I set out to redistrict Texas with six goals in mind:
1. To correct the disparity between Hispanic VRA seats and their percentage of the voting age population.
2. To respect most of the current district lines (which were born out of the Delay scandal).
3. To fix the awful gerrymandering of the three Llano Estacado districts of West Texas.
4. To respect and draw districts according to geographic and social areas of common interest.
5. To draw districts with minimal county splitting.
6. To number the districts in a coherent way (the current numbering is awful).
This map was done using the 2010 Census Data.
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The only three districts that are radically different than their current iteration are held by Bill Flores, Lamar Smith, and Michael McCaul. Every other district takes in the same major population centers that it had before and, in most cases, the same or similar rural area populations that it currently holds.
First, the rural and second tier city districts:
17th to 24th: I shifted Waco out of the same district as Bryan/College Station due to Waco's economic reliance on Interstate 35. Bryan/College Station is an educational area with, frankly, different concerns. In the place of Waco, I assimilated a large group of rural counties to the southwest. Though different, Bill Flores (from Bryan) would probably be very comfortable in such a district as it lost the competing population base.
27th to 30th: Farenthold is screwed. No matter how much I tried to craft a district for him that didn't include huge Hispanic populations, I failed. Corpus Christi has become too hispanic for any Republican to win in a year with a normal electorate. He's probably gone after this next redistricting simply because he has no connections with the Texas Legislature.
23rd to 32nd: Quico Canseco is also probably screwed. No matter how much I tried to draw a district to suit him, the overwhelming nature of the border, the expansion of the three districts north of him, and the existence of Lamar Smith (sucking up the conservative areas of San Antonio) screwed him over.
After the last few rounds of redistricting, the valley was split in multiple different ways with districts that were narrow and wove up to the Austin-San Antonio area. I've gotten rid of that bulls*** and drawn two simple district that are Hispanic majority.
15th to 29th; 28th to 31st: I toyed around with drawing a densely packed district in McAllen, but the district which surrounded it always ended up looking gerrymandered to death. I went the route of splitting the McAllen area in two for the sake of neatness. Both of the districts are impossible for anyone not Hispanic to win (read: Republican).
El Paso:
16th to 33rd: Silvestre Reyes's district obviously had to contract due to growth patterns... I wonder if the drug war's effects and Arizona's recent anti-immigrant sentiment will fuel growth in El Paso leading to two districts in 2020 or 2030.
Though Austin and its environs grew much much faster than both the state and the nation as a whole, its growth wasn't fast enough to warrant a new district. The new districts were instead placed in San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth/Arlington, and Houston. Frankly, the Hispanic population in Austin is not large enough for me to create a VRA district.
An influence on my map and where I created the new districts found that he could create a (barely) Hispanic non-VAP majority district by stretching east of interstate 35 all the way down to New Braunfels.
I shied away from doing that out of two fears: 1) That Lloyd Doggett would not be able to win a Democratic primary for reasons of race and ideology (he's not as liberal as many in East Austin would like) and 2) The new primary winner would not be able to hold the district in a bad year a la Farenthold's election in 2010.
10th to 23rd: This district had to shed almost 50% of its population to come down to the required population. Many of the rural counties that were in the 10th were given to the 24th. All that remains is Williamson County and the moderately conservative highland lakes portion of Travis County. Some of my friends thought that I should have shifted Michael McCaul to the Houston area and given the Austin suburbs to someone else, but McCaul is an Austin resident and I wanted to preserve members residency. This district will become more liberal as the decade progresses.
25th: Lloyd Doggett lost all of the area outside of Travis County, which was then picked up by the 24th.
Here you can see the first glimpses of MattTX's influence on how I drew the VRA districts. I had a few issues with his configuration of Gonzalez's district. We both left the conservative inner area out, but I gave access for Lamar Smith to take up that area from the north instead of having to come in through minority-dominated east Bexar County.
21st to 26th: This district used to stretch north and west of San Antonio, but because of population growth along the Austin-San Antonio corridor and the population loss of the 11th, 13th, and 19th districts it had to be shifted slightly east. It lost Kerrville and gained San Marcos, and instead of taking in the northwest area of San Antonio (which is becoming more Democratic) I gave it the still conservative inner areas like Alamo Heights and Olmos Heights.
28th: A new VRA district.
Fort Worth and Dallas each get a new VRA Hispanic district: the 10th and 12th. This has some awful consequences for Kenny Marchant and some nice consequences for Sam Johnson's and Mike Burgess's districts.
26th to 3rd: Denton and Cook counties now make up an entire district. Mike Burgess's district no longer needs to go into Fort Worth to get enough people. This cuts two ways: he lives in Fort Worth, but I'm sure he'd be happy with a more suburban/exurban district. Most of the area he sheds from Tarrant County was Hispanic and went to the new 12th.
3rd to 4th: Collin and Grayson counties are larger than a district when combined, so I took out just the most southern parts of Collin and gave them to the 5th instead. The 3rd is similar to the 4th in that both are suburban/exurban in this configuration instead of urban/suburban.
10th: A new Hispanic VRA district.
11th: Eddie Bernice Johnson's district is no longer African American majority due to strong Hispanic growth.
12th: A new Hispanic VRA district.
24nd to 13th: Kenny Marchant's current district, the 24th, has alot of Hispanic territory. I gave all of that to the 12th. The problem is that the area that was the 24th now lies half south and half north of the 12th... I decided to take the district south and give the northern half over to the 9th. Really, this makes no difference in electoral ability for Marchant. Either way he'd have an easy election in such suburban territory.
Houston gets another VRA Hispanic district: The 17th. The 15th becomes more Hispanic, while the 16th and the 20th have trouble maintaining their African American populations. I wouldn't be surprised in ten to twenty years if an Asian VRA district could be drawn.
29th to 15th: How does Gene Green stay in office? I've often wondered how he manages to get elected year after year in such a Hispanic district.
18th to 16th: Sheila Jackson-Lee's district is only plurality African American in the entire population, and barely so when only considering VAP. I won't be surprised when the GOP dominated state legislature draws her and Al Green into the same district for VRA purposes.
17th: A new Hispanic VRA district.
7th to 18th; 22nd to 19th: The legislature is going to find it hard to protect Culberson and Olson. Neither of them has a district that is dominated by non-Hispanic whites. The distribution of the population in the Houston area keeps their districts from going out to far, which in turn means that they have to have some semi-inner city area...
9th to 20th: Al Green's problems are Sheila Jackson-Lee's problems. If the legislature does decide they want to draw them into the same district, a third Hispanic VRA district is likely to emerge in Houston. If they forgo creating that third Hispanic district, protecting Culberson and Olson is going to be extremely difficult.
Conclusions:
1. In this map there are 11 Hispanic VRA districts - or, put another way, 31 percent of the districts I've drawn can easily elect a Hispanic representative. This roughly corresponds to the percentage that Hispanic make up of the VAP.
2. There are only 3 African American VRA districts - 8 percent. This, like the Hispanic VRA districts, is just slightly under their actual VAP figure of 11 percent.
3. Non-Hispanic whites dominate the other 22 districts. Thus giving them 61 percent of the districts in Texas. This is wildly out of proportion. Only one of those 22 seats will elect a Democrat: his name is Lloyd Doggett.
4. 15 of 36 seats is actually not a bad outcome for Democrats in Texas. This number functions as a floor. As the decade goes on Michael McCaul, Pete Olson, and John Culberson will probably lose, while Lamar Smith's seat becomes swing-ish. A ceiling of 19 seats is actually VERY good. Democrats can win anywhere between 41 to 52 percent of the seats in Texas under this configuration.
If you want to go and mess with what I've done, I've uploaded the file used by Dave's Redistricting App here. To use it, navigate to the app. Look at the top left corner of the page and click on the drop-down File menu. Click "Open". I'm not sure how to do it on a Gates Machine, but for those who worship at the Temple of Jobs you have to click the drop down "Enable" menu and click "All Files" in order to be able to actually open the file.
I'll be doing Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi next.
I've added a new map: The entire state with all county lines visible. There has been some confusion in the comments as to where what counties are, so I thought this might help: