heaviness. ALT-02 takes in the area from Bradford County west. ALT-04 takes in the remainder.

ALT-03 could be made more minority; I just decided that the price wasn’t worth it. For example, Gadsden County, to the west of Tallahassee, is a 54% African American jurisdiction with a population of about 45k, but adding it would require sacrificing either the relatively clean lines in Leon County or the very clean line between Bradford and Clay Counties.

Here are closeups of Leon and Duval Counties.

Detaching Lakeland Instead of Kissimmee

It’s possible to detach Lakeland from Polk instead of Kissimmee from Osceola to make FL-12 work. This results to two subscenarios. Either way, the new ALT-12 has VRA stats of W 59%, H 25%, B 11%.

The simpler scenario is to just swap Lakeland and Kissimmee between FL-10 and FL-12.

This results in an ALT-08A with VRA stats of W 73%, H 12%, B 11%.

Alternatively, from that point, you could choose other county splits between FL-10 and FL-11. For example, you could consolidate Pasco into one district, picking up Lakeland and that little bit of leftover Hillsborough, leaving you about 65k short of a district. Splitting Hernando now instead of Pasco to get that 65k results in this.

ALT-10B has VRA stats of  W 79%, H 10%. ALT-11B has VRA stats of W 80%, H 10%.

Choosing between any of these three scenarios (the main and the two sub scenarios) is essentially arbitrary from a demographic standpoint. Without partisan motivation, explicitly disallowed by the Fair Districts standpoint, I’m not sure why you’d choose one over the others. I also have no idea which one of the three scenarios would be most favorable to Democrats.

Majority African American Palm Beach-Broward

It looks like this:

I swapped colors around for working purposes and forgot to put them back for display purposes, so for this map only ALT-20 is the light blue one and ALT-23 is the pink one. ALT-21 is the redder of the two browns; ALT-22 is the other district.

ALT-20 – VRA: B 51%, W 27%, H 19%

ALT-21 – VRA: W 67%, H 18%, B 11%

ALT-22 – VRA: W 72%, H 16%

ALT-23 – VRA: W 53%, H 28%, B 13%

Politically, I don’t think it matters. It mostly whether this district is legally required.

Summary

Since my grasp of Florida politics is not a firm as I’d like, this is pretty tentative. But the rough upshot is that I think that Fair Districts is worth about three districts to the Democrats: West’s, Young’s, and the new Orlando seat. Which I think is a pretty common view anyway.

The goal of this wasn’t to figure out the politics anyway. It was to try to figure out how few boundaries can be broken. Please let me know if you see anyway to improve the map on that score.

This is a part of a series of posts analyzing the 2010 midterm elections. This post will discuss the 2010 Florida gubernatorial election, which Republican candidate Rick Scott won in an extremely close contest.

Florida’s Gubernatorial Election

On November 2010, Democrat Alex Sink faced an extremely flawed Republican opponent: multimillionaire Rick Scott, a businessman accused of heading the biggest fraud in Medicare history.

Ms. Sink still lost, running in a Republican leaning state in a very Republican environment. Here is what happened:

More below.

This constitutes a classic map of a close race in Florida. Ms. Sink wins the counties that she needs to win in the I-4 central corridor. For a Democrat, she performs relatively strongly in conservative northern Florida.

Turn-Out

What kills Ms. Sink, however, is Democratic turn-out.

To gain some perspective on this, let’s compare Ms. Sink’s performance with that of President Barack Obama’s:

Note that the circles depicted here are not equivalent. In 2008 8.4 million people voted; in 2010 only 5.3 million did. So the absolute margins of 2008 – regardless of whether Mr. Obama won or lost the county – are much bigger.

Nevertheless, one can see that Mr. Obama gets quite a bit more mileage out of the counties he wins than Ms. Sink does. This is especially true along the Democratic, minority-heavy strongholds of Orlando and South Florida.

In 2008 these places composed a greater share of the Florida electorate than they did in 2010; minority and Democratic turn-out fell disproportionately in the mid-term. In 2008 Orlando and South Florida (i.e. Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange, and Palm Beach counties) composed 31.6% of the electorate; in 2010 they composed 29.2% of the electorate. This does not seem like much, but it makes a difference when the margin of victory is 1.2%.

On a county-by-county basis, Mr. Scott’s margin would be cut from 61,550 to 15,226 in the 2008 electorate, even if his share of each county’s vote does not change (only the number of voters in each county does). I suspect that if you adjust this on a precinct level – if you give each precinct the same number of voters it had in 2008, without changing the percent of the vote Ms. Sink and Mr. Scott got in that precinct – Ms. Sink would have won outright.

Turn-Out

There is one part of Florida, however, in which Ms. Sink did much better than Mr. Obama. It’s hard see this in the previous maps, due to the low population of this region. Here is a better illustration:

As the map indicates, Northern Florida moved quite strongly towards Ms. Sink, although not strongly enough to offset her losses elsewhere.

There are a variety of explanations for why this might be. The rural, poor, Southern voters there might have been turned off a wealthy businessman as a Republican candidate. Ms. Sink might have overperformed amongst Republicans.

It is also true that Mr. Obama did quite poorly amongst these voters, losing many of these counties by 40+ margins. Partly this had to do with his status as a big-city Chicago liberal. Mostly, however, Mr. Obama did poorly because he was black.

Half a century ago northern Florida was the most Democratic part of the state, back in the days of the Solid South. Since then the Democratic Party has moved away from these voters (see: John Kerry, Barack Obama); it gets progressively harder each election for a Democrat to win them, although some still do. Ms. Sink’s improvement over Mr. Obama, then, might have been the last gasp of a dying breed: white Dixie Democrats.

Conclusions

In the dying days of Florida’s gubernatorial campaign, Democratic candidate Alex Sink was accused of cheating during the gubernatorial debate. The scandal broke during the final days of the campaign, derailing a crucial time for any campaign. Pundits will point to the scandal as responsible for the 1.2% margin by which Ms. Sink lost.

Yet it may have been another event, seemingly unrelated, that truly undid Ms. Sink. During the campaign’s final days, Independent Charlie Crist – running for Florida’s Senate seat – mounted a concerted effort to get Democrat Kendrick  Meek to drop-out. The coverage dominated national news, blackened the image of both participants, and demoralized Democrats everywhere in Florida.

It may have also led to Ms. Sink’s defeat. In many ways the candidate did what she had to do – she won the right places and improved on Mr. Obama in the most Republican part of Florida. I remember looking at her northern Florida numbers on election day and feeling somewhat optimistic about her chances. With the vote in at 50%, Ms. Sink stood behind by 5% – but the Democratic Gold Coast hadn’t started reporting. She could close things once the Democratic strongholds Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties came in.

But Ms. Sink never did fully close the gap. Democratic turn-out killed Ms. Sink, as it did with many others in 2010.

–Inoljt

P.S. Here is a table I created, some of whose information is used in this post.

Republican Margin: Change   from 2008 to 2010	2010 County Percent of Vote	2008 County Percent of Vote	Change in Turn-Out	Sink Under 2008 Electorate	County
0.11%	1.38%	1.50%	-0.12%	-26919	Alachua
-29.35%	0.15%	0.13%	0.02%	3091	Baker
-2.73%	1.03%	0.97%	0.06%	30805	Bay
-17.09%	0.15%	0.14%	0.01%	2706	Bradford
2.87%	3.66%	3.43%	0.23%	38254	Brevard
3.50%	7.83%	8.74%	-0.90%	-229201	Broward
-32.24%	0.08%	0.07%	0.01%	504	Calhoun
6.87%	1.11%	1.02%	0.09%	12047	Charlotte
-0.81%	1.02%	0.91%	0.11%	11629	Citrus
0.12%	1.19%	1.13%	0.06%	40617	Clay
10.14%	1.92%	1.69%	0.23%	46331	Collier
-12.40%	0.35%	0.34%	0.02%	6001	Columbia
-1.01%	0.13%	0.12%	0.01%	1146	Desoto
-30.47%	0.10%	0.09%	0.01%	1047	Dixie
3.81%	4.88%	4.95%	-0.07%	23793	Duval
-0.78%	1.79%	1.84%	-0.05%	28636	Escambia
11.39%	0.62%	0.59%	0.04%	4833	Flagler
-28.01%	0.08%	0.07%	0.00%	-10	Franklin
-7.45%	0.31%	0.27%	0.04%	-10451	Gadsden
-18.49%	0.10%	0.09%	0.01%	2214	Gilchrist
-0.63%	0.05%	0.05%	0.00%	832	Glades
-15.77%	0.09%	0.09%	0.01%	1693	Gulf
-13.24%	0.07%	0.07%	0.01%	75	Hamilton
-5.83%	0.10%	0.09%	0.01%	1761	Hardee
5.24%	0.12%	0.13%	-0.01%	1354	Hendry
4.90%	1.09%	1.05%	0.04%	7458	Hernando
2.20%	0.56%	0.53%	0.02%	9074	Highlands
3.79%	5.93%	6.12%	-0.19%	-17133	Hillsborough
-24.68%	0.11%	0.10%	0.01%	3460	Holmes
6.92%	0.88%	0.84%	0.04%	15364	Indian River
-24.48%	0.28%	0.26%	0.02%	754	Jackson
-14.85%	0.12%	0.09%	0.02%	-1476	Jefferson
-43.33%	0.05%	0.04%	0.01%	574	Lafayette
2.61%	1.90%	1.75%	0.15%	23697	Lake
11.33%	3.39%	3.21%	0.19%	58504	Lee
-11.04%	1.86%	1.77%	0.09%	-52485	Leon
-5.68%	0.24%	0.22%	0.01%	3976	Levy
-45.26%	0.04%	0.04%	0.00%	-43	Liberty
-10.71%	0.12%	0.11%	0.01%	-680	Madison
5.42%	1.98%	1.81%	0.17%	18952	Manatee
2.02%	2.13%	1.93%	0.20%	22073	Marion
2.07%	1.01%	0.93%	0.08%	12257	Martin
1.82%	9.11%	10.28%	-1.17%	-123556	Miami-Dade
5.01%	0.49%	0.48%	0.01%	48	Monroe
-4.23%	0.50%	0.46%	0.04%	15161	Nassau
0.69%	1.14%	1.14%	0.00%	43580	Okaloosa
-5.99%	0.15%	0.15%	0.00%	1684	Okeechobee
7.48%	5.07%	5.50%	-0.43%	-51546	Orange
13.29%	1.00%	1.20%	-0.20%	-6459	Osceola
4.16%	7.15%	7.03%	0.12%	-110658	Palm Beach
4.88%	2.55%	2.56%	-0.01%	18217	Pasco
2.55%	5.66%	5.53%	0.13%	-26374	Pinellas
4.83%	2.99%	2.92%	0.07%	26880	Polk
0.37%	0.40%	0.40%	0.00%	6523	Putnam
-3.26%	0.93%	0.91%	0.02%	34011	Santa Rosa
4.40%	2.71%	2.47%	0.24%	9360	Sarasota
4.00%	2.46%	2.45%	0.01%	13996	Seminole
-1.39%	1.40%	1.26%	0.13%	31952	St. Johns
7.18%	1.41%	1.44%	-0.03%	-5928	St. Lucie
1.21%	0.78%	0.58%	0.20%	13803	Sumter
-13.75%	0.25%	0.21%	0.04%	5189	Suwannee
-17.01%	0.12%	0.11%	0.01%	2058	Taylor
-46.53%	0.07%	0.06%	0.00%	169	Union
7.74%	2.94%	2.91%	0.03%	5093	Volusia
-21.92%	0.21%	0.17%	0.03%	415	Wakulla
-5.00%	0.35%	0.32%	0.03%	11029	Walton
-16.60%	0.15%	0.13%	0.02%	3462	Washington
3.97%	100.00%	100.00%	0.00%	15226	Total

This is my first diary post using Dave’s App, so any suggestions are welcome 🙂

I tried to create a slight Democratic Gerrymander of Florida. I didn’t follow VRA very much, so I will be working to make a VRA map with 2 AA majority districts and 3 hispanic majority districts. I don’t believe the DOJ will require a 3rd in North Florida (Corrine Browns awful district.)

But being able to basically ignore the VRA in Florida opens amazing opportunities, especially in South FL. And luckily, some of the districts around the Tampa Bay area and a few others may end up being the actual districts with the new Fair Districts initiative being passed.

So, here are my maps:

Panhandle:

CD1 in Blue: It’s pretty hard to do anything here unless you want to send an arm from CD2 to to suck up Pensacola voters, but that would just look to crazy. This district is Safe Republican for the next decade at least.

76% White, 13% Black, 4% Hispanic

Rating: Safe R

CD2 in Green: This district is based in Tallahassee, and differs from the current district because it extends further north and east (Repubs drew an arm from Andrew Crenshaws district on the GA border over into CD2 to suck up Blue Dog voters and take out Allen Boyds home town in Monticello)

Here, I put a lot of traditionally Dem voting areas (Wakulla and Jefferson counties) along with very Democratic Leon county. This district is probably around even PVI, and I can easily see a Dem winning this (probably a moderate).

68% White, 24% Black, 4% Hispanic

Rating: Tossup

North Central FL and Jacksonville:

CD3 in Purple: This is a Gainesville based district. I toyed with trying to tie this to Tallahassee or Jacksonville, but decided to just give this district traditionally Democratic Madison county in the northwest part of the district, heavily Dem Alachua county and high AA parts of Ocala in the southern part of the district, and also extends over to Palatka in the east down through hispanic De Leon Springs. It has enough of an AA population along with the University of Florida to make it a competitive district. I am fairly unsure of what Obama % this district would be, but I think another fairly moderate Dem could easily hold this district barring another 2010.

70% White, 19% Black, 7% Hispanic

Rating: Tossup

CD4 in Red: This district sucks up heavily Republican suburbs of Jacksonville including all of Nassau county. It stretches further south to suck up rural white populations away from the east coast.

82% White, 8% Black, 5% Hispanic

Rating: Safe R

CD5 in Yellow: I decided to let Jacksonville have it’s own district, but at the same time keep it competitive for Dems. It’s only 55% white, but the Jacksonville area is very racially divided. However, with some liberal whites, a high AA populations, and some hispanics, this district will also probably be very competitive. It all depends on AA turnout in the city.

55% White, 34% Black, 6% Hispanic, 3% Asian

Rating: In Presidential years – Lean D In off years- Tossup

CD6 in Blue-Green: This district was designed to be as Dem as possible on the east coast. It takes in fairly wealthy beach towns, and heavily AA areas like Titusville and Holly Hill. It extends over towards Orlando to pick up heavily minority Sanford.

74% White, 12% Black, 10% Hispanic

Rating: Lean D

CD7 in Grey: I love this district. It covers heavily rural and Republican areas all through the big bend and central part of the state.

83% White, 7% Black, 8% Hispanic

Rating: Safe R

I’ll come back to CD 8 after the Tampa area.

Behold, Tampa!:

CD9 in Cyan: This is a solely Tampa based district and is plurality-white. It doesn’t include all of the New Tampa area (which is technically part of the city.) It stretches down a bit to take in Gibsonton and  Riverview, and east to take in the diverse Brandon area and heavily AA Progress Village and Clair Mel City.

49% White, 21% Black, 25% Hispanic

Rating: Safe D

CD10 in Magenta? / Pink: A Tampa suburb district. This takes in Republican leaning areas in Pasco, down through heavily R Sun City, absorbing the rest of the R leaning Tampa suburbs.

72% White, 7% Black, 16% Hispanic

Rating: Likely R

CD11 in Pale Green: St. Petersburg district. If you look closely at the current district map, the actual city of St. Pete is gerrymandered out of this district, and linked to downtown Tampa and Bradenton to the south by water (awful.) So adding downtown St. Pete makes this district much more Dem friendly, considering it is already a Tossup. Once Bill Young retires, this would easily go D.

76% White, 12% Black, 7% Hispanic

Rating: Lean D after Young retires.

CD12 in Light-Bluish: Coastal Pasco and Hernando and Northern Pinellas. This district takes in Greek populations north of Clearwater, and suburban R leaning Pasco and Hernando. Bilirakis would probably run here and win, with his family name. As for the long term, this district may slowly trend D as its population explodes and suburbs continue to become slightly more D friendly.

Rating: Likely R, possibly Lean R by the end of the decade.

Now for the Orlando Area:

CD8 in Light Blue: This district is majority-minority when adding all minority groups. It includes the western half of Orlando, and heavily hispanic areas to the south and west of downtown Orlando. The Dem primary here would be interesting.

47% White, 25% Black, 20% Hispanic, 5% Asian

Rating: Safe to Likely D

CD14 in Ugly Brown/Green: I’m really unsure of the Obama % here. There is a decent minority vote here, along with the eastern half of downtown Orlando. I know this area is quickly growing, and becoming more D as the Puerto Rican population skyrockets. This district also slides east to pickup the space center and Merritt Island.

70% White, 7% Black, 17% Hispanic

Rating: Unsure… could be between Lean R and Lean D.

CD15 in Orange: One of my more gerrymandered districts that I am proud of. It is barely majority white. This takes in south Orlando, Kissimmee, St. Cloud, along with downtown Winter Haven and Lakeland. It could be tweaked maybe to make it majority-minority.

50% White, 12% Black, 33% Hispanic

Rating: Likely D

SW Florida and South Central FL:

CD 13 in Tan: I apologize for the colors here. This districts includes all of Brandenton, Sarasota, Venice, Punta Gorda, and Port Charlotte. Bye-bye, Vern Buchanan. He might run in CD10 or CD16 instead.

81% White, 7% Black, 10% Hispanic

Rating: Likely D

CD16 in Bright Green: Republican vote sink extraordinaire. Probably my favorite R vote sink in FL. This district sucks in all of the R heavy and R leaning areas from Hillsborough County all the way down through the spine of central FL, ending at Lake Okeechobee.

73% White, 9% Black, 16% Hispanic

Rating: Safe R

CD17 in Purple: Another fun east coast district, including Melbourne all the way down to Fort Pierce. Not too sure about this district either… I know the coastal areas are fairly swingy, but I assume Obama carried them narrowly, but lost the inland parts I put in CD16.

74% White, 12% Black, 10% Hispanic

Rating: Lean D to Tossup

CD18 in Pale Yellow: This district takes some very low population inland Everglades areas, and eat up part of the East coast and we approach the Miami area. I believe a lot of the white population here is wealthy, and also I think we are starting to get into some Jewish population areas. If anyone wants to help fill me in on the type of white population that lives here that would be awesome!

63% White, 17% Black, 16% Hispanic

Rating: Lean D to Tossup?

CD19 in Lime Greenish: This district includes Palm Beach. It has a decent AA and hispanic population (that I don’t think is too Cuban heavy yet.) We’re also getting into the more Jewish populated areas.

61% White, 14% Black, 22% Hispanic

Rating: Likely to Lean D

CD20 in Pale Pink: Fort Myers and Cape Coral. These heavily populated areas are Lean D, considering they are a huge hot-spot for retirees. This district is probably R leaning, but I may be wrong and it could elect the right D.

77% White, 6% Black, 14% Hispanic

Rating: Lean R

South Florida!:

CD21 in Brown: How do you make Rs in Florida pissed? Make them have a nasty primary between old white people in Naples and Cubans near Miami. Should be an R district, until the Cuban populations shift to Dems (hopefully soon)

48% White, 14% Black, 35% Hispanic

Rating: Likely R for now.

CD26 in a Greyish color below the Lime green district: Boca!

I apologize again for the picture here. This district should be heavily Jewish with a 12% AA population. I don’t think this district will leave the D column.

69% White, 12% Black, 15% Hispanic

Rating: Likely D

CD27 in Aquamarine:  Ft. Lauderdale. This district was my leftovers kind of. It’s extremely diverse, but with over 30% AA and most of the white population being Jewish, it seems like it should be a Dem district.

42% White, 34% Black, 19% Hispanic

Rating: Safe to Likely D

Miami Area:

CD22 in White: Hollywood. A barely white majority district, diluting some of the Cuban power in the area. With the Jewish population and % AA population combined, it should be Lean D.

50% White, 8% Black, 36% Hispanic

Rating: Lean D

CD24 in Purple: North Miami. This is the only AA majority district I have here, so the VRA would be sad.

14% White, 52% Black, 30% Hispanic

Rating: Safe D

A closer look at the South Miami Area:

CD23 in Teal-ish color: Miami Cuban areas. Can’t get much more Cuban than this district.

9% White, 6% Black, 83% Hispanic

Rating: Safe R for one of the Diaz-Balarts or Ms. Ileana.

CD25 in Light Pink: Hialeah. This sucks in Hialeah and makes a C shape to suck in more Cuban populations to the south.

14% White, 5% Black, 79% Hispanic

Rating: Safe R

The main questions I think are involved here are:

1) Will the fair districts law hold up in court?

2) Will Corrine Brown get a district that goes Jacksonville to Orlando, or will it go to Tallahassee?

3) How many “compact” Orlando seats are drawn, and how many go into rural areas?

I’m assuming (or at least hoping) that we will see some less gerrymandered lines.  It might be interesting to see what the best case GOP map is, though.  I don’t think 21-6 could work, 20-7 may have to be uglier than what we have now.

I’m not sure of the politics of some of these seats, but my take is that the Democrats gain one seat in the Orlando area, have better chances at two seats in the Tampa area (Bill Young and Vern Buchanan both lose some blatant gerrymanders), and probably pick up Allen West’s seat.  David Rivera is almost certainly gone in 2012 as well, though that might be a primary.

VRA – 3 plurality black seats, CD3 at 47B, CD17 at 47B, CD23 at 39B.  I’m not sure you can do much better with nice lines; there just aren’t enough blacks in Broward county to make Hastings’ seat more than plurality black.  Kathy Castor’s CD11 is at 46W, as is CD8 in Orlando.  The 3 Hispanic R Miami seats are all at least 65H.

Per-district analysis below the fold.

CD1 (blue, 76W 14B) – Still in the panhandle, contracts somewhat.  Very little that can be done to this district.  Scarborough Country is still safe for Jeff Miller (R).

CD2 (green, 79W 13B) – Loses parts of Tallahassee to CD3.  Stretches across the northern part of the state all the way to Jacksonville.  With the black portion of the district decreased by 9%, Steve Southerland (R) should be safe in this already conservative district.

CD3 (purple, 47B 44W) – The previous district was 49% black.  I hope this is good enough for the VRA.  This district seems more compact than the previous monstrosity, and taking Democrats from a city (Tallahassee) represented by Republicans right now is better for them.  As noted in the opening, Corrine Brown (D) is safe here.

CD4 (red, 77W 11B) – Still wraps around Jacksonville, but gets the rest of its population from the south side rather than going along the north border to Tallahassee.  Ander Crenshaw (R) should still be safe.

CD5 (yellow, 82W 9H) – Mostly the same on the Gulf coast, loses a part of Lake County.  Should be fine for Richard Nugent (R)

CD6 (teal, 72W 15B) – More significant changes here.  Loses the Jacksonville area completely, and gets the entirety of the Gainsville and Ocala areas, previously gerrymandered into other districts, as well as Putnam County.  I don’t know how this district would turn out, but I expect it’s less safe for Cliff Stearns (R) than before.

CD7 (gray, 75W 12B 10H) – Pulls out further from the Orlando area, but gaining the towns of Sanford and Deland that were pushed into CD3 before.  Still includes Daytona and a bunch of the Atlantic coast.  I assume it is safe for John L. Mica (R) still.

Orlando

CD26 (gray-ish square looking district, 63W 18B 14H) – Another new district in the Orlando area.  I really have no idea how this would turn out.  As noted below, Daniel Webster would probably run here.

CD8 (light purple, 46W 31H 17B) – My guess is Daniel Webster (R) will look for a different district to run in.  This become majority-minority and collapses to Orlando and suburbs.  It has been suggested that making this be more Hispanic, the other districts would be safer R.

CD24 (dark purple, 75W 14H) – Very similar, trades some Orlando suburbs around.  I expect this to remain a swing district for Sandy Adams (R).

Tampa:

CD9 (bright blue, 82W 10H) – As many of these other districts have done, loses some outlying areas, and picks up a few precincts gerrymandered out before.  Guessing it’s safe for Gus Bilirakis (R).

CD10 (pinkish-red, 76W 12B) – Generally shrinks but gains Democratic areas gerrymandered out before.  Basically everything from Clearwater to St. Petersburg now.  Bill Young (R) won’t be happy, but I see no way the plan can do anything else with the new rules.

CD11 (green, 46W 26H 22B) – No longer gets minority or liberal areas from St. Petersburg or Bradenton.  Still should be safe D for Kathy Castor.

CD12 (cornflower blue, 70W 16H 11B) – Generally moves in towards Tampa, losing much of Polk County and gaining areas shed by other districts.  I don’t know how safe this is for Dennis Ross (R), but it shouldn’t be too bad.

CD13 (peach, 81W 10H) – Loses rural Hardee and Desoto counties, gains the liberal parts of Bradenton back from a gerrymander.  I assume Vern Buchanan (R) would have lost this district in 2006, and it’s probably a swing district in 2012 for him.

CD27 (aquamarine, 73W 15H) – The other new district appears in central Florida.  It stretches from Kissimmee in the north to the entirety of Port Charlotte and part of Fort Myers.  Once again, I’m not sure how this would fall politically.

CD14 (olive, 76W 15H) – Fort Myers/Naples based still, loses a lot of area and gains none.  Connie Mack IV (R) is probably as safe as before.

CD15 (turquoise, 73W 15H) – Same story, shrinks slightly.  Bill Posey (R) is probably safe, though I’ve never heard of him.

Southeast Florida

CD16 (ugly green, 65W 18H 14B) – covers Fort Pierce to Jupiter on the coast, as well as Lake Okeechobee and a lot of the Everglades.  Tom Rooney (R) is in the district.

CD22 (dark maroon, 57W 22H 18B) – a compact Palm Beach district.  Allen West (R) almost certainly is in trouble with anything not gerrymandered.

CD19 (khaki, 70W 15H 11B) covers Boynton beach to Boca Raton, and then goes inland to pickup areas west of Fort Lauderdale.  Ted Deutch (D) presumably is still safe.

CD23 (sky blue, 39B 39W) – Deerfield Beach to Fort Lauderdale.  Plurality black; it can pretty easily be made 42B 36W with a tendril to Hollywood, but I don’t think it can do much better without a very thin line to Palm Beach.  Alcee Hastings (D) might not like it, but I don’t care.

CD20 (pink, 54W 28H 14B) – Coastal areas in Broward county, mostly.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) should be safe.

CD17 (dark blue, 47B 30H 20W) – North Miami.  Frederica Wilson (D) should be fine.

CD21 (dark red, 76H 16W 6B) – Hialeah, other Miami suburbs to the west.  Mario Diaz Balart (R) is probably as safe as before.

CD18 (yellow, 65H 27W) – Miami and the Keys.  Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) is probably fine here.

CD25 (pink, 68H 20W 9B) – more of the everglades, picking up population from Miami as well as Naples/Fort Myers.  David Rivera (R) is probably in trouble more because he’s a corrupt idiot than because of changes in the district.

Now that it’s 2011, the redistricting games will soon begin in earnest, with more detailed Census data expected in February or March and some states holding spring legislative sessions to deal with drawing new maps. Long ago I planned to do state-by-state rundowns of the redistricting process as soon as 2010 election results and Census reapportionment were clear. Now that time has arrived, and it’s time to look at Florida, Georgia, and Hawaii.

Previous diary on Alabama, Arizona, and Arkansas

Previous diary on California, Colorado, and Connecticut

Extend a thought today to Rep. Giffords, her family, and the families of those killed yesterday in Arizona.

The rest below the fold…

Florida

Districts: 27, up from 25 in 2002

Who’s in charge? Republicans

Is that important? Yes, but how important?

To date, Florida’s map has been one of the most effective Republican gerrymanders in the country, with Democrats packed efficiently into six ultra-safe seats: the VRA-protected black-majority 3rd (stretching from Jacksonville to Gainesville to Orlando), 17th (in north Miami), and 23rd (in Palm Beach/Broward), and three liberal, mostly white, urban districts: the 11th (Tampa Bay), 19th (Palm Beach/Broward), and 20th (mostly Broward). There are two seats you could call swing districts – the 8th, around Orlando, and the 22nd, on the north end of South Florida’s wealthy Gold Coast, and at the moment they are both represented by Republicans (Dan Webster and Allen West, respectively).

With the state gaining two seats, the GOP should superficially be primed for more gains, but 19-6 is a pretty lopsided majority in a state that voted for Obama and closely matched nationwide margins in 2000 and 2004. Worse for the Republicans, voters passed referenda in 2010 aimed at curtailing gerrymandering in the state. The language of the initiatives – using terms like “compact” and “existing political/geographic boundaries” – was definitely open to interpretation, but if GOP legislators preserve monstrosities like the 16th, for example, they are likely to face lawsuits on the basis of Amendment 6 (whose own validity is being questioned in court right now by Reps. Brown and Diaz-Balart). Even if Amendment 6 is struck down by the district court, though, it is hard to imagine Republicans carving out another two seats. My guess is they will seek to protect their 19 incumbents, add a new GOP seat along the Gulf Coast, and add a new Dem seat in Central FL (near Orlando or Kissimmee, perhaps) to soak up liberal-leaning voters currently represented by Sandy Adams or Dan Webster.

I have mapped Florida multiple times on DRA and have tried to create a 21-6 GOP majority. As I usually draw the new central district, it could potentially be won by a moderate Republican with appeal in the Hispanic community. But it would be a strong Obama ’08 seat and good territory for a Dem legislator like Darren Soto. Really, 20-7 is about the best any party can hope to do in a swing state, even one that tilts its own way.

Georgia

Districts: 14, up from 13 in 2002

Who’s in charge? Republicans

Is that important? Sort of

Republicans should have no trouble adding a new GOP seat in the Atlanta suburbs (most likely around Gwinnett, Rockdale, Walton, and Newton Counties), but from there it gets more complicated. Most observers agree they will make Sanford Bishop’s district VRA-protected, adding mostly black areas of Macon to protect Austin Scott from competition in the 8th, but we seem to be divided over whether they will target John Barrow for defeat. Arguments for: he’s white, it’s not a VRA-protected district, and his bases of support in Augusta and Savannah could easily be lumped with neighboring safe Republican districts to ruin any chances he had for reelection. Arguments against: a VRA lawsuit would be inevitable because black voters currently hold sway in the district’s Democratic primaries, Jack Kingston and Paul Broun don’t particularly want a bunch of new Dem-voting constituents, and there are a lot of rural African-Americans in eastern and east-central Georgia who have to go somewhere and will comprise a large portion of the district however it is drawn.

Personally, I don’t think they will target Barrow much; they may attempt to dilute his black % a little bit, or they may do the opposite to make serious primary competition more likely. Either way, there are too many Democrats in that part of the state for mapmakers to crack the district very effectively.

Hawaii

Districts: 2

Who’s in charge? Nonpartisan commission

Is that important? No

Well, this is the snoozeville of congressional redistricting right here. Dem incumbents Hirono and Hanabusa are already fairly safe and native son Barack Obama will be on the ballot in 2012. The commission will very slightly tinker with the lines and it should mean nothing for either woman’s reelection prospects.

Later: Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa!

MIAMI GARDENS, FLA – Kendrick Meek, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, continues to consolidate support from Florida Democrats as he receives the endorsements of Rep. Mark S. Pafford (D-West Palm Beach), Rep. Darren Soto (D-Orlando), and Rep. Scott Randolph (D-Orlando). Statements by Rep. Pafford, Rep. Soto, Rep. Randolph and Kendrick Meek follow:

Rep. Pafford (D-West Palm Beach) said, “Kendrick Meek’s career has always been defined by his commitment to the people of Florida. Like me, he has stood in opposition to big oil and offshore oil drilling to protect Florida’s coastlines. Kendrick also understands the importance of protecting another natural resource: our children. As a father I am grateful that Kendrick fought to restrict class sizes so that our children can excel. I am honored to give Kendrick my support and will continue to fight with him for Florida.”

“Kendrick Meek has a long and reliable record of supporting issues Hispanics care about, including a strong economy, advancing education through smaller class sizes, equality, and fair wages. He was a strong supporter of Justice Sotomayor’s nomination and is against the Arizona style immigration law, issues important to our community. Kendrick Meek has asked for our support and I am honored to stand by him in Central Florida,” said Rep. Soto (D-Orlando).

“Kendrick Meek has been protecting the people of Florida since his days as a Florida State Trooper. He’s not afraid to stand up and speak truth to power. In his opposition to HB 1143, Kendrick stood for all women as a champion of choice. Kendrick is committed to securing justice for every Floridian, not just the ones with big pocketbooks. I am proud to stand by Kendrick and endorse his candidacy for the U.S. Senate,” reported Rep. Randolph (D-Orlando)

“I am honored to have the support of these three outstanding public servants. They have each fought tirelessly for the state of Florida and aren’t afraid to stand their ground on tough issues. These three men work relentlessly to protect the people of Florida because they understand what’s at stake. They are leaders who have strong roots in Florida and in their communities. I value their vision and their insight as principled men of character. Florida is fortunate to have them and I am honored to receive their support,” said Kendrick Meek, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

Our campaign has also picked up the support of Al Gore, as he writes.

Florida has had its share of close elections, but this Senate race really ought to be a landslide. And it would be if people just look hard at the facts.

Kendrick Meek is the only one in this race who has consistently opposed offshore drilling. He is the only one who will ensure that we all have quality health care, and the only one who will focus on helping working Americans, rather than wealthy corporations.

Here is the bottom line: We have to help make sure Florida voters have all the facts about Kendrick and his opponents.

We’ve got just 42 days until Election Day, and Kendrick needs your help so he can keep his ads on the air and tell it like it is. His opponents are getting all the help they need – from corporations and special interests. Kendrick relies on you-his grassroots supporters. He needs you to make a donation today so he can raise $75,000 before the critical September 30 end-of-quarter deadline.

Click here to make an immediate donation to Kendrick’s campaign. He needs his grassroots supporters to help him raise $75,000 by the September 30 deadline.

As you know, I’m working hard to raise awareness about the serious threats to our environment. One reason it’s so hard is because the polluters don’t want any protections for the environment that might reduce their profits, so they have managed thus far to kill climate change legislation that would have protected our children and grandchildren.

Unlike his opponents, Kendrick Meek never has been and never will be in the pocket of these special interests. He was against offshore drilling long before the terrible oil spill in the Gulf, and he’s always worked to protect our beaches and wildlife, research and develop energy sources like solar power, and promote a better environment.

With Kendrick in the U.S. Senate, we can rest assured that there’s somebody in Washington looking out for us. But that will happen only when he can raise the funds to stay on the air until Election Day-just 42 days away. You are an integral part of Kendrick’s campaign because he relies on you for support, not oil companies and special interests.

Please make a donation to Kendrick’s campaign today and help him reach his goal of raising $75,000 before the September 30 deadline. If he reaches this goal, I know he’ll be able to win in November.

Once people get the facts, the choice will be clear and Kendrick Meek will be the new United States Senator from Florida. With your help today, we can make sure the facts get out.

Sincerely,

Al Gore

We are also having a Rally for Kendrick Meek with former vice president Al Gore.

THURSDAY, SEPT. 30TH

DOORS OPEN: 4:45PM

TAMPA LETTER CARRIERS HALL

3003 W CYPRESS ST

TAMPA, FL 33609

RESERVED TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLINE AT http://www.kendrickmeek.com/al…

OR CALL 877-354-6335 FOR DISTRIBUTION LOCATIONS