Monday, March 21, 2011

Our new district....doesn't look like us

After reading on a couple of political blogs about how the gerrymandering of Loudoun went down at the last board meeting (and elsewhere?), I started wondering about the demographics of our new district. Sure, we all know it's predominantly "rural," particularly compared with our acres and acres of townhouses and tiny SFH lots, but what about the people?

Here's how Brambleton looks as of the 2010 Census: (numbers rounded)

58% White
30% Asian
7% Black
7% Hispanic
5% multi-racial


Here's how the new District 8 (Blue Ridge, or whatever) will look:

80% White
11% Asian
6% Black
6% Hispanic
3% multi-racial

(note: this is based on what I can tell is included after the amendments; I didn't include Hamilton because I'm not sure if it is in or out, but I don't think it's going to swing it much differently)


And, just for kicks, here's how our district would have looked under the HOA-4 Plan (again, these are super-rough numbers because I don't have race/ethnic numbers for the precinct splits used in this plan):

61% White
28% Asian
6% Black
6% Hispanic
4% multi-racial


Are Asians disenfranchised under the adopted plan? Thoughts?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

No they own a great many franchises.

Liz Miller said...

Wow, anonymous, way to derail a thoughtful post!


I think it does disenfrachise the Asian community. I hope that Burton will reach out to the suburban and multi-cultural neighborhood that has been added to his district.

Eric the 1/2 Troll said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_United_Latin_American_Citizens_v._Perry

In order for a district to be considered racially gerrymandered and therefore disenfranchising a certain minority population, I think it has to be e majority-minority district to begin with - my laymans read of this SCOTUS case.

Rocky Road said...

Thanks for posting. Those are very interesting numbers. If I was Asian I would be concerned and looking for change.

Check these numbers out…

Miller 5 Blue Ridge district-Total population 39,676
Suburban population 14417 (115, 111 and 116)
Rural population 16,366 (308, 309, 307, 305, 302, 311, 303)
Purcellville population 8,893 (301, 310)

With the quickly growing suburban precincts, it looks like the rural folks should be concerned as well. Is there change on the “Blue Ridge” horizon???

Anonymous said...

I can't wait until an HOA resident represents Middleburg and Hamilton. I for one will be telling my elected official to pave over the west.

Eric the 1/2 troll said...

Anonymous, You do realize that Hamilton is in now in the Catoctin district...? More divisiveness from an anonymous poster - we will see a lot of this over the months running up to the election - from a developers point of view, division is good for politics...