US House Redistricting: New York

[dpmapper]

It's kind of hard not to give up seats when you overwhelmingly control the state Congressional delegation 21-8. 

An alternative way to look at is a downstate delegation of 19 districts that loses a seat plus an upstate delegation of 10 districts that loses a seat. The population loss neatly divides along those lines. The upstate delegation is 5-5. The downstate delegation is 16-3. Since the downstate delegation almost certainly must sacrifice a Democrat, it stands to reason that evenly divided upstate can and should sacrifice a Republican. There are multiple ways this can be done successfully, although NY-23 as it stands is not so much as a lean-D district and would need shoring up to be counted as a D district.

NY-26 and NY-29 should be merged to create one ultra Republican district. Meanwhile Slaughter's ultra-Democratic NY-28 can afford to take on some more Republicans. It's only fair.

It's interesting how you Dems believe that 'fairness' compels those who have more to give up proportionally more when it comes to taxes, but not when it comes to districts.   

[dpmapper]

Hideous, but it does get all the GOP seats to a +5 PVI at least, Dems to +8.  I'm not even going to pretend that this is realistic, but it was fun nonetheless. 

Blue, Buffalo: Higgins, 64-35 Obama. 
Green, between Buffalo and Rochester: Lee, 53.64-44.88 McCain.
Purple, southern tier: Reed, 53.24-45.18 McCain.
Yellow, Rochester-Ithaca: Slaughter, 65-34 Obama.
Red, east of Rochester to Watertown/Rome: Hanna, 51.78-46.52 McCain.

Teal, the piece de resistance - Syracuse, Utica, Binghamton, and Schenectady: Buerkle and Tonko (!), 60-38 Obama. 

Light blue, north country-Albany: Owens, 61-37 Obama. 
Yellow, leftovers: Gibson, 51.42-46.82 McCain. 
Orange, Hudson valley: Hinchey, 61-38 Obama.
Green, leftovers: Hayworth, 52.42-46.41 McCain. 

[dpmapper]

There are a couple of other things I might do to make that map a little more favorable to the incumbents, such as stretching the Rochester seat down to Canandaigua and then dropping some of the really R suburban areas to the west in exchange. That could get the Rochester seat up to 59% Obama and the rural seat between Rochester and Syracuse up to 55% McCain. Also, Hamilton (in Madison County) is a very D college town isolated just beyond the Syracuse-Ithaca district that it seems a shame to strand in a heavily R seat, but drawing it into the Syracuse-Ithaca seat makes the border with the rural seat a little ugly.

If you take Canandaigua, you may as well go over and grab Geneva, as it's still the same county.  Free up the Syracuse seat to take Utica, perhaps? 

The other small problem with the map is that it puts Tonko, Hanna, and Gibson all in the same district (the pink one).  I think Tonko lives in Montgomery County.  That's the easy part to fix, but I think the Pubbies would complain if you crush Buerkle *and* push two of their other incumbents together.  Is there a good way to do the 6D-4R-1 Owens swing with one of the GOP reps tossed in with Owens?