U.S. House Redistricting: New Jersey

[Devils30]

I do think the Holt vs. Lance race would be fair but only in a 56-57% Obama district

[Devils30]

A fair NJ map would probably shave off Sussex and Warren from Garett's district, setting up a Bergen centric Garrett/Rothman battle in a D+0-1 district. Give Sussex to NJ-11, Warren to NJ-7 and expand NJ-12 into southern Somerset county while giving all of Hunterdon to NJ-7

[Devils30]

My ideal plan would involve snaking NJ-7 right down from Hunterdon into Mercer County and Trenton while giving Holt more of southern Middlesex county to make up for part of Mercer lost. Of course this will never happen

[Devils30]

Considering Garrett is a tea partier and the tiebreaker vote is a moderate, my money would be on him taking the Dems map but you never can be sure. The GOP attempting to give Garrett a 50-51% McCain district and strengthening NJ-3 while the dems have a tossup Rothman/Garrett plus NJ-3 remaining swing territory sounds like a much fairer deal.

[Devils30]

The Dems probably should have written off the north jersey  seat and tried to gain more friendly districts either in 3 or 7. NE Jersey did lose the most population so it's not that shocking it loses a seat. It sounds like the dems have a chance to win NJ-2,3 but the GOP has no chance in hell for any of the 6 dems. Another boring decade.

[Devils30]

It was more of a guess, this is really just an incumbent protection map on steroids with the elimination of a D seat in declining population area.

[Devils30]

NJ-3 is not unwinnable by any stretch but probably only switches in a wave year for now. NJ-2 leans slightly Dem but no one is going to win it until it opens.

[Devils30]

TBH, some dems are exaggerated the changes to NJ-3, while it did lose Cherry Hill it also gained all of Burlington county which added another several thousand Dem votes erased by Cherry Hill. Obama won the new district by about 3-4 and the old one by 5. Runyan is safer but the Dems certainly can and must win this seat to take back the house.

[Devils30]

It's somewhat ironic that based off Bush/Gore 2000 numbers this map is actually quite fair to Dems. Gore easily won both NJ-2 and 3 and nearly tied in 4. The 9/11 effect I think caused Ocean and Monmouth Counties to rapidly swing to the GOP. Both counties have decent sized white working class communities which hurts the dems but GOP overreach as with Gingrich in 1994 can cause this area to swing Dem again. NJ 2,3 don't have the low educational levels that districts with similar trend lines in Western PA have so you cant rule out a swing back to the Dems.
  As for NJ-3's Democratic bench, having almost all of D leaning Burlington County in it should solve this problem . It went from a 5.5 point Obama win to roughly a 4 point Obama win. It's really time to quit the whining and find a candidate against Runyan.

[Devils30]

And even adjusting for the 2010 numbers, Runyan only won it by 5 points in a heavily GOP year. Burlington has trended D for awhile so I'm not sure if they can control the county offices for long, much less the whole decade. Will Runyan lose in 2012? Odds say no but you can't rule out the dems taking it in a future cycle.
I'm a Jersey native so I'm not trolling with BS on this thread lol. In a way it's not terrible that the Dems can now concentrate on the growing areas of south jersey and ditch the machine style corruption from the north that certainly hurts the party image in moderate NJ-2,3.

[Devils30]

Not sure he's compiled the strongest legislative resume quite yet either. And congress is very popular right now