Draw the Congressional Districts of the Alternate States!

[Antonio the Sixth]

A few of these districts are only marginally Republican though, and in a good Democratic year (or with good candidates) you could see 5 or 6 seats fall in Dem hands. Does splitting municipalities allow Republicans to solidify their hold on CDs 2 to 5?

[muon2]

A few of these districts are only marginally Republican though, and in a good Democratic year (or with good candidates) you could see 5 or 6 seats fall in Dem hands. Does splitting municipalities allow Republicans to solidify their hold on CDs 2 to 5?

By swapping about 10 precincts each way between AD 5 and 6, I can move AD 5 up to R+3. With about half an hour work carving up towns I can get AD 5 such that McCain wins the district, and so on.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A few of these districts are only marginally Republican though, and in a good Democratic year (or with good candidates) you could see 5 or 6 seats fall in Dem hands. Does splitting municipalities allow Republicans to solidify their hold on CDs 2 to 5?

By swapping about 10 precincts each way between AD 5 and 6, I can move AD 5 up to R+3. With about half an hour work carving up towns I can get AD 5 such that McCain wins the district, and so on.

Sounds good!

One more State I seem to have mostly gotten right, then.

[muon2]

Another insidious gerrymander, this one for the new OH. It more than neutralizes the Dems gains in ER. All CDs are within a range of 0.5% and no townships, or munis are split except for Cinci and Columbus where no wards are split. McCain wins all 10 of the CDs with at least 50% of the vote.

Are you sure you don't want your new states to support a federal redistricting commission?



CD-1: O 45.0%, M 53.9%; R+8
CD-2: O 45.7%, M 53.2%; R+7
CD-3: O 45.2%, M 53.3%; R+8
CD-4: O 43.3%, M 54.9%; R+10
CD-5: O 47.5%, M 51.1%; R+6
CD-6: O 43.9%, M 53.9%; R+9
CD-7: O 46.1%, M 51.6%; R+7
CD-8: O 47.8%, M 50.6%; R+5
CD-9: O 48.2%, M 50.3%; R+5
CD-10: O 47.4%, M 50.8%; R+5

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh wow, that's a nasty one. I'm actually surprised the GOP can actually manage to crack the Columbus district, I thought they would have done so IRL if they could.

[muon2]

Oh wow, that's a nasty one. I'm actually surprised the GOP can actually manage to crack the Columbus district, I thought they would have done so IRL if they could.

It was something that was looked at in 2011. However, cracking Columbus requires the use of the heavily GOP rural counties to the north and west. Those were used instead to boost the Speaker's district (OH-8 gets an R+15) and to crack Lorain (OH-4 and OH-7). They took the ER area from the natural 5 D + 1 tossup seats out of 7 (not counting my gerrymander for 6) down to 3 with no tossups, which is a good trade for one D seat in OH-3. Without the ER counties the Pubs would surely go after Franklin.

The Columbus district was also used as a bargaining point with the Ohio Black Legislative Caucus to build support for a supermajority vote. There was a threat that a petition drive would place the remap on the ballot, but a supermajority vote would block that.

[Fuzzybigfoot]

Excellent work! 

[Antonio the Sixth]

That's really interesting (in a sickening sort of way )! Excellent work indeed.

Do you think the GOP could manage to do the same with Pittsburgh in Allegheny?

[Sol]

That's really interesting (in a sickening sort of way )! Excellent work indeed.

Do you think the GOP could manage to do the same with Pittsburgh in Allegheny?

I'm skeptical- they could try it, but the pubbitude of areas around Pittsburgh is a pretty recent phenomenon. You'd probably end up with several D districts.

[Gass3268]

That's really interesting (in a sickening sort of way )! Excellent work indeed.

Do you think the GOP could manage to do the same with Pittsburgh in Allegheny?

I'm skeptical- they could try it, but the pubbitude of areas around Pittsburgh is a pretty recent phenomenon. You'd probably end up with several D districts.

I agree with this.

[muon2]

That's really interesting (in a sickening sort of way )! Excellent work indeed.

Do you think the GOP could manage to do the same with Pittsburgh in Allegheny?

I'm skeptical- they could try it, but the pubbitude of areas around Pittsburgh is a pretty recent phenomenon. You'd probably end up with several D districts.

I agree with this.

First of all the split is pretty weird compared to the more natural splits we've looked at in TX, NY, and OH. Either PA would split along the Susquehanna (perhaps following the west branch) which puts York in the west and Lycoming and some northern counties in the east, or it would split in the south along the main eastern ridge of the Appalachians putting Adams, Cumberland, and Franklin in the east while maybe shifting some northern counties west.  I can't visualize an alternate timeline that results in the split you propose.

That said, it's instructive to look at the current gerrymander in western PA. PA-3, 5, 9, 12, 14, and 18 are in Allegheny. All but 14 are heavy R (PVI R+8, R+8, R+14, R+9 and R+10). The additional counties added to this area are also very solid R (probably about R+10 or more). PA-14 is currently D+15, so the average is about R+6. That suggests a gerrymander does exist that puts all 7 CDs in the range from R+5 to R+7.

[Sol]

Oh, yeah, somehow I thought that the border was further west.

Anyway, the Allegheny GOP still may be hesitant to split Pittsburgh- it'd require some really ugly lines and a PVI of R+5 could still hurt some incumbents. I can try it though.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, if the only misplaced counties are York, Lyncoming and Tioga, you can't say my division is so bad. I just think it's nice to draw a pretty "clean" vertical line and if only a few communities are slightly misplaced it's not that big of a problem.

[muon2]

Well, if the only misplaced counties are York, Lyncoming and Tioga, you can't say my division is so bad. I just think it's nice to draw a pretty "clean" vertical line and if only a few communities are slightly misplaced it's not that big of a problem.

I'm just saying that geography and demographics would drive any split over an arbitrary line. For example the current proposal to divide CA into six states ignores the straight line dividing SoCal and puts Kern with the rest of the Central Valley. That makes geographic sense.

York and Harrisburg are significant areas in PA and an arbitrary split wouldn't come about. jimrtex's recent thread had a healthy debate about splitting states, including PA. The debate was about a four-way split and you can see that all three alternatives had the entire lower Susquehanna together west to Franklin and keeping Dauphin and Cumberland together. That goes to a mountain-based split.

[muon2]

In fairness to the two opposing gerrymanders for the split of OH, I thought something more neutral should be considered two. OH did try to pass a constitutional amendment a few years ago to reform redistricting so I will assume that in some alternate timeline it does pass for both states. It's also an interesting exercise since the split caused the total of OH to get 17 rather than 16 CDs.

I used a number of the neutral rules to create this plan. I chopped as few counties as necessary and used microchops of less than 0.5% of a district when possible. Districts were kept within a range of 1% in each of the two alternate states with no districts crossing state lines. Township and municipal divisions were not chopped within a county except for the chop of Columbus which chopped no wards. Urban black populations were treated as a community of interest and generally kept together in one CD. UCCs (urban county clusters) were covered by the minimum number of CDs.



CDs 1-10 are in alternate Ohio which I will designate as OI to avoid confusion with RL OH. CDs 11-17 in the map are ER-1 to ER-7.

OI-1: D+2; BVAP 26.7%, part of the Cincinnati UCC and entirely within Hamilton.
OI-2: R+17; entirely within the Cincinnati UCC; the chop in Warren is slightly larger than a microchop, but it could be replaced by a microchop into each of Warren and Butler by splitting townships or cities.
OI-3: R+4; covers two of the three counties in the Dayton UCC, the fragment in Darke county is a microchop.
OI-4: R+16; the chop into Hardin is a microchop.
OI-5: R+11; an alternative is to attach Mansfield to Columbus which reduces erosity in eastern OI with increased erosity in the south.
OI-6: R+10; entirely within the four county Columbus UCC.
OI-7: R+9; links the remaining county from the Dayton UCC to Columbus keeping both at the minimum CDs for their respective UCCs; there is a microchop into Union for Dublin.
OI-8: D+15; BVAP 27.6%, the third Columbus UCC district and entirely within Franklin.
OI-9: R+15; the third CD for the Cincinnati UCC, it includes a microchop into Hamilton.
OI-10: R+5.

Summary: 6 R, 2 r, 1 d, 1 D.

ER-1: D+8; contains both counties of the Toledo UCC.
ER-2: D+3; includes part of the Cleveland UCC and the western counties force an extra chop of that UCC.
ER-3: D+31; BVAP 49.5% includes all of Cleveland and entirely within Cuyahoga.
ER-4: R+1; entirely within the Cleveland UCC except for the microchop of Geauga; erosity is high to avoid chops to other counties and excess chops to the Youngstown and Akron UCCs.
ER-5: D+5; includes the entire Youngstown UCC and part of the Akron UCC.
ER-6: D+5; entirely within the Akron UCC which is slightly to large for one CD.
ER-7: R+4; the fourth the chop into Lorain is slightly larger than a microchop, but it could be replaced by microchops into both Lorain and Cuyahoga.

Summary: 1 r, 1 e, 3 d, 2 D.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, if the only misplaced counties are York, Lyncoming and Tioga, you can't say my division is so bad. I just think it's nice to draw a pretty "clean" vertical line and if only a few communities are slightly misplaced it's not that big of a problem.

I'm just saying that geography and demographics would drive any split over an arbitrary line. For example the current proposal to divide CA into six states ignores the straight line dividing SoCal and puts Kern with the rest of the Central Valley. That makes geographic sense.

York and Harrisburg are significant areas in PA and an arbitrary split wouldn't come about. jimrtex's recent thread had a healthy debate about splitting states, including PA. The debate was about a four-way split and you can see that all three alternatives had the entire lower Susquehanna together west to Franklin and keeping Dauphin and Cumberland together. That goes to a mountain-based split.

Yeah, I guess you are right. I did my best to learn about each State's political and cultural regions when I drew the States, but there are so many of them that it's easy to make a few mistakes. Thanks for pointing that one out, I'll keep it in mind next time I tweak around with PA.

On the other hand, it would take me too much time to re-calculate all the numbers I had to fix the mistake, so I'll still keep these boundaries for the sake of our scenario. Sorry.

[traininthedistance]

I've finally had some time to fiddle around with DRA again.  It's been awhile.

Anyway, you were looking for a Republican gerrymander of Adirondack?  I can do that.  Of course, one can only do so much when the Republican numbers are several points underwater.  But if we assume ancestral downballot strength holds, this could be 6-3 Pub many years.







My usual self-imposed limits apply: no split towns, all districts plus or minus 1000 of ideal, whole-county groups used when feasible.  Here, 3 is whole-county, as well as 6/7 and 8/9.  What was thrown out the window was the usual prohibition on double-spanning, which is used and abused to get our three Dem sinks.

Note that the Dem % is artificially low in Western NY and artificially high everywhere else, b/c it's largely based on the lopsided Cuomo/Paladino race.  The Obama in 08 numbers are a better guide, if you just mentally subtract 3 or something.

District 1: Obama 62.8%, Dem 57.6%.  Buffalo, Niagara Falls, inner burbs. 17.5% black. Safe D.
District 2: Obama 46.5%, Dem 45.2%.  Buffalo burbs, west of Rochester, rural bits in between.  Without any actual large Dem areas, this is the safest the Republicans get here, and it still isn't all that gaudy. Likely R.
District 3: Obama 48.4% (McCain 49.9%), Dem 47.9%.  19.5% black. Just like in real life, Ithaca gets sunk in the Southern Tier.  Obviously the price of maxing out Pub opportunities here is that, well, they'll still have to fight close races.  Ain't no way around that. Lean R.
District 4: Obama 65.4%, Dem 65.5%.  The Rochester earmuffs go... east instead of west, to pull the beating Syracusan heart out of Dan Maffei's district. And of course Slaughter doesn't even live here either, another nice touch if I do say so myself.  Obviously this is the most egregious part of the map.  I refrained from drawing the earmuffs further south and having 5 be an elongated C, I think that would be a bridge too far for these Rockefeller Pubs even if it goosed 5 half a point or so. Safe D.
District 5: Obama 50.9%, Dem 52.4%. Rochester and Syracuse burbs, Finger Lakes.  Definitely another district that would cry out for one of those mythical Moderate Pubs who supposedly run this state.  Tilt R.
District 6: Obama 52.2%, Dem 54.6%.  No, I am not splitting the North Country. That would be a bridge too far, and probably doesn't even help much anyway.  Ancestral R, but I think Owens probably holds on and ruins their gerry. Tossup.
District 7: Obama 48.8% (McCain 49.4%), Dem 50.6%.  Hanna's made enough moderate noises that he'd probably be relatively comfortable in this third and final McCain district.  Lean R.
District 8: Obama 49.3% (McCain 48.9%), Den 51.1%.  And Gibson would likely do the same, given that his current district is actually D+1.  Though I guess he lives in 9, oops.  Lean R.
District 9: Oabma 61.8%, Dem 62.3%. Our third and final sink is mostly the Albany district, but reaches down to grab Ulster just because.  Safe D.

Anyway, this is probably 5-4 right now, but could go 6-3 in good Pub years, and as bad as 8-1 Dem in waves.  But you can't wave-proof Upstate, and honestly you couldn't even on the Dem side either.

One thing I wonder is, if they didn't have NYC to demonize, the Dems might do better there.  I also wonder if the Pubs might not actually go all-out here either.  Might throw up a map that keeps these county groups but cuts down on the double-spanning, to get a "clean" but nominally Pub-favoring setup.  (I say nominally Pub-favoring if only because of the Ithaca sink, honestly).

[traininthedistance]

Oh, oops, didn't see that Muon took care of that awhile ago.  Ah well.  Consider my effort a gentler, more constrained riff on the same basic idea.

[traininthedistance]

BTW the 18-0 New York might not actually be as airtight as people seem to be assuming, once you factor in the VRA and certain minimal standards of shame preventing multiple spaghetti strings doing things like quadruple-spanning the Queens-Nassau border.  I'll do what I can, but I suspect that Peter King will have a better-than-even shot of hanging on.

And 19-0 would ofc be marginally tougher.

[muon2]

Oh, oops, didn't see that Muon took care of that awhile ago.  Ah well.  Consider my effort a gentler, more constrained riff on the same basic idea.

I see we took some different approaches to some areas, and I particularly wanted to excise the North Country tossup as I think the Pub AD Assembly would do. Any thoughts on who the candidates would be in my version?

As an aside, what do you think about my "neutral" map for the Senate?

[traininthedistance]

Oh, oops, didn't see that Muon took care of that awhile ago.  Ah well.  Consider my effort a gentler, more constrained riff on the same basic idea.

I see we took some different approaches to some areas, and I particularly wanted to excise the North Country tossup as I think the Pub AD Assembly would do. Any thoughts on who the candidates would be in my version?

As an aside, what do you think about my "neutral" map for the Senate?

Seems good at first glance.  I might try and mock something up when I'm done with downstate just to see what a fresh pair of eyes might come up with, but I doubt it'll be much different.

I had sort of been thinking that the North Country would be treated in much the same way as Staten Island or Bucks County are: as this separate bloc that you don't mess around with out of tradition, even in partisan plans. 

[Antonio the Sixth]

That's a very interesting map, Train, even though I guess Muon's gerrymander was a bit more aggressive. Anyway, I can only make guesses as to what the legislatures would actually do, so feel free to experine with other hyptheses if you think they make more sense.

[muon2]

Oh, oops, didn't see that Muon took care of that awhile ago.  Ah well.  Consider my effort a gentler, more constrained riff on the same basic idea.

I see we took some different approaches to some areas, and I particularly wanted to excise the North Country tossup as I think the Pub AD Assembly would do. Any thoughts on who the candidates would be in my version?

As an aside, what do you think about my "neutral" map for the Senate?

Seems good at first glance.  I might try and mock something up when I'm done with downstate just to see what a fresh pair of eyes might come up with, but I doubt it'll be much different.

I had sort of been thinking that the North Country would be treated in much the same way as Staten Island or Bucks County are: as this separate bloc that you don't mess around with out of tradition, even in partisan plans. 

I figured that given the dynamics after the 2010 election it would be hard to resist knocking 3% off Obama's totals in the North Country CD and put McCain slightly ahead there. And the price for that is only a 0.7% Dem increase to the North Hudson Valley CD (only a 0.5% increase in the PVI differential) by moving Plattsburgh to the south.

Of course the real piece of art in my gerrymander is getting Ithaca in with Rochester and Syracuse without splitting towns.

[traininthedistance]

So a solid 18-0 is, as I thought, quite impossible in New York.  It’s easy to sink Staten Island and Southern Brooklyn, and you can give the three northern districts all D+something PVIs (if not totally safe) with not too much effort, only moderate ugliness, and no split towns.  (Split towns are a necessity on LI no matter what.)  But Long Island is huge, and is too 50/50, and if you’re gonna stick to the VRA and keep a black district in Queens, you’re just gonna have to live with Peter King.

I’m gonna present two options here.  The first one keeps LI swingy and gives the Dems a shot at all of the districts, but at least two of them remain in easy reach of the Pubs as well.  This Long Island is also pretty similar to the actual court map and as such is pretty “good government”, modulo carving Islip in such a way as to shore up Tim Bishop as much as possible.  The second one will cede a crazy gerrymander to King in an effort to make the other three LI districts as secure for Dems as possible, and will go up hopefully tonight?







Note that the lines in NYC are as ugly as they are for legacy and VRA purposes more than partisanship.  I’m assuming you need to keep three BVAP-majority districts, one in Queens and two in Brooklyn, and that requires stretching things to the limit especially in Queens, which goes into East New York rather than Valley Stream for obvious partisan purposes.  Then you’ve got the Asian-plurality Queens district, and Nydia Velasquez’s Bushwick-LES-Sunset Park monstrosity, made even more monstrous by the fact that Southern Brooklyn needs to be properly gerrymandered by sticking it with Park Slope and Williamsburg.  If it was really a tabula rasa she’d get a Bushwick-Jackson Heights district instead and Sunset Park would be with the rest of South Brooklyn (which could be made Dem without too much effort).  But we’re supposed to hold everything else the same, and that means crazy dumb Brooklyn lines.  I might also present a counterfactual NYC that makes more sense and keeps everything Dem, if my computer doesn’t keep choking on NY.

Obviously I am mashing Staten Island together with Lower Manhattan.  I mean, duh. The ferry connection totally counts!

District 1: Obama 53.0%, Dem 55.6%. 74W/15H. Taking some of the more Dem-heavy parts of Islip instead of Smithtown helps shore up Tim Bishop a point or so.  But there’s not that much you can do.  Tilt D.
District 2: Obama 51.6%, Dem 53.9%. 67W/19H. Pretty much a pure tossup if it was an open seat, but the power of King’s incumbency probably keeps this Tilt R for now.  Only so much you can do.
District 3: Obama 52.3%, Dem 54.6%. 72W/10H/10A. And, likewise, the power of incumbency keeps the North Shore Tilt D.
District 4: Obama 56.5%, Dem 57.8%. 59W/17B/18H.  Entirely within Hempstead and Long Beach.  Likely D.
District 5: Obama 86.4%, Dem 87.6%. 14W/50B/18H/11A.  Has to leave Queens to break 50%, which it does just barely.  God, I wish plurality was good enough here.  It’ll have to be next time.  Safe D.
District 6: Obama 65.1%, Dem 69.0%. 31W/21H/42A.  Asian-plurality. Safe D.
District 7: Obama 76.3%, Dem 78.3%. 28W/41H/22A.  Hispanic-plurality.  God I hate this district, but I think the rules suggest it should continue to exist. Will totally blow it up in my next alternative. Safe D.
District 8: Obama 85.2%, Dem 86.3%. 21W/51B/21H.  I more-or-less preserve the boundary between the two RL black Brooklyn districts, which IIRC is mainly for the purpose of unifying the Caribbean immigrant community in 9. Safe D.
District 9: Obama 84.7%, Dem 86.2%. 29W/50B/12H.  My home district is… changed a lot less than many others here. Splits the hyper-Pub Orthodox areas with 10. Safe D.
District 10: Obama 64.0%, Dem 69.0%. 67W/14H/16A.  And here’s the Hipster vs. Hasid district (plus all the forgotten areas of Southern Brooklyn that are going to probably be majority-Asian in a decade or two).  Whee. Safe D.
District 11: Obama 62.6%, Dem 62.7%. 66W/15H.  All of Staten Island in a Safe D district!
District 12: Obama 78.1%, Dem 74.7%. 67W/14H/12A.  Pretty similar to the current West Side-Astoria district, except of course for that tendril to get Middle Village whites out of the way of 6 and 7.  Probably unnecesssary but whatever. Safe D.
District 13: Obama 91.1%, Dem 90.2%. 27W/24B/43H. Hispanic-plurality.  Didn’t even try to up the black percentage here TBH; possibly could have gotten ugly between this and 14 for a couple points, but not worth it. Safe D.
District 14: Obama 93.6%, Dem 94.5%. 28B/64H. The South Bronx, Hispanic-majority as always.  Safe D.
District 15: Obama 81.7%, Dem 82.9%. 16W/20B/54H.  Another Hispanic-majority Bronx district, this one with some parts of Queens too (most importantly Jackson Heights/Corona). Safe D.
District 16: Obama 61.3%, Dem 60.8%. 60W/16B/19H.  Co-Op City to southern Duchess! No split towns, but split counties galore as we sink the Republican band centered around Putnam County in a mostly-Westchester Safe D district.
District 17: Obama 59.5%, Dem 62.4%. 57W/17B/19H. Similar to Eliot Engel’s old district, except with no split towns, less Bronx, and going further up into Orange. Safe D one would hope.
District 18: Obama 56.3%, Dem 57.2%. 66W/10B/17H. And the northern district grabs what it can along the Hudson to goose the Dem percentage as much as possible. Without extraneous county splits you can get an roughly even PVI district, enough for a Dem to win right now but not forever.  Still not quite safe, but Lean D, bordering on likely?

[traininthedistance]

Alternate Long Island.  Towns and villages are shredded to spaghetti... well, some of them.



District 1: Obama 56.1%, Dem 58.0%.  65W/22H.  Up to Likely D for Bishop now.
District 2: Obama 44.4%, Dem 47.9%.  Congrats, Peter King.  We can't dislodge you.  Safe R.
District 3: Obama 56.7%, Dem 58.4%.  65W/14H/13A.  Except for the finger down into Babylon, this is still actually a pretty clean and sensible North Shore district.  It just, well, goes into Babylon and Jericho rather than Smithtown.  Likely D.
District 4: Obama 57.2%, Dem 58.4%.  58W/17B/18H.  Not much change.  I toyed with the idea of cutting out hyper-Pub Garden City and nearby areas, but it's not actually worth it, especially if you want to keep the fig leaf of the North Hempstead-Hempstead town line unbroken.  Likely D.