Talk Elections

It looks like PA may end up with GOP control of the map, so I looked at how well the GOP could do after the reduction to 18 districts.

Edit: There is some additional discussion at this thread (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=126461.0) which switched quickly from polling to maps.

I drew districts to be within 10 persons of the ideal and there are two majority-black districts (CD 1 and 2). I did not look at incumbent residences so some members may find themselves out of their normal district. I was able to get 12 of the districts such that they would have voted for McCain in 2008.

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Here's the detail:

CD 1: 51% black, 84% Obama
CD 2: 51% black, 91% Obama
CD 3: 51% McCain
CD 4: 51% McCain
CD 5: 54% McCain
CD 6: 51% McCain
CD 7: 60% Obama
CD 8: 50% McCain
CD 9: 57% McCain
CD 10: 51% McCain
CD 11: 50% McCain
CD 12: 54% McCain
CD 13: 61% Obama
CD 14: 68% Obama
CD 15: 59% Obama
CD 16: 51% McCain
CD 17: 55% McCain
CD 18: 52% McCain

The western end doesn't require any strange county splits to reach my goal. SE PA is not so pretty, but I think it's actually less pretty than the current map.

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Somewhere, Perzel is jealous.


That probably screws Dent over and Meehan.

I dont think Republicans would draw a map to make it almost impossible for Dent or Meehan to win.   They would also be making Altmire much safer, but that is something they will probably have to do.  

Also, Tim Holden would likely run in the new PA-11 and win based on his strength in Schuylkill county and the fact that the other counties in the district are Democratic leaning.

I dont think Republicans would draw a map to make it almost impossible for Dent or Meehan to win.   They would also be making Altmire much safer, but that is something they will probably have to do.  

Also, Tim Holden would likely run in the new PA-11 and win based on his strength in Schuylkill county and the fact that the other counties in the district are Democratic leaning.
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The area probably hinges on Dent's district. The half of Lehigh with Dent could be attached to the Buck and Montco parts shown as CD 8 to make an R-leaning district, or Lehigh could be attached to parts of Berks and Schuylkill to bring the numbers up. In either case Northampton would have to be separated or the district stays D. Perhaps the D part could connect to Kanjorski's area in Luzerne.

The area probably hinges on Dent's district. The half of Lehigh with Dent could be attached to the Buck and Montco parts shown as CD 8 to make an R-leaning district, or Lehigh could be attached to parts of Berks and Schuylkill to bring the numbers up. In either case Northampton would have to be separated or the district stays D. Perhaps the D part could connect to Kanjorski's area in Luzerne.
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Holden would almost certainly beat Dent in the district you drew.  He typically rolls up giant margins in Schuylkill county and Dent is only known in the Lehigh portion.

So, only 1/3 of the districts are "obama" in a state that he won by 10 points. Typical.

Didn't I say Perzel was jealous.

Can ask you experts a question? When I play around with the app, the partisan data for the entire distirct I draw becomes unreadable as the number of minorities is increased (the partisan data is shooved off the end of the info bar with all the district's demographic numbers). Expanding the page doesn't fix it either. How can I fix this?

Well, to be honest, after drawing the two African-American Majority districts around Philly, the state becomes 51-48 Obama.  Throw in a Pittsburgh District and a suburban Philly one and it becomes 48-51 Obama.  You could theoretically draw a 14-4 map

There are too many Democrats in the Scranton-NE area not to have at least one Obama district there.  And there are too many Democrats in the Philly suburbs not to have at least two Obama districts there.  This map is pretty much the best that can be done for Republicans and that would probably still be 10-8 in favor of Republicans because it shores up Altmire and Holden. 

I said Theoretically (involving Pittsburgh to Scranton districts).  My point was that Democrats are highly concentrated in Pennsylvania, so it's much easier to draw maps that favor them than maps that favor the Democrats.

Not only would Altmire and Holden be pretty safe in that map, Carney shouldn't have much trouble winning the 10th there even if he does this year. Kanjorski probably goes down this year but that idiot mayor who'll beat him would likely lose to Tim Holden as mentioned. 12 wouldn't be entirely unwinnable either (Critz could move there and run against Murphy), and Dent might have trouble in the 15th. Ironically this Republican gerrymander could result in 3 Republican districts in NE PA going to 3 Democratic districts.

Obviously there are always some secure incumbents who could hold just about any seat. Given that 2008 was as good a vote as the Dems have seen in a generation, how GOP must a PA seat be to elect one in an open seat and against an incumbent.

I expect I'll revise the map after I see which members might be subject to special treatment. BTW, no one has yet opined as to how Dent would want to strengthen his district. I would think that losing all or part of Northampton would be desirable, but which way would he prefer to go to replace population lost?

Dent would probably want Republican parts of Berks or Republican upper Bucks but doing that would make PA-08 very difficult for any Republican to win.

So why not move him into a new 8 that combines upper Bucks with Lehigh? Put lower Bucks with CD 13 as my map suggests. That would leave a heavy Dem Northampton to Wilkes-Barre district.

And put him into a primary with Mike Fitzpatrick?

Ah yes. That's why I made my earlier statement about my next map coming after the election. I think that Fitzpatrick actually ended up in my CD 13, but barely, since he lives in Levitttown.

The big problem for the GOP will be if they win throughout eastern PA. As noted, the best maps for them leave Dems concentrated in the VRA districts in Philly, two suburban districts (7 and 13 on my map, and one other in NE PA. The current 538 ratings have only 4 Dems surviving in the east (1, 2, 13, 17). I assume that a district that voted for McCain in 2008 would be enough to hold an incumbent in 2012, but a soft Obama win (less than 53%) would be a swing district. To protect all incumbents in that case will require that at least one of the the R districts I drew will have to be watered down into a swing district so that one of the 5 D districts also becomes a swing district. It might require two R districts to shift more to swing.

As I said, I had trouble reading the party data when the districts got diverse, probably a browser error.

I wiped out the 12th. Not sure if Critz ended up in Murphy or Shuster's district but I would want him to be in the district with Shuster. I stretched both PA 10 and PA 11 Westward in the wake of Thompson's which shifts all the way down to Westmoreland county now. Pitts, Platts, and Shuster shift Westward slightly as well. Shuster includes Northern Cambria, including Johnstown. The new Tim Murphy seat includes all of Washington and Green Counties, northern Alleghenny, The Western third of Westmoreland, and a sliver of Fayette (the rest is in Shuster's). The 10th includes more then half of Tioga, and Lycoming, and all of Union and Snyder. The 11th goes all the way to Southern Northumberland, Columbia and Montour as well as including parts of Schuylkill, Carbon and Monroe. Again, can't read the data but I would assume its more Republican then it is now, not sure if its enough to keep Barletta secure. I did keep Scranton out of the 10th so the 10th shouldn't be much different politically.

If the 12th is the district that is removed, does stretching those two Westward in the wake of that help solve the problem of keeping three GOP seats in NE PA? I hope Barletta votes like Fred Upton. If this worked like I think it did, then keeping the three (should Dent, Barletta and Marino win) isn't as impossible as Mr Phips said it would be. However, as I can't read the cummulatvie partisan data of the completed districts (is that a browser issue, maybe?). I think the 10th has 115,000 Obama Votes and the 11th 135,000 in the map I drew.. That's as much as I can read on them. My new Dent district is 127,000 obama votes.

The Philly districts are messed up. The seventh is probably two Democratic (215,000 Obama votes, and the Bucks district is at 196,000). The Philly area is above my pay grade. :P Of course simultaneously trying to gerrymander the state and renumber in and east-west makes it kind of confusing. ;)


Here's the screenshots of the map I made
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2523/pa18districteast.png (http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2523/pa18districteast.png)
http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/7256/pa18districtwest.png (http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/7256/pa18districtwest.png)

The PA-11 you drew would still be about 55%-45% Obama and 51%-49% Kerry, enough to sink Barletta against someone like Pat Casey in 2012.  

Republicans are going to have to conceed a Scranton based district to Democrats unless they want a map where Democrats could potentially gain all three NE seats in the next good Dem year.  

Your PA-15 actual is identical to the district that Republicans destroyed in 2001 to get rid of Democrat Frank Mascara.  It voted for Gore and only barely went for Bush in 2004, although it probably went for McCain by a slightly larger margin.  Critz might just move there and run, since it is historically very Democratic and Murphy isnt well known in the Greene or Fayette county parts(which are represented by Critz as well as parts of Washington county).

Not really, in reference to all three being lost. Without Scranton, I don't see how PA-10 would be lost if it doesn't include Scranton (and Marino wins this year). It took a scandal and a wave to defeat the last Republican in that seat. Yea Marino might not be the strongest but it would still be a pretty safe seat and I doubt the Dems would even bother to challenge it in that case.

PA-11 is going to be blood bath for quite some time. The goal is not to make Barletta safe but to give him a fighting chance in that district. He can win and that's what matters. But no one is seriously talking about putting him in a McCain seat. I wouldn't want to put Scranton in the tenth. The tenth is a far more Republican district and if Carney wins we have numerous other strong candidates to throw against him in 2012 and would have much better chances then Barletta does without Scranton. Stretching the district westward to make up for population loss, adds several rural and small town areas that Barletta will be very appealing in and it dilutes the Scranton vote. I don't see it being as Democratic as it is now and even if only 1% or 2% more Republican it provides a large potential base for Barletta to rely on.  Dent survives in a Dem district that also narrowly voted for Kerry. If Barletta can't survive in a 50-50 year in that district without destroying a safe GOP seat and making it a swing district and only making his seat a few points more GOP. Then screw him and Let him lose in 2012.

The key to PA-15 I created (which you right, it is basically the old Mascara seat) is that it is getting more Republican. Obama will be atop the ticket in 2012 and I suspect that Critz would have a hard time against Murphy, considering that. Don't forget that Burns was a bad candidate on multiple levels as well, whereas Murphy isn't, as far as I know.

You are going to need to gamble somewhat. The GOP didn't expect Holden to win in 2002, but he did. There is no such thing as a "safe gerrymander". The goal is to minimize risk, but it still has to be taken.

You are also worrying about a bad year, how often do they occur? Very infrequently. So we should just give up on two or three GOPers now in case that occurs in the next decade.  

Bad years occur far more frequently than they used to with very polarized voting.  I can see the House shifting back and forth every two years this decade.  We've had three bad years for parties in a row starting in 2006.  2012 will probably be a good Democratic year if Obama gets reelected.  

If it makes it easier, Fitzpatrick lives in Middletown Twp (one of the 4 townships comprising the postal area, thats all it is, known as levittown)....You could split that off and leave the rest of Levittown (which is more democratic than the middletown part) in the other district.

An upper Bucks, upper Montgomery, Berks, and Chester district would be a good one for Fitzpatrick.  It would almost certainly save him from a repeat Murphy challenge in 2012. 

So basically what I drew on my map. I note that northern Chester may have to all be in CD 6 to suit Gerlach, however, which would require more of Berks for CD 8.

I think I have figured out what to do about the Holden district if the GOP runs the map and all seats that are projected for the GOP do go that way. Platts can add Harrisburg and points west from CD 17 and be called CD 17 (since 19 has to go away anyway). Gerlach takes Lebanon and southern Dauphin, while CD8 (presumably Fitzpatrick) takes northern Berks from CD 17.  Dent adds most of Schuylkill and northern Dauphin which shifts CD 15 about 2% more R though it still would have voted Obama. Central Schuylkill which has the D-leaning areas including Holden's home is attached to CD 5, but it remains a strong R district (54% McCain). There would be a new D-district (new CD 12) primarily in Montco that Holden could move to and maintain a place in Congress.

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(yeah, I said I would wait, but I was curious to solve the puzzle :P)

CD 1: 85% Obama, 51% black
CD 2: 91% Obama, 51% black
CD 3: 52% McCain
CD 4: 51% McCain
CD 5: 54% McCain
CD 6: 50% McCain
CD 7: 52% McCain
CD 8: 50% McCain
CD 9: 55% McCain
CD 10: 49.5% McCain (49.3% Obama)
CD 11: 51% Obama (56% in 2008)
CD 12: 61% Obama
CD 13: 60% Obama
CD 14: 68% Obama
CD 15: 53% Obama (55% in 2008)
CD 16: 52% McCain
CD 17: 53% McCain
CD 18: 56% McCain

Again, Holden would run against Dent and likely win in 2012.  He would swamp Dent in the Schuylkill and Dauphin portions and probably hold Dent to 55% or less everywhere else.   And you are cutting PA-10 and PA-11 awfully thin for Republicans. 

It would probably be better to just concede the Democrats a Safe district for Holden in Central PA.  Draw one from Harrisburg to Schuylkill to Scranton and Reading.  You can make one that's about 65% Obama, and by doing so you make the 11th, 15th, and 6th much safer for Republicans.

But that forces either the 7th or 8th into heavily Dem areas. Republicans can win the current swing suburban districts like 7 and 8 in a year like this, but will have a difficult time holding them as 2006 and 2008 showed. I presume that the PA legislature will want to protect the R incumbents, so there will need to be enough districts to accommodate all of them. It's harder to make a map with only 1 suburban D seat than to make one with no solid D seat in NE PA.

I drew the map to reduce the ability of Holden to run against Dent. The Schuylkill and Duaphin parts I moved are 17% more R than the state as a whole (those areas went 61-38 for McCain) and they only represent 1/6 of the district. I also took out Easton from CD 15 which votes about 75% Dem and its removal should help Dent. Holden probably does better against Gerlach since the CD 6 I drew has much more of Holden's area than Gerlach's.

I boosted the R performance in CD 11 by 5% which should be enough to allow an incumbent to hold it in all but the worst years. I did lower CD 10's performance by 4% so if Carney wins it's a better district for him. It is still roughly R+4 so it should lean R in a neutral year open seat contest, and I shifted it substantially west where Marino comes from.

Holden would carry those areas handily.  He always gets around 70% and Schuylkill.

I agree that he wins those areas against a typical underfunded challenger. However, those areas I put in CD 15 are very hard R, and though he might win them against Dent I don't see large margins there. He would miss his home base of Pottsville, since I put that area in CD 5. Since the majority of that district is Dent's home base of Lehigh, I don't see a clear win for Holden if the incumbents were head to head.

The best way to get rid of Holden would be to divide Schuylkill among three or four districts.

No, the best way to get rid of Holden would be to put him in a Safe D district and wait for the primary challenge.

Then he would just choose to run in whatever district connected to Schuykill is the most Democratic and run there. 

So perhaps the best choice for the GOP is to connect central Schuylkill through Reading to Montco. Holden can run safely there, and the Montco suburbs were a problem for any of the GOP reps in the area.

That is quite brilliant, and plus, if Holden retires, it may potentially be a swing district anyway. The Dems in Montco might nominate a liberal, cultural and otherwise,  who gets decimated in Schuykill.

Alternatively you could use his Schuylkill base as a way of trying to shore up the new reps further north. Is a ridiculous Schuylkill-to-Scranton district possible?

First, you don't have to worry about who lives where; the representative has to only live in the state, not the district.

Second, Muon, you are making CD's 5, 6, 7, 15, and 16, hugely expensive, because they span over several media markets.

Now, can you divide PA-13 between PA 1, 2, 6, 8 and 15?  Basically slice Montco like a loaf of bread?

Can you, without gutting PA-18, make either PA 4 or 12 a Republican (or more Republican) district?

I understand that, but I was responding to other posts that suggested that Holden would go to whichever district included parts of Schuylkill and had the best Dem lean. That's why I suggested he could most easily run in the open, heavily D, Montco district I drew (new CD-12).

That normally serves to help the incumbent, since they generally start with a cash advantage. If the GOP is trying to protect its gains, that actually might be a good strategy.

I could, but the result is a number of districts that would flip Dem in a year like 2008. To avoid this one has to create at least one hard-D district in the Philly suburbs. The safest course is to create 4 D districts in eastern PA - three in Philly and inner suburbs (basically PA 1, 2, and 13), and another either in the Montco suburbs or in Scranton/Wilkes Barre/Bethlehem. My map is example of the former, but latter is also possible. The best option may depend on what the political trends forecast for the coming decade.
 
I assume that the current PA-12 is the district to be cut since the population changes favor a lost district in the west and that's easier to slice up that PA-4. PA-4 could be made more GOP, or it could be left as a target should it become an open seat. There's a danger to try to get both Critz and Altmire, since both have shown their ability to win in an R-leaning district. I made PA 9 and 18 my strongest R districts to concentrate on eliminating PA 12.

To directly answer your question, I think the answer is yes, though I haven't tried it. PA 18 would wrap around the north side of Pittsburgh, PA 9 would move even more into Westmoreland than my map shows, PA 5 gets Blair, PA 4 would pick up Butler, and PA 3 would go into Clarion and Armstrong.

I've lived in PA for 4 years now - one thing to keep in mind is that Lancaster and York counties have very strong senses of county identities, and a pretty long-standing rivalry (the names are a giveaway).  I have Lancaster County friends and they always say that York - not to mention Harrisburg - is a whole other world.  They have traditionally each had a seat to themselves; any map that splits either county is probably a no-go.  (These are Republican counties, so their preferences have to be taken into account.) 

I have the impression that Bucks is sort of the same way - that one always talks about "the" Bucks County district.  Maybe the Lehigh Valley as well.  But I'm less sure of these. 

With all the seats they've won, and the bluish tilt of the area, the GOP can't make everyone in southeast PA safe.  Best you can do is make them all slightly safer while keeping them with swing areas that have voted for them before - which implies that you can't mess with the current districts all that much.  Out west, put Critz and Altmire together in an R-leaning district and make sure PA3 stays red.  Can't do all that AND guarantee that Holden loses, although moving his district farther north and/or west is inevitable. 

Republicans wont want any part of PA-13 in PA-06, PA-08, and PA-15 except for a maybe a few very Republican enclaves up north. 

PA-04 could not really made more Republican that it already is.  What they will probably try to do is pair PA-12 and PA-18 together. 

There were some comments about wher Fitzpatrick lived as well.  Brady wasn't in CD 1 until the last redistricting.



The incumbents don't have that kind of money.  In a bad year, where they would be on the defensive, you might be talking about several million per candidate to get on the air.  If you are the RCCC, and you have 2 million to spend in PA, are you going to cut four others out (who could be held) or are you going to spread it around, where it won't be too effectiv?.  Or would you maybe use it the Scranton/Wikes Barre, or Erie, or Johnstown/Altoona media Markets, where it might make a difference in 3 races?


Well, couldn't you put most of the Democrats in CD 1 or 2, and strengthen one or more of those other districts?  You would be eliminating a Democratic district.

I wouldn't care where you'd draw the lines; you'd get one or two districts that would flip in a 2006 or 2008 type year.
 



What I'm looking at is some way to put Critz or Altmire into an incredibly strong GOP district, stronger than PA-4 is today.  And in doing so, not harm Murphy in PA 18.

It would have the effect of eliminating on seat (Schwartz) and giving Critz or Altmire a hugely GOP district.

The situation in the SW is delicate. I would leave PA-04 alone, just move with the flow for population and changes in other districts. The key to the SW in getting rid of Critz is Westmoreland and Southern Allegheny. Fayette and Greene counties are dangerous WV style territory. Westmoreland is probably the most Republican (I mean Toomey at 61%). So I think that if you can give as much of Westmoreland to Murphy as possible and shove the mining and WV country into the 9th with Shuster, you can probably prevent Critz from winning either.

Trying to eliminate Schwartz would likely backfire in a Dem year.  It would take away how much help you could give to the 6th, 7th and 8th.   If anything I think it would make sense for the GOP to make the 13th a bit more Democratic, push the 1st a bit further into Delaware County take some more Democratic areas from the 7th, and trying to sure up the 6th and 8th a bit more to give them more cushion to withstand a wave.   If they try to eliminate Schwartz they lesson how much they could help out the 6th, 7th and 8th and could get lose all three of them in a wave.  Hell if the GOP nominates Palin, the SE is a bloodbath.

That was exactly my strategy in the SW.

I tend to agree. In my map I moved CD 1 as you suggest, and the best way to make CD 13 more Dem is to give it southern Bucks as I have done. The problem is the rest of Montco. There really are enough people for four solid D districts in SE in an average year, let alone a year like 2008. Trying to divide them up risks losing two or three seats that don't have to swing when a strong D year occurs.

I started by keeping Lancaster and York separate and intact. The problem is that there are now three GOP reps in Delco and Chester, and the R votes are in the counties to the west. Linking the districts in strips to the west is the only way to secure the districts. The PA GOP will have to decide between incumbent safety and maintaining traditional district areas.

Holden could never win a Dem primary in the new CD-12. He would run in the district that his home was put into. CD-s 6, 8 10, 11 and 15 all need to be made more GOP. Those numbers just are not going to hold up very well. Maybe the GOP needs to give up another seat in the northeast.

Ten only needs to change if it needs population. The Dems would be hard pressed to get that seat back as currently drawn. It took a wave, and a scandal to disolodge an incumbent and then by only 6%. Marino may not be a strong campaigner, but as long as the district remains as it is now, he is safe.


I tried last night to draw a Lancaster and York district while maintaining my strategy every else. Talk about impossible. And it screws up Holden's district leaving it short on people which then messes up my plan for the 11th and 15th. Of course I was almost done when I realized I had used the old population data. Still, keeping the two separate is impossible without messing up both the delicate situation in the SE and NE. 

Some PA maps, keeping Lancaster, York, Bucks, and the Lehigh Valley intact:

East:
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West:
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From east to west:

CD1 - dark purple (Brady): Pushed a bit farther south.  Brady lives in the far western tip of Philadelphia so that's why that finger goes up like that (it's in the current map too, if you look).  For Philadelphia peace it would be better if the white wards had a seat rather than splitting everything up into two majority-minority districts; this is the way the GOP drew it last time and I assume it will continue.  78-21 Obama.  

CD2 - dark green (Fattah):  78% black, and a whopping 96-4 for Obama.  

CD13 - bright red (Schwartz):  65-34 Obama.  

CD7 - yellow (Meehan): Inner suburbs shifted to CD1; takes the remainder of Montgomery instead.  Obama 51-48, but it used to be 56-43.  

CD6 - grey (Gerlach): 52-47 Obama.  Given that he managed to win in both '06 and '08 in a district that formerly went 58-41 Obama, he could survive for quite a while longer.  With Chester/Berks/Lebanon but almost none of Montgomery, this is now purely an exurban/rural district, which fits Gerlach pretty well, I think.  Meehan is more of a dense-suburban guy.  

[note: you could mess around with the CD6/7 boundary if you wanted to match Gerlach with more of his former district's territory.  It looks nicer this way, though.]

CD8 - dark blue (Fitzpatrick): Couldn't mess with this too much given the desire to keep Bucks intact.  It does shift from 54-45 Obama to 53-46 due to some shuffling of the non-Bucks portions.  (Whoever drew the lines in 2000 was an idiot and added a heavily Dem area to the Bucks seat.)  

CD15 - lavender (Dent): Again, couldn't do too much; you're basically forced to keep the Lehigh Valley intact if Bucks stays intact.  Goes from 56-43 to 55-44 Obama.  GOP candidate hasn't been under 53% since 1998, and Dent was that guy since 2004, so he's probably going to be OK.  

CD 11 - light green (Barletta): was 57-42, now 54-45 Obama.  Keeps Wilkes-Barre and Scranton together (lest too many people yelp), but loses all the smaller industrial towns between/around them.  I put sections of Schuylkill County here because they're close to Hazleton (Barletta's hometown).  

I think with all of these eastern PA districts, the GOP just has to bank on their strong candidates.  You can't make them all safe for a generic Republican except by tearing up long-established communities and making an awful-looking map in the process; it's better to just make them relatively safe for the current incumbents, who all have demonstrated an ability to get crossover voters.  

CD17 (+part of 10) - hot pink (Holden/Marino): In the 90's, Holden was with Reading.  In the 00's, with Harrisburg and George Gekas.  Now he gets Williamsport and Tom Marino. He could still win, as Marino is a terrible candidate (a dolt on policy, and has ethical troubles that are pretty legitimate); I'm sure the GOP won't be too sad to see Marino dumped (at least, I won't - I'm conservative and live in Marino's district but couldn't bring myself to vote for him).  After that happens Holden will struggle: he was in a 51-48 McCain district but now is in a 55-44 McCain district, with only half of his home county left.  

CD16 - dark teal (Pitts): Probably the Rep. least happy with this map, Pitts is down to 51-48 McCain due to taking in all of Reading.  Oh well, them's the breaks.  (I'm not sure McCain won by that much more than this in the old district, though.)  

CD19 - light teal (Platts): Keeps York intact.  55-44 McCain.  

CD5 (+ part of 10) - grey-blue (Thompson): A heck of a district to have to travel in, since I've stretched to take in the cities outside of Scranton.  Still 53-46 McCain.  

CD9 (tan) and CD 12 (bright green): Not sure which one Shuster would want, since his current district is just about evenly split between these two.  The way I've drawn it he lives in the tan one, but you could switch that pretty easily.  Whichever one he is not in is vacant.  CD9 is 53-45 McCain, CD12 is 55-44 McCain.  

CD4 (dark purple) (Altmire/Critz): About half is former Altmire territory and a third was Critz's, so they can bloody each other in a primary and then try to survive in a 55-43 McCain district.  (Altmire's previous seat was 55-44, so he might still win.  Critz wouldn't, though; he was formerly in a 49-49 seat.)

CD14 (light yellow) (Doyle): 69-30 Obama.  

CD18 (olive) (Murphy): A lot of new territory for him, but it's still 53-46 McCain.  

CD3 (orange) (Kelly): Now 52-46 McCain, compared to 49-49 previously.  

I would expect him to be doubly unhappy since he lives nowhere near this district. His home is in southern Chester Co near your border between CD 6 and 7.


Would the PA GOP be more likely to concede a district to Holden in this case? You could swap Harrisburg and Williamsport and maybe give Holden either Wilkes Barre or Reading as well.

I think that Somerset county based district could fairly easily go Democratic.

At the time (and even in 2004 as the old-time forumites know), PA-13 was expected to be competitive.

D'oh!  I just assumed that OF COURSE the Lancaster Cty rep would live in Lancaster County.  I checked almost everyone else but him.  I kind of wonder if he couldn't have been given a good fight by a strong Lancaster Cty Democrat.  I suppose such creatures might not exist in real life. :)  

Anyhow, it's an easy tweak to add Kennett Square and West Chester back to Pitts's district in exchange for Gerlach regaining his Reading wards.  Everything stays the same partisan balance, and Pitts has basically his exact same district, minus a few Republican areas of Chester County.  He shouldn't complain.  

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I wouldn't concede a district just because there's a strong candidate on the other side.  Shift the district by 4 points and he only wins by 3 this year, against a lackluster candidate; I think the GOP has a reasonable shot at him and there's always the chance he leaves the seat open for one reason or another.  (And Marino is stuck no matter what - he'll face Thompson in a primary if you stick Williamsport in CD5.)  

By the way, the new CD17 on my map is actually a pretty coherent district if you ignore the finger out to Luzerne County - the upper Susquehanna Valley (Union, Snyder, Northumberland, Montour, Columbia, and lower Lycoming) is generally thought of as constituting a region of sorts.  

Critz would have lost by 8-10 this year had he run in the new Somerset district.  It's 5-6 points more Republican than his district is now, plus it doesn't have his Johnstown base.  What am I missing?  

Chopping up the current tenth isn't a wise approach. Its currently a strong Republican seat and the GOP has no shortage of candidates that could hold that seat or "slightly less GOP" seat for decades. I see no reason to eliminate it and force Marino into a race with Holden.

My suggestion would be to use the 13 and have it take in as much of the heavily Dem areas in the SE as possible. My last map (I didn't post this one) had it stretching from NJ border through lower Bucks, taking in the heavily Dem areas of North philly and giving the Republcian/marginal ones to the 8th, then taking the 13th up through Montco and then running a tiny sliver of the district into lower Delco's Dem areas that I couldn't put into the first. I replaced whatever remaining population is needed for the 8th with GOP areas in Northern Montco. Bucks remains almost entirely intact, except for a line parralleling the Delaware to NJ that is in the 13th. I realize Fitz lives in Levittown but, he can 1) move, or 2) PA doesn't require Reps to live in the districts, I don't beleive. Ugly gerrymander I know, but it secures the 8th considerably and the 7th somewhat.

The seventh district is the rest of Delco, and parts of Chester and Montco. I am still refining this area and not being able to tell cummulative partisan data of diverse districts in the app is annoying. The sixth is 2/3's of Chester, northern Montco and Southern Berks.

Yeah, if one were inclined to chop up Bucks then that's what you'd do.  I don't think it gains as much as one would think initially, however - every area added to the 13th has to be matched by another area going back to the 8th or 7th, and pretty much every ward in the 13th is 60+% Obama already.  Plus most the tilting-red areas of NE Philly would then be cut off and have to go in the 13th. 

Re: chopping the 10th, this is just semantics.  You could call the pink district the 10th (and it's just as strongly Republican) and then it's Holden's 17th that "disappears".  You have to put Holden *somewhere*, and better there than in Dent's or Gerlach's.  I suppose you could try shoving him into Barletta's.  Then Marino is safe but Barletta is a likely goner.  I suspect the GOP thinks of Barletta as more valuable - GOP candidates who can win the 10th are a dime a dozen, but ones who can win Scranton/Wilkes-Barre are rare. 

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre is a tough, tough district, I will grant that. A lot will depend on how Barletta votes and how entrenched he can become there.

I think it would be best to Holden where he is with his own district. Throwing him in with any Republican is asking for trouble, and most Republicans should have learned from what happened to Gekas, that it is best to just wait out Holden's retirement.

Fayette, Greene, and those sections of Washington and Westmoreland Counties in the district are heavily Democratic in registration.  In even a neutral year, they will go Democratic.

You could drive PA-4 down the Monogehala and into Fayette and Green Counties and combine it with PA 12.  Think of a J on top of a T.

Murrysville, could go into PA-18, if needed.  The northern tier of Westmoreland, possibly all of Armstrong and Indian Counties would go into PA-4 and that could extend along the Comemagh River into Johnstown.

Hempfield, Unity (part) and South Huntington Townships and Greensburg (and the enclaves) would go into PA-4.  Ligonier would go into PA-9.

Most of Washington Fayette and all of Green would go into PA-4 (with the remainder in PA-14.

PA-18 would skirt Pittsburgh in the north.

(I still think it's better to slice up Montco like a loaf of bread.)

Just a little reminder that Republicans had complete control of the redistricting process. PA-12 was drawn to primary Murtha with fellow Democrat Frank Mascara, who was eliminated, while PA-18 was drawn specifically to elect Tim Murphy, one of the Republicans who drew the map.

PA-12 ended at Mascara's precinct.

PA-4 was specifically drawn for Hart, and you see who is holding it.

If you eliminate PA-12, the question will be, can you keep PA-18 Republican?

PA-4 was preserved the way it was in the 1990s at Hart's request, which isn't the same thing. She resisted the legislature's wish to make it a safer seat for Republicans because she prized her cross-party appeal and thought it would be an advantage to get her to the Senate after Specter retired in 2010. So it's more marginal than it needed to be, and we got Altmire.

I wonder if it would be possible to do the Murtha/Mascara trick again, this time with Altmire and Critz.

You can put Altmire's home in Doyle's district very easily. But I just played around with the Redistricting App and keeping PA-14 as Pitt based, it's almost impossible to put Beaver Falls/New Castle, Johnstown, and Fayette County in the same district without it making the current PA-12 look graceful. It might be possible to reconfigure PA-14 and PA-12 drastically, but PA-14 is pretty well-packed with Dems as it is and then Murphy is vulnerable.

1.  As noted, Altmire does not have to live in the district.  He must be a resident of the state.

2.  Don't worry about how stuff looks.  Nobody ever has.

You could run PA-14 further south along the Monongehela.  There are two Republican ways around Pittsburgh.  South, the way it is, and North, where PA-4 is.

You could put some of the Republican sections north of Pittsburgh into PA-18, Take in Butler and some parts of the northern counties, and even parts of western Westmoreland and make PA-18 more Republican.

PA-12, NE Allegheny, north Westmoreland and up the Comemaugh (including Derry) to Johnstown, central part of Hempfield (including Greensburg), at its narrowest point.  Then, add in Mt. Pleasant, North and South Huntington, Rostravor, and into Fayette County.

Brittain, I doubt that her "cross county appeal" was the reason. 

1.  There was no way to create a Republican district without crossing county lines.

2.  Her district was pretty much always in Pittsburgh media market.  It wouldn't have made a huge difference.

It's not a legal issue, but it's a good way to cause headaches for the person involved and open them up to attacks in the primary and the general for not living in the district. Pennsylvania has a history of taking this into account, it's why PA-7 reached into Marcus Hook to include Curt Weldon's home.


It's not just that it has to look awful, it's that you'd have to resort to single-precinct chains running for 50+ miles to get from Beaver County to Cambria County and back down to southwestern Pennsylvania to both lock up all the Democratic votes and not exceed maximum population. That's simply not going to happen.

You can say no one cares how it looks, but in reality, you'd never see a true monstrosity like this which links New York City to Buffalo in multiple districts. That's not redistricting, it's mapsturbation.

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Misunderstanding here; I wrote "cross-party," not "cross-county." She liked that she drew the support of anti-abortion, pro-gun Democrats and thought that was her leverage into statewide office.

Well, this one map makes more sense for CD-8 giving Fitzpatrick more conservative parts of current CD-13 such as Mayfair and Fox Chase in Philadelphia along with VERY conservative Bryn Athyn and Huntingdon Valley in Montgomery County.  However, the GOP will have virtually NO shot at beating Schwartz.  Even with this "excursion", Pat Murphy could take CD-8 back in a wave year.

PA is a state the GOP could get too cocky then bitten in the ass in later years. 

Why do you insist on messing up the quotations like that. Now it looks like I said that stuff about Somerset when a clicking on the link reveals I didn't? It was dpmapper who said that. ::)

Sorry, but I thought is was you.

And Brady didn't live in PA-1 for several years,


What I envisioned is dividing Hempfield Township between two congressional districts.  Under the current setup, Hempfield is divided between two congressional districts. 

I'd also call your attention to PA-8.  One Montco part is basically connect to the rest of it by a highway.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania%27s_8th_congressional_district 

The connection in this version of PA-4 has a much greater width than a highway. 

Have you been able to use the App successfully? If so, I'd really like to see a map of two districts with ~700,000 people, one that concentrates Dems in Pittsburgh and the river valleys without sloughing off too many Dem precincts to Murphy, and one which links the valley towns both above and below Pittsburgh with Johnstown. That little spur in PA-8 connects towns just a few miles apart. I contend that this can't be done across much greater distances like that between Johnstown and the Ohio border. We are at an impasse until one of us draws a map.

Were is the Application? 

http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.html

You need to have Microsoft Silverlight installed, too. It should prompt a download.

Take a look at the Dem concentration Johnny created here in PA-4 and now imagine it also including Johnstown... and also contorting Republican districts on either side of it at equal population.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=97085.msg2592916#msg2592916

It uis not downloading.

Here's what I did with Western Pennsylvania.

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Note: I chose districts whose colors contrast with the colors on the partisan data layer. It makes it easier to know what I'm doing when I can tell the difference between an uber-Republican precinct and a precinct I happened to put in the 4th district.

District 14 (Gold): Not much is changed, I simply took a few Democratic precincts from Murphy's district. 68.10% Obama.
District 4/12 (Yellow): Both Altmire and Critz live in the district. It basically combines the most Democratic areas from the current 4th and 12th districts. 51.95% Obama.
District 3 (Green): Mike Kelly lives in Butler, so the new district shores him up by cutting out Erie. 57.74% McCain.
District 18 (Light Blue): Not much has changed here, either. It may look a bit different, but the core of the district is unchanged. 56.40% McCain.
District 5 (Orange): Glenn Thompson might not be happy about the fact that I put Erie in his district to shore up Kelly. I might go back and trade some territory with Kelly's district. 50.50% McCain.
District 9 (Gray): Shuster takes in Republican areas of Cambria county and loses territory to the east. 56.86% McCain.

Where does Altmire live?

McCandless Township, Allegheny County (in the yellow district). I specifically included the entire township to make sure I got his home in the district. If I knew which precinct he lived in, I would only include what was necessary.

Okay, can you run the district across the northern tier of Westmoreland County from McCandless (where my grandmother lived).  Putting Lower Burrell, NK, Derry should make that more Democratic. 

You could use that to shift some slightly Democratic sections from PA-4/12 into PA-9.  You might be able to put some Republican sections of PA-9 into in PA-5.

I'm not sure it's worth it. My district already includes New Kensington. Lower Burrell is 55% McCain, and Derry is 53% McCain. The only towns along the northern tier of Westmoreland County that voted for Obama are Vandergrift, East Vandergrift, and Avonmore, and some of the precincts that would have to be included are well over 60% McCain. While the same is true in western Washington County, those precincts are less populous and allow for easy access to places like Smith Township, Chartiers Township, and Canonsburg, some of the most Democratic areas of Washington County. Critz lost in the Westmoreland County part of his district, but he carried Greene and Washington Counties. So if the goal is to pack Democrats, I don't see how including northern Westmoreland County will help.

I might not look at the McCain numbers, but maybe the Bush numbers.

I'd like to see if you could boost PA-5 a bit,

I realize the folly of using Obama numbers, particularly in Western Pennsylvania. I was hoping the Critz numbers would convince you. 47% in Westmoreland County, compared to 53% in Washington and 52% in Greene.

Even so, in 2000 Gore barely broke 50% in the northern tier from Lower Burrell to St. Clair Township. I don't have the Kerry numbers, but I suspect they're worse since he underperformed compared to Gore in Westmoreland County.

I might take another look at PA-5 later tonight.

Well, gentlemen, I present to you what will be my one Democratic district in Western PA. You can't get much better than this. :P  Find the rivers, and you find the Democrats, living near the burnt out hulks of former steel plants.

The gray district is a work in progress. I may make it into a Pittsburgh suburban district in its entirety, or maybe not. I am not sure yet. I used Butler County to neutralize Erie County for the Northwest corner district, which you cannot see in this screen shot. That created a CD which McCain carried by 3%, along with the green one which you can see a part of. The gray one is so far, also McCain up by 3%. I may beef that one up a bit more, as I expand it.

My idea, outside the Philly burbs, is to have all the districts carried by McCain by at least 3% - maybe a bit more in the Altmire zone to keep him honest, but I will not try to unseat him. That would be a waste of votes. In the Philly burbs, I will settle for McCain break even districts, since he ran so anemically there. I will try to hew to county lines, except where it proves "inconvenient."  I see that the yellow district does sneak out of Allegheny County to pick up a few heavily Dem precincts up to the northeast. That was very naughty of me. I may want to adjust that.

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I really don't care if the Democrats have a PA-14 and PA-4/12 that are uber-Democrat, so long as it is surrounded by a PA-3, PA-5, PA-6, and P-18 that stay Republican on a bad night.   

For places like Allegheny County, it would be nice to have a computer program that just drew you the most partisan district within a county - instantly. Then you could play with it, to make it look a bit less erose, if you want, just to make it seem a big less outrageous, assuming it did not otherwise interfere much with your "agenda."  Another example, would be Marion County in Indiana. Or Milwaukee County in Wisconsin. Or Palm Beach and Broward Counties in Florida.

Who wants to volunteer to do that?  :P

The solution that others seem to be missing is to put Erie in Altmire's district. Makes him safe, to be sure, but there's no way to eliminate both him and Critz and also guarantee the Republicans hold all of their current seats. Better to go after Critz and give Altmire a safe(-ish) district for now. And it wouldn't be strictly unwinnable for Republicans, maybe 55-56% Obama.

Well, I was dumb, and mixed up PA's projected number of electoral votes (20), with the number of CD's, which isn't 20, but 18. So my effort above has districts with inadequate population. So time to start over. The "problem" with having to add another 80,000 folks or so is that I ran out of precincts in Allegheny County that I really wanted as part of the Dem pack (anything 55% Obama or less I really didn't want to include unless necessary as a connector). So it was time to throw the rule book out, and just go for the ultimate gerrymander, and thus this object d'art, 71% for Obama. Just call it the rust belt river snake CD.  Do you think the Dems might have any problem with it?  :P  This little effort should make the rest of Western PA comfortably GOP, although Altmire can continue to represent a district when I get done that went for McCain by 6% or 7% or so, as long as he remains sufficient "traitorous" to his party. Crist will be total history. He's going to be fried. I am going to do a number on Cambria County, just to make sure he gets the message. :)

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Okay, here's a map of Pennsylvania. My objectives were:

1. Shore up the Republicans in Obama districts as much as possible.
2. Get rid of Tim Holden for real this time.
3. Eliminate Critz's district.

Here are the maps:

Statewide

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Pittsburgh area

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Southeast PA

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Philadelphia area

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PA-01 (blue, Bob Brady - D) - Pretty much unchanged. 37% white, 37% black, 17% Hispanic. Old district: 88-12 Obama, new district: 84-16 Obama.
PA-02 (green, Chaka Fattah - D) - Expands into North Philly. 57% black. Old district: 90-10 Obama, new district: 88-11 Obama.
PA-03 (dark purple NW corner, Mike Kelly - R) - Goes more to the east than to the south. Old district: 49-49 McCain, new district: same (McCain by about 1,200 votes).
PA-04 (red, Jason Altmire - D) - Didn't try to dislodge him, but didn't try to make it easier for him either. Pretty much kept the same borders, except it pulls in more of Butler County now. Old district: 55-44 McCain, new district: 54-45 McCain.
PA-05 (gold central district, Glenn Thompson - R) - Necessity causes it to stretch down to the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Old district: 55-44 McCain, new district: 54-45 McCain.
PA-06 (dark teal SE district, Jim Gerlach - R) - Somewhat less of a mess, it takes in as much Republican territory in SE PA as possible, and also picks up part of Bethlehem. Old district: 58-41 Obama, new district: 53-45 Obama.
PA-07 (grey, Pat Meehan - R) - Some of the heavily-Dem precincts on the eastern end of Delaware County get eaten by PA-01, and it expands west to the more Republican parts of Chester County. Old district: 56-43 Obama, new district: 54-45 Obama.
PA-08 (purple SE district, Mike Fitzpatrick - R) - Cut out the Dem part of SE Bucks County and added some parts of Montgomery and Philly that are more Republican. Old district: 54-45 Obama, new district: 51-48 Obama.
PA-09 (light teal S district, Bill Shuster - R and Mark Critz - D) - Mostly the same, except it pulls in Cambria County and stretches out to the Pittsburgh suburbs. Critz wouldn't stand much of a chance here. Old district: 63-35 McCain, new district: 60-39 McCain (the most Republican district in the state).
PA-10 (magenta, Tom Marino - R) - Stretches across the northern part of the state, but also takes in all of Lackawanna. Republicans would do well to primary Marino, since he'd probably lose here, but a competent Republican could hold the district. Old district: 54-45 McCain, new district: 51-48 McCain.
PA-11 (light green NE district, Lou Barletta - R) - Luzerne County and its environs. Old district: 57-42 Obama, new district: 51-47 Obama.
PA-12 (light purple S district, Todd Platts - R) - The former PA-19, pretty much unchanged except it takes in part of Harrisburg. Old district: 56-43 McCain, new district: 53-46 McCain.
PA-13 (pink, Allyson Schwartz - D) - An octopus that takes in as much heavily-Dem territory as possible from the surrounding Republican districts. Old district: 59-41 Obama, new district: 68-32 Obama.
PA-14 (brown, Mike Doyle - D) - Pretty much the same, Pittsburgh. Old district: 70-29 Obama, new district: 68-31 Obama.
PA-15 (orange, Charlie Dent - R) - Cut out part of Bethlehem, adds parts of counties to the north. Old district: 56-43 Obama, new district: 54-45 Obama.
PA-16 (light green SE district, Joe Pitts - R) - Mostly unchanged, except it pulls in some more of Reading. Old district: 51-48 McCain, new district: 51-49 McCain.
PA-17 (dark purple central district, Tim Holden - D) - To get rid of Holden, you need to cut up Schuylkill County, as I did into 4 districts. Stretches to the west now, and loses part of Harrisburg as well. Old district: 51-48 McCain, new district: 57-42 McCain.
PA-18 (yellow SW district, Tim Murphy - R) - Pretty much all of the southern Pittsburgh suburbs and points south. Old district: 55-44 McCain, new district: 53-46 McCain.

So, if the Republicans knock off Holden and hold their seats, it's a 13-5 map. If they can get rid of Altmire as well, it's 14-4.

Critz might stand a chance in that yellow district. I know he lives in Johnstown but it's never hard to "move".

I still think that the PA GOP would be wiser to concede a fourth seat in SE PA and lock in all other gains. The JL map has more swing districts that rely on strong incumbents in that area than partisans should be comfortable with.

And he wouldn't have to, since he doesn't have to be a resident.

He could be made a resident of that district.  I think he lives in Westmont.  You could add Conemaugh Township (Somerset County) and either Upper Yoder or Southmont and reach Westmont.  The population change would be 14,000-18,000 from the 2000 Census;  I'd expect a drop with the current numbers.

It would be wiser, yes, but what is wise often goes out the door come redistricting time. The Republicans did the exact same thing with the last map, creating a bunch of swing districts and hoping the Democrats didn't pick them up. Of course, all but one of the Democratic pickups snapped back in 2010. And heck, my map is better because all the swing districts are at least a couple points more Republican now.

Here is my initial attempt with the 4 CD's in far western PA. Apparently, the are no legal or other constraints on the Pubbies gerrymandering CD's in PA, just legislative seats. So I feel totally unleashed, and this map reflects that, and then some. The stats are as follows (PA-14 is 71% Obama):

              McCain    Obama                 McCain %
CD-18   190029   155692   345721   54.97%  (yellow CD)
CD-04   203505   172984   376489   54.05%  (orange CD)
CD-03   162114   149307   311421   52.06%  (purple CD)

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Torie, that spot by Monroeville appears to be completely cut off from the rest of the district, can you do that?

I can do anything, because I am a lawyer, and rules are for other people. :P

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I did notice that I trapped one precinct elsewhere by accident (erose maps are hard to see when the "fits" are so tight, kind of like really satisfying sex). I have fixed that. :)

Meanwhile, in other news, having now drawn one more CD, CD-12, the infamous Critz CD, that CD is now 56% McCain, even though Critz has all of his beloved Johnstown. Shuster may not like it, but then I don't like Shuster much. Bud is kind of a useless drone earmarking porker type. It will be good to make him sweat a bit.

What was done in the Northeast and Southwest is quite risky.  Critz could run in PA-18 and could well win.   A Democrat could beat Marino in your PA-10.  The cutting up of Bucks county is something that has never been done before and could cause some trouble with the locals. 

I always thought the real problem with creating a 4th Philly suburb district is that it's sort of a waste. There's really not much incredibly strong Dem territory. Between upper Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks county you're really looking at a whole load of 52-56% Obama precincts globally across the board. You can't really pull out 700k voters and really shore anyone else up that much.

Even in 2006, Mike Fitzpatrick won Bucks county. The problem is that he lost some really poorly chosen sections of Philadelphia by landslide margins.

Natural expansion of the 1st, 2nd, 13th is going to swallow up all the 65%+ Obama precints in areas like Upper Darby, Lower Merion, Bensalem, etc. Fitzpatrick, Meehan, Gerlach are all stuck in Obama voting districts, but more like Obama 50-52% rather than Obama 55-56%.

I'd much rather run Tim Holden up to Scranton/Wilkes Barre. If you get really ugly, you can run him into Reading as well. Looks like the Devil's pitchfork. If you need to, you can pull him slightly out of Harrisburg and absorb that city into the districts in the T.

Like father like son. ;)

Hey Phil, you may well soon be residing  in CD-08.  Congratulations!  :P  And Mr. Phips, you got the idea for how to draw PA-13, but there is always more, when one really tries - one precinct at a time. :P  The partisan coloration feature for PA really helps. Sometimes, I just click on a rather deep blue precinct, to add to a Dem pack CD, and then see if I can link it up, without ceding much ground that I don't want to cede, because it just isn't Dem enough.  There usually is a way. In father out areas, it typically is older little towns that have the blueish coloration one wants to suck up, and then you try to link them up with little snakes or spikes, through the most Dem precincts possible. I got almost everything that I wanted that way.

In any event, if you ever wondered where the Dems in the Philly area are who live in precincts that I can get at "cheaply," now you know. To be specific as to what "cheaply" means, I mean that it is a 57% Obama precinct or better, that I can reach without going through a precinct that is less than, with a couple of exceptions, 56% Obama. The Dems in the Philly area in general (except for a few prongs into Montco), really do hang together, and in this case, that does not mean just blacks. The blue CD is only 36% black (Hispanics 18%, and whites 36%), yet Obama carried it with 84%.

And you also now know where the Pubbies are competitive in Philadelphia. On the south side, it presumably is the land of Italians, military personnel, and airline pilots and their playmates perhaps. Yes, I know, the precinct through the Philly airport and a tank farm field or something, with next to no people, needs to be redrawn, with another slightly adjusted. But precinct boundaries, have to follow district boundaries, and not the reverse, so that should not be a problem, to connect the somewhat Pubbie clutch in South Philly (overall Obama probably carried it by a very narrow margin, but that means it needs to be cut out, so that the Dem CD's can take in more heavily Dem territory elsewhere) to the reasonably Pubbie friendly zone in Delaware County.

PA-13 (the tan CD), clocks in at 65% Obama, 34% McCain, for a 31% lead. With  3 of the Pubbie districts in the west now put to bed,  for the 11 Pubbie CD's yet to be drawn, McCain has now taken the lead by 1%. Thus I this point, I am putting up the Philly map. Isn't it gorgeous? :P  

For the two Philly CD's, by the way, I have increased the Dem pack by 7 points, from the 2000 map, with the Green CD clocking in at 91% Obama. Not bad at all, considering I was expecting a dilution, although granted I am using the McCain numbers rather than the Bush 2004 numbers, so perhaps there is no gain, but the two Philly CD's just grabbing more Dem territory due to population loss is a big help in and of itself.  And for Montgomery County probably, and certainly Delaware County, the internal county population shifts not reflected in the data base yet, should give another little Pubbie boost.

It looks like this map is indeed going to work limiting the Dems to just 4 CD's. We shall see. It is tight, and I need to see the Bush 2004 numbers when I do a 50%-51% McCain CD.  If it is much below 55%, or I don't like the trends, I am going to get nervous. If I have to create a marginal CD to make it all work, it will of course be CD-10 that takes the hit. The incumbent Pubbie, Tom Marino, was just elected, and is not well respected by Pubbies in PA. He is not respected by Phil, and he was not respected by a Pubbie operative I met at GOP headquarters in Gettysburg (Adams County), and he has ethical problems, and so on. If he goes down, fine. It will still be a marginal CD, and a Pubbie later on might pick it up. It looks like that might well be where we are headed.

And yes, when you draw your maps, it is best to do the Dem pack CD's first really. That gives you the information that you really need as to whether you are headed in the right direction. I will repost the text for my PA back of the envelop formula that I posted on the Ohio thread later on for purposes of reference so that you understand better what I mean by Dem pack and points.

Happy new year all!

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If one wrote a computer program telling it to max the GOP take in the Philly metro area, drawing contiguous CD's, after telling it to redraw the two Philly airport precincts, and the Gulf Oil tank farm precinct, this is what the map would look like. PA-08 is 51%-49% Obama, and assuming the swing to Obama in the new CD was the same as the old (it is not all that different, but it is different, that translates into 52-48 Bush 2004 (the trend in this CD from 2004 to 2008 was only about half that of the nation). The old CD-08 was 51-48 Kerry, and 54-45 Obama, so the CD is about 3% more GOP than before. When the internal population shifts in Bucks and Philadelphia census figures come in, the CD might get about .5% more GOP perhaps. But maybe not. The precincts are so relatively monochromatic, including the Philly ones (which in some instances are actually a tad more GOP than much of Bucks), that in this neck of the woods, there may not be much movement.

So PA-08 is a about a +1% GOP PVI CD now, clearly marginal, but it is the best one can do.  There just isn't any GOP territory around to pick up really to the north and west, and if the CD did have some crazy prongs going in that direction, it would cause problems for other CD's in any event. So I suspect PA-08 will indeed look something like the way I drew it, if the GOP is not going to cede a seat.  Mike Fitzpatrick did win by 8% in 2010, and lost by just a handful of votes in 2006, so he should probably be OK if competent. Granted, I may change my mind about how to handle CD-08 as I work on the central and northeastern parts of PA, but I tend to doubt it. It may indeed by the case that even ceding a CD (or making another CD marginal (say CD-17 (Holden, or CD-10 (Marino)), will really not move the ball much given the geography involved here.  We shall see.

Granted, there is some attractiveness to making the Holden CD much more marginal, because then all the Pubbie incumbents will be safe, which is probably a rather attractive option for the PA GOP. But it is not as if CD-08 has any really substantially Dem precincts that can be carved out. It really doesn't, except for two 60-40 Obama New Hope precincts which are impossible to get at, in any event, and clearly not worth the candle anyway.

Finally, that green precinct in CD-16 to the far east of CD-16 is where the incumbent Potts lives, which is going to make the map a real mess. But it can't be helped, unless he moves, and he has lived there forever. CD-06 and CD-07 are not finished yet to the west and perhaps northwest. Drawing the balance of the map is going to get extremely complicated, and will require a lot of thought to get right.

I am also adding a zoom focusing on the City of Philadelphia itself, and the close in burbs, so that you can see better the wild mischief I did there. I really don't feel too guilty about it all, because frankly the existing map is ludicrously erose in many places. Erose maps I guess are a tradition in PA. The parties will stop at nothing to grab all they can.

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Here is the map. Yes, it is 13R-5D map (well 12R-6D for so long as Altmire survives). Basically, PA-17 becomes a CD taking in the most Dem parts of the old PA-11 and PA-15. I did not realize just how Dem PA 11 and 15 actually were. They needed rather massive surgery. So PA 15 is shorn of heavily Dem Bethlehem, Easton, and most of Allentown (it is convenient that Dent lives in the most GOP precinct in Allentown on its west end), while PA-11 drops Monroe County, and most of Scranton (Scranton has a 3 way chop, as PA-17 and PA-10 pick off the bulk of the most heavily Dem precincts), with the new PA-11 and PA 15 heading on West, picking up basically all of the GOP parts of the old PA-17.  The only thing PA-17 has left is the most Dem part of  Schuylkill County, including Holden's home in St. Clair.

So all the incumbent Pubbies are safe, with PA-12, the Critz-Shuster seat, at 56% McCain, the most GOP in the state (so Critz is finished). The second most GOP  is the Altmire CD, PA-4, ironically (55% McCain). Under this map, the main issue is whether Holden will resign from the blue dog caucus, given that his CD is now 62% Obama.  :P

Yes, the map is ugly, but it is the only way to draw it, if all the Pubbie incumbents have their home in their CD, and all are to be made safe, even if the CD becomes open at some point (the most marginal being PA-08, but even that seat should under most conditions be held by the Pubbies even if Fitzpatrick retires). If fact, all the incumbents in the state have their home in their CD's, with Critz and Shuster in the same CD, PA-12.

I suspect that this is the map that will become law, or something very close to it, unless Pitts in PA-16 can be induced to move his residence.

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Pitts may well retire soon enough - he's going to be 73 in 2012.

I just noticed Springfield voted for McCain. That's...wow. Really not what I would've expected.

He was vying for some major Committee or Subcommittee Chairmanship. Not sure if he got it but if he did, he'll be around for awhile longer.

By the way, I like Johnny's map for Southeastern PA. It puts me just barely into PA 8.  :)

The map is fascinating but very risky. I wonder whether, after eventually getting burned by their own handiwork last time round*, the PA Republicans have the stomach for trying something like that again? Mind you, I suspect that your map is much more competent than what was drawn for 2002, but this issue is one reason why the process of gerrymandering can be so interesting.

*They would have done about as well in 2010 with a sane looking map as with the actual one, so it isn't as though it ever came good for them.

How is the map risky? As I noted somewhere, the GOP made the big mistake of thinking PA-13 could be made competitive last time. I did not make that mistake obviously this time, and neither will the Pubbies. This time, it just wanders around, sucking up every 55% and over Obama precinct within reach, and manages to get most of them.

 In any event, it is the best one can do, if one does not wish to make one of the Pubbie incumbents walk the plank. And there is so much marginal territory around Philly, that tossing a Pubbie really is not going to make the GOP CD's that remain all that much more Republican. With most of the 55% and over Obama precincts  locked up in the Dem pack CD's, what remains is fairly monochromatic.

I am quite confident that this is the map that will be drawn, since Holden (PA-17) has made very clear that he cannot be defeated (he won 56% this time, in a 51% McCain CD), and is not going anywhere, so why not unlock the bulk of his Pubbies and put them to better use elsewhere,  while locking in a bunch of Dems in northeastern PA?  In that sense, the map almost draws itself. I was also very careful to make sure that Holden would not be tempted to run in PA-15, which takes in a lot of his old territory. He lost the areas in his existing CD that are now in CD-15 by 52-48, and he would be slaughtered in Lehigh County, Dent's home base (with Dent being a very competent politician to boot), which has been shorn of most of its Dem precincts. (You also might notice that I neutralized the heavily Dem City of Harrisburg by putting it in PA-05, which is certainly not a district that Holden would choose to run in.) Plus I left Holden's core area in Schuylkill County in his new CD.

So far, for all three states that I have drawn, in the end, given all of the considerations, there is really only one map to draw that makes much sense.

I wouldn't be too confident that Holden is unbeatable.  One thing that hasn't been tried yet is chopping up Schuylkill County so that he only has a third of it.  As that is the only county in which he seriously outperforms the Obama vote share (by about 40% if memory serves - he outperforms Obama elsewhere but not by nearly as much), Holden without most of Schuylkill might be like Samson without his hair.  

In addition, as I mentioned before, I suspect local tradition dictates that York and Lancaster counties stay mostly whole (and separate, but that would happen in any GOP gerrymander anyway).  Maybe  Phil would like to weigh in on that point?  He's probably lived in the state longer than I have.  

Holden carried his CD in 2010, a GOP wave year, even if you exclude Schuylkill - by 10,000 votes (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2010/results/county/#PAH17p1). The real jewel in his crown, when you are talking about raw numbers, is the City of Harrisburg.

You cannot leave York and Lancaster whole, without leaving CD-06 and CD-07 very vulnerable to the Dems picking them up, and the GOP is just not going to stand for that. Those two CD's desperately need some heavily GOP precincts in Lancaster. In addition, since the CD that was eliminated is in the West, there is a population vacuum there, generating a demographic push for the eastern CD's to move west in any event to fill it as it were.

 I don't think PA really has any traditions, other than maximizing the partisan advantage, or keeping alive someone they consider to be a useful Dem, like Murtha (yes the Pubbies once considered him useful, before he turned into a Dem demon).

I know that this makes it harder to help districts 6 and 7, and if there indeed is no such tradition then I'm all for breaking Lancaster.  I was just trying to point it out. 

Incidentally you can add 5-6 points of McCain performance to both of them by pushing into Berks and Lebanon instead of Lancaster (see my map).  That gets them almost to the same levels as you have. 

Besides, I wouldn't think Gerlach and Dent need much help.  (Meehan is a different story.)

Where is your map? Of course, I would enjoy seeing it, now that I know the lay of the land, as it were. Actually, a majority of the Pubbie precincts in Berks are used in my map to help PA-06. The balance of the Pubbie precincts go to PA-15. If you use all of Berks (sans Reading), and Lebanon, to try to prop up PA-06 and PA-07, what do you do then to bail out PA-15 (and boy does it need bailing out), which is what I used those two counties for?  And then there is PA-11, which is a really sick puppy. A Pubbie is there solely because of a wave, and a flawed incumbent, just awash in negative publicity.

Posts 47 & 51. 

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=126739.msg2715604#msg2715604

If I did it again I'd do a better job packing the Pittsburgh district - you can probably get another point or two into the GOP districts going up the river valleys like you have it.  You're right that PA-11 is a problem; I'm not sure whether swinging it 3-4 points like I did will be enough, but it should at least give Barletta a fighting chance. 

Dent hasn't had a close election yet, and that includes some good Dem years.  There's no need to up his McCain % by 9. 

Because partisan identity in much of PA isn't solid enough these days, basically. You've created a lot of districts that would be safe enough most of the time, but might be horribly vulnerable in a wave or the incumbent is naughty is caught being naughty.

Though all of that is fine, actually, if the point is to maximise GOP congressional representation in an average year; it'd be hard to do much better in that regard. The interesting issue wrt redistricting is that that might not be the goal of the people who actually draw the maps.


It was slightly weirder than that; it's like they were trying to do two things with that district at once.

Yes, with PA-13 last time they wanted to pick up some Dem precincts in Montco to help PA-06, that were not the most Dem (if those could be put into PA-02), appending that to a once more GOP northeast Philly,  transfixed by the days when a Pubbie actually was able to win NE Philly, and thinking somehow that whomever the Montco Dems nominated would be culturally incompatible with lower middle class Catholic NE Philly. As I said, the story line was fictive, but whatever.

Dent only got 54% of the vote this time in a GOP wave year (yes, there was a weird 3rd party candidate this time who got quite a number of votes, which muddies the waters). Not particularly good, particularly given that Dent is so talented a politician (he and Gerlach are the congressional Pubbie Titans really in the PA delegation).  

In any event, assuming that the Pubbie incumbents in some of these marginal to lean Dem CD's will hang around for 10 years in my view is in and of itself a mistake, except at the margins (one reason why I made CD-07 (Meehan) a bit more GOP than CD-6 (Gerlach) - which was deliberate - was because of who the incumbents are, so it does have some impact). That is particularly true with talented ones, who will have opportunities to run for higher office, or get some other important job. Will Gerlach run against Casey in 2012?  How about Dent?  Of course, if the Pubbie line drawers know, that may influence matters.

I looked at your map. For starters, Fitzpatrick in CD-08 would be at least a 50-50 shot for the Dems to knock off in 2012, if Obama is competitive. And Barletta in CD-11 will more likely than not lose. His opponent won't be Kanjorski, and it probably won't be a GOP wave year. And yes, Holden would probably have a 50-50 shot against Marino, or close to it, and probably go for it.

I recall in 2001 reading a Holden interview in which he said he very carefully considered whether he would run against Gekas in CD-17, or just throw in the towel. (His CD was thrown together with Gekas's.) Bush in 2000 had won the CD by 57%. He looked at the numbers very carefully. He said that if that CD had been drawn to be but one more point GOP, then he just didn't see a window to victory, after penciling in the above partisan baseline pad that he expected to get in Schuylkill and Harrisburg (where he campaigned in front of the cameras visiting black neighborhoods that Gekas had never set foot in during his very long Congressional tenure). So Holden ran against Gekas, and guess what?  He got 51%. He knows how to do the maths, as the Brits would say. Thus I did him the honor of doing what he would do - in advance, and trying my best not to be doing it wearing rose colored Pubbie glasses.

This time you are offering him up a 55% McCain district, and a very flawed incumbent, more flawed than Gekas.  And while you have shorn Holden of part of Schuylkill, unfortunately it is a very heavily GOP part of Schuylkill which Holden probably only carried by a small margin, leaving him with two thirds, including all the most Dem parts of Schuylkill, which overall he probably carried by 70% this time, and against Marino next time would probably hit 80%.  Moreover, I think he would be intrigued with the idea of thwarting the GOP's gerrymandering games  twice. That will make him legendary in the annuls of political history, and his immortality would be secured. What would you do in his shoes?  :)

Not sure what happens over there. I'll concede that I don't know too many details about the 16th and 19th districts.

Here's what I'll warn everyone though: don't look at these maps and say, "This is how I expect things to go." Don't forget the political process here and, from what I hear, there is at least one interesting idea being floated that hasn't been discussed by many.


It was the other way around. PA 13 was made the way it was to create problems between Borski and Hoeffel. They expected Hoeffel to be forced out or, probably more interestingly, setting up a Borski vs. Hoeffel primary which Borski would have won because of the more Democratic Northeast Philadelphia. They thought Borski wouldn't play well in Montco. That was screwed up when Borski retired. They did think Hoeffel would have problems in the NE but that wasn't the original plan.


That third party candidate was the real problem. If he wasn't there, Dent was going to demolish Callahan despite Callahan being hyped as an absolutely amazing candidate for the Dems. 


Dent won't waste his time. The party won't allow two U.S. Senators from the Lehigh Valley though it would be funny if it happened since Toomey is the first one we've had since the mid 1800s.

Gerlach is a strong possibility since his 2010 run for Governor was apparently a set up for 2012 but with seniority in the House, good committee spots and maybe a safer House seat, he might skip an uphill battle against Casey.

You are absolutely right about PA-13 Phil, now that you spelled it out for me. That of course is an even bigger fantasy - that the registered Dem liberals in Montco at that time (and back then it was more true that only really committed Dems registered Dem in Montco rather than GOP, because they wanted a say in local office elections, or something), with a considerable number of Jews involved, would vote against [for] a Pubbie over Borski.  That seems so ludicrous to me, that I suspect that is why my faltering mind got it reversed. The reverse is more plausible to me; well both are implausible, but the reverse perhaps a bit less so.  

If I am missing some political angle here, hopefully I will pick up the buzz in due course (maybe when I manage to hook up with some insider to show him my map), since whatever it is that you know, you clearly won't tell me. :P

Hey, is Holden considering switching parties?  :)

PS: Regarding Dent, in googling him that was a story about a poll showing that if Towne, the third party candidate, were not on the ballot, his vote should have split between Dent and Callahan. FWIW anyway. Yes, that would get Dent up to 60% I admit. It still frightens me to draw a CD that only he can hold however, unless it is another very good Pubbie election cycle at the time.

Would vote "for" a Republican over Borksi.  ;)

 
But there weren't as many at the time. Remember, this was 2002, we were running a candidate with a moderate reputation and the Dems didn't really boost their numbers until a few years later. 


I don't know how private the plan is supposed to be so I prefer to be cautious and not say much.  ;)

Maybe I should draw a map assuming Holden switches parties. That will be quite interesting, since the map would have to consider how to make Holden get comfortable that he could win a GOP primary. If all of that occurred, then CD-17 could be cut down to say maybe a 48% McCain CD or so, and then I think I would weaken Marino in CD-10, doing both in order to try to get Barletta in CD-11 out of the danger zone (under this scenario, Dent is not going to get much help, if any). One would need to assess the electoral prospects of both Barletta, and Marino- carefully, because one of the two CD's needs to be viewed as a clear lean to the GOP at least if it opens up at some point, which means the other can at best be only marginal, with the incumbent Pubbie winning except in bad GOP years anyway, because he is viewed as competent. I wonder what Barletta's reputation is, in that regard.

I guess I will google Holden and switching parties, to see what pops up. If he has said no way, after the election, then I guess I will drop the whole idea. But, having done that, what popped up is that Congressman Pitts, who apparently is the point man on redistricting, has an interest (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10360/1113564-454.stm) in chatting with Holden about redistricting. Interesting!  Maybe that is just because Holden is the senior Dem of something, or maybe it suggests perhaps that either 1) he will switch parties, or 2) my map will be adopted, except that maybe it will be a bit more friendly to him, and in particular giving him all of Schuylkill.

Holden isn't switching.

It will be interesting to see how they deal with Barletta and Marino. The former is definitely more of a star within the party but the leadership might prefer the latter.

Why would the leadership prefer Marino?

I think he's more of an establishment guy than Barletta. Barletta has always been more of a wildcard/more in touch with the grassroots.

Aren't they both problematic in their own ways? Do other Republicans in Pa. value Barletta or are they wary of him and what he represents?

Sure but Barletta's "problems" are more ideological. Marino has...other issues.

 
He is extremely popular outside of his district/region. He is very well known and has a very dedicated following. The guy could have run for any statewide office he wanted and would have been a real player.

Oh Barletta is the anti illegals guy, mayor of Hazelton. I remember now. I should have connected the dots when I found out where he lived. He probably will be pretty hard to beat perhaps, but his CD still needs a lot of help.

He's personally popular but, yeah, it would help if he had a few more Republican areas thrown in.

The thing you have to realize about PA-13 is at the time the GOP still had a pretty solid RINO base in Montco. They were hoping they could run a "moderate" candidate (though their bench of "moderates" seems to be more the "OMG THEY'RE PRO-CHOICE!" type party-line otherwise type than a true moderate) and win Montco independents and RINOs that were mostly voting Democratic then. It epic failed partially due to Borski retiring but also them not realizing at that point that Montco was gone. The Democrats made a similar mistake in Georgia figuring they could rely on conservative Democrats (though another area where they blew it that I noticed was not realizing that suburban Republican voters are not as easily swayed as rural ones.)

I was laughing at the scheme at the time as I recall BRTD. If they had abandoned it, they might have held PA-08 rather than lost it in due course, and they only held PA-06 because of an extremely talented candidate, Gerlach. PA-07 had different problems, and probably could not be saved as things turned south for the Pubbies in suburban Philly, no matter how it was drawn. But now with the population losses, and PA losing a seat so most of the remaining CD's need to each have more population than they have now because of that, and my trick of picking up South Philly for PA-07, it can be brought back to a pretty safe GOP status. In other words, the size of the 3 CD Dem pack can expand, and pick off most of the over 55% Obama precincts that are in Pubbie CD's - not all of them but most. All of the over 60% precincts are out however, unless needed as a connector or something, and I don't think I have any of those. Well not all; I did have to saddle Gerlach with Pottstown, and one of my goals will be to try to cut that out (making my map uglier) if he isn't going to run in PA-06 as the incumbent.

For PA-06, I am going to draw a map for the Gerlach runs for the Senate scenario (I assume he will tell the line drawers one way or the other before a decision has to be made), which pumps more Pubbies into his CD, at the expense a bit of PA-11 and PA-15, both of which while  seemingly rather close to the marginal zone in my map, apparently have strong incumbents (certainly Dent is), so they can afford to be shaved a bit, to take PA-06 more out of the danger zone if Gerlach isn't running for the seat in 2012, which I strongly suspect will be a better year for the Dems than 2010 was, even if not as good a year as 2008 (yes I know, that leaves a lot of space :))

Well, this is what happens, when you have no rules to leash your mouse. :P  Just by the flow of the population numbers, and where heavy GOP precincts were convenient to pick up, notice that rather small Schuylkill County now hosts four CD's! The winner of the CD host contest however, is Montco, which has 6 CD's impinging on it. Montco is a rather complex county, even more so than its somewhat equivalent county in Michigan in some ways, Oakland, and this map reflects that complexity.

Yes, I know, CD-18 trended so strongly to McCain from Bush 2004, that assuming that the trend is to a substantial extent ephemeral (which may, or may not (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=130325.0;viewResults), be the case), that it looks a bit weak. It will move another 50 basis points or so in the GOP direction, once the intra county census splits come in, since I am confident inner city Pittsburgh had far less population growth than the suburbs, particularly the outer suburbs. So PA-14 is slated to expand some more, sucking up more Dem precincts in PA-18.

As to the rather peaked PA-08, it is trapped by geography. Sorry Congressman Fitzgerald. You will just have to work your butt off, and avoid gaffes. Good luck.

The first poster to guess in which precinct Congressman Altmire in PA-04 (D) lives in just by looking at the lines of the map along (look at the SW PA zoom at the bottom of this post) using inferential logic, gets to pick my signature on my posts for a week. :) As a hint, I deliberately put him in his own CD, rather than having him in PA-18, just to eliminate any temptation on his part to take a crack at running against Murphy in PA-18 (since Murphy's CD is slightly more Dem, and he had about half of Murphy's territory in the current map).

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McCandless Township, Ward 1, District 4, Allegheny County?

You sir are indeed correct, and get to pick my signature for a week. Well done!  :)

Ugh, that yellow district in the SE (which is where I'd be) would be one of the worst districts ever.

Normally I would pick something suitably sadistic, but under the circumstances, I think condolences to Congresswoman Giffords and everyone who was affected by the attack in Tucson would be most appropriate. Change your avatar to D-AZ for the duration.

PA-13 certainly has merit, but my personal favorite is PA-14. I just love my octopus, and when the final census figures come in, I look forward to extending the NNE tentacle up to New Castle in Lawrence County to help out PA-04 some more, which will just make it all the more outstanding. :)

You are in PA-13 eh, Phil?  You must live in a more than 55% Obama precinct then, and probably at least 57%. Everything more Pubbie in the City of Philadelphia in NE Philly is in PA-08 except for a few connecting precincts along the Delaware River heading to Bucks County, to get at the Dem precincts there.

So let it be done.

My precinct went for Obama with 53% of the vote. It's pretty much a bellwether. When I saw Obama won my precinct that night, I turned to the Obama poll watcher and congratulated him on what was going to be a great night for them. I really thought McCain would eek out a win here. Once I saw otherwise, that was all the confirmation I needed to know it was done. Anyway, it's one of the ones you're thinking of along the Delaware River (though the ones in question, while close to the river, don't actually touch it). I live right across the street from the border with Bucks.

I'm sure McCain won some precincts a little further south (57th, 64th and 55th Wards come to mind).

I think I found your precinct Phil. Suffice it to say, it is but one of 4 connector precincts in NE Philly that is less than 55% Obama in NE Philly, that is needed to be used by PA-13 to connect it to a bunch of more Dem precincts beyond the connector precinct. :)  Do you see what I mean by looking at the map?

Here is a question for you Phil, that if you get the answer "right," you get to select my next signature after I am finished honoring Congresswoman Giffords (per Vazdul nailing my last question).  What rather specific psephological event would specifically take PA-06 and PA-07 per my map totally out of the danger zone, while doing nothing for say PA-11 and PA-15?

Anyone else is free to play this game too, and select my next signature (within certain limits of decorum set solely by me :P) by the way.

I think so.  :P

I've often wondered what is the exact population density of Phil's zip code and neighborhood.

Torie, it would be helpful if you'd post the partisan breakdown of the districts in your maps. I can't just look at a map and say "well, that'd be great for the Republicans".

Joe Pitts's residence is really, really irritating. It makes the map so much cleaner if he just moves.

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I did the best I could for PA-8 and PA-15.

PA-8: Obama 50%
PA-15: Obama 51%
PA-10: Obama 47%
PA-11: Obama 46%
PA-6: Obama 49%
PA-16: Obama 45%
PA-12: Obama 46%

PA-7: Obama 55%. Sorry Meehan.
PA-17: Obama 63%
PA-14: Obama 70%
PA-13: Obama 66%
PA-1: Obama 85%
PA-2: Obama 88%

PA-9: Obama 42%
PA-5: Obama 45%
PA-3: Obama 46%
PA-4: Obama 43%
PA-18: Obama 46%


I really think the wise thing to do is to choose 2 between Gerlach, Meehan, Fitzpatrick. So I did.

My numbers are all in a matrix chart on the previous page. The map on this page is just switching around voters between PA-16 and PA-09 (well not anymore, I switched out that map (thank God for the "modify" button on this site) for a map that I think is close to final form, but it does not move the numbers all that much, and affects only PA-06, 07, 09, 15 and 16, with each of those listed  CD's getting a higher Pubbie percentage, except PA-15, which drops 3 points to 51-49 Obama). The main benefit of the map, other than giving a booster shot to the map drawer, Congressman Pitts, and his PA-16, is that both Pitts and Platts in PA-09 get much more of their previous voters, and the map "looks" prettier (I put "looks" in quotes, because there is nothing "pretty" in the end about a vicious gerrymander, and that is precisely what I have done, I think).

All of the Pubbie incumbents are quite safe in my map, with Fitzpatrick in PA-08 perhaps on the edge of slipping into a potentially marginal CD, but it is the best one can do, after sweating out each and every precinct, given its geographic location (it is more marginal because it just doesn't have the snap back potential from that Pubbie disaster known as 2008, the way PA-06 and PA-07 do and did).

My trick was to convert PA-17 into a heavy Dem district, from a comfortable Pubbie one, inasmuch as Holden has demonstrated he cannot be defeated with an "efficient" number of Pubbies. It solves a lot of problems at once. The rest was more about squeezing out 1-2 points of PVI where I could, and in this game, I to 2 points means a lot.

And potentially even more than that is at stake, if for the Dem pack in the 3 Philly CD's, you don't work each precinct at the edges hard, one by one. There is no other way. And sometimes by doing that you bag something fairly important, like my cut out of South Philly into PA-07. That one cut out was worth perhaps as two Pubbie points, all of which were desperately needed to pump into PA 06, 07 and 08. So the cut out was huge.

My immediate neighborhood is very densely populated. I live in one of the largest precincts in Northeast Philly (over one thousand registered voters. That is big for a Philly precinct especially up here). The zip code probably isn't that dense because the three precincts closest to me are mostly single homes with a decent amount of land for a residence in a major city.

Here is the map I think that is nearing the point of being presentable  enough to ship off to Pitts' office, and whomever other powers that be. I will send off all my final form maps to the powers that be. That is part of the fun of it all. And if the map they pick varies, it will be interesting to see as to why, and if the purpose(s) is(are) self serving, well then the public square will have a chance to call them on it. And that is what makes this really fun. :P  Get to be as good or better than they are (e.g., and then when they see the map, they say hey, this guy really knows what he is doing, and maybe we should take him seriously. Just go for it; isn't that what makes life worth living?  If you don't go for it, one thing is for sure; nothing will happen, unless stasis, in some existential sense, is in and of itself a "happening."

Although for some CD's it is hard to see (for example PA-16's impingement into York County is new territory), I have with this map shown by shade variation, where the new CD's picked up new territory, and lost old territory.  I did this to emphasize that one important factor to consider is trying to minimize just how many new voters Pubbie incumbents have to deal with. The more new voters, the more voters the incumbent will have to romance from scratch, although it would be of considerable help if the new territory were in the same media market. That is the main reason why I reconfigured PA-16 and PA-09, in order to reduce the amount of new territory each Pubbie incumbent acquired.

I will put up the new stats matrix chart when I have processed the exact numbers on my spread sheet. But I quite happy with them. :) [Addendum; stats now added.]
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I wonder why this housing tract, not far from Phil's pad in NE Philly, voted 2-1 for McCain, making it a Philly precinct that is way off at the end of the Pubbie side of the tail of Philly's partisan bell curve of its precincts - way at the end. It does not look that different from some other precincts in the area, which like this one are all single family houses of about this SES niche.  Is it because it is right next to a Catholic Church and school, and these folks like to go to church a lot, and send their kids to Catholic school, which tends to be a  Pubbie parameter these days?

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It's five minutes from me. It's a wealthier pocket of the Northeast. The single houses aren't your typical single houses for Northeast Philly. It being next to St. Jerome's has nothing to do with its politics.

The area across Westin to the east is duplexes, and the area to the north across Holmes is fourplexes with not enough off-street parking.  The northern boundary of the precinct is not on Holmes as one might expect, but a couple of streets south, so you get rid of the folks who want to live in the neighborhood, but could only afford to live on the main road, and not on the preferable locations that back up to Pennypack Creek.

If you zoom out some, it is pretty clear that Pennypack Creek was a traditional edge of the city.  Northeast Philadelphia Airport was built during WWII by the Army Air Corps but not completed, but it has clearly blocked residential development in Northeast Philadelphia, so that most of the development is closer to the Delaware River, or out towards Montco, which probably has some Republican precincts(?yes).

So you would have Frankford Ave (US 13) coming out of the city, and you will notice that the streets nearest to it are traditional grid.  You would have State Ave down by the river adjacent to the railroad, and probably with some industrial plants because of the trains, so that wouldn't be a desirable area.  And you would have Roosevelt Blvd (US 1).  Is it named after Theodore or Franklin?

The particular area in question is on a peninsula between Pennypack Creek and a tributary, and only accessible from the north (at least before the time when bridges were routinely built for residential streets).  For a short time in the 1940s, Northeast Philadelphia Airport was the city airport, since what is now Philadelphia International was closed due to military security reasons (because of the shipyard?) and there was later commuter service from Northeast Philadelphia.  So you have an area that was close to an airport, without real good accessibility.  But it was closer to the city than Bucks, so eventually you get some infill.

You have an I-95 exit at Academy maybe designed for the airport.  It kind of looks like the entire area south of the airport between Grant and Roosevelt may have been developed at the same time, based on the curvilinear street patterns.  Areas closer to the airport get the multiplexes, and the furthest area, down by the creek, in between the runway and traffic pattern got the largest houses.  It is also convenient to Nazareth Hospital, so doctors just starting out could live in the area before moving out to Bucks or Montco.

Pretty close to me as well, but Torie brought up a point I once thought as well.  I noticed the areas around Catholic churches are some of the most Republican divisions in the city as well.  Look at the areas around St. Matt's, Cecilia's and Christopher's.  They are arguably some of the most Republican in the city.  I think the division that voted 68% for McCain and gave Crazy McDermott 5% (the CP Congressional candidate against 2 pro-choicers Schwartz and Kats) was near St. Cecilia's in Fox Chase.   

They are like that for other reasons though. Fox Chase is very German (Bavarian German). Old Somerton is wealthier so that explains the results are St. Christopher's. The area around St. Matt's/Mayfair is so Republican because Perzel built it up during the 1980s though I do think strong social conservative/Roman Catholic beliefs play a big role there.

I clicked on a random South Philly block in Google Street View to see what the houses were like and one of them was flying the "Don't Tread on Me" flag.

That's not necessarily a right-wing flag. It was common at anti-war rallies and whatnot during the Bush years...which is when I think Google's streetview was taken (at least in Minneapolis, I deduced it was in 2006 by reading the movies playing a theater.) Basically it's used by whichever side is out of power.

Scratch that actually, they must've recently been updated. It's now showing movies from late 2009.

Well, that's random for South Philly.  :P

Well as expected, with better intra county Allegheny County population figures now available, PA-14 needed about 23,000 more people, so its NW tentacle continued another fifty miles NNW to pick up about 10 mostly 70% plus precincts in New Castle, helping PA-18, which was further helped by making up its loss of the New Castle Obama precincts with some marginally to comfortable McCain precincts in Allegheny from PA-04.  PA-03 had to drop most of one Butler County township,making it a tad more Dem.

In Indiana, the old city of Indianapolis suffered some rather major population losses, so IN-07 now takes in almost all of Monroe County, booting IN-08 from it entirely. The Indiana map underwent rather substantial changes. I will put that up on the Indiana thread later.

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There is plenty of interesting gossip in this discussion, much of it different from speculation we've made before.

http://www.politicspa.com/exclusive-pa%E2%80%99s-gop-congessional-delegation-coming-to-harrisburg-to-discuss-redistricting-scenarios/22138/

Critz is protected because neighboring Republicans don't want more Dem voters... but Altmire's district could be made more Republican without being dismantled. (So how do they account for lost population in the west?)

Merging Schwartz and Fattah is discussed. Maybe this is what KP was alluding to?

No Republican votes wasted on shoring up Barletta. He sinks or swims on his own. 

How can they possibly combine Schwartz and Fattah? That would be an immediate suit on intentional dilution of the black vote, and there's no way they can create just two Democratic seats in the Philly metro (so they can't do it unless they're going to throw one of their other incumbents to the wolves--in which case Schwartz would probably just move there than fight Fattah).

Maybe they want to take out Schwartz as a potential statewide candidate and would create a different 3rd Dem district with her home in the 2nd?

But... she would just move. And they didn't address whose seat will be eliminated.

Per reading the article, it doesn't make the slightest sense to me, and the numbers don't work. They must be on crack. And how do you make Critz safe, even if you wanted to? They must be on crack, or the reporter is being fed a line of disinformation. And combine Fattah and Swartz, while protecting all the Philly area Pubbies?  Ya right. As I said, they are on crack. The idea of endangering (well it can't be done but whatever) PA's only black congressperson is itself very curious - and probably illegal.

They're Pennsylvania Republicans. Of course they are on crack. What did you think?

Sacrifice four Republican congressman, if not more, just to fail at getting rid of Schwartz? And why get rid of Schwartz? She is a better person to face statewide then Altmire or Critz.

Schwartz is 62; she won't have another crack at a Senate seat until she's 68. I guess she could run for Governor in 2014, but she doesn't seem interested in that. There's no point in trying to get rid of her when they could make her district a sink for suburban Democratic votes.

It doesn't say they want to make Critz safe, only that they're not really going after him and thinking of putting Altmire's Dem voters into either Doyle's or his district. Doyle would be the more geographically natural choice, but playing around on the app you can create an even weirder PA-12 that drops non-river-valley Greene and Fayette and gets another tentacle up to New Castle, and it's about 49-49 like now while getting rid of Altmire.

I don't think it's crazy for the GOP to be cautious and not go after both Altmire and Critz. For Pittsburgh suburbia+rural ex-coal & steel to be a safe seat you have to rely on the continuation of the current situation where class politics are simultaneously important enough that Pittsburgh suburbia hasn't gone the way of Philly suburbia but still unimportant enough that ex-coal & steel is at historically low levels for the Dems. A delicate balance.

As far as your actual quoted question goes, it would be pretty easy to bring Critz up the Monongohela to places like Clairton, Braddock and eastern Pittsburgh and split the difference with Doyle at about D+9, but this is obviously purely hypothetical with the Dems not in control.

How can they eliminate another Philly seat? The state is only losing one seat and the weakest in population is out west. They already eliminated a Philly seat last time and the state doesn't have that much population distribution. If the goal is to just remove the suburban parts and just result in two seats almost wholely in Philly, then they're displacing some very heavily Democratic parts of lower Montco that have to go to some Republican's seat and won't make them happy.

I think someone is spreading fud for their own amusement.

Having actually drawn the map, given the population shifts, Critz is gone period (it lost population big time and is surrounded by uber GOP territory, and Altmire already has a heavily GOP district. I put all the Dems I could into the Doyle district, reaching about 100 miles in one instance up a river picking up Democrats living in little old houses on the rivers next to cold steel mills. There really are not very many Democratic precincts left to pack into PA-14. Altmire has a few marginal precincts, but the rest are GOP to varying proportions. And by the way if Critz is kept in some alternative universe, what happens to Shuster?  I mean, basically 3/4 of a CD was lost in West PA. Somebody has to go. If not Critz, who?

In short, if you actually do the map, you then know just how nonsensical this all is. The one thing that caught my eye, was leaving Barletta with a pretty heavily blue collar and Dem white CD, suggesting that Holden in PA-17 would still have a pretty GOP district, which makes some sense, but Holden won't be beat, so it will just keep him a blue dog, and probably flip to the GOP if he gets another job someday. I will play with an alternative map doing that. It is not what I would do, but it is a reasonable alternative. None of the rest is reasonable - at all.

Well psephology fans, here is a redraw, designed to screw Barletta in PA-11 and make Holden's life in PA-17 more difficult, which also substantially affects PA-15. It uses non final population numbers, but the basic outline should hold even with some population adjustments, which should be pretty minor, since the county splits involving these three CD's are rather limited vis a vis the population subject to being moved from one CD to another.

First, the map is even more butt ugly than my gerrymander, which I consider far more efficient. Second, unfortunately, by screwing Barletta, one also hurts Dent in PA-15, because PA-17 in my draw picked up a bunch of heavily Dem precincts in both PA-11 and 15, and for PA-17 to get to the Dem precincts in PA-15 it needs to go through PA-11, and so both CD's must take their Dem precincts back. So both PA-15 and PA-11 are now about 54% Obama (i.e. marginal, but safe enough probably for Dent and Barletta (but only perhaps in the latter case, if Barletta's anti illegals thing has legs), while PA-17 becomes 53% McCain, a couple of points more Pubbie than the old PA-17.  With Holden having so much new GOP territory, and losing some of his heavily GOP precincts in Schuylkill to PA-15, he might have a tough time, and his CD will go Pubbie probably if he retires).

So maybe the GOP picks up another seat (PA-17), but it will be at the expense of making two new marginal seats that were pretty safe GOP in my map, while whether or not Holden goes down, becomes a 50-50 proposition perhaps. It may be a pretty good short term bet, but may prove costly in the longer run. It all depends on your time horizon, and who retires when, and whether or not somewhat lower SES  Anglos (particularly Catholic ones outside Appalachia) remain longer term estranged from the Dems. I would not do it, but yes, it might be done.

The key may be Dent. He loses a lot of his old territory in my plan, and he might prefer more familiar ground, which he has proved more than capable of holding. His CD becomes a little more than a point more GOP than his existing CD in any event, while PA-11 becomes about 4 points more GOP from the map currently in place (PA-10 picking up those Dem precincts, and PA-11 needing quite a bit of more territory, was what gave it its still rather substantial GOP shove - an option not nearly as available for PA-15, since it is more trapped by geography).

So we give back to PA-11 and PA-15 their old territory, and then with the need for more population (with PA-11 losing a few heavily Dem precincts to PA-10, which loss I keep in place), they move west, with PA-15 in particular cherry picking the most heavily GOP precincts along north and south of the Schuylkill-Berks County line. PA-11 sort of does the same, but is forced to go to the northern edges of the available territory, but that area is all quite heavily GOP anyway.

Would anyone pick this alternative for the GOP who wanted what was best for them, in lieu of my map version on this forum?  If so, sound up, and explain why. Thanks.

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No one is specifically saying to screw Barletta, just that the Republicans are saying he's not worth trying to shore up. Though adding one of the cities from his district to Holden's seat is an idea that I suppose could be tried.

"Not shoring up" = "screw" in Toriespeak here. It's shorter. Anyway, it turned out that the swiving he got was not so bad. He's a lucky boy that so many folks in his neck of the woods are getting the hell out of Dodge, forcing the CD into the uber GOP parts of "The T."  Scranton/Wilkes Barre just isn't where it's at these days.

I don't follow you. Of course the exact numbers will change when the PA census comes out, but as seen below, on Dave's "new population estimates" I can get a very safe 2-2 southwest, with Doyle at 63 Obama, Critz at 56 Obama, Murphy at 57 McCain, Shuster at 60 McCain, and Altmire gone. I agree, just to be clear, that it would be extremely risk-averse on the part of the Republicans, and I wouldn't do it, if I were them. But if Shuster and Murphy decide their priority is just job security even in the event of Meg Whitman vs. Sherrod Brown 2016, and sucks to the team numbers, they might want it.

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Oh I see. Sure, you could pump up the Pubbie CD's in Western PA to astronomical levels, get rid of a GOP CD that a very moderate Dem holds, and then give Critz per the very inefficient PA-14 gerry, some heavily Dem precincts that actually belong in PA-14. 

Yes, it can be done, but it's insane from any point of view which is interested in pushing public policy towards a GOP point of view. You get rid of a smarter and more moderate Dem, for a much dumber and somewhat less moderate Dem, tied to the hip to the unions, unlike Altmire. And the Critz CD become basically a real Dem CD, pushing Critz probably into mainstream Dem territory, as opposed to a GOP CD held by a very competent and moderate Dem, who knows he is walking on eggshells, and can be useful to add bi-partisan coloration to things.

If the map is remotely like this, in short, I will vomit. Thanks for sharing!  :)

I would not be surprised if the map were somewhat like this except with Altmire's immediate neighborhood somehow included in Critz' CD. Not saying it's the most likely option, but it would appeal to a certain type of R mapdrawer.

...and Mike Kelly (R, PA-3) drawn into Murphy's district. He lives in Butler.

Doyle is about 120k below in population, and Critz is another 90k below. Critz should be done for good.

Yes, and  PA-03 without Butler becomes a marginal to lean Dem CD. :) That is another little problem with the mappie.

Yeah, I didn't check Kelly's residence - but the north isn't really the important part of this map. You could just rotate the Republicans five minutes counterclockwise, so to speak: PA-4 loses Butler and gains a bit of territory from PA-9, which in turn compensates by going further east into the southern T, which is where it goes now anyway.

Here comes the real PA plan, not the FUD.

http://www.politicspa.com/redistricting-watch-dc-republicans-working-toward-consensus/22604/

The most striking feature of Republicans’ tentative plans is the change to Tim Holden’s 17th Congressional district. Currently, the 17th covers all of Holden’s home county of Schuylkill County, as well as Dauphin and Lebanon. The district comprises parts of Perry and Berks counties as well.

Republicans are talking about stretching his district up to the Democratic stronghold of Scranton, so as to make freshman Rep. Lou Barletta’s district far more favorable to the GOP. This idea has really caught on in the past two weeks, and appears more likely every day.

The seat targeted for dissolution would be that of Rep. Mark Crtiz. The GOP is looking at ways to attach Critz’s Democratic base in Johnstown to the district of Rep. Jason Altmire, whose district would itself lose Democrats to the Pittsburgh-based district of Rep. Mike Doyle.

That would set up a Democratic primary between Altmire and Critz.

Republicans emphasize that they’ll be conservative this time. They’ll be drawing out a Democratic seat for sure, but they won’t attempt to make every Democratic seat more competitive as they did in 2001. They are trying to protect their gains of 2010.

The main question, how competitive will the GOP the merged Altmire/Critz district, will likely fall to Rep. Bill Shuster. If he is willing to take traditionally Democratic counties of Fayette and Green, the the new seat will be much more achievable for Republicans. If however Shuster wants to maintain his lopsided party registration advantage, Republicans may cede the Altmire/Critz district to Democrats.

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If they're going to give Holden a safe seat, I'd give him Reading+Scranton rather than Harrisburg+Scranton.  Harrisburg is easier to swamp with mid-state GOP votes (Platts's or Shuster's district) than Reading is; this would allow Pitts's district to soak up more Dem towns in Chester County and Gerlach's to take some Dem areas in DelCo/MontCo from Meehan. 

Surprisingly meek redistricting plan. Shores up Gerlach and Barletta, but doesn't do much to help the other incumbents. And Barletta would be vulnerable if Chris Carney decided to run again, since he's been put into PA-11.

Fairly Clean too.  I mean, it obviously has partisan leanings to it, particularly the 17th and SEPA, but nothing really egregious like the current map.  You could probably make a case for 'community of interest" for every district but the 17th (not a good one mind you).

This is basically my map! They did give away a Pubbie point or point and a half around Pittsburg, and maybe a total of 3-4 points away in the Philly area by canning my little erosities, but other than it's all mine baby. :P  However, that loss of points makes PA-07 a very marginal seat; it might be hard to hold. And PA-08 slips into the lean GOP but marginal zone. In this range, every Pubbie point gained is pure gold.

Well one other major and dumb difference, is they over-pubbied the south central zone by cutting out Harrisburg (which I chopped up between 3 CD's), by leaving it in OH-17 still, so that OH-17 was not able to suck up as many Dem precincts as it should in the Scranton and so forth zone. They also should have gobbled up the half of Schuylkill which is more than 60% McCain, rather than just wasting those Pubbies by leaving them in uber Dem OH-17 as redrawn. What a waste that was! Maybe they did that to try to help Holden survive a primary, and continue to be something of a blue dog. Who knows?

Oh, and they didn't do my rather brilliant cut out I think of South Philly. I need to get my map over to Wasserman ASAP.

I think that map is just Cook Political's prediction, not the real thing. 

But yeah, there are some clear inefficiencies, from the GOP point of view.  As mentioned before, I'd give Reading to Holden rather than Harrisburg, plus more of Monroe County.  And why not liberate some of the heavily McCain precincts in Schuylkill County, while you're at it? 

In the west, Doyle could be packed more, and CD5/12 are unnecessarily strong GOP.   

Well, the article said the map came closer to the real thing than anything they saw so far, so I guess it could be that in fact, the real thing is my map (:P), because well, it is the most efficient thing. It just is. And for something this marginal, as I say squeezing out that last 5 Pubbie points  pays very high dividends at the margin. It would be a shame to lose them.

I suspect that the real thing, in more states than one, will be somewhere between Cook and Torie in terms of clean lines and aggressiveness.

Are they going with Torie's map in West PA, and a lite version of it in Northeast PA, but not try anything funny around Philly? That would strike me as the most sensible thing they could do, really.

I personally think Torie's map is great in Western PA, myself, and a bit too ugly in the Philly suburbs.

Meehan will get a Delaware + Montco + some of Chester
Dent will get the Lehigh Valley
Fitz will get Bucks (hopefully they cut out Bensalem + Bristol here) + Montco
Gerlach will get Chester + Berks
Pitts will get Lancaster


I don't think we'll see the cross county ugliness there.

You can give both Reading and Harrisburgh to Holden, as well as all of Lackawanna and Wilkes Barre.

Lebanon and that much of Carbon don't need to be in Holden's district.


I would call the sprawling CD-14 though that cuts across counties passive, rather than aggressive. The compact circle on Pittsburgh is simply a waste of a lot of Pubbies.

It's just based on the historic situation. Abolishing two D seats in West PA seemed a bridge too far in 2000 (and almost certainly would have been), and that part has trended R more than the areas in what's now Altmire's district.

There's also been a surprising degree of resilience at a 'local' level and that's the sort of thing you'd assume the people drawing the maps would be aware (and wary?) of.

Isn't that exactly what happened?

http://www.mapcenter.org/region/gerrymaps.html

The 18th was merged into the 14th, and the 12th was merged into the 20th. Altmire's district was Republican at the time.

Alright, abolishing three seemed a bridge too far. I know there were voices that one more might be doable.

I also totally misunderstood your original post, it seems.

Possibly. It's just really hard to create 2 Dem districts in SW-PA without splitting Pittsburgh.

You could do 1 district that covers Lawrence, Beaver, and some of Allegheny, and a 2nd district that covers the Dem areas of Fayette and Green and connects them with Johnstown. That would probably allow Murphy to grab more of his Westmoreland County areas that he has currently.

Shuster is fine no matter what you throw at him, but I am not quite confident in that CD-18 that I drew. The problem is that the Dem areas in Atlmire's current district and Critz's current district are really far dispersed.

Aggressiveness as I think they mean it is trying to create new pubbie districts, ie the old CD-13, while weakening your own. I guess that's a bit of what that CD-4 is I drew, but that's only because Westmoreland County happens to be where it is. Removing the south leg of CD-14 causes more problems than it solves, imo.

What I recall was that the 4th could have been made more Republican than it was, but Melissa Hart asked to keep it somewhat competitive, because it burnished her credentials for a future statewide run.

Given the news that they're going to give Holden a safer district, here's what I imagine the Philly area might look like, if they keep the Bucks district and the Lancaster district intact:

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Pitts's district in light blue is freed from having to crack Reading, so it takes the bluest parts of Chester County.  He's still at 51-48 McCain.  Meehan, in pink, is at 51-48 Obama, down from 56% Obama before.  Gerlach's district in purple is incomplete - it depends on how much of the Reading area you give to Holden, but Gerlach will likely end up stretching to Lebanon and maybe even the western part of Schuylkill County - but will almost certainly be at least a 50-50 McCain district.  Can't do much with Fitzpatrick if Bucks stays together, but I did give him the most GOP section of Montgomery County to go with GOP areas of NE Philly.  The Obama % is down from 54% to 52.7% in his district. 

The Dem pack is a bit mischievous.  The green district is entirely within the Philly city limits but is 57% white.  Brady doesn't live in it, but he can move. 

Blue is 51% VAP black for Fattah.  Tan is 43% VAP black to 41% white - it would be amusing watching a primary challenge to Schwartz, and (in both of these districts) seeing affluent suburban liberals represented by inner-city blacks.  The additional benefit is that, if a black takes this seat, Dems might be a bit more constrained if and when they get control of redistricting back. 

Re: Pittsburg- is the octopus actually looking like it will be a reality?

If so, take that, snootily-toned WSJ article! :D 

Is this really necessary? You can still accomplish the Dem pack without having to get rid of 2 black districts. All you are doing is making your map vulnerable. Give Schwartz a white dem pack and everyone stays happy, and it's not as if this map helps the Republicans at all. You're just trying to be a douche to the Dems aren't you? :)

The 3 Dem districts I drew are basically the max Dem pack*, assuming Bucks and Lancaster are inviolate.  I just manipulated the boundaries between the three Dem districts for gits and shiggles.  :)  

(And I'm not sure what you mean by "get rid of 2 black districts".  There is one majority black district and one plurality black district in this map, just like there is now.)  

In any case, that's not really the point; I was really just trying to see what Gerlach and Meehan could get assuming that the GOP doesn't have to worry about Reading any more.  Basically, the answer is that Meehan probably won't be able to get a McCain district unless you break up Lancaster County.  

*: barring Meehan's district making a raid into south Philly via a runway-width strip through PHL airport.

According to a post Wasserman tweeted last week, Republicans consider SE Pennsylvania a lost cause and don't want to go crazy with redistricting. They seem more interested to protect the rest of their delegation.

Your Dem pack left about 3-4 points on the table, which the Pubbies cannot afford to lose in the Philly area. Only my map, or something close to it, can get the job done.

How are you calculating that, Torie?  What additional Dem areas would you add to the pack, and in exchange for what (besides the handful of 50-50 precincts in south Philly)?  (Remember that I'm assuming Bucks stays whole.)

Look at my map. Bucks will not be kept whole. That I promise you. It wasn't last time (it dipped in Philly, and Montco and Philly dipped into it, in a back and forth exchange. The lines will be erose - just the way I drew them in that neck of the woods. Otherwise, an incumbent Pubbie or two will be ripe hanging fruit, and that is just not going to happen. What you do, is shove the Dems in the Philly metro area, here and there, in what is effectively the importation of Pubbies from the hinterland, into the Philly metro area, in a game of dominoes, that starts all the way about 85 miles east of Harrisburg in Chambersville, and areas north, and moves east. It is kind of like playing dominoes.

Bucks was kept whole in 2000.  Yes, it added MontCo and Phila bits but not vice versa.  Or by "last time" do you mean 1990??

Anyhow, I stand by my assertion that my map is basically the best Dem pack one can do if one leaves Bucks in one piece.

Yes, you are right. I thought there was one PA-13 jut into Bucks, but alas not. There were some erose Bucks juts into Montco and Philly. But that was done for population reasons, and this ludicrous Pubbie goal of trying to make PA-13 into a competitive CD. It had nothing to do with the Bucks line being like some magic Maginot Line. Anyway, if that is your constraint so be it; go for it. But if it is a PA Pubbie constraint, than PA Pubbies are dumber than a box of rocks, and I will let the world Pubbie world know about it.

Another stab at a Republican PA map:

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Open in a new window to make it bigger.

PA-01 (blue, Bob Brady - D) - Mostly the same, just takes in a little more of Delaware County. 39.5% black VAP. Goes from 88-11 Obama to 85-14 Obama.
PA-02 (green, Chaka Fattah - D) - Also pretty much the same as the old district. 55.0% black VAP. Goes from 90-10 Obama to 90-9 Obama.
PA-03 (purple NW, Mike Kelly - R) - Borders change, but pretty similar to the old district. Goes from 49-49 McCain to 50-49 McCain.
PA-04 (red, Jason Altmire - D and Mark Critz - D) - I carved up both Altmire and Critz's districts in an attempt to get rid of both. PA-04 contains both Altmire's home in suburban Allegheny County and Critz's home in Johnstown. I cut out the areas that went strong for Altmire (Beaver and Lawrence Counties) and for Critz (Greene, Fayette, and Washington Counties) and instead centered the district in Westmoreland County. Goes from 55-44 McCain to 56-43 McCain.
PA-05 (yellow N, Glenn Thompson - R) - Had to shift this one south in order to accomodate PA-10, but it remains 55-44 McCain.
PA-06 (teal, Jim Gerlach - R) - This one had to shift north. Whereas it used to be mostly in Chester County, now it's mostly in Montgomery and Berks. Gerlach might not like having a bunch of new territory, but I managed to cut the Obama margin quite a bit. It went from 58-41 Obama to 52-47 Obama.
PA-07 (grey, Patrick Meehan - R) - Dropped the Montgomery County portion of the district and added a lot more of Chester County. Goes from 56-43 Obama to 53-46 Obama.
PA-08 (light purple SE, Mike Fitzpatrick - R) - Bucks County stays all in the same district, but the bits that poke into Philadelphia and Montgomery County are reconfigured to drop the margin a bit. Goes from 54-45 Obama to 53-46 Obama.
PA-09 (sky blue, Bill Shuster - R) - Stretches east to gobble up some Democrat-friendly parts of PA-12. Remains the most Republican district in the state, though. Goes from 63-35 McCain to 59-39 McCain.
PA-10 (magenta, Tom Marino - R) - Chops out the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area stuff and stretches west way across the state. Stays the same at 54-45 McCain.
PA-11 (light green, Lou Barletta - R) - Almost an entirely new district, but Barletta will be happy to be in one that voted for McCain. Cuts out all of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and instead goes down to Harrisburg. Goes from 57-42 Obama to 52-47 McCain.
PA-12 (light purple S, Todd Platts - R) - The former PA-19 remains pretty much the same. Goes from 56-42 McCain to 56-43 McCain.
PA-13 (pink, Allyson Schwartz - D) - Redrawn a bit to soak up some more Democratic territory. Goes from 59-41 Obama to 62-37 Obama.
PA-14 (brown, Mike Doyle - D) - Expands a bit, but pretty much the same. Goes from 70-29 Obama to 68-32 Obama.
PA-15 (orange, Charlie Dent - R) - Cut Bethlehem out of the district and expanded it north. Goes from 56-43 Obama to 53-46 Obama.
PA-16 (light green S, Joe Pitts - R) - Pretty similar to the old district, just swaps a bit of Chester with PA-07. Stays the same at 51-48 McCain.
PA-17 (purple NE, Tim Holden - D) - Holden gets an almost completely new district; basically just attached Schuylkill County to a Dem vote sink that takes in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Bethlehem. Goes from 57-42 McCain to 58-41 Obama.
PA-18 (yellow SW, Tim Murphy - R) - Drops a bunch of Westmoreland County and pulls in parts of PA-04 and PA-12 to weaken the Democrats' chances of holding PA-04. Goes from 55-44 McCain to 54-45 McCain.

And for an intellectual exercise, here's a Democratic gerrymander:

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As usual, new window = bigger. I cut the 18th district.


PA-01 (blue) - Soaks up some Republican parts of Delaware County. 49% white, 29% black, 13% Hispanic, 8% Asian VAP. Goes from 88-11 Obama to 78-21 Obama.
PA-02 (green) - Stretches up to the northeastern end of Philadelphia to take in some Republican precincts. 50.2% black VAP. Goes from 90-10 Obama to 84-16 Obama.
PA-03 (purple) - Mike Kelly is one of the few Republican winners here; he gets an uber-safe district based in his home turf of Butler County. Goes from 49-49 McCain to 60-39 McCain.
PA-04 (red) - Jason Altmire likely wouldn't want an Obama district, so I kept this a McCain district, but it's much closer now. Drops the worst parts of the district for him and adds some more of Allegheny, including a bit of northern Pittsburgh. Goes from 55-44 McCain to 50-49 McCain.
PA-05 (yellow NW) - Time to get serious here. Glenn Thompson's district has Erie County appended to it in order to create a Dem-friendly swing district. Goes from 55-44 McCain to 54-45 Obama.
PA-06 (teal) - Jim Gerlach's district is drawn out from under him (he's just across the border, in PA-16), and also has much of its territory removed to create a Lancaster-Reading-Pottstown-Norristown district. Gerlach could run here, but it might be easier for him to run in PA-16, given that his Chester County base is mostly there. Goes from 58-41 Obama to 56-43 Obama.
PA-07 (grey) - Patrick Meehan and Joe Pitts are put together in this district, which is strengthened from 56-43 Obama to 61-38 Obama.
PA-08 (light purple SE) - Oh no, Bucks County got chopped up! Add parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County, and you get a district that goes from 54-45 Obama to 60-39 Obama.
PA-09 (sky blue) - Bill Shuster's district remains mostly the same, and stays 63-35 McCain.
PA-10 (magenta) - Tom Marino gets a safe district, going from 54-45 McCain to 59-40 McCain.
PA-11 (light green NE) - Not much could be done to unseat Lou Barletta, so the Democrats would have to do some work. Goes from 57-42 Obama to 56-43 Obama.
PA-12 (light purple SW) - Reconfigured the Murthamander to up the Democratic performance a bit. Goes from 50-49 McCain to 51-48 Obama.
PA-13 (pink) - Allyson Schwartz gets the other half of Bucks County. Goes from 59-41 Obama to 61-39 Obama.
PA-14 (brown) - Mike Doyle's district drops quite a bit of Democratic performance, but remains safe. Tim Murphy is dropped in this district. Goes from 70-29 Obama to 62-37 Obama.
PA-15 (orange) - Charlie Dent gains some more Democratic territory and loses some Republican territory, goes from 56-43 Obama to 59-40 Obama.
PA-16 (light green SE) - Republican vote sink. No incumbent actually lives in this district, but it would be good for either Gerlach or Pitts, who are both just over the border. Goes from 51-48 McCain to 55-44 McCain.
PA-17 (dark purple) - Tim Holden gets a much improved district, though not a safe one, so he can continue being a Blue Dog. Picks up the Harrisburg suburbs and York. Goes from 57-42 McCain to 50-49 Obama.
PA-18 (yellow SE) - Formerly PA-19, Todd Platts is probably just outside the district, since he lives in York. It's extremely Republican now, going from 56-42 McCain to 61-39 McCain.

Lol, I just drew an 80% Black, 96% Obama district in Philly.

Its even more pronounced in  Southern Chicago.  I got it up to 91% and 98.4% Respectively, with not a single precinct that voted less than 90% Obama. McCain literally got a whopping 5,272 votes there to Obama's 370,976

You guys are surprised? Drawing such districts on the legislative level happens all the time, a 98% Obama State Senate district in Maryland is easy to draw without looking the slightest bit gerrymandered.

LD-24 in Prince George's County, Maryland, is possibly the most Democratic in the country: it gave 98% for Obama and 96% for O'Malley in 2010. Steele got 16% there in 2006, which makes me wonder if the oft-quoted "Steele got 25% of the black vote" from the exit poll is incorrect (the district is 89% black).

yes, but its rare to be able to do it to 700,000 person Congressional districts.

I don't think you can get it over mid-70's Black in NYC, for example (and that only in Brooklyn).
Really though, I was just trying to see what a Black-pack in Philly would look like, since the current setup of the first and second districts is basically ridiculous. Either do a really heavily Black seat and a "White" seat (that is only 50% White, and about 20% each Black and Hispanic) by splitting the city (sans northeastern and northwestern edges) east-west - cleaning up the eastern edge of my maximum Blackpack only brought it down to 75% Black - or screw Bob Brady and do two 55% Black seats by splitting north-south.

OK, I've more or less completed my PA map now that the numbers have been added to DRA. 

Ground rules: Lancaster stays whole.  York stays whole.  Bucks stays whole.  Lehigh Valley stays whole.  I limited myself to adding an arm into only one county outside Allegheny for the Pittsburgh pack, and tried in general to not make things too ugly... at least, where they weren't before. 

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Yellow in the NW, Kelly: 52.3-46.4 McCain, up from 49-49.  Erie city is still all in this district, but a lot of its suburbs are put into the next district.

Pink stretching across the north, Marino: 55.1-43.5 McCain.  Almost all new territory for Marino, which is probably good for him since he underperformed with his current ones.  Actually a smidge more Republican, too. 

Green in the middle, State College to Harrisburg area, Thompson, 54.0-44.8 McCain.  Again, almost all new territory.  I'd have preferred to switch Thompson and Marino, sending Marino down to Harrisburg and giving Thompson the Erie area plus the part of Cambria county, thus keeping Thompson paired with much of his current territory, but doing that required either shaving Thompson's district down to <51% McCain, or slicing State College from the rest of Centre County and giving it to Marino, which Thompson probably wouldn't like since he was Centre County GOP chair.  But if he's fine with those options then you can do that. 

Cyan, south central Altoona/Johnstown, Shuster/Crist: still the most GOP district in PA, at 57-41.7 McCain.  Takes the upper Monongahela valley towns as well.  Still much prettier than the current PA-12. 

Salmon, SW border, Murphy: 54.8-44.1 McCain.  Not much change in partisanship.

Light green, Pittsburgh, Doyle: 69-30 Obama. 

Purplish blue, east of Pittsburgh, Altmire: 57.0-42.0 McCain, up from 55-44 before.  He'll have to stay on his toes. 

Blue, NE PA including Wilkes-Barre for Barletta: 51.6-47.0 McCain, big change from 57-42 Obama. 

Green, Scranton-Pottsville-Reading for Holden: 60.3-38.6 Obama.  He'll be annoyed that Schuylkill County is split up, but there's really no sense in wasting all that strong GOP vote in the southern half. 

Orange, Lehigh Valley for Dent: not much can be done here; 55.0-43.6 Obama, as opposed to 56-43 previously.  I tried picking out the reddest parts of Schuylkill and Berks to add to the two core counties. 

Brown, York-Harrisburg for Platts: 53.5-45.4 McCain.  Down slightly from 56-43, but he should still be OK. 

Moving into SE PA:

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Light blue, Lancaster for Pitts: 51.0-48.1 McCain.  Essentially no change, although Holden taking Reading allows Pitts to soak up more Dem towns in Chester County. 

Light tan, Lebanon-Berks-Chester counties for Gerlach: 50.1-48.8 McCain!  Given that Obama won Gerlach's current district by 58-41, this should be quite secure. 

Yellow, Bucks county: 52.8-46.1 Obama, down from 54-45 previously.  Again, not much can be done if Bucks is kept intact, but I did try to find the reddest parts of Montgomery County to append. 

Purple, Meehan: 51.0-48.1 Obama.  It was 56-43 before.  Sneaks all the way around MontCo and takes in some parts of NE Philly.... you could decide not to bother and it probably wouldn't change the figures much. 

Orange/Blue/Green: Schwartz, Fattah, Brady; 43.1% black plurality, 50.7% black majority, and 62% white, respectively.  All between 72-84% Obama. 

You forgot the light blue district in South-Central PA, though I assume it's safe R taking in much of the current 12th to take out Critz.

Also, did you put Schwartz into a black-plurality district or am I reading it wrong?

It's there.  I called it cyan.  


Yup, just being mischievous.  If it helps the map garner black Philly votes in the legislature, that's great.  If it creates a precedent for future maps, even better.  But obviously it's not essential.  

Here's an article about the pending redistricting in Pennsylvania. (http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_145/GOP-Wary-of-Repeating-Redraw-Overreach-in-Pa-206784-1.html) Pitts is loath to give up any of his safe district to help out Gerlach or Meehan.

I suspect that he will be forced to.  He should retire anyway.  What has he ever done to make a contribution to the public square?  Pitts strikes me as a back bencher beta in it for the lavish pension benefits.

My attempt at fairmapping PA.

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enhance

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1 (South Philly) 55% Black, 30% White, 89.3% Obama. Brady, Fattah.
Went to research where Reps live... and I just understood why the current first is shaped as it is. Lol. Brady is from its northwestern earmuff.
2 (NC Philly) 42% Black, 31% White, 20% Hispanic, 85.1% Obama. open
There are two possible reasonable designs in Philly - north/south, both seats intended for a Black rep, or east/west, with the western seat quite heavily packed Black and the eastern seat intended for a White rep. Either way you want to keep the main Hispanic concentration united in the less Black seat. This is the former design, the arguments are finely balanced though and I don't really have a preference either way. Or didn't til I noticed where Brady lives. Now I guess I prefer the other map. It'd still draw Fattah and Brady both in the Blacker seat, but at ~70% Black there'd be no chance whatsoever of the map producing two White Congressmen. I'll post a map of what that'll look like tomorrow, probably also keep Cheltenham with Montgomery in that.
3 (Bucks) 86% White, 53.7% Obama. Fitzpatrick
Not changed much, remains very much winnable for both parties.
4 (Montgomery) 78% White, 57.6% Obama. Schwartz
Not much to see here.
5 (Delaware) 80% White, 10% Black, 58.4% Obama. Meehan
Probably gone for Republicans.
6 (Lancaster-Chester) 81% White, 50.8% Obama. Gerlach, Pitts
Interesting primary fight here... despite voting for Obama, should be safe congressionally.
7 (York) 88% White, 57.5% McCain. Platts
Not much to see here.
8 (Harrisburg) 82% White, 53.2% McCain. open
An overdue seat. Reliably Republican for now, though they can't like the pattern of demographic change here.
9 (Berks-Schuylkill) 83% White, 11% Hispanic, 51.7% Obama. Holden
This is Tim Holden, Schuylkill's Tim Holden. He'll be fine.
10 (Allentown-Bethlehem-Stroudsburg) 75% White, 15% Hispanic, 56.9% Obama. Dent
Should be gone for Republicans, but the stress is on "should". I'm not actually sure it would be.
11 (Wyoming Valley) 87% White, 56.3% Obama. Barletta
Two theories: Barletta's until the Democrats nominate an electable candidate, or Barletta's until the next major Democratic wave (and the Democrats nominate an electable candidate.) Exactly what I'd be saying about his current district too.
12 (Northeast) 93% White, 57.0% McCain. Marino
Not much to see here.
13 (Northwest-State College) 94% White, 55.0% McCain. Kelly, Thompson
Thompson's favored as he represents much more of the area at current.
14 (Altoona-Johnstown) 94% White, 59.8% McCain. Shuster, Critz
Safe for Shuster, evidently. Makes you wonder why Shuster is so interested in keeping Johnstown out of his district, it poses no danger to him.
15 (Erie-Beaver) 90% White, 51.4% Obama. open
Swing seat.
16 (Pittsburgh) 73% White, 20% Black, 65.5% Obama. Doyle
Not much to see here.
17 (Westmoreland-North Allegheny) 94% White, 57.9% McCain. Altmire
Altmire's a goner in this district, which is more of a successor to Johnson's current district than his own.
18 (Washington-Fayette-South Allegheny) 92% White, 50.4% McCain. Johnson
This seems tailormade for a Mark Critz/Jason Altmire type of Democrat, but Johnson's residence throws a spanner in the works.

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1st 75% Black, 15% White, 95.2% Obama
2nd 47% White, 22% Hispanic, 20% Black, 74.9% Obama
3rd 86% White, 53.7% Obama
4th 78% White, 59.9% Obama
5th 79% White, 11% Black, 58.6% Obama

Lancaster County will not be split, nor paired with York.  No way, no how.  I doubt it happens even if the Dems have total control. 

It's not a prediction. ^-^

I suppose though you're saying it mustn't be split... so, what alternative should I pursue here?

A big clockwise rotation: red district takes the Main Line, retreats from upper MontCo.  Yellow takes more of Chester County.  Teal takes the rest of Lancaster.  Grey district goes further west (assuming you want to keep Cumberland + Dauphin whole and together, which makes sense), bronze eats into tan, tan into the light blue NE district.  From there... well, there's certainly Stroudsburg from the Lehigh Valley district, and then bits from the cyan district, which will probably have to move into outer MontCo/Chester Co.  Schuylkill and/or Berks will end up getting chopped up, but they don't have a particularly coherent identity, certainly not as coherent as Lancaster County does (very few counties do). 

The city of Lancaster is totally different in every way from the countryside.  They represent two totally different worlds. And the city is heavily Dem I might add.  So I don't consider the county "cohesive" myself. 

I've often wondered if the Democrats would ever try a district like this if they had total control:

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58.1% Obama.

Exchanging the grey district's share of Lancaster for Franklin and Fulton works almost perfectly, so I'll try it, dp.

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enhance

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1 (West Philly) 76% Black, 13% White, 95.5% Obama. Brady, Fattah.
2 (East Philly) 49% White, 22% Hispanic, 19% Black, 74.5% Obama. open.
3 (Bucks) 86% White, 53.7% Obama. Fitzpatrick (virtually unchanged)
4 (Lower Montgomery - Main Line) 78% White, 62.7% Obama. Schwartz.
5 (Delaware - South Chester) 78% White, 11% Black, 56.7% Obama. Meehan, Pitts
They get to tear each other's limbs out in the primary, and then the winner is too weakened to win the general. Sounds like a plan to me. :D
6 (Lancaster - North Chester) 84% White, 52.5% McCain. Gerlach
Gets a safe seat, but a hell of a lot of new territory.
7 (York - Franklin) 88% White, 58.7% McCain. Platts
Supersafe.
8 (Harrisburg) 82% White, 53.3% McCain. open (minor changes)
9 (Berks - Upper Montgomery) 80% White, 11% Hispanic, 53.7% Obama
And Bucks has a twin! Ought to be... interesting.
10 (Lehigh Valley - Stroudsburg) 76% White, 15% Hispanic, 56.6% Obama. Dent (virtually unchanged)
11 (Wyoming Valley - Carbon) 88% White, 56.3% Obama. Barletta (minor changes)
12 (North East) 92% White, 55.1% McCain. Holden
Yeah well, lol. And probably a step too far for Holden to holden. That 12th is so ugly though that I will try to cut off its eastern earmuff next and add Carbon and Hazleton instead.
13 (North West) 96% White, 58.6% McCain. Kelly, Marino.
Glenn Thompson has been cut out of his safe seat and two other Republicans have been cut into it. Lol.
14 (Altoona - Johnstown - State College) 93% White, 55.0% McCain. Thompson, Shuster, Critz
Shuster is gonna be mad. Then he prevails anyways.
15 (Erie - Beaver) 90% White, 51.4% Obama. open (unchanged)
16 (Pittsburgh) 73% White, 20% Black, 65.5% Obama. Doyle (unchanged)
17 (Westmoreland - North Allegheny) 94% White, 57.9% McCain. Altmire (unchanged)
18 (Southwest) 92% White, 50.4% McCain. Murphy (unchanged)
Some part of my brain insists on calling Tim Murphy "Johnson".

Went a little further than that...

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7 (York - Franklin) 88% White, 58.9% McCain. Platts
8 (Harrisburg) 82% White, 53.4% McCain. open
10 (Lehigh Valley) 77% White, 14% Hispanic, 55.9% Obama. Dent
11 (Wyoming Valley - Stroudsburg) 85% White, 57.5% Obama. open.
Utterly safe for the lucky sod who wins the first Democratic primary.
12 (Schuylkill - Hazleton - Williamsport) 92% White, 55.8% McCain. Barletta, Holden.
Barletta wins.
13 (North) 97% White, 58.6% McCain. Marino
Just barely in, he lives in a township (Lycoming) that I'd rather have kept with Williamsport but I had to move something from cornflower back to tan, and this and its immediate western neighbor seemed the best candidates.
14 (Altoona - Johnstown - State College) 93% White, 54.4% McCain. Thompson, Shuster, Critz.
Come at me with more innocuous-sounding change proposals that somehow affect the center of the state, and eventually I'll come up with a map where Critz beats Shuster. ;D (Actually... not happening unless it gets taken into Fayette next.)

I don't see why the Democrats would care about keeping Lancaster and York counties together since it just results in a lot of wasted Democratic votes in the cities proper. See my map above. The Democrats could easily put those votes to use.

This is in reference to what, exactly?

For the same reason that the GOP isn't going to dump lower Bucks into Schwartz's district, or crack the Lehigh Valley.  To answer Torie's post, demographically Lancaster city and county are now different, but economically and historically they are very much one unit. 

What reason is that again?

That they care about more than the sheer numbers, at least in some parts of the state, and also have some - not necessarily correct - notion of what kind of candidate will play best in what place. You may have noticed that gerrymandered plans that look okay at first glance usually just means that the people who drew it despise all their subjects ("citizens") equally, while the egregious-at-first-glance maps come about because some areas' regional identities and historical ties were respected, forcing crasser splits in the remaining places.

That is all a bit too abstract to me.  The idea is to defeat the opposition and maximize your influence in the public square. The two parties are at war with each other, and seem to agree on next to nothing these days.  All of this regional stuff is just so yesterday.  Surely the political class has got that memo by now I would think, unless they're totally obtuse.

Some of them. Whether Pennsylvania's has... I don't know. The two legislative parties still are aligned at an odd angle compared to Presidential or even Congressional voting patterns, for one thing.

Well they don't have to to still elect Republicans from those areas. But the Democrats would be letting lots of votes go to waste by just preserving the counties as is.

Well, some areas have crazy rivalities.

Suppose than a district has Area 1 and Area 2, with a big rivality.
Party A runs a candidate from Area 1. Party B is campaiging hard on "Party A candidate is from Area 1, he hates you".

A bit exagerated, but I already saw people not voting for someone because he was from the bad part of the district.

I think it goes back to the war.

Much like the difficult relationship between Yorkshire and Lancashire then.

I would eliminate the triple split of Butler, and the quadruple split of Chester.

and also the cases where two districts split multiple counties:

Butler-Armstrong, Cumberland-York, Centre-Mifflin

The extra splits of Chester, Delaware, and Philadelphia are being caused by keeping Bucks whole.

If you force cyan and salmon out of Delaware and Chester, then bring the blue Philadelphia district further out into Delaware, while extending the Philadelphia districts out to the Montgomery County line.   You can then pull the Bucks district into north Philadelphia.  The outer part of Bucks can then be added to the cyan or salmon district.  This would give you a 3-way split of Philadelphia, and 2-way for Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester.

Boundary in Beaver is the Ohio River. Obviously you could put some piece of Warren or Venango in instead, but I don't see the point.Easily possible. Just gonna look damn ugly.No. Just no. That was done for two very good reasons. The northernmost township of York is a fast growing suburb of Harrisburg, and the Cumberland-Franklin line splits Shippensburg in two. Easily possible and not affecting many people. Just gonna look damn ugly.

Not the ones in Delaware - one keeps very heavily Black areas just outside the town limits (and bordering just as Black areas of Philly) in with the Philly Black seat, and the other is caused by following the instruction to move the Main Line towns in with Lower MontCo (and by the desire to split no towns except Philly and Upper Darby.) They could theoretically be removed without much change elsewhere. And cyan could also be gotten out of Chester without serious remap - it just forces a less sensible split of MontCo (and/or a split town there). It's still the most reasonable one of your suggestions. :P
You even missed one more double county split - Lycoming/Clinton. Of course, that too was done for a reason.
One thing I think probably would improve the map is exchange Wyoming County for part of Wayne.

The DelCo/ChesterCo/MontCo boundaries aren't very meaningful.  For instance, I think Lancaster Ave. (Rt 30) - the Main St. of the Main Line - crosses between MontCo and DelCo a couple of times. I'd say keeping the Main Line, or at least the lower parts of it from Radnor inwards, together is more significant than (not) breaching those county boundaries.  

Your claim is that your proposal is "fair".  One characteristic of fairness is that you apply rules consistently and uniformly.  It would appear that one of your rules is to not split counties, except where it is necessary for population balance.

Beaver County is not being split because the Ohio River goes down the middle of it (if it were a significant barrier, the county itself would be split).  Erie County is way short of a district and you would have to go way east in thinly populated northwestern Pennsylvania.  So instead you come south into the Beaver Valley, which becomes a major population center in itself.  If you needed some more population, you wouldn't have worried about including the whole of Beaver County.  If you come across the Ohio River on the numerous bridges, you can eliminate the 3-way split of Butler County.  Since the areas in Butler County are along the interstate, they are quite likely to be Pittsburgh suburbs and not associate with Erie or the Beaver Valley at all.


Not really.  You use the northern boundary of Westmoreland further east, and it doesn't look ugly.  It looks like a stream boundary.   You could include all of Armstrong in the Northern district, and extend the Pittsburgh suburban district further out into Butler County.


Almost all of the population in Shippensburg is in Cumberland County, so you have come across the county line to put the town in a district dominated by York County.  I'd guess that the university gets a relatively large part of its student body from Harrisburg.

I suspect that Newberry has had more population growth than Fairview as both lie along the interstate south of Harrisburg.  So you have split the high growth areas.

That is saying that Centre County has an odd eastern extension where Clinton County includes areas along the West Branch of the Susquehanna.   What if you included all of Clearfield in the northern district, put all of Centre in the brown district and pushed the blue district a bit more north?

To deny effective representation to voters in the northern parts of the two counties?

The others are quite reasonable.  This one is just eminently so.

I didn't object to the split of Delaware and Chester counties, just the three and four way splits.  It is the Montco seat lapping into those counties that is the extraneous district.   I was suggesting extending the Philadelphia district further into Delaware county.  Can you get to the city of Chester?

The Bucks plus a bit of Philadelphia district makes sense in isolation.  I have seen similar situations where a district would have almost an ideal population, but it ends up forcing all kinds of other compromises.

A Berks plus outer Montco and Bucks would make a lot of sense.

So you would have:

York 435, Chester 259

Chester 240, Delaware 454

Delaware 106, Philadelphia 588

Philadelphia 694

Philadelphia 244, Bucks 449

Bucks 176, Berks 411, Montgomery 106

Montgomery 694

So you keep the two Philadelphia seats; 3 suburban districts, one each for Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware-Chester; and two exurban districts which are dominated by an smaller city, York and Reading (3 exurban if you include the Lehigh Valley). 


The northern district is not going to look pretty no matter what you do, because it doesn't have any cities.  You aren't doing any favors by chopping up lots of counties.


What if you bring the green district into Carbon (or maybe Northampton), pushing the blue district out of Carbon, but further north in Lycoming, and then moving part of Wayne into the northern district.

No, not really. Although it will look a lot like it in those parts of the country that don't have universal township organization.
Nor do I really think "applying rules uniformly" is really a characteristic of fairness - at least, the rules would have to be very very detailed for that to be true. But that's neither here nor there, really. Mostly, these maps try to be based on "community of interest" as far as feasible, and counties, like townships, population density (not splitting smaller population centers if it can be avoided, especially), race, and occasionally even partisan leanings are all determinants of community of interest. Along with theoretically more important "soft" factors like what feels itself to belong together - I say "theoretically" because I frequently don't know enough about the places to get it right. And thus need input. :)

I wouldn't... but I would worry about including just a little sliver south of the river. Which does appear to be a fairly significant boundary, actually. You wouldn't need to go that far east, either... there's actually more population than I really think ideal just outside the four West PA districts.

Fair points, of course.

No, to not split Lock Haven and to not split it from Williamsport. :-*

Of course you can - the current seat does. There's just no rationale for it beyond partisan gain. You're carving a corridor through "normal" suburbia to get some hardcore dem (and quite Black) enclave purged from the Delaware district. There's plenty of Blacks in Philly itself; unless you're going with the two Black Philly seats scenario.
Apart from cutting through the Main Line, your Philly Metro map would also make it impossible to use the Outer Northwest as one of the shed parts of Philadelphia. And that Berks seat is gonna look quite strange. I'm not saying it's not also a possible alignment, it is. I'm saying it's not probable to come out better than mine. Though, draw it yourself and prove me wrong.

Well, the idea was more the impression that Tunkhannock looks to Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and would thus be a better fit there than Wayne and Pike are... but a threeway exchange of territory with Wayne or parts of Wayne; additional territory in Lycoming; and... not Carbon, but Luzerne... actually does sound a reasonable suggestion, yeah.

Im not sure how much the GOP can gain in metro philly

PA-07, PA-08 should be competitive again no matter what. PA-06 will be too if they dont strengthen Gerlach

They're maxed out.  I think they'll protect Fitzpatrick as much as possible, give Gerlach an ok seat and sacrifice Meehan, but give him a fighting chance.  That's what I'd do if I were the GOP.  The districts as is I could see all 3 GOP held seats eventually flipping/flipping back.  And talk of putting Dem areas in Pitts' district I'd say go right ahead!  If the GOP wants to get aggressive like that I'd say make a run at Pitts in a more favorable Dem climate!  PA 16 almost went for Obama and is rapidly trending D probably more than any other district in the state.  My prediction is the GOP will attempt to salvage Meehan, but lose not only him but Pitts as well sometime in the 2010s similar to PA 8/13 this past decade!

They aren't sacrificing Meehan by any means. It will surely be a competitive seat but I don't know of any top tier candidates yet. Fitz is looking like he'll get luck in the 8th, too, with Murphy running for Attorney General instead of going for a rematch. Gerlach will benefit the most from all of this.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but in news from the other end of the state, rumor is that Critz might be thrown into Shuster's district. I believe Critz's own spokesman said it would be "political suicide" if Critz decided to challenge Shuster. I agree.

Thanks for just barely putting me into the Bucks county district! :)  Just a precinct over and I'd be out (though that's the way it is now anyway).

Very interesting and fair division of Northeast Philly. The Far Northeast (my area) would best fit in a Bucks district. The Lower Northeast district (green) would be good except for the Montco part. Talk about a culture shock going from one end of the district to another. The red area of the Northeast in the Montco district is fair, too, since Schwartz will have to keep at least some of this area.

Not exactly as the alternative would be to just retire.

Well, it isn't a done deal that he'll be in Shuster's district but if he was, it might not be crazy to just walk away. He won't win in Shuster's district.

Here's some advice to the Republican's in the Pennsylvania state legislature: don't be greedy!  Your greediness cost you this past decade and you just gained back from the greediness in this wave election.  Shore up your gains and don't try to go after ANY more democrat seats.

I think the GOP will have problems as drawn.  They may have to toss Fitz, Gerlach, or Meehan to shore 2 of them up and throw one under the bus.

Me thinks the GOP will be greedy enough to ensure Democratic Congressional seats will cover every square inch east of the Susquehanna River in a reverse wave election.  Hey, it could happen.  The R strength in all districts isn't that strong as PA-5/9.

And they aren't doing that.


Flyers, you have no reason to think this. You haven't even heard credible redistricting rumors so you're just pulling stuff out of thin air.

As someone who has actually heard real rumors, the plans seem to be very fair and, if anything, somewhat generous to Dems.

And no, you aren't covering every square inch east of the Susquehanna. Are you out of your mind? Even in a reverse wave, you wouldn't possibly get every Republican seat. You aren't getting Platts' seat. You likely wouldn't even get Marino's seat in a reverse wave. You only won it in 2006 because Sherwood was scandal-plagued in the worst possible wave.

http://www.politicspa.com/redistricting-watch-brady-accused-of-complicity-with-gop/27137/


Brady is going to deliver votes in exchange for drawing his own district. Naturally its to ensure that the Philadelphia blacks are mostly in Fattah's district.

Haha, I wish this wasn't posted. I purposely avoided posting it because the legislative district in question is mine and I work for one of the people mentioned.

Everyone is obsessed with redistricting now so there are tons of rumors out there. Just to clear things up: Brady isn't going to deliver votes for the candidate in question if you're referring to the Council election. The candidate in question is going to win. Believe me.  ;) Brady already knows that. There isn't a deal on that end. The real story here is this idea that Brady will see to it that a joke Democratic candidate will go up in the Special so the GOP keeps the seat and, in turn, the Republican members of the legislature draw him a favorable district.

Brady is getting a lot of push back on this on his side so I don't know how likely it is to happen. If such a deal with the state legislative leaders goes through, Brady becomes my Congressman.

The natural expansion of Brady's district is into the Dem parts of Delaware County and Philadelphia east of Broad Street. Do you think he'll want anything different, like being run into Lower Merion/Montco?

He wants Northeast Philadelphia. His plan is to snake up along the Delaware River to get areas like mine. He wouldn't want Lower Merion/Montco because...eh...they aren't exactly Bob Brady type Democrats.  ;)  At least up here he'd have working class/union voters.

The district would look a lot like a telephone receiver - the bottom portion would have South Philly then a thin stretch of land would hug the river then the district would expand west again once it hit the Northeast.

Somebody get me out of Chaka freakin' Fattah's district -____-

...

You live in the Philly area?

Byron Dorgan adopted Chaka Fattah?

Rumors that Republican bits of North Allegheny will go into Tim Murphy's district, making a combined PA-4/PA-12 easier for Altmire to win.

http://www.politicspa.com/redistricting-watch-pittsburgh’s-north-hills-may-not-end-up-in-the-4th-district/27501/

I wonder if his district is then going to end up even uglier than the current PA-12, going from the Ohio border to Johnstown and then back under PA-18 to the SW corner of the state.

That's strange. Murphy doesn't need those areas but we know how incumbents get around this time of the decade...

This is one state where I'm really interested in what the maps are going to look like eventually. When about can we expect maps?

The Pubs just don't seem to buy my idea that having a moderate Dem represent a GOP leaning (not but rock solid GOP) CD, is actually quite a useful exercise do they?  :(  I mean, if the Dem gets too far out of the zone, then he can be replaced by a Pubbie, so the dude is leashed. The alternative is to have an unleashed Dem, by over-Pubbieing CD's of GOP incumbents. Dumb, dumb.

Never forget that politicians are usually terrible judges of this sort of thing.

We're running later that usual. I'm guessing we'll see something by the middle of October. Then we get the fun Supreme Court challenges! I'm just most concerned with our City Council redistricting (I might be thrown into a different district, which I really don't want) so I haven't been following this as closely.

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CD-1 Black VAP%- 44.6%, White VAP%-43.3% Obama-80.2-19.2
CD-2 Black VAP%- 45.3%, White VAP%- 28.9%, Hispanic VAP-18.3% Obama 86.3-13.2
CD-3 Obama 57.4-41.3
CD-4 Obama 57.4-41.3
CD-5 Mccain 59.6-39.1
CD-6 Mccain 50.8-48
CD-7 Obama 59.7-40.3
CD-8 Obama 60.1-39.1
CD-9 Mccain 61.2-37.7
CD-10 Mccain 57.4-41.3
CD-11 Obama 60.7-38.3
CD-12 Mccain 60.9-37.9
CD-13 Obama 59.3-39.6
CD-14 Obama 59.7-39.3
CD-15 Obama 60.5-38.3
CD-16 Obama 53.4-45.4
CD-17 Mccain 60.5-38.5
CD-18 Mccain 57.8-41.1

It's a ruthless Dem gerrymander just in case it's not clear. Though it's not good enough for Torie, apparently. :P

Close up of Philly.
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13 Dem CD's, all at least 58% Obama. I win sbane.  :P

And PA-16 still goes to Reading - Reading is just appended to a different landscape. :)   And isn't PA-13 nice and compact?  LOL. Oh, PA-03 is "only" 56.6% Obama. My bad. It could potentially be shoved up about half a point by thinning out the snakes, and elongated the one jutting towards Pittsburg to pick up a few precincts there, but that is about it. PA-11 is 59.1% Obama, so it could give up half a point. Of course, in an uber GOP wave, the Dems would lose most everything, but PA-01 and PA-02. They are the only two CD over 60% Obama (PA-01 is 62.2% Obama), with PA-02 still majority black VAP, so in a GOP tsunami, PA-02 will hold no matter what. :P

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So there is only one Black seat? With one black seat, I could do that too. :P

You got that killer instinct though. I mean Philly to rural areas north of Allentown lol. And your 1st almost looks discontinuous.

Torie, your light green Bucks county district that snakes from lower Bucks to upper Bucks is certainly interesting.  :P

Which number is the light blue one that makes up most of Bucks county then weaves its way through Northeast Philly into North Philly? What are the Obama-McCain numbers, too? Surely an Obama district since you picked up North Philly. That district, along with the other Bucks district, would certainly be one of the more polarized districts in the state (and the country) considering the demographics.

Phil, the numbers have not changed for the light blue (cyan), and lime green CD's, PA-08 and PA-15 respectively. The population is off a tad for PA-08 (and PA-10), but for this fun little exercise it was just too much work to fix it, since it would require minor shifts in 4 CD's to get it done. Do you like the lines in my PA-03 CD? :P

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I didn't know how you were numbering them. Those numbers are brutal.

Which one is PA 3 on your map?

The Erie seat. I put up the population legend, so you can tell the numbers from the color code (except that I have two cyan CD's - Erie is the second one in addition to PA-08). The lines of PA-03 are my piece de resistance. It "should" probably jut some more into Pittsburg to up its Obama percentage a bit, while thinning the snake out to beautiful downtown Johnstown. It is still within reach of the Pubbies (barely), and we can't have that!  :P

Why are you doing such ridiculous Democratic gerrymanders?  :(

It was because of a little bet that I made with Sbane, that his Dem gerry was for pussies. Mine is a man chop; his is for girly men. :)

Who controlled PA's redistricting in 2000? Did either party have a trifecta or was it divided?

The Pubs controlled it. They didn't do a very good job. They screwed up PA-13 and PA-17 - for starters.

Yes, the gerrymandering by the then Majority leader/former Speaker (2003-2007)/now former State Representative on his way to prison really backfired.

Speaking of the guy above, he drew himself a district that was a plurality Republican after winning re-election in 2000 by only 80-something votes and it's up for debate as to whether or not he really won. In 2002, he won re-election with 82% after one of the most interesting state legislative gerrymanders in the state. In 2010, however, with his legal troubles catching up with him, he became the only incumbent Republican to be defeated in Pennsylvania. He lost 54% to 46%.

He's a former Representative from Philly and I'll just say this as mildly as possible: I'm not a fan.  ;)

Vieth v Jubelirer  (http://supreme.justia.com/us/541/02-1580/case.html) was a redistricting case from Pennsylvania, in which 4 justices said that political gerrymandering was not justiciable because there was no standard that could be applied; Justice Kennedy said that it didn't apply to that particular case, but there must somehow somewhere be a case where it applies; and 4 justices said that it might apply.

An earlier plan had been found by a lower court to be a political gerrymander because in their haste to add strange fingers, the legislature had drawn slightly unequal districts (a bizarre conclusion that have a handful difference would reveal a partisan motive).  The legislature passed a remedial plan shifting a few voters, and this was upheld.

Joe Pitts is really stinking up PA Redistricting. He has to give up the Chester County portion of his district but is crying about it.

He lives there.

Our legislative district maps are coming out today at noon if anyone cares.  :)

I'm not exactly thrilled since I already know how my area of the city is going to be drawn. The seat I'm currently in is being eliminated and I don't like the replacement.  :(

Looks like the GOP got its legislative maps. Dem districts in Western PA relocated to Republican Philadelphia suburbs.

And my current district (represented by my Republican boss who is running for another office, by the way) is gone. Oh well. A third of the district (including the area where I live) will be absorbed by a more Democratic district but at least its the Republican area of the current district. The new district will be somewhat competitive.

My friend is at the hearing and just sent me the map. I didn't think the districts could possibly get more gerrymandered than they were last time but they did.

Do we have maps out?

They haven't been uploaded to the website yet. I was texted a picture of just the Northeast Philly portion. I doubt you guys are interested in that.  :P

Yep.  I can see why you're not happy.  John Taylor will be the only GOP Rep in Philly and even he's vulnerable.  Didn't crack 60% last time.  And I don't think his district will be any more Pubbie in the future.  I guess the Dems wanted to protect McGeehan.  I would have drawn Taylor's seat up the river if I were the GOP. 

Honestly, my disgust is more because of the division of neighborhoods. My Ward, for example, has three State Representatives now. There's no need for that. Mark Cohen takes parts of my Ward. Come on. The worst part is that Cohen and Sabatina only take a few divisions so it isn't like they came in to take a lot of voters. There's no reason for them to take those random divisions. It confuses neighbors.

As for the Philly Republicans, Murt has more of Philly now. He's technically a Philly State Representative already; this only strengthens it. Of course, the district is still overwhelmingly Montco. Taylor is certainly vulnerable because of the rapidly changing demographics of most of the district.

The GOP's logic was to give up on Philly and that's just stupid. They got seats in more conservative areas but not competing here is very unwise. It hurts us in so many other ways. They weren't even looking out for Taylor. They know that seat will be gone whenever he decides to go. Hell, he could even lose.

As for the Dems, they weren't looking to protect McGeehan any more than they were looking to protect any of their other guys. Look at where McGeehan and Cohen went. Look at the neighborhoods. I think you can figure out why they wanted to go there and the GOP leadership gave it to them because Philly isn't a priority to them.

I won't bet against McGeehan but he has to be careful. 40% of the district is new for him and he has some pretty Republican areas now around me. This won't be as safe as his current district from a partisan standpoint but it's safer for him for other reasons...

Word from an inside source is that I'm staying in PA 13! I never thought I'd see the day when I'd celebrate that but when you consider the most likely alternatives...

Also, none of Northeast Philly will be in PA 8 this time.

Will it just be Bucks?  I also doubt the Montco strip will be around as well.  My guess is they'll take Bryn Athyn which is very conservative if they have to take something from Montco.  I also thought the GOP would try a strip roughly around Pine Road to include Fox Chase in PA 8. 

No word on whether it will just be Bucks but I'd be willing to bet that that's the case. The Montco strip almost definitely won't be there since that area is worse for Fitz/the GOP than the Northeast.

That Fox Chase proposal would be smart but I think they'd rather avoid Philly all together. I wish that wasn't the case but it is what it is.

You definitely can't fit all of PA-08 in just Bucks. If you exclude anywhere in Philly and Montco you only can go into the Lehigh Valley which I don't think Dent would like. But you could use a different part of Montco like this:

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I don't know the real inside politics of the matter but Dent might not have a choice. His seat isn't safe but he's certainly safer than Fitz so they might take from Dent to even it out. Dent could always move further west to take some more conservative areas anyway.

That being said, your map is more likely. Those areas of Montco are rural, very Republican friendly and would fit a Bucks county district well.

I still don't understand this fixation of keeping Bucks all in one CD. Whatever.

It's best for Fitzpatrick. He won Bucks even in 2006.

OK, but it is just so convenient to put some of the heavily Dem lower Bucks precincts into PA-13.

Torie, I don't say this with hostility but I still don't understand why you can't grasp that satisfying certain political egos is standard. You're not naive. You have to know that there are certain insiders that have to be satisfied. And, for the record, I'm not defending it but I at least understand that it's done. It isn't just about what will make the district the safest bet for the GOP. If that was the case, yes, your analysis would be correct but it isn't just about that.

And one insider quirk that you have to keep in mind is their disliking for mixing districts with other counties. I know that many Montco politicos despise having districts overlap with Philly and it isn't just because the Philly areas are more Democratic.

Well, in general, the maps drawn this year, have not been driven by individual egos that much. But you know the local culture and I don't. If Bucks is split however, I will avoid tweaking you about it. Yes I will. When is the f'ing CD map going to come out, so that we can find out?  :)

...not sure how you can say that. Are you aware of the PA redistricting?

 
Not sure but I guess it will be out very soon since I got pretty confident word last night about where I'll be and how PA 8 will look.

I had the same thoughts as Torie on this in a conversation with someone in the past.  Yeah, if the GOP wanted to pack the Dems and GOP into 2 strong districts between PA 8 and 13, they'd put NE Philly/Lower Bucks in a district along with some of the more liberal areas of eastern Montco in a seat and the more exurban areas into a safe GOP seat.  Some people outside of here don't know that egos won't let that happen.  I for one love the fact that you have a mildly competitive Dem leaning seat in PA 13 and a swing seat in PA 8.  I still think even with the BRTD map of PA 8, you could have a competitive seat albeit a GOP leaning seat. 

Getting to one of Phil's points...a big player (and pretty ancient too) in Bucks Republican Politics, Harry Fawkes lives in some of the most Democratic territory of Bucks...frankly I'm surprised he hasn't moved North by now...but I guess olds get so attached to home.

Additionally, Fitzpatrick does relatively well in Lower Bucks (he's from there)...sure he won't carry most areas (but its not the end of the world there), and I doubt the GOP can really cleave enough of Lower Bucks (while leaving Fitz in 8  )...unless they use your map!

This is all good for the GOP at the state level, but similar adjustments to the Congressional map could benefit Dems.

Is John Taylor's district the only McCain district in Philly or DelCo?

Also, Torie, can you post our octopus Pittsburgh map, with the city labels?

The GOP has another reason to want to keep Bucks together: Fitzpatrick has enough of a personal vote to thereotically neutralize Lower Bucks, if it was put into PA-13 it'd also be neutralized yes, but this would free some other territory in PA-13 that the GOP would probably prefer going there. PA-13 alone isn't enough to take in all the Democratic parts of Montco so they'd get shed elsewhere.

And that makes me wonder why they'd want to remove the Philly portion of PA-08, it only voted for Obama by a point (50-49) and really isn't the type of area you'd want to put into a Dem pack seat. Similarly moving into the Lehigh Valley means taking away some of the more conservative parts of PA-15, not sure what they're planning but it looks like another potential dummymander if all of this is true. The GOP clearly didn't know what they were doing in some areas in 2002 as evidenced by the fact that Montco sliver was put into PA-08 at all (seriously, what the hell is the point of that?)

John Taylor's district is heavily Democratic, pro-union, and very urban looking albeit has some heavily ethnic white areas such as Port Richmond and Bridesburg which are his base.  He won in 1984 on Reagan's coattails and has established himself quite well despite a GOP Pres candidate not winning there since 1984.  The district (PA-177) has a lot of Polish Catholics that liked Reagan's tough stances on Communism despite being throughly Democratic and unionized.  He also defeated a weak Dem incumbent with alcohol problems that year along with the coattails.  PA 177 voted in the low 60s for Obama IIRC and has a few minority neighborhoods.  Up until recently, Taylor was seen as untouchable.  Similar to Dan Kapanke in Wisconsin- he's personally popular, but if he made a vote like that, he'd be toast.

Pretty spot on. What Flyers didn't really touch on: the rapidly changing demographics of the district. It's very Hispanic now and these new residents have no connection to Taylor. That's what is giving Taylor trouble.

And Obama definitely hit 60% in the district despite losing many white ethnic precincts in Bridesburg, Fishtown and Port Richmond.

Bingo.

'Just so we have a map posted:

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New reports that the GOP is gunning for Schwartz again by putting her in a heavily black district and putting Brady in a (mostly) white district.

http://www.politicspa.com/redistricting-watch-schwartz-v-fattah/29153/

Makes sense as Schwartz is a dynamite fundraiser and has some statewide appeal.

Yes, but as the article says, the other CD will be Dem, and Schwartz will probably just move there. There need to be 3, not 2, Dem sink CD's in the Philly area, if all the Pubbie incumbents are to be made reasonably safe, and even then it is a close call. So they are just toying with her by excising  heavily Jewish Abbington from her CD and dumping it into the black Fatah CD is all. Kind of spiteful really.

I think Schwartz will be representing Conshohocken, Lower Merion, and possibly King of Prussia when all is said and done to protect Gerlach and Meehan.  Lumping her with Fattah- part of me says bring it on!  All 3 GOP reps in the Philly area will now have tougher races.

The thought process is likely that putting Schwartz in a 40% black district running from Lower Merion to Darby/Chester will lead to her being exposed to a primary.

That would make Schwartz as doomed as Steve Cohen.

Excellent analysis BRTD, particularly if Gerlach is not going to hang around in the House for another decade. The only thing is that only by appending to PA-08 the most GOP parts of Montco, or some of that and about just 5 or 6 selected precincts in Philly, can a PA-08 which takes in all of Bucks be moved to an even PVI.  Just doing Philly as is will move PA-08 to about a +1% Dem PVI.

The existing Montco sliver in PA-08 is heavily Dem, and was put there, to try to make PA-13 within reach of the Pubbies. Yes, it was a dummymander.

Here's an enlightening article for someone (i.e. myself) who knew next to nothing about Pennsylvanian politics: can anybody improve on his efforts?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/03/1032742/-Drawing-Pennsylvania-Going-After-Schwartz-in-SEPA?via=blog_2

She has statewide ambition, not real statewide appeal.

Anyway, this would be funny to watch but it isn't going to happen.


The commentary looks good but I don't understand how his rendition of the 1st isn't way overpopulated. I guess the numbers on the right don't lie though. Brady would die for that district. I don't think he, even in his wildest dreams, expects all of Northeast Philly.

As for PA 8, I think Torie should read the author's comments...

"In Pennsylvania redistricting, Bucks County is never, ever split. People from Bucks have a shared identity, and it seems like they hate the idea of being split."

;)

I have already read it Phil. :)

I'm looking at these maps and thinking.. Sure, go after Schwartz.  Thing is, the rest of SEPA Republicans would still be vulnerable in a Dem wave.  Yeah... I've heard about the personal popularity of Fitzpatrick and Meehan blah blah blah.  But people said that about Fitz and Weldon in 2006 (even with his scandal).  I think Weldon would have lose even without the scandal.  Simple fact, the districts are moving D.  In this scenario, Brady's district is weakened considerably on paper, but anyone who knows local politics can figure with NE Philly firmly in his district, he'll have no problems and gets even more protection in the primaries with less likelihood of an African American or Hispanic challenger.  And I've said it before- PA 16 (or 18 in the article) has rapidly changing Dem areas.  Pitts is a cook and if anything I'd be looking to protect him and take him out of Reading if I were the GOP.

What's wrong with cooks?

Crook, perhaps?

I meant he's a RW whackjob in a now marginal GOP district.

Whether, or not, he is "RW," and whether, or not, he is a "whackjob" is completely independent of whether, or not, he is a "cook" or a "crook."  There are "crooks" that are "RW," crooks that are "moderates" and crooks that are "LW." Implying that politicians are corrupt merely because they disagree with your politics is totally unacceptable.

I think he intended to write 'cock', actually.

He probably wanted to say "kook" for crazy.

Cock also would work for those militantly anti whoever we are discussing and with no problems using such language.

There are those who do think that everyone that disagrees with them is a "crook". I have seen various liberals do so with conservatives on here.

Cook might be a Freudian slip, perhaps he was extremely hungry when he made the post. :P


If they are going to mess with Schwartz, they should do so without harming the Republican held districts. Since there isn't much that realistically can be done to take her out, such a cautious approach should be followed. 

I suppose we can't entirely rule out the possibility that he intended to speak of country matters.

I remember eating at a Japanese steakhouse in Huntsville, Alabama, where the chef cooks at your table, and is supposed to put on a show juggling cleavers and knives, and whacking the meat with elan.   The dinner was fine, but as we were leaving, the manager profusely apologized, explaining that the chef had just been promoted from the branch in Anniston, and wasn't ready for the move up.

So if you remove this cook from Reading, where does he go?  Pottsville?

Ugh, I'm represented by that ass Pitts. He's basically a single-issue anti-woman Congressman.

In general, "He's basically a single-issue ..issue candidate," are code words for, "He disagrees with me on some issue, and he takes that position more seriously than I would like."

Does that mean the Congressional map is out?

No, but I have him now and I'll probably have him in the map since he refuses to give up Lancaster County.

What leverage does he have (aside from seniority perks, I guess) over the rest of the Pennsylvanian Republican party to keep it?

BTW, are there any other counties/cities in Pennsylvania that simply won't accept being divided into separate congressional districts?  For instance, would there be a strong backlash against dividing Harrisburg or Reading?

Reading is already divided.

Yup, Reading was cut into three or so pieces in 2000. Since they might create part of a D-leaning district if they were made whole, they're cut up and only serve to make Republican districts slightly less Republican.

We really need a nonpartisan redistricting commission a la Arizona or Florida.

AZ isn't looking so nonpartisan this year. :(

Yes, but AZ is a hell of a lot of fun this year isn't it? 

The legislature does the redistricting in Florida.  This is so that they can get sued and have the Florida Supreme Court draw it.

I lost the map before I could post it (and I evidently forgot to fill in a few tiny precincts that I failed to spot the first time I filled in the districts), but it was looking pretty good for Democrats without being a gross gerrymander.

I think it was something like this:

1st: Erie, western Crawford, Mercer, and most of Lawrence. Beaver was either in this one or in:
2nd: Washington, Greene, Fayette, a little of Westmoreland, and the non-Pittsburgh parts of Allegheny
3rd: Eastern Crawford, Venango, Butler, Armstrong, Elk, Clarion, Forest, Jefferson, Cameron, Warren, McKean
4th: Pittsburgh (central Allegheny county)
5th: A few Allegheny suburbs, Westmoreland, Indiana, Cambria, Somerset, parts of Blair
6th: Lackawanna, Luzerne, Carbon, part of Monroe
7th: Potter, Clinton, most of Centre, Tioga, Lycoming, Sullivan, Bradford, Susquehanna, Wyoming, Wayne, Pike, part of Monroe
8th: Part of Blair, part of Centre, Clearfield, Bedford, Fulton, Franklin, Huntingdon, Union, Snyder, Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, western Cumberland
9th: Eastern Cumberland, Dauphin, Northern York
10th: Adams, Southern York, Southern Lancaster, Southern Chester
11th: Lebanon, northern Lancaster, northern Chester
12th: Eastern Chester, northern Delaware, southeast Montgomery (KOP)
13th: Southern Delaware and the entire coast of Philadelphia along the Delaware
14th: Central Philadelphia (majority black, over 90% Obama)
15th: Bucks, parts of NE Philly, parts of SE Montgomery
16th: Northumberland, Montour, Columbia, most of Berks, Schuylkill
17th: Lehigh, Northampton, parts of Berks, possibly a sliver of Montgomery
18th: South-central Montgomery, parts of northern Philadelphia

Rumors of a leaked map showing Holden getting Scranton but not Wilkes-Barre (!)

http://citizensvoice.com/news/reapportionment-effort-favors-barletta-marino-1.1234491

Seems they will indeed not get too greedy in the southwest, either.

The counties they are giving to Barletta indicate how much to the west Shuster's district is shifting.

Hardly surprising what they did with the Holden district. It is the only way to keep all the Pubbie incumbents reasonably secure. Wilkes-Barre is far less toxic than Scranton to a Pubbie. It can rather easily be neutralized. My map does not put WB in Holden's CD either. His CD had more pressing Dem nodes to suck up. 

I wonder how badly a Harrisburg-Scranton 17th will screw us when Holden leaves. It won't be the almost guaranteed pickup it was looking to be.

Holden's CD if drawn that way will be safe Dem by design, and he will need to tack left or run the risk of being primaried.  It would be a pity if the Pubs didn't chop Schuylkill.  It has some prime GOP territory in it outside the Dem zone Holden lives in. It just begs to be chopped.

It's just the kind of thing redistricters shy away from for no really good reason unless there's no alternative, somehow.

True, but the partisan numbers are tight up there in NE PA. Pubs need to be imported in from the west as it were, to get out of the danger zone.

I doubt Holden would be toppled in a primary. It would have to be a very liberal district for some activist/non-elected official to topple him since I don't know of any prominent elected official that would want to take him on. He's very personally popular.

Hmmm I deleted my post so I could write up a more detailed one and now Phil's post looks weird. :P Anyway I commented that if the seat is made too safe Holden could be primaried, though Phil is probably correct. So this is roughly what these seats described might look like:

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The 17th is around 55% Obama and 53% Dem average, the 11th is 52.6 McCain to 46.1% Obama and about a point more Republican in the average. Yeah Holden probably would be fine, a more liberal Democrat could certainly be elected if he retired though.

The goal it seems to ensure very liberal primary electorates so nutters like Murphy and Trivedi get nominated.

LOL there's a town in Lycoming County called "Loyalsockville". That has a lot of possible interpretations in relation to this forum. :P

Try Lancaster County for numerous sexual innuendos for town names.

I've pointed that out once before on here. :)

It is a corruption of Lawi-sahquick which means "middle creek", the township was named after the creek and the town (-ville) after the township.

If the 5th district loses Lycoming and Tioga to the 10th, what does that mean? Splitting Erie County and putting some Democrats from the 3rd into the 5th.

http://www.goerie.com/article/20111120/NEWS02/311209955/Part-of-Erie-County-expected-to-be-carved-out-of-3rd-Congressional-District

Presumably this helps the 3rd slide south and soak up some territory released by the merger of 4th and 12th. Perhaps even some Democratic territory in Beaver County, and that's why they have to split Erie? What else could it be?

Thank you Mrs Earll!

NePa Fajita!

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That's doesn't look like it works out with keeping Lancaster and York Counties whole and separate. (Not that that should be a high priority, IMO, but it does seem to be one).

Also, WTF.

Well she represents an >60% Obama district, so she has to walk a fine line...

Earll is popular. She wouldn't get the boot if she didn't put up an objection to this plan. Plus, there's word that she's retiring anyway.

Oh well then that seat is gone.

Oh darn. I guess we'll just have to settle for a 29-21 majority!

By the way, don't comment unless you understand the district, the players, the candidates/field team for each side, etc. It doesn't all boil down to "Oh, that area went for Obama in a landslide? Ok, the Dems pick that one up."

Ah, they did split Schuylkill County. Good job boys. :) PA-10 seems short 90,000 folks, nowhere to be found, since other than in Cumberland, the perimeter of the 3 CD's is just county lines (maybe PA-10 goes farther west and the map is just in error on that), but here are the partisan data.

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What's so terrible with a compact map which more accurately represents counties and regions, and doesn't split major cities in between large GOP strongholds?

Oh yeah, that would show off PA's Democratic lean. Let's not be fair.

If you split Erie, wouldn't that result in one district heading east to the Poconos and the other south to Pittsburgh?

I suspect that the map is just a reporter's sketch based on the snippets that have leaked out; I wouldn't treat it as gospel in all of its details.  For instance, if there are pieces of Schuylkill that you break off, aren't the southeast and southwest corners the most lucrative from the GOP point of view? 

You'd also want to put Clinton County in with Marino to soak up some blue dogs in Lock Haven, assuming Thompson does go out to Erie and you don't split up his home county in the process. 

Schuylkill is mostly lucrative for the GOP except for the north central portion.

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The county is nicely suited for a trichop, which is exactly what I did in my map. Heck, it could even be a quad chop, as neighboring CD's bite off Pubbie portions from all directions, leaving Holden in his little Dem lair all by himself. :)

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If I assume that whole counties are correct, but splits are inaccurate in the press sketch, then here's how I make the districts whole:

Take enough of Cumberland into 11 to bring the three districts up to the correct total (all but the SE corner).

Put more of Monroe and a lot more of Northumberland into 10.

Put the north central part of Schuylkill into 17 and all or almost all of Carbon in 17, too.

I get three districts with 10 @ 54.7% McCain, 11 @ 52.8% McCain, 17 @ 56.1% Obama.

Like this?  :P

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That's a nice, compact Southeast map, Torie. Thanks for keeping me in the 13th! See that little dot where the 1st and the 8th meet the 13th? That's me (for the time being, at least).  :)

You live on the Bucks County border now Phil?  I know your precinct (maybe previous precinct now), remember?  :)

You know all this gerrymandering business does not get the GOP a lot surprisingly. In this meticulously non partisan map, the GOP will drop PA-07 and PA-11 (probably), but Dent will easily hold PA-15 with a Dem PVI of about 2.5%, Holden's PA-17 CD has a GOP PVI of about 4%, so that is a pickup someday probably, and Atmire's PA-04 goes up about 30 basis points in its GOP PVI.  Gerlach in PA-06 has a Dem PVI of about 3%, which he would hold. PA-08 is dead even in its PVI.

Some parts of your map are not that clever, Torie. There's no excuse but gerrymandering for putting Cheltenham in PA-02, for example, as to put more of Philly in PA-02, more of NE Philly in PA-01 and Cheltenham in PA-13 (1) increases the black % in PA-02 (2) avoids an unnecessary county split and (3) looks visually neater.

Yes, but that is the existing line, and Cheltenham is heavily black, and I think a court would leave it as is. If it is a gerrymander, it serves no partisan purpose whatsoever, so it would be an odd one. PA-02 is 58.5% black VAP by the way, which is plenty.  Your suggestion would actually reduce its black percentage in all probability. Darby and Tinicum are in PA-07.  PA-01 has none of Delaware County now except for the airport precinct. The rest of it is entirely in the city of Philly.

Now? I've always been on the border. My street is the last in the city. I look out at Bucks county from my front step.


I know. If anything, it has been proven that it backfires.

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Here's my fair map. I was going for two black districts in Philly, unlike in Torie's map. The 8th picks up northeast Philly instead of upper Montgomery like Torie did. Putting NE Philly with lower Bucks makes sense to me. And putting upper Montco with Chester does as well, as I did in the 6th. The 17th picks up the Harrisburg area mostly and Holden's part of Schuykill.

Here are the Obama numbers for a few districts. Torie, can you post the numbers from your map as well?

8th- 53.7-45.2 Obama
6th- 54.7-44.2 Obama
7th- 59.9-39.2 Obama
15th- 55.7-42.9 Obama
11th- 56.5-42.3 Obama
13th- 61.3-37.9 Obama
17th- 52.9-46 Mccain
14th- 64-35 Obama
4th- 51.4-47.7 Mccain
3rd- 50.3-48.4 Obama

Cheltenham is not "heavily black". It's 57% white and 31% black. There are enormous swaths of heavily black precincts included in PA-01 on your map in SW Philly (talking 70-80%), plus some 40-60% black precincts in central-north Philly (not sure what that area is called). Sure, PA-02 is already majority black, but there's just no excuse at all for the county split but partisan motivations. (You're right on Darby/Tinicum; the airport precinct, which is in Tinicum, confused me--though it should probably be removed from PA-01 as well.)

I think what might confuse people about Cheltenham is that it borders a heavily black area of Philly.

I don't know if this was noticed before, but the seven SE counties are almost exactly the size of 7 CDs. In fact those seven counties exceed 7/18 of the state's population by only 67 persons. That sort of minimal deviation to preserve the county boundaries would be easily defensible in court. That seems like a natural place to start the design of a fair map.

Using the precincts in DRA I divided the area up to minimize county splits. Within a split county no two districts split more than one township or Philly ward between them. The maximum deviation is kept under 100 for any of these districts. CD 1 is now the black majority district with 51.0% BVAP and is entirely within Philly.

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Great map Muon2.

My (2nd and 3rd) maps on page 15 use that.

Very good. I assume that if I want to sustain the deviation greater than 1 in those districts, I need to show that I had followed a dictum to keep as many whole counties or districts within a county as possible. Hence our differences in how to split those seven counties. Other than Philly and Montco which must have splits after creating as many districts entirely within, I only split Chester.

In the meantime I've completed the rest of the state based on the principle of county integrity.

I found that six districts fit almost exactly in the western half of the state, plus Tioga and Bradford, form six districts with a deficit of only 372 persons total. Allegheny and Butler together are within 0.3% of two districts. The other four districts are each within 1.4% of the ideal population if rounded to whole counties. Other than Allegheny, only two counties are divided to bring the districts to with 100 persons. As in the SE no more than one township is divided between any two districts.

The remaining five districts in the east would be within 2.8% of the ideal size if rounded to whole counties. Three of the districts (11, 15, and 17) are within 0.9%. Three counties are divided to bring these five districts to with 100 persons, and only one county subdivision is split between any two districts. CD 10 isn't very pretty, but both CD 11 and 15 are very close to exact with the three counties that make up each district and the western division constrains the rest of CD 10.

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For those interested in the political breakdown - here are the 2008 stats:

CD 1: Obama 89.9% - 9.7%
CD 2: Obama 79.7% - 19.7%
CD 3: Obama 51.0% - 47.6%
CD 4: McCain 54.9% - 44.1%
CD 5: McCain 55.1% - 43.9%
CD 6: Obama 53.5% - 45.3%
CD 7: Obama 61.4% - 37.7%
CD 8: Obama 53.7% - 45.2%
CD 9: McCain 58.6% - 40.3%
CD 10: McCain 55.7% - 43.0%
CD 11: Obama 57.6% - 41.4%
CD 12: McCain 56.2% - 42.5%
CD 13: Obama 58.8% - 40.3%
CD 14: Obama 64.0% - 35.0%
CD 15: Obama 55.2% - 44.8%
CD 16: McCain 52.1% - 47.1%
CD 17: McCain 53.3% - 45.6%
CD 18: McCain 54.0% - 44.7%

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Is it likely a CD-16 like this will be drawn? It seems to make all the other districts much easier to hold for the Republicans, and looks fairly nice. In addition to a Dem pack which goes in and takes in the most Democratic parts of Delaware and Montco, that is what the Republicans need to do to keep their gains. The 16th as I have drawn it is about 50.7-48.3 Mccain  and the average is 57.6-42.4 Republican.

Pitts lives in Chester, so no. It'll probably be just Lancaster and southern Chester.

Inspired by this quote (Map is a work in progress)


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CD10 (pink): 59.5/39.2 McCain (63/37 Rep) - was 54/45 McCain
CD11 (lime): 52.7/46.1 McCain (56/44 Rep) - was 57/42 Obama
CD15 (orange): 55.4/43.3 Obama (54/46 Dem) - was 56/43 Obama
CD17 (blueish): 60.3/38.6 Obama (59.5/40.5 Dem) - was 51/48 McCain

I'm guessing that 5 and 9 will be pushed west and that the 12th district will be moved to the current location of CD19

The pattern looks like a fantasy geological map of some kind.

not to mention it'd be a district where Holden could be primaried fairly easily

Based on the maps of Muon2 and sbane in part, here is another iteration of a non partisan plan which I suspect will be hard to criticize much.  And just as the Philly metro CD's PA 01, 02, 06, 07, 08 and 16 all almost perfectly fit within a cohort of counties, so too, PA-03, 04, 14 and 18 similarly fit in a series of counties on the western side of the state as it happens, in both instances with less than a one precinct error.

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There are still a few issues. I don't like that you split the obvious community of interest between Greene and Fayette Counties. Similarly, Beaver County goes well with Washington County or with points north, but not really with Pittsburgh suburbia or Butler County exurbia. In general, that area needs to be reworked.

Also, splitting up coal country is a bad idea. Schuylkill-Columbia-Montour-Northumberland is a pretty clear community of interest, while connecting Dauphin to Schuylkill is artificial and just a continuation of an old gerrymander (not that the Dems could win any nongerrymandered district containing Dauphin--this is a COI determination, not a partisan one).

Finally, I think the towns peeled off from the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre district should be the really rural ones in NW Luzerne rather than the fairly developed ones in NE Lackawanna, but that's a small quibble. There might also be some unnecessarily split townships in MontCo?

Does Lackawanna-Luzerne-Carbon-Schuylkill equal a district, roughly? Because if so, it's an obvious one to draw, almost as a starting point.

Fairly close-ish: 43k over ideal population

You guys seem now to be going for county splits to give the Dems a few odd extra basis points. The alternative to the way I drew PA-17 are worse. Dauphin has to go somewhere. I thought about it. So, I don't find any of it compelling. The split in Lackawanna by the way involves next to no people. It's irrelevant, and done for compactness reasons. Three precincts are involved. Whatever.  

What will actually come down will make my map seem like a wet dream to you anyway. I think this is the map God would draw. So that is that. Cheers.

The thing is, is that it seems absent a Dem gerry, the natural flow is not all that different from a GOP gerry. Interesting.

Finally, I might add, that this redistricting process is so emotional, so much is at stake, it's so partisan, and based on my experience on this very site, and the comments, objectivity is almost impossible to achieve. There are just too many semi plausible cover stories to doing anything, that one one has a lot of plausible deniability to just being a partisan hack, so one is just so tempted.  Very few have the personal discipline to just say no. Sobering. It has actually influenced me in how I might structure a redistricting mechanism. Finding an objective panel is laughable. There is no such thing. Even here, we seem to mostly revert to matter how hard we try, to partisan games, sometimes disingenuously.

My first version of this map (which I posted part of last night) was lost in an accident. So I recreated it and went statewide. So here's the map titled "vindictive Republican gerrymander"

Statewide:

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PA1 (Brady): 43% White, 34% Black, 12% Hispanic, 8% Asian. Obama 76, McCain 23 (was 90/10 Obama). Dems 77, Reps 23.

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PA2 (Fattah): 61% Black, 18% White, 14% Hispanic. Obama 94, McCain 5.5 (was 88/12 Obama). Dems 92, Reps 8

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PA3 (Kelly): 91% White. Obama 50, McCain 48.5 (was 49/49). Reps 50.2, Dems 49.8

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PA4 (Altmire): 93% White. McCain 56, Obama 43 (was 55/44 McCain). Reps 54, Dems 46

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PA5 (Thompson v. Critz?): 94% White. McCain 53, Obama 45 (was 55/44 McCain). Reps 53, Dems 47

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PA6 (Gerlach): 84% White, 7% Hispanic. Obama 51, McCain 48 (was 58/41 Obama). Reps 53, Dems 47

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PA7 (Meehan): 83% White, 7% Black. Obama 54, McCain 45 (was 56/43 Obama). Dems 50.4, Reps 49.6

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PA8 (Fitzpatrick): 87% White. Obama 53, McCain 46 (was 54/45 Obama). Dems 51, Reps 49

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PA9 (Shuster v. Critz?): 94% White. McCain 61, Obama 38 (was 63/35 McCain). Reps 60, Dems 40

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PA10 (Marino): 94% White. McCain 60, Obama 38 (was 54/45 McCain). Reps 63, Dems 37.

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PA11 (Barletta): 84.5% White, 7% Hispanic, 5% Black. McCain 51, Obama 48 (was 58/41 Obama). Reps 54.5, Dems 45.5

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PA12 (Platts): 87% White, 5% Hispanic. McCain 57, Obama 42 (PA19 was 56/43 McCain). Reps 62, Dems 38

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PA13 (Schwartz): 73% White, 13% Black, 6.5% Asian. Obama 65, McCain 34 (was 59/41 Obama). Dems 63.5/Reps 36.5

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PA14 (Doyle): 71.5% White, 21.5% Black. Obama 69, McCain 29.5 (was 70/29 Obama). Dems 72, Reps 28

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PA15 (Dent): 77% White, 14% Hispanic. Obama 56, McCain 43 (was 56/43 Obama). Dems 54, Reps 46

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PA16 (Pitts): 80% White, 12% Hispanic. McCain 51, Obama 48.5 (was 51/48 McCain). Reps 57, Dems 43

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PA17 (Holden): 82.5% White, 8% Black, 6.5% Hispanic. Obama 60, McCain 39 (was 51/48 McCain). Dems 59, Reps 41

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PA18 (Murphy): 94% White. McCain 53.5, Obama 45.5 (was 55/44 McCain). Dems 51, Reps 49.

totals

McCain: 8
Obama: 10

Rep Avg: 9
Dem Avg: 9

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Rep incumbents in Obama seats: 5
Rep incumbents in Obama seats who see the Obama percentage go down: 3

Alleghany County:
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Beaver County:
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Chester County:
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Delaware County and Philadelphia:
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Fayette County:
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Johnstown:
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Montgomery County
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Reading:
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I'm sensing 9 could go into Greene County, moving the top counties of 9 to 5, moving 18 into Beaver, moving 3 into the top part of 5.

Here's another Republican map of PA:

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PA-01 (blue, Bob Brady - D) - 83.3 Obama, 16.1 McCain, 82.3 D avg; 44.0% white, 40.8% black VAP
PA-02 (green, Chaka Fattah - D) - 91.4 Obama, 8.3 McCain, 89.8 D avg; 53.9% black VAP
PA-03 (purple, Mike Kelly - R) - 50.6 McCain, 48.1 Obama, 52.5 R avg
PA-04 (red, Jason Altmire - D and Mark Critz - D) - 54.7 McCain, 44.2 Obama, 51.9 R avg
PA-05 (yellow, Glenn Thompson - R) - 56.8 McCain, 42.0 Obama, 58.8 R avg
PA-06 (teal, Jim Gerlach - R) - 53.0 Obama, 45.8 McCain, 50.5 R avg
PA-07 (grey, Patrick Meehan - R) - 53.2 Obama, 45.9 McCain, 50.3 R avg
PA-08 (light purple, Mike Fitzpatrick - R) - 53.3 Obama, 45.6 McCain, 51.9 D avg
PA-09 (sky blue, Bill Shuster - R) - 56.8 McCain, 41.9 Obama, 53.3 R avg
PA-10 (magenta, Tom Marino - R) - 55.4 McCain, 43.3 Obama, 58.7 R avg
PA-11 (light green, Lou Barletta - R) - 55.1 McCain, 43.7 Obama, 57.3 R avg
PA-12 (light purple, Todd Platts - R, formerly PA-19) - 56.8 McCain, 42.1 Obama, 61.9 R avg
PA-13 (pink, Allyson Schwartz - D) - 65.0 Obama, 34.2 McCain, 62.6 D avg
PA-14 (brown, Mike Doyle - D) - 68.2 Obama, 30.8 McCain, 70.0 D avg
PA-15 (orange, Charlie Dent - R) - 54.9 Obama, 43.8 McCain, 53.4 D avg
PA-16 (light green, Joe Pitts - R) - 52.8 McCain, 46.3 Obama, 59.6 R avg
PA-17 (purple, Tim Holden - D) - 60.7 Obama, 38.2 McCain, 58.9 D avg
PA-18 (yellow, Tim Murphy - R) - 54.8 McCain, 44.2 Obama, 50.4 R avg

I liked Torie's observation that four districts fit neatly into the western counties. Together they have a deficit of 1,266 people from the ideal. That is within 0.5% and has been allowed by SCOTUS, so I'll use that as a basis elsewhere. I did stick to my plan to keep Butler and Allegheny as two districts since together they are less than 1% off and can be divided to keep each within 0.4% of ideal. That leaves Beaver as the only split county in the west, and should better satisfy Verily's concern.

The SE has a surplus 67 people for the seven districts. I prefer to keep as many whole districts within a large county as possible, so I left my split of Montgomery as before. I did make some minor adjustments to avoid any township split while using up to a 0.5% variation. As before only Chester is the only county under one district to be split. Philly is unchanged from my previous plan which leaves three ward splits there with CD 1 at 51.0% BVAP.

I was able to create a NE grouping of counties that were only 126 persons over the ideal size for three districts. The answer to Al is that Lackawanna and Luzerne would be too big with Carbon and Schuylkill, but match up almost perfectly with Monroe to make one district, short by only 491 persons. Carbon is just slightly too big for Lehigh and Northhampton and was split along township lines to keep CD 10 and 15 both within 0.1%.

The remaining area in the center has four districts and only 1073 extra persons. Two whole groupings of counties can be made into single districts staying less than 0.3% over the ideal size. The remaining area splits only Huntingdon to complete the map with CD 5 and 9 with 0.3% of the ideal size.

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But Monroe doesn't fit from a community of interest perspective.

Monroe doesn't fit with much of anything from a CoI perspective.  Gotta put it somewhere...


"Coal country" only extends really to the southern tips of Columbia and Northumberland; most of those counties are hilly farms and Susquehanna river towns, more related to (say) Union County, I would think. 

No reason not to combine that four-county grouping with the other rural areas as well. Sort of like muon's map, except with Northumberland in the NE district and Clinton and Potter in the North-Central district.

I have some other misgivings with muon's map as well (notably, again, in the SW--I'd rather split Westmoreland than separate Greene and Fayette, as eastern and western Westmoreland have not much in common but Greene and Fayette might as well be the same county), but it does fix some of Torie's problems. I like Torie's design of PA-15 and PA-11, and also his internal split of Allegheny County, better than muon's, though.

What does everyone think of this district? It's one of my dream districts, obviously wouldn't ever happen without a Democratic gerrymander, but it'd be so awesome if it did:

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That manages to chop Lancaster in half and split apart York while taking pieces of five different counties and combining pieces of Lancaster and York. If you could just find a way to put part of Bucks County in there you could break every PA "rule"

Well the point is to get the cities of York and Lancaster together along with Reading and the Democratic territory around it, and I tacked on Pottstown and the area just south of it for also nearby Democratic votes. It's a 56% Obama district drawn entirely out of areas currently represented by Republicans.

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Yes - the 17th needs to be built around Dauphin and Cumberland.

Monroe is hard to place from a CoI standpoint. It's exurban NYC as much as anything else. I thought my PA-15 and PA-11 were essentially the same as Torie's. The slight boundary shift is due to my attempt to elevate county boundaries as a more important criteria when practical.

I would note that the northern tier of counties now has more in common with the Schuylkill coal fields than a decade ago. Bradford and Tioga are huge areas of shale gas drilling today, so the mineral industry dominates much of the PA-10 I drew.

It seemed to me that the split of Allegheny that you like also created the attachment of Beaver to Butler that you didn't like. I treated Beaver the way you suggested. I think you need an additional CD in SW PA to simultaneously meet your objectives. Unfortunately, that's where the population losses were.

Maybe we're misunderstanding each other. I just don't like the Pittsburgh district going all the way to the Washington and Westmoreland County lines.

Anyway, it occurs to me that the Lehigh Valley also has a fair number of NYC commuters. Not a lot, but enough that putting Stroudsburg in PA-15 would probably be reasonable. The rest of Monroe still has to go with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (along with Carbon County), but rural Monroe is not any different from rural Carbon, really.

So I think I understand that you would prefer a three-way split of Allegheny. The southern part of Allegheny would go with Fayette, Greene, and Washington. The northern part would go with Butler and Armstrong. You didn't seem to like Beaver with Butler; is putting it with Washington, etc. OK?


I understand that, I was trying to understand why you thought Torie's was better, when it seemed much the same as mine.