National 2023 State Legislative Districts

## RDH Creation Date
07/31/2024

## Sources
[National Post-Redistricting (2021 Cycle) State Legislative District Boundaries and Block Assignment File](https://redistrictingdatahub.org/dataset/national-post-redistricting-2021-cycle-state-legislative-district-boundaries-and-block-assignment-file/)

[National 2022 State Legislative Districts and Block Assignment File](https://redistrictingdatahub.org/dataset/national-2022-state-legislative-districts-and-block-assignment-file/)

Please view the README for either of those files for more information on sourcing. 

This file is intended to be joined to 2023 state legislative election results. Please be aware that there may have been elections to finish terms on old districts and that these districts may not always be the correct ones to use. For states that did not hold a state legislative election in 2023, the state legislative boundaries in effect during the year are used. 

## Fields
Field Name Description
***national_2023_elections_st_leg_boundaries_baf.csv***
GEOID20    2020 Census Block GEOID
SLDU       State Legislative Upper House District Name or Number
SLDL       State Legislative Lower House District Name or Number
FLOTERIAL  Floterial District Name or Number

***national_2023_elections_st_leg_lower_nh_floterial_boundaries***
DISTRICT   District Name or Number
STATE      State Abbreviation

***national_2023_elections_st_leg_lower_boundaries***
DISTRICT   District Name or Number
STATE      State Abbreviation

***national_2023_elections_st_leg_upper_boundaries***
DISTRICT   District Name or Number
STATE      State Abbreviation

## Processing Notes
This file was constructed by loading in the 2022 file and swapping in the BAF and shapefile data from the "Post-Redistricting" file for the following states and levels: LA SLDL, LA SLDU, MS SLDL, MS SLDU, NJ SLDL, NJ SLDU, VA SLDL and VA SLDU.

These swaps were made to reflect redistricting plans that were passed following redistricting but were not used in an election before 2023.

## Additional Notes
In the BAF, the "FLOTERIAL" field is not applicable and marked "NO FLOTERIAL" for all states except New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, the state legislative lower house has both base districts (represented by the 'SLDL' field) and floterials (represented by the "FLOTERIAL" field). Not all blocks in New Hampshire are nested within a floterial and those that are not are assigned "NO VALUE" in the "FLOTERIAL" field. The floterial districts are stored in a separate file to prevent unintentional overlaps in processing.

For states with one map for state legislative districts, the same values were used for the "SLDL" and "SLDU" fields. Nebraska is an exception to this, as it does not have a lower chamber in its state legislature, so for the "SLDL" field all blocks are assigned "NO SLDL". Some blocks may not have assignments for SLDU or SLDL districts. These blocks are given "NO VALUE" in their respective fields.

When creating the district shapefiles, "NO VALUE" and "NO SLDL" districts are filtered out.

Please email info@redistrictingdatahub.org for any questions about this dataset.