Talk Elections

Great proposal here. It's a Democratic gerrymander in the way that southern Michigan in 2002 was a Republican gerrymander: creating compact districts with reasonable borders, while breaking up other, alternative regions, will unduly favor the Democrats.

http://www.swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=A521ABB436BB3CC73A8239656F0EDC2C?diaryId=4477

Reposted with population numbers at Daily Kos where I monopolized the comments.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/23/161855/807/81/700626

I did a map a while ago which had the Republicans reduced to only two seats, although one seat was only marginally Democratic. District 8 looks like it could be made more Democratic by exchanging some areas on the border with Districts 5 and 7.

Just make Garrett the one to lose the seat and I'm happy.

I spent a few hours last night to make a 12-seat map. The 12th district was removed and the others generally made more compact. NJ-13 around Jersey City becomes the new NJ-12.

I kept all local units and smaller counties intact. I was able to get all but three districts within 500 persons of the ideal size. Those others are 1000 and 1500 under (NJ-8 Paterson, NJ-11 Parsippany) and 2500 over (NJ-7 Edison) the ideal size and could probably be improved by splitting Somerset and Morris counties. I have not yet looked at voting histories or minority strength.

Update With some shifts, the map below now has the NJ-10 Newark at about 50% Black. A significantly larger fraction is difficult without splitting towns. The districts that vary by more than 500 persons are NJ-7 Edison (+1300), NJ-8 Paterson (-800), NJ-10 Newark (+1000), and NJ-11 Parsippany (-1400).

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Seems that 12 districts are much easier to draw than 13.

The current map is needlessly complicated. It reflects compromises made in 1992 for the loss of one seat and the VRA-ization of the Hudson seat and in 2002 to protect Holt and Ferguson. I am curious if the counties in central and southern Jersey were deliberately carved up to weaken the power of county parties to decide the elections, as happens frequently in legislative races. There is just no good reason for 3, 4, 12, and 7 to be so horizontal and for there not to be a Delaware Valley seat based in Trenton and Burlington County.

Yes... but I've tried my hand at redistricting the state with 13 seats, and it's not as if an all-round beautiful map were obtainable.

Where does it go wrong?

It's been a while since. :P

Just for fun, in the 1970s, N.J. had 15 districts, including

* a district that was everything in Essex County minus Newark and East Orange;
* two districts that were completely or largely in Bergen County, split north-south: the western one had Teaneck, Hackensack, and Paramus, while the eastern one followed the Hudson down to North Bergen and Union City
* a district that was all Union County, minus Hillside and Linden;
* a district that was almost exactly Passaic County (West Patterson and Little Falls went to the Essex district, Garfield and Wilmington came in from Bergen County)
* a district based in Trenton and Burlington County that, instead of jumping east, bolted northeast to include East Brunswick and Old Bridge
* a Monmouth County district (this was dismembered in 1992, leading to Pallone's current spaghetti)

Moving from south to north, ordered by southernmost point in the district:

1: Marginally Democratic, D+1 or so. LoBiondo (R) is in this district.
2: Safe Republican, R+15 or so. Open seat, but Smith (R) would probably move into the district.
3: Safe Democratic, D+12 or so. Andrews (D) and Adler (D) are in this district.
4: Safe Democratic, D+10 or so. Holt (D) and Smith (R) are in this district.
5: Slightly Democratic, D+3 or so. Pallone (D) is in this district.
6: Safe Republican, R+12 or so. Lance (R) and Garrett (R) are in this district.
7: Safe Democratic, D+15 or so. Open seat.
8: Safe Democratic, D+20 or so. Payne (D) is in this district. The district would be declared invalid by the courts for splitting up the heavily black areas (with 11 below)
9: Safe Republican, R+10 or so. Frelinghuysen (R) is in this district.
10: Safe Democratic, D+18 or so. Sires (D) is in this district. The district might be declared invalid for diluting Hispanic voting power, but it might not, too.
11: Safe Democratic, D+12 or so. Pascrell (D) is in this district. Would have problems with the courts because of 8 and race-dilution.
12: Slightly Democratic, D+4 or so. Rothman (D) is in this district.

8 Democratic seats, 3 Republican seats, one marginally Democratic seat held by a Republican. Smith loses his district, but a new Republican district is created on the Shore. A new Democratic district is created around New Brunswick. Either Garrett or Lance (probably Lance) loses a primary, and either Adler or Andrews (probably Adler) loses a primary. So the net is one fewer Republican-held seats.

Except for the racial issues in and around District 8, this is a pretty realistic map for the 2010 redistricting. Lance will probably lose out. Rejigging the borders between 8, 9 and 11 would fix the racial issues.

Anyway, anyone interested in gerrymandering or just redistricting NJ, should take a look at the map of NJ by municipality in the 2008 Pres election I posted a few weeks ago. I also have the town-by-town data in an Excel file for every county except Bergen, Hudson and Passaic (which I did before recording it all in the Excel file, but which would be relatively easy to get from the NJ elections website).

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=1061

New Democratic 12-seat gerrymander up at swingstateproject. It creates a 10-2 delegation by Obama votes, which means that it reshapes LoBiondo's district without mapping him out of it, etc.

Connecting Elizabeth with Hudson County across Newark Bay is still cheating. There's no land route between the two without passing through Newark (or Staten Island).

Yes, the redistricting commission has been fine with it in the past. I'm not.

How about these?

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL&district=11
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=VA&district=3

FL-11 has a bridge connecting it. There's no bridge between Bayonne and Elizabeth, not even a ferry, just water. Not that FL-11 is exactly a district I approve of, but it's not quite the same principle.

VA-3 is just as bad.

Ok.

On that note, I love that Tampa is apparently connected to the rest of the district if you are traveling southbound, but not for returning via the same road.

VA-03 illustrates the challenge of drawing a majority-black seat in Virginia. There's not a large enough black population for a Richmond-based seat, nor for a Hampton Roads-based seat (you might be able to draw one in Hampton Roads, but it would probably be about 51% black), so you have to connect the two.

For the record, though, connecting Hudson County to Elizabeth by splitting Newark would be fine. Especially since the area you'd need to connect the two is mostly Newark Airport and Port Newark-Elizabeth, so you'd have a grand total population in Newark of less than 1,000. The district just needs to extend to include the Newark Bay Bridge and the I-78/I-95 interchange, plus Newark Airport and the port.

I updated my earlier map (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=93102.msg1929506#msg1929506) to improve Black population percentage in the Newark CD-10. It is hard to get significantly above 50% without splitting towns since the district size grows substantially as the number of CDs drops from 13 to 12 and there are few towns in that area that have over 50% Black population.

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Purely eyeballing the populations, but here's a beautiful pro-Democratic gerrymander of New Jersey using 13 districts. Of course, it would need to be cut down to twelve if it were to be a map for 2010, and that has to involve cutting one of the eleven Democratic districts (presumably dark blue). Balancing out the populations would be mostly achieved by switching relatively even towns between Democratic districts; the two ultra-Republican districts, dark green and cyan, are very close to correct if not perfect.

If I get bored again, I may try a Republican gerrymander, which would be a lot harder (and obviously couldn't reach 11-2; maybe 9-4 if I tried really hard).

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