US House Redistricting: Pennsylvania

[dpmapper]

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. 

[dpmapper]

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

East:

West:


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.  

[dpmapper]

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.)  

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.

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?  

[dpmapper]

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. 

[dpmapper]

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.  

[dpmapper]

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.)

[dpmapper]

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. 

[dpmapper]

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. 

[dpmapper]

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.   

[dpmapper]

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:



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. 

[dpmapper]

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.

[dpmapper]

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.)

[dpmapper]

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.

[dpmapper]

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. 



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:



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. 

[dpmapper]

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.

It's there.  I called it cyan.  

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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.  

[dpmapper]

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. 

[dpmapper]

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). 

[dpmapper]

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.

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. 

[dpmapper]

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.  

[dpmapper]

NePa Fajita!

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

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. 

[dpmapper]

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...

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).

"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.