Map Across America Partisan Balance Winner: Paul Nieves
The DistrictBuilder team knows that redistricting only gets better when more people are involved. We wanted to host Map Across America in order to engage with mappers and get folks participating in the redistricting process in a fun way. Since the first DistrictBuilder implementation in 2010, we have worked with academics, analysts, and other experts in this field to ensure the latest release of DistrictBuilder would be an effective, easy-to-use tool to draw legal maps. We are fortunate to partner with these subject matter experts and are thankful three of them agreed to judge the competition. The DistrictBuilder team is blown away by the many excellent maps that were submitted and happy to showcase Paul Nieves’ North Carolina Congressional map submission.
About Paul Nieves
Paul Nieves is an amateur mapmaker from New York with a passion for analyzing redistricting. Over the past decade, he has utilized apps like DistrictBuilder to learn about the country’s demographic and geographical makeup. He recently joined the Princeton Gerrymandering Project Mapping Corps, a PGP subdivision that creates district map plans to analyze and combat gerrymandering. Paul has an interest in urban planning and city-building-simulators, and also enjoys: playing guitar and keyboard, making music, photography, and cooking. You can find Paul on Twitter @pjn925.
Judges Statement
This map’s statistics speak for themself. There is high efficiency and 4 swing districts with exceptional partisan balance. The scores for this map were some of the best we have seen in the competition. It also maintains a good number of majority-minority districts and accurately represents NC. You can check out the metrics for Paul’s map here.
Paul’s Map Narrative
My goal in drawing up North Carolina’s Congressional districts was to find a balance of compact districts that respect: minority population groups, regional and county boundaries, communities of interest (COI), and, competitiveness and partisan fairness, as much as practicable.
My plan’s Efficiency Gap, Declination, and Mean-Median Difference are less than 1%. About 5 districts would consistently lean towards Democrats, while 6 would consistently lean towards Republican. The remaining swing districts would be consistently competitive, since they combine areas with different partisan leanings, allowing them to remain competitive with current trends. Also, incumbent protection was not considered.
In my map there are four districts with significant minority populations: 1, 6, 8, and 12. Districts 1, 6, and 12 are similar to their current incarnations. The 1st includes much of the state’s rural Black population in the Northeast, and maintains a significant Democratic edge, ensuring the regions Black voters would be able to influence electoral outcomes. The 6th district combines the Black communities in High Point, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem, which allows the area’s Black voting bloc to influence the outcome in a Democratic leaning district. Similarly, the 12th is a Democratic-leaning district that stays in Mecklenburg County and keeps together the county’s large minority population.
The 8th is a Sand-hills district that attains minority coalition status by combining the region’s different minority groups. While there is a growing difference in the voting pattern between the districts Black voters and Native American voters, this district at the very least allows a new opportunity for minority representation in a competitive district.
My district plan respects communities of interest and achieves partisan fairness in compliance with State and Federal law.
We’re thankful for the devoted mappers that have contributed over 50,000 maps to DistrictBuilder to date. Want to get more involved in the redistricting process and map your own future? Start drawing in DistrictBuilder today. Be sure to check out our other Map Across America winners!
