Mid-2014 county population estimates out tomorrow, March 26

[traininthedistance]

Good to see that Philly's continued growth continues apace.  Another 4K last year! Sadly not enough to keep up with the nationwide rate- but they accounted for over half of Pennsylvania's growth.

[traininthedistance]

Man, that 26-district NY might be less erose than the 27-district version, but I think that despite that the 27-district map is a better one, since it does a better job of keeping the North Country and Capital Region together (the Schenectady cut-out is still unfortunate though).

Also of course it doesn't matter much to separate out groups within NYC when VRA constraints will make mincemeat of most boundaries there.  

I'm curious about NJ.  Imagine there's not a whole lot of groups you can make happen; NJ just does not tend to play well with the numbers as they currently stand.  Hopefully at least you can still nest the Philly-oriented bits in approximately three districts, like is currently possible.

[traininthedistance]

And here is a version which will get a better Muon2 score, moving VA-08 into close to safe Dem territory at about a 4.5% Dem PVI (using 2012 numbers), and VA-10 from fairly safe Pub to quite safe Pub (3.5% Pub PVI to around 5% Pub PVI).  So this “good government” map locks in the delegation at 7 Pubs to 5 Dems. Thus the Pub gerrymander nets it one seat, while moving VA-10 into a slightly more marginal status as the cost of doing so. By 2020 if trends hold, it may be necessary for the Pubs to draw the map this way anyway, to keep its hold on VA-10. In that event, a Pub gerrymander would turn into a dummymander.

This last map certainly seems like the best option of those three, and gets the "pleasing non-elongated shapes" metric down well.  It's not bad.  Couple small GooGoo tweaks I wonder about:

a) giving the Eastern Shore to VA-2 instead, since it only has road connections to VA Beach, and/or
b) splitting 6 and 10 such that they don't cross the Shenandoahs.  

The first tweak would be pretty neutral or maybe even help the Pubs by putting VA-2 further out of reach (I assume 1 and 3 would shift south, with 1 taking Williamsburg and 3 taking more of VA Beach/Chesapeake); the second would make an additional competitive district (the Loudon/Charlottesville one of course).