Redistrict NJ

[Verily]

I did a map a while ago which had the Republicans reduced to only two seats, although one seat was only marginally Democratic. District 8 looks like it could be made more Democratic by exchanging some areas on the border with Districts 5 and 7.

[Verily]

I spent a few hours last night to make a 12-seat map. The 12th district was removed and the others generally made more compact. NJ-13 around Jersey City becomes the new NJ-12.

I kept all local units and smaller counties intact. I was able to get all but three districts within 500 persons of the ideal size. Those others are 1000 and 1500 under (NJ-8 Paterson, NJ-11 Parsippany) and 2500 over (NJ-7 Edison) the ideal size and could probably be improved by splitting Somerset and Morris counties. I have not yet looked at voting histories or minority strength.

Moving from south to north, ordered by southernmost point in the district:

1: Marginally Democratic, D+1 or so. LoBiondo (R) is in this district.
2: Safe Republican, R+15 or so. Open seat, but Smith (R) would probably move into the district.
3: Safe Democratic, D+12 or so. Andrews (D) and Adler (D) are in this district.
4: Safe Democratic, D+10 or so. Holt (D) and Smith (R) are in this district.
5: Slightly Democratic, D+3 or so. Pallone (D) is in this district.
6: Safe Republican, R+12 or so. Lance (R) and Garrett (R) are in this district.
7: Safe Democratic, D+15 or so. Open seat.
8: Safe Democratic, D+20 or so. Payne (D) is in this district. The district would be declared invalid by the courts for splitting up the heavily black areas (with 11 below)
9: Safe Republican, R+10 or so. Frelinghuysen (R) is in this district.
10: Safe Democratic, D+18 or so. Sires (D) is in this district. The district might be declared invalid for diluting Hispanic voting power, but it might not, too.
11: Safe Democratic, D+12 or so. Pascrell (D) is in this district. Would have problems with the courts because of 8 and race-dilution.
12: Slightly Democratic, D+4 or so. Rothman (D) is in this district.

8 Democratic seats, 3 Republican seats, one marginally Democratic seat held by a Republican. Smith loses his district, but a new Republican district is created on the Shore. A new Democratic district is created around New Brunswick. Either Garrett or Lance (probably Lance) loses a primary, and either Adler or Andrews (probably Adler) loses a primary. So the net is one fewer Republican-held seats.

Except for the racial issues in and around District 8, this is a pretty realistic map for the 2010 redistricting. Lance will probably lose out. Rejigging the borders between 8, 9 and 11 would fix the racial issues.

[Verily]

Anyway, anyone interested in gerrymandering or just redistricting NJ, should take a look at the map of NJ by municipality in the 2008 Pres election I posted a few weeks ago. I also have the town-by-town data in an Excel file for every county except Bergen, Hudson and Passaic (which I did before recording it all in the Excel file, but which would be relatively easy to get from the NJ elections website).

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=1061

[Verily]

Connecting Elizabeth with Hudson County across Newark Bay is still cheating. There's no land route between the two without passing through Newark (or Staten Island).

Yes, the redistricting commission has been fine with it in the past. I'm not.

[Verily]

Connecting Elizabeth with Hudson County across Newark Bay is still cheating. There's no land route between the two without passing through Newark (or Staten Island).

Yes, the redistricting commission has been fine with it in the past. I'm not.

How about these?

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL&district=11
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=VA&district=3

FL-11 has a bridge connecting it. There's no bridge between Bayonne and Elizabeth, not even a ferry, just water. Not that FL-11 is exactly a district I approve of, but it's not quite the same principle.

VA-3 is just as bad.

[Verily]

FL-11 has a bridge connecting it. There's no bridge between Bayonne and Elizabeth, not even a ferry, just water. Not that FL-11 is exactly a district I approve of, but it's not quite the same principle.

Ok.

On that note, I love that Tampa is apparently connected to the rest of the district if you are traveling southbound, but not for returning via the same road.

For the record, though, connecting Hudson County to Elizabeth by splitting Newark would be fine. Especially since the area you'd need to connect the two is mostly Newark Airport and Port Newark-Elizabeth, so you'd have a grand total population in Newark of less than 1,000. The district just needs to extend to include the Newark Bay Bridge and the I-78/I-95 interchange, plus Newark Airport and the port.

[Verily]

Purely eyeballing the populations, but here's a beautiful pro-Democratic gerrymander of New Jersey using 13 districts. Of course, it would need to be cut down to twelve if it were to be a map for 2010, and that has to involve cutting one of the eleven Democratic districts (presumably dark blue). Balancing out the populations would be mostly achieved by switching relatively even towns between Democratic districts; the two ultra-Republican districts, dark green and cyan, are very close to correct if not perfect.

If I get bored again, I may try a Republican gerrymander, which would be a lot harder (and obviously couldn't reach 11-2; maybe 9-4 if I tried really hard).