Why the 'daring' Virginia redistricting plan may not be such a bad thing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/22/virginia-senate-redistricting

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Republicans in the Virginia State Senate passed a daring redistricting plan on Monday. I say "daring" because the only way Republicans were able to get the bill through the evenly divided senate was to bring it up for a vote when a Democratic member was at President Obama's inauguration. Democrats are rightly infuriated, but is the result really so terrible for the people of Virginia?

First off, I think we can all admit it's bad PR to jam a bill through when a member is gone. To make matters worse, the missing Democratic member was a civil rights leader attending the inauguration of the first black president. That's why you had both the Republican Governor Bob McDonnell and Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling coming out against the redistricting plan.

Any good Democrat will also say the people elected a 20-20 split, and yesterday only 39 members were present. Republicans decided not to play by the rules and in doing so defied the will of the people.

On the other hand, it's not like the Democrats haven't played a similar redistricting game before. Eleven Texas Senate Democrats actually left the state in 2003 to prevent a mid-decade redistricting, which is unusual in that redistricting usually, though not always, takes place in the beginning of the decade after the census. There's nothing wrong with mid-decade redistricting, yet Democrats departed to avoid a quorum call because without the Democratic members there weren't enough senators to actually conduct Senate business. Eventually, a quorum did take place and Republicans got their redistricting.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Texas redistricting was legal with one minor Voting Rights Act (VRA) exception, and I'm guessing that the Virginia plan is too. Diluting minority voting power, which is a violation of the VRA, is usually the pitfall of many redistricting plans. As Kenton Ngo pointed out on Twitter, "If VA Republicans were smart enough not to touch the already cleared [Voting Rights Act] districts, the plan will likely stand. Dems are toast." Not only did Republicans not take away any black majority seats, but part of their gerrymander was to actually create another black majority seat. That's to say they concentrated black Democratic strength into one district to get a black senator, which ensures that majority white districts become more Republican.

If the Republican plot was politics as usual, will it create a senate that doesn't reflect the majority of Virginia voters? In other words, will Republicans be getting more seats than they deserve given the statewide vote for senate? Republicans were able to pick up about 10 more seats in the United States House of Representatives in 2012 because Republicans controlled redistricting in a lot of states. This redistricting, along with natural Democratic concentration in the cities, helped Republicans maintain a 33-seat majority even when losing the nationwide vote for the house by a point.

The old Virginia Senate districts were drawn by Democrats in 2011 in an effort to try and maintain their then four seat majority. Republicans were up in arms and for good reason. Republicans were only able to win 20 out of 40 seats in 2011, despite the fact that they won the statewide vote for senate 57% to 40% in the 2011 elections. That result is far more skewed than it was for the national house in 2012. If percentage of vote equaled percentage of seats, Virginia Republicans should have won 23 to 24 seats in 2011. Usually, though, in single member districts, the curve is more responsive and 57% of the vote would result in something like 60-65% or 24 to 26 of the 40 seats.

The new districts are more likely to mirror the statewide vote for state senate. One estimate from Ben Tribbett has Republicans winning up to 27 seats in a good Republican year. This isn't terribly far off from the upper range of the responsive curve for the 2011 elections, and it certainly is closer to statewide vote than the actual 2011 seat makeup. My friend Sean Trende puts the estimate at locking in a Republican majority by two to three seats. This would actually be at the lower end of the proportional curve, but still closer to what we'd expect than the actual 2011 seat makeup.

Thus, while Virginia Republicans may have done something dirty, it's hard for me to be up in arms about it. They'll certainly take hits for it in the press and from Democrats. At the end of the day, however, the result is likely a Virginia Senate that better emulates statewide voting patterns. And while I think they probably will, the only question left is whether or not the courts find it legal.