Which members are likely to loose their seats due to reapportionment?

[Sbane]

Granted, other than drawing an octopus for the Pittsburgh district, just for my entertainment, I have not drawn PA yet. I guess maybe that should be my next state.

I can assure you that 5 dems are needed in PA. I even gave Holden a swing district, instead of a lean R district, just so I could make the Republicans safer. There were just too many Republicans elected in Obama districts in PA for there to be an easy solution for the GOP.

[Sbane]

So the pubbies like Critz more than Altmire? Any reason for that?

[Sbane]

Critz and Altmire could both be disposed of if Republicans wished to do so.

Trying to get rid of two Democrats would not be wise. Republicans have gained enough in PA; holding on to them should be their goal.

[Sbane]

Granted, other than drawing an octopus for the Pittsburgh district, just for my entertainment, I have not drawn PA yet. I guess maybe that should be my next state.

I can assure you that 5 dems are needed in PA. I even gave Holden a swing district, instead of a lean R district, just so I could make the Republicans safer. There were just too many Republicans elected in Obama districts in PA for there to be an easy solution for the GOP.

I start out doing a back of the envelop mathematical exercise, before starting to draw anything for a state. For PA, let's assume that we can draw the two Philly CD's and the Pittsburgh one 75-25 Kerry over Bush on average, and that PA-13 is 2-1 Kerry. That takes a total Kerry pad taken out of circulation of about 90 points. We have a total of 17 CD's, so we have 13 left to draw, trying to make them all say at least 54.5% Bush, or 5.75% more GOP each than the state (Kerry carried PA by 2.5%, so one needs to add half of that, or 1.25% to get to even).

Thus we start with an average of each CD being 48.75% Bush or so,  for  a total score of minus 21 (17 x 1.25%), and then we add to that the 90 points corralled into the 4 Kerry CD's, leaving a positive score of 69 points to allocate to each of the 13 Pubbie CD's, generating a Bush 2004 percentage of 5.3 points per CD if perfectly evenly allocated (69/13 = 5.3).  (I am assuming here that the turnouts are fairly similar across the state, which is reasonable for PA with its relatively low Hispanic population.) So it is theoretically possible to draw 13 Pubbie dominated districts, at 55.3% Bush 2004 each, which is just about the number that makes a CD reasonably safe for the Pubbie, or at least will require a Tory Dem to hold it.

Of course, it is not possible to seamlessly move Pubbies around the state like that, and in effect move the excess Pubbies in say Perry County over to where there are needed say in PA-8.  And there are some legal constraints, and PA is not known for the wild gerrymanders that some states are, due perhaps to its rather thin veneer of CD decorum, sort of like MI perhaps. So I grant you it will not be easy. I suspect a couple of Philly area CD's are just not going to get to say 54.5% Bush (which I view as about the minimum number to take a CD out of the marginal zone (a Bush 2004 PVI of +3% GOP). We shall see.  The task in all events will probably require some rather vicious chops of the GOP zone in Lancaster and York Counties for example, with might prove discommoding. But the task is not facially hopeless.

But what one cannot do is make Altmire's and Holden's CD's hyper GOP. There are just not enough Pubbies to go around to do that, without shoving some other Pubbie CD's into the marginal zone.

Does this make sense to you, Sbane?

I suppose it is possible theoretically, but practically speaking you will end up with a bunch of districts emanating from the Philly burbs and the Scranton area going into central and western PA. The Philly districts were easy to draw once there were 4 Dem districts in the area ( I made the fourth Dem district only 56% Obama in the hopes Holden runs there, but he doesn't live in the district so maybe not)  The two Scranton area district are much harder, especially since you also have CD-3 to worry about. I was trying to keep Schuylkill in a safe R district, which made things even more complicating. If I ignore that, things get easier to draw. Even then you end up with a bunch of fajita strips.

Also, Altmire gets a 54% Mccain district and the 14th consists of Pittsburgh and then follows the Monongahela river down to WV.