Tornado Map: 2012 Version

Following the loss of a House seat in 2000, House Democrats proposed a new Congressional map that would later be dubbed the “tornado plan” because of its shape. As Representatives Chip Pickering and Ronnie Shows were being matched up, it favored Shows- the Democrat. Redistricting ended up in the courts and we got the current map, the one favoring a Republican. The head-to-head matchup wasn’t even really that close and the Third is now the longest running Republican held district in the state.

Flash forward to the next round of Congressional redistricting. I’ve opined that we won’t see many fireworks because little is at stake and not sweeping changes are necessary, or possible. Well, maybe possible if you are a Democrat and if Democrats had control of things in Jackson. (Of course, they did control the show last time around and couldn’t get their most aggressive plan through).

Without further ado, here is the 2012 version of the tornado plan (although you would probably saying this is like the tornado plan on steroids). Remember, this was just for fun. But we were able to draw one majority black district (still the Second) along with making the Third plurality black (49 black, 47 white). Because of this the Second goes down to 54 percent black and up to 43 percent white. Again, this is just for fun. Even if the Dems could pass this, Bennie Thompson would obviously be none to happy.

A thumbnail shot is to the right, but you can view a full-size image of the map here.

To get numbers like this we had to make significant changes across the board. Where to begin?

Well, the First District which use to go no further south than Choctaw now extends into Rankin and Hinds. The First would take all of Attala, while slivering through western Leake, northwest Scott, and into northern Rankin. It also extends west into several majority white precincts in Madison. It also even takes some largely majority white north Jackson districts.

The key here was splitting Rankin- full of Republican voters- into three districts. Central Rankin remains in the Third while southern Rankin heads to the Second. To get the high black population in the Third, we took that into the city of Jackson taking up many of their large, nearly all-black precincts. And to lower the white numbers in the Second and Third, the First dips into North Jackson to take many of the white precincts in the city. The Second then takes up the rest of Hinds outside Jackson (plus a few Jackson precincts). There is no need for the Second to take all of Jackson because there are enough black voters in the Delta; similarly by breaking up Rankin we were able to essentially dilute the Republican voting bloc.

The Third maintained a lot of its old eastern counties but had to head north through Lowndes and into Monroe thanks to the First coming so far south. And to take some black vote from the Mississippi River counties we slivered through several counties to get good chunks of Adams, Jefferson and Wilkinson counties. Majority white counties like Lincoln, Lawrence, Simpson and Smith are basically moved to the Second.

In the northern part of the state, the Second got a lot wider taking Panola, Yalobusha and Grenada.

The Fourth lost parts of Jasper and Forrest, and heads west all the way out to Wilkinson.

The final demographic numbers? The First becomes 74 percent white. It is currently around 70 percent white using new Census numbers. The Fourth is 71 percent white, which is about right. The Second takes a huge hit going from 66 to 54 percent black. That is at the expense of the Third which goes from 62 percent white to plurality 49 percent black.

Lets look at this. A 54 percent black district has a pretty good chance of electing an African-American. Someone like Bennie Thompson who has never really made inroads with white voters might not fare the best here. As for the Third, at 49 percent black, you have a chance to elect an African-American (Samford Bishop’s district in Georgia has similar demographics), but it would probably lean toward a white Democrat.

So you could draw maps to create a net one seat pickup for Democrats. In a wave Republican year like 2010, however, Democrats would need to be careful. I could see a Republican winning in both these seats under last year’s circumstances. That is why mapmakers need to be careful about not overextending their party faithful. Further, the Second District representative likely wouldn’t be able to be as liberal as Thompson is.

And there are some other drawbacks to this: 1) It likely runs afoul with the Voting Rights Act because it technically dilutes the black vote (even though its helps an African-American in another district). 2) Democrats don’t have the votes for something like this. 3) The most prominent black Democrat (Thompson) in the state wouldn’t go for this.