2020 New York Redistricting

[kwabbit]

We’re expecting a 22D-4R here, right? I drew 3 upstate R packs that gave Trump 60% of the vote, and one Long Island 57% R pack. This makes the other 3 LI seats solidly blue. Malliotakis is really easy to give a 62% Biden seat. Just give her the woke white liberals in Brooklyn. Karoo would be a goner in a Tompkins County-Cortland County-Onondaga County configuration with a tentacle to pick up Utica city. That pushes his seat to 59% Biden. The. Draw a Biden +6.5% seat for Stefanik by giving her Saratoga County and the blue parts of Rensselaer. Shore up Delgado’s seat by moving it 6 points left by picking up Binghamton. Maloney gets shored up by contracting more into Westchester County and getting a Biden +10 seat.

I think 23-3 is the expectation more. It's risky to give Stefanik and especially Katko seats that aren't blue enough, given their personal popularity however. That's why Stefanik's seat is often used as a sink. Katko is another deal, given that he got a full 10% more than Trump in 2020. You either have to really pack Dems to make the seat blue enough where he won't just win in 2022, which might be impossible, or you could make an arm from the Western NY R sink into his neighborhood to draw him out and then package the rest of Syracuse into other districts.

[kwabbit]

My Upstate NY Gerrymander. The Syarcuse based seat is Biden +20, too Dem for Katko in all likehood. I moved his residence, along with Tenney's, into the Northeast Pub district. The district that replaces Stefanik's is Biden +12. The goal for the map was to create the two Upstate R packs, but the Northeast one to force Katko, Tenney, and Stefanik to run against each other. [/img]

[kwabbit]

I don't think 23-3 is very realistic at this point. The Democrats might be apprehensive to draw such a radical gerrymander given the commission and all the safeguards against it. Not to mention the possibility of a huge dummymander in 2022.

When I was drawing my 23-3 map, my goal was to ensure each district was Biden +10 in Upstate NY. That in itself was difficult. But now it seems that most Biden +10 seats would be marginal in Upstate NY, given the horrible approvals Biden has among White voters without a degree. I think 21-5 would easily be fine however, and probably 22-4.

[kwabbit]

I don't think 23-3 is very realistic at this point. The Democrats might be apprehensive to draw such a radical gerrymander given the commission and all the safeguards against it. Not to mention the possibility of a huge dummymander in 2022.

When I was drawing my 23-3 map, my goal was to ensure each district was Biden +10 in Upstate NY. That in itself was difficult. But now it seems that most Biden +10 seats would be marginal in Upstate NY, given the horrible approvals Biden has among White voters without a degree. I think 21-5 would easily be fine however, and probably 22-4.

I personally find dealing with Long Island is the hardest problem, especially since the politics are weird and Dem voters on the island tend to be packed while making a true R pack is nearly impossible. 2

Long Island is hard to gerrymander by virtue of its shape. There's no singular area of dominance so packs are harder. I'm not sure if you can draw only one Republican district and have the rest be sure to hold in 2022. At least not unless you spaghettify Queens, which is an option, but would be difficult to do without upsetting Meng and Meeks.

[kwabbit]

A little fair map of NY, in a thread all about gerrymandering.









Some unique things I did:

Extending NY-05 into the Black areas of Hempstead, then swung NY-04 into the Whiter area of Queens.

Drawing a Southeast Brooklyn district. This district could function as a Orthodox Jewish opportunity district, which I think could be argued as necessary under VRA guidelines but that's a whole other question. I think this district should be part of a fair map. Just because the existing Manhattan-mander into Jewish Brooklyn has been around for a decade and functions as the status-quo doesn't mean it's a good district or fair and proper.

Correspondingly, I didn't expand the South Brooklyn district westward enough where the Staten Island takes in that much of Park Slope, where it can drowned out. It's still a Staten Island based-district, that is, not a Hipster + Staten Island tacked on.

The rest is quite generic. I extend the Upper Hudson district to the Plattsburgh area, so the Northeast seat (Stefanik's) doesn't really exist, although I didn't consider incumbents at all.




If the images take up too much space I'll delete and replace with the VRA link.

[kwabbit]

Wouldn't Cuomo 2018 numbers be effective enough to use to predict the likely Dem Floor for 2022 outside of Katko?

Upstate, prolly not quite the floor but like than bottom quartile, but tbf Cuomo did pretty well on long Island.

Upstate is weird in the sense that districts like NY-24, 22, and 18 all saw dramatic ticket-splitting in 2020 election. However, dramatic ticket splitting in both directions making it kinda tricky to gauge things. I think Biden + 12 seats should be enough to hold in most if not all years this decade, and anything over Biden + 20 should be relatively safe.

Well yes I obviously meant Cuomo 2018 anything north of Rockland. No way are Democrats winning Staten Island or Suffolk County.

Richmond County would probably be a heavy lift.

Suffolk county Biden only barely lost though; I would say Dems have a decent shot at winning the county on the Pres level again at some point (though Rs are still favored)

If the county's BOE had just counted votes faster, then Biden very probably would have won the country outright.

What do you mean by this? Did they throw out some Biden votes for being counted too late after election day?

[kwabbit]

Wouldn't Cuomo 2018 numbers be effective enough to use to predict the likely Dem Floor for 2022 outside of Katko?

Upstate, prolly not quite the floor but like than bottom quartile, but tbf Cuomo did pretty well on long Island.

Upstate is weird in the sense that districts like NY-24, 22, and 18 all saw dramatic ticket-splitting in 2020 election. However, dramatic ticket splitting in both directions making it kinda tricky to gauge things. I think Biden + 12 seats should be enough to hold in most if not all years this decade, and anything over Biden + 20 should be relatively safe.

Well yes I obviously meant Cuomo 2018 anything north of Rockland. No way are Democrats winning Staten Island or Suffolk County.

Richmond County would probably be a heavy lift.

Suffolk county Biden only barely lost though; I would say Dems have a decent shot at winning the county on the Pres level again at some point (though Rs are still favored)

If the county's BOE had just counted votes faster, then Biden very probably would have won the country outright.

What do you mean by this? Did they throw out some Biden votes for being counted too late after election day?

They were too slow to count the votes. By the time they ran out of time, there were still some votes left to count, that had to be left uncounted. These very, very likely would have flipped the county to Biden, considering that there was a major pro-R vote bias in New York that year.

Oh ok. What was the deadline? Tenney and Brindisi were still battling it out into February as as I recall.

[kwabbit]

Wouldn't Cuomo 2018 numbers be effective enough to use to predict the likely Dem Floor for 2022 outside of Katko?

Upstate, prolly not quite the floor but like than bottom quartile, but tbf Cuomo did pretty well on long Island.

Upstate is weird in the sense that districts like NY-24, 22, and 18 all saw dramatic ticket-splitting in 2020 election. However, dramatic ticket splitting in both directions making it kinda tricky to gauge things. I think Biden + 12 seats should be enough to hold in most if not all years this decade, and anything over Biden + 20 should be relatively safe.

Well yes I obviously meant Cuomo 2018 anything north of Rockland. No way are Democrats winning Staten Island or Suffolk County.

Richmond County would probably be a heavy lift.

Suffolk county Biden only barely lost though; I would say Dems have a decent shot at winning the county on the Pres level again at some point (though Rs are still favored)

If the county's BOE had just counted votes faster, then Biden very probably would have won the country outright.

What do you mean by this? Did they throw out some Biden votes for being counted too late after election day?

They were too slow to count the votes. By the time they ran out of time, there were still some votes left to count, that had to be left uncounted. These very, very likely would have flipped the county to Biden, considering that there was a major pro-R vote bias in New York that year.

Oh ok. What was the deadline? Tenney and Brindisi were still battling it out into February as as I recall.

Whenever final results had to be certified in New York, I guess?
Of course there is more time to count votes for a congressional race than a presidential one.

I thought New York didn't actually certify its results until around June. It wouldn't be an issue during the electoral count, given that Biden had obviously won NY, but I imagine if ballot counting persisted as long as it did for NY-22, it also would've for Suffolk County.

[kwabbit]

I would be surprised if the Dems do something extreme assuming that the high court in NYS will be far more hackish than the Ohio high court when it comes to interpreting what the words "unduly" mean. I assume that the Dems are watching what happens in FL and OH, which have the some "unduly" stricture. They certainly should be.

Is there any precedent for a Dem court striking down its party's gerrymander? There is certainly a different attitude from Red and Blue avs on the forum about gerrymandering. In my experience, Democrats often justify gerrymandering as a moral imperative to counter Republican gerrymandering and ensure that extremist Republican policies are not instituted. Republican justification is more "because we can". This makes me think that a Dem court is much more likely to uphold a gerrymander if a similar situation arises to Ohio.

[kwabbit]

We'll see what the legislature comes up with, but neither of these maps are that bad for the Republicans. They'd have a decent chance of 17-9 on the Dem map and 16-10 on the GOP map. Katko is probably finally toast in 2024, but I think he'd win by 5+ in 2022. He outperformed Trump by 20, so a Biden +17 isn't that bad for him in an R wave year. 1, 18, and 19 would all be very close. I think that Rs would probably come away with 2 out of the 3. Fairly sure they'd hold the LI seat, and one of the Hudson seats, with a better chance for Jones' seat than Maloney's.

I think that a GOP NYC seat makes it into the final map, either based in South Brooklyn or SI. Then an LI GOP seat, then 3 upstate GOP seats. 21 Biden/5 Trump, essentially map A but with Jones and Maloney being shored up further.

[kwabbit]

We'll see what the legislature comes up with, but neither of these maps are that bad for the Republicans. They'd have a decent chance of 17-9 on the Dem map and 16-10 on the GOP map. Katko is probably finally toast in 2024, but I think he'd win by 5+ in 2022. He outperformed Trump by 20, so a Biden +17 isn't that bad for him in an R wave year. 1, 18, and 19 would all be very close. I think that Rs would probably come away with 2 out of the 3. Fairly sure they'd hold the LI seat, and one of the Hudson seats, with a better chance for Jones' seat than Maloney's.

I think that a GOP NYC seat makes it into the final map, either based in South Brooklyn or SI. Then an LI GOP seat, then 3 upstate GOP seats. 21 Biden/5 Trump, essentially map A but with Jones and Maloney being shored up further.

Katko went from 60.6% in 2016 to 52.6% in 2018 to 53.1% in 2020.   The days of him outperforming the top of the ticket by those kind of margins are long gone.  A Biden+17 district isn't going to be winnable.

It'll be winnable in 2022. Katko would've won in this district in 2022. He overperformed Trump by 20 points in 2020, so hypothetically he could've won any district up to Biden +20. That'll go down quite a bit by 2024, which is why he'll lose in 2024, but in a GOP friendly environment, he's no worse than a tossup in 2022.

In 2016, he outperformed Trump by 26. In 2018 it's hard to determine, but if there was a generic R vs. Generic D federal race he likely would've outperformed by around 20. In 2020 he outperformed Trump by 20. In 2022, it might be 17. In 2024, it might be 14. These are still massive outperformances. Polarization is ever increasing but Katko is the best electoral fit for anyone in any district in the country. There's not much of a reason he'd lose all of his crossover appeal, which while declining, was still strong enough for him to win a district that blue in a moderately good year for Democrats.

[kwabbit]

We'll see what the legislature comes up with, but neither of these maps are that bad for the Republicans. They'd have a decent chance of 17-9 on the Dem map and 16-10 on the GOP map. Katko is probably finally toast in 2024, but I think he'd win by 5+ in 2022. He outperformed Trump by 20, so a Biden +17 isn't that bad for him in an R wave year. 1, 18, and 19 would all be very close. I think that Rs would probably come away with 2 out of the 3. Fairly sure they'd hold the LI seat, and one of the Hudson seats, with a better chance for Jones' seat than Maloney's.

I think that a GOP NYC seat makes it into the final map, either based in South Brooklyn or SI. Then an LI GOP seat, then 3 upstate GOP seats. 21 Biden/5 Trump, essentially map A but with Jones and Maloney being shored up further.

Katko went from 60.6% in 2016 to 52.6% in 2018 to 53.1% in 2020.   The days of him outperforming the top of the ticket by those kind of margins are long gone.  A Biden+17 district isn't going to be winnable.

It'll be winnable in 2022. Katko would've won in this district in 2022. He overperformed Trump by 20 points in 2020, so hypothetically he could've won any district up to Biden +20. That'll go down quite a bit by 2024, which is why he'll lose in 2024, but in a GOP friendly environment, he's no worse than a tossup in 2022.

In 2016, he outperformed Trump by 26. In 2018 it's hard to determine, but if there was a generic R vs. Generic D federal race he likely would've outperformed by around 20. In 2020 he outperformed Trump by 20. In 2022, it might be 17. In 2024, it might be 14. These are still massive outperformances. Polarization is ever increasing but Katko is the best electoral fit for anyone in any district in the country. There's not much of a reason he'd lose all of his crossover appeal, which while declining, was still strong enough for him to win a district that blue in a moderately good year for Democrats.

That's kind of an odd way to measure overperformance, but anyway, Republicans don't currently have any seats that are anymore than Biden+12,  there seems to be a hard cut off around Biden+10 or Biden+11.   You can't just carry the overperformance over directly like that, it doesn't work.

Also ticket splitting has been in decline for a while now and it's an entirely new district with a lot more hard progressive areas.   Your math here just doesn't work for a variety of reasons.

It's a very straightforward way to measure overperformance, in fact the most obvious and straightforward. Katko won by 10 points while Biden won by 10 points. If Biden won by 12 points instead, it's not like that would've evaporated Katko's margin. Instead if the conditions were there to move the electorate 2 points to the left, that would affect a presidential and congressional race in a similar (although not identical) way. Maybe there is an effect where overperformance becomes more difficult the bluer the district. Let's say Biden's margin shifted left 5 points and Katko's shifted 8 points. Katko still wins in a 15+ scenario.

The simple fact is that Katko is able to win a large percentage of Biden/Dem voters, with little reason to think that percentage would change simply because of the partisanship of the district. The two factors that are troubling to Katko are that he is taking in a few hundred thousand new voters and the possibility of Brindisi opposing him. Katko keeps Onandaga County, his home and site of strongest overperformance. He loses Wayne and Cayuga and takes in Tompkins, Madison, and Utica in Oneida. He'll still maintain about 70% of his strength from Onondaga, and I think he'll be able to perform well in Tompkins specifically. It is true that Tompkins is a progressive, very blue county. But it's also one extremely full of educated White voters, the exact type of swingy demographic Katko has been so effective at courting in the past. Katko doesn't need much in Tompkins. If he's able to get 28 or 29%, he's going to win the district.

Brindisi may also pose a risk, but after a few years out of his district, his strength may be diminished. This new district will also only overlap about 20% in population of Brindisi's old district. Katko needs strong performances everywhere, so I view Brindisi getting strong margins in Oneida as Katko's main threat.

Ticket splitting is declining, but the effects of polarization are weaker in midterm years and Katko has maintained crossover appeal quite well obviously. In what is likely to be a a strong Republican year, his district simply isn't blue enough to render the race anything less than a tossup for Katko. It's Biden +17, a generic D vs. generic R would probably be around D +10. Overcoming that is a task Katko can do with ease.

[kwabbit]

We'll see what the legislature comes up with, but neither of these maps are that bad for the Republicans. They'd have a decent chance of 17-9 on the Dem map and 16-10 on the GOP map. Katko is probably finally toast in 2024, but I think he'd win by 5+ in 2022. He outperformed Trump by 20, so a Biden +17 isn't that bad for him in an R wave year. 1, 18, and 19 would all be very close. I think that Rs would probably come away with 2 out of the 3. Fairly sure they'd hold the LI seat, and one of the Hudson seats, with a better chance for Jones' seat than Maloney's.

I think that a GOP NYC seat makes it into the final map, either based in South Brooklyn or SI. Then an LI GOP seat, then 3 upstate GOP seats. 21 Biden/5 Trump, essentially map A but with Jones and Maloney being shored up further.

Katko went from 60.6% in 2016 to 52.6% in 2018 to 53.1% in 2020.   The days of him outperforming the top of the ticket by those kind of margins are long gone.  A Biden+17 district isn't going to be winnable.

It'll be winnable in 2022. Katko would've won in this district in 2022. He overperformed Trump by 20 points in 2020, so hypothetically he could've won any district up to Biden +20. That'll go down quite a bit by 2024, which is why he'll lose in 2024, but in a GOP friendly environment, he's no worse than a tossup in 2022.

In 2016, he outperformed Trump by 26. In 2018 it's hard to determine, but if there was a generic R vs. Generic D federal race he likely would've outperformed by around 20. In 2020 he outperformed Trump by 20. In 2022, it might be 17. In 2024, it might be 14. These are still massive outperformances. Polarization is ever increasing but Katko is the best electoral fit for anyone in any district in the country. There's not much of a reason he'd lose all of his crossover appeal, which while declining, was still strong enough for him to win a district that blue in a moderately good year for Democrats.

That's kind of an odd way to measure overperformance, but anyway, Republicans don't currently have any seats that are anymore than Biden+12,  there seems to be a hard cut off around Biden+10 or Biden+11.   You can't just carry the overperformance over directly like that, it doesn't work.

Also ticket splitting has been in decline for a while now and it's an entirely new district with a lot more hard progressive areas.   Your math here just doesn't work for a variety of reasons.

It's a very straightforward way to measure overperformance, in fact the most obvious and straightforward. Katko won by 10 points while Biden won by 10 points. If Biden won by 12 points instead, it's not like that would've evaporated Katko's margin. Instead if the conditions were there to move the electorate 2 points to the left, that would affect a presidential and congressional race in a similar (although not identical) way. Maybe there is an effect where overperformance becomes more difficult the bluer the district. Let's say Biden's margin shifted left 5 points and Katko's shifted 8 points. Katko still wins in a 15+ scenario.

The simple fact is that Katko is able to win a large percentage of Biden/Dem voters, with little reason to think that percentage would change simply because of the partisanship of the district. The two factors that are troubling to Katko are that he is taking in a few hundred thousand new voters and the possibility of Brindisi opposing him. Katko keeps Onandaga County, his home and site of strongest overperformance. He loses Wayne and Cayuga and takes in Tompkins, Madison, and Utica in Oneida. He'll still maintain about 70% of his strength from Onondaga, and I think he'll be able to perform well in Tompkins specifically. It is true that Tompkins is a progressive, very blue county. But it's also one extremely full of educated White voters, the exact type of swingy demographic Katko has been so effective at courting in the past. Katko doesn't need much in Tompkins. If he's able to get 28 or 29%, he's going to win the district.

Brindisi may also pose a risk, but after a few years out of his district, his strength may be diminished. This new district will also only overlap about 20% in population of Brindisi's old district. Katko needs strong performances everywhere, so I view Brindisi getting strong margins in Oneida as Katko's main threat.

Ticket splitting is declining, but the effects of polarization are weaker in midterm years and Katko has maintained crossover appeal quite well obviously. In what is likely to be a a strong Republican year, his district simply isn't blue enough to render the race anything less than a tossup for Katko. It's Biden +17, a generic D vs. generic R would probably be around D +10. Overcoming that is a task Katko can do with ease.

so running in a largely new district only affects Brindisi?

The district is going to be 60% Katko's old district, 15% Brindisi's old district, 25% new for both. It'll effect both, but there's essentially an arm to Utica so Brindisi can run, while the district remains Syracuse based, with Katko the incumbent rep for that area.

[kwabbit]

https://twitter.com/wildstein/status/1519663220331532292
Rs could try their luck at changing the special master. The article quotes that Sam Wang favorably vhanged the grade of the PA map.

Sam Wang is such a Democratic hack. None of his models or metrics are that reliable and are exclusively biased towards Democrats. He is very reliant on the prestige of his university to stay relevant.

[kwabbit]

https://twitter.com/wildstein/status/1519663220331532292
Rs could try their luck at changing the special master. The article quotes that Sam Wang favorably vhanged the grade of the PA map.

Sam Wang is such a Democratic hack. None of his models or metrics are that reliable and are exclusively biased towards Democrats. He is very reliant on the prestige of his university to stay relevant.

The models themselves don't seem that biased towards Democrats but he just disregards his own data.



Example, Michigan state senate, somehow such an extreme outlier of a map gets a B on partisan fairness



The Median Outcome in PA is barely passable according to him but this near impossible outlier is a fair map.

I was mainly referring to his past election models. With his redistricting models, the primary issue is the lack of transparency coupled with his bias. If he's not making the model publicly available, he's completely free to change his grading system subjectively. With NJ redistricting, when asked to clarify why his model regarded the Dem plan as better than the GOP plan, he refused. I wouldn't be surprised if his model also had the GOP plan as better in that case, but he once again fudged the numbers.

[kwabbit]

By the way this is underdiscussed, but the legislature really gave the middle finger to Sean Patrick Maloney. They drew him a Biden +3 district in their proposal which is even worse than the current seat. Really the only way to draw a worse district is to do the East Bank district and then draw the Orange+Rockland district.

Tbf, it’s hard to give him a much bluer seat without it coming at someone’s expense or being too blatant.

I mean most maps other than Empire State have a better map for Maloney. I can imagine Maloney wanting to be a "team player" to some degree but I can't imagine him wanting such a sh**tty proposal for him.

Empire literally makes his seat like Biden + 15 lol

Well that does double bunk him with Mondaire Jones who would be favored as the D base has a strong Westchester lean there. So he might have to carpetbag to the Biden +1 Rockland/Orange seat.

Ye long term a stacked Central Valley config is better for Dems than an east west for this reason, especially since Rockland/Orange has been a mixed bag when it’s come to recent political shifts.

I still wouldn’t bet on Jones being favored though in any race against Maloney.

The Empire map is prolly overall the worst for Dems. The Dunn map is simillar in many ways though

The Hudson valley had strong shifts to Trump in 2016 and then swung to Biden more than any region other than Metro Atlanta in 2020. It’s hard to tell the future of the region politically. I could see Republicans winning a Biden +15 seat easily in 2022, given that that same seat was Clinton +5 and there isn’t demographic change going nor is it that educated.

Then Molinaro demolished Cuomo too as house Dems hugely overperformed. Upstate NY is low key one of the most idiosyncratic regions of the country.

[kwabbit]

Is Stephen Dunn Torie?
https://vhdshf2oms2wcnsvk7sdv3so.blob.core.windows.net/thearp-media/documents/Stephen_Dunns_Resp._Letter_to_Court_5.4.22.pdf

leaving only the far western edge of Putnam County in
NY-18, in order to cause the NY-18 incumbent to still reside in his district, who lives on the Hudson
River in the town of Cold Springs. Very naughty that, and illegal.

Yes, because the paper uses the phrase "chops" and not "splits" like literally everyone else.

Dead giveaway (not that I like outing people on anonymous forums).

I actually ran into this when I submitted maps on the Oregon website, it requires your name be displayed and I almost posted the map on the forum, luckily I caught myself and stopped a few seconds short of posting the map in the Oregon thread.

If Dunn isn't Torie, he seems likely to lean R based on how he defends basically every R possible decision (2 Trump seats in South Brooklyn, Central Valley reconfig, ect). From what I've seen it seems like most Rs or R leaning group maps tend to rely heavily on the Orthodox argument for their districts.

Overall though the Dunn proposal 3 is prolly the best of the "R leaning maps" from a COI and compactness perspective.

Reguardless of whether this is Torie's map or not, I would be curious to know his actual irl leanings and general personality.

Can you guess which map is mine lol? (I don't mind being outed)

Dunn is absolutely Torie. He gives the same arguments as he has in this thread. Torie is also known to live in Hoboken, NJ and as Nyvin says uses chops instead of splits.

I believe Torie used to be a moderate Republican from New York City, so it’s not surprising that he has a soft spot of the NY GOP and is willing to draw them a favorable map.

His map isn’t an R gerrymander by any means. I think it’s hard to detach one’s idea of fairness from the existing map, which does carve up a potential compact South Brooklyn district. Any map that draws the Black areas of Brooklyn into White hipster yuppie Brooklyn instead of White ethnic, Jewish, and Chinese Brooklyn will arrive with a SI swing seat and a Safe R (by 2020 pres) south Brooklyn. Either is reasonable. The latter achieves proportionality if that’s the target though.

[kwabbit]

Also can confirm he is by looking at Torie's profile (don't mean to be creepy).

I don't think Torie is too attached to online anonymity haha. If he was he wouldn't be so open about his life. 

[kwabbit]

Also lol at all the letters supporting the Dem State Sen and Congressional map.

Like maybe it's ok in some areas but overall it's def the worst in terms of COI and competitiveness and is very similar to what was made illegal.

I feel like a disproportionate amount of public comments are either from the Orthodox Community or one of the metros upstate, or a minority interests group that has a clear political agenda.

One of the recent ones even argues that "changing districts too much would lead to confusion" like bruh.

The Senate map was only struck down on procedural grounds so it definitely has some argument to leave most of it as is as deference. The congressional maps are lol tier screwed.

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. What you dismiss as "procedural grounds" is a definitive decision that a bipartisan commission, and, not the legislature, has the right and duty to redistrict the state on a bipartisan basis. The opinion of some legislators is of no more importance than the opinion of any other New Yorker's. That is, except, that this is one opinion that the Courts should dismiss out of hand given the vote for this plan passed on a purely Democratic partisan vote rather than a bipartisan one. This strongly indicates that this map is far from the bipartisan requirement.

Shouldn't the same standard be applied to Ohio?

I think the Ohio commission included a provision for the legislature to draw the map if the commission broke down. While NY state didn’t and the legislature illegally granted itself that power. I think Big Sky Bob also does not view the OH map as egregious.

[kwabbit]

Slightly odd map, and one that is pretty favorable for Democrats. Standard fare for a Princeton Election Consortium disciple.

[kwabbit]

Cervas is kind of an old school neutral map drawer. It is the kind of map that I would have drawn 10 years ago. The metrics are:

1. Minimizing chops is job one.

to be continued ...

Torie, we love you but sometimes you need to take the L. Any truly neutral map would have a Trump seat for NY 19. And maybe an orthodox seat. Dems clearly got a break here

I say this with all due respect, but what are you talking about?  There is no even remotely compelling argument for an orthodox seat existing on anything even remotely resembling a neutral map.  And NY-19 would be a Biden seat on most neutral maps.

A compact South Brooklyn seat is obvious. If race was not a metric, this seat should exist. Even when taking the VRA into account, it is very easy to send the Black seats West instead of South. There would very likely not be two Trump seats in NYC on a neutral map however.

Just because the previous map goes South doesn't mean every fair map needs to. Cervas clearly didn't want to stir the pot too much, keeping Jeffries seat the same and only giving the GOP a very marginal seat in SI, rather than the Trump +10 seat that's easily possible.

[kwabbit]

Cervas is kind of an old school neutral map drawer. It is the kind of map that I would have drawn 10 years ago. The metrics are:

1. Minimizing chops is job one.

to be continued ...

Torie, we love you but sometimes you need to take the L. Any truly neutral map would have a Trump seat for NY 19. And maybe an orthodox seat. Dems clearly got a break here

I say this with all due respect, but what are you talking about?  There is no even remotely compelling argument for an orthodox seat existing on anything even remotely resembling a neutral map.  And NY-19 would be a Biden seat on most neutral maps.

A compact South Brooklyn seat is obvious. If race was not a metric, this seat should exist. Even when taking the VRA into account, it is very easy to send the Black seats West instead of South. There would very likely not be two Trump seats in NYC on a neutral map however.

Just because the previous map goes South doesn't mean every fair map needs to. Cervas clearly didn't want to stir the pot too much, keeping Jeffries seat the same and only giving the GOP a very marginal seat in SI, rather than the Trump +10 seat that's easily possible.

A neutral map would have no Trump seats in NYC.

What is a neutral configuration in your eyes?

[kwabbit]

Cervas really is a standard partisan hack all the way through. Its one thing to be in a position of power and try to favor the Democrats on the congressional maps in worry of the national outcome. It may also be defendable to gerrymander the PA state house in the name of partisan fairness. There is literally no reason to gerrymander these state senate maps other than being a pure partisan hack.

It's just obnoxious to be specifically hired by a judge to draw a fair map and then draw a medium gerrymander. This wasn't even a light gerrymander, I'd say it's more comparable with DeSantis' map. Which is a step down from the legislature's CD map but still a gerrymander nonetheless.

PEC stinks after this cycle. They have practically zero credibility at this point. Wang and Cervas are simply Democratic Party activists who have been able to fool some Boomer judges into implementing gerrymanders. This type of BS is why it's so common to view educated institutions like academia and media with distrust. They pretend to be neutral but are just trying to hide their bias under the guise of knowledge.

[kwabbit]

You heard it here first, I promise you. I was wondering how McAllister could rule on a map today, particularly given that Cervas needs to prepare a report, and there have been an avalanche of comments, every one of which Cervas reads and has said that he will consider. From all of that McAllister himself may request changes. I believe he has the final say, not Cervas. So when he considers relief to some intervenors as to calendar issues, he mentions that it is possible the map might not be adopted by his own May 20 deadline. And he mentions that prospect on - you guessed it, May 20. If I were a betting man, it ain't happening today. And the odds that there will be some map changes just went up.

I don’t trust them to be on time but I also doubt they’d be terribly late. Prolly Monday if not today.

Also I doubt the top line partisanship changes much; it’d look really bad for the court if suddenly they made a map with like 10 Trump seats. The districts will def be cleaned up though as the map was quite messy in some areas.

Biggest change when it comes to partisanship is if a swingy or R leaning Orthodox district in south Brooklyn is created (more likely Asian centric district), however, in that case NY-11 prolly becomes D leaning anyways

The thing is by creating an Orthodox seat requires the elimination of one existing seat in the city, and that may lead to one less minority district because the white seats (NY-10 and NY-12) are too large to be cut. In the Republican map, relocating NY-10 led to a lot of Manhattan excess that couldn't fit into NY-12 and was stuffed into NY-07 instead, weakening its Hispanic percentages.

You can send a South Brooklyn seat into the Rockaways to relieve some of the jam in NYC. Doing that allows the Black seats to move South a tad and creates  more of an opening for the Hispanic seat.

[kwabbit]

I don't know if the subtext of this is related to redistricting, but the fight over who will be chief justice of the Court of Appeals in NYS has turned vicious. The Dems in the State Senate packed th Judiciary Committee with more progressive Dems, so that it is 13D-6R, and then killed the nomination of LaSalle, the moderate Hispanic, 10-9. The Dem Senate leader won't let it go to the floor. Hochul is threatening to sue to force it to the floor. It is threatening to upset budget negotiations.

Both SCOTUS and the high courts of the states are getting ever more politicized. It is beginning to remind me of what is going on in Israel. Folks are even bothering with trying to put lipstick on the pig anymore. They want partisan hacks, and they want them now.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/democrats-reject-hochuls-pick-hector-lasalle.html

With what Republicans have done to the SCOTUS and to state supreme courts in states like Florida, Dems simply have no choice but to do this with the courts where they can.  Otherwise, they will simply be finished off.

The Democrats could've won the House even while losing the popular vote. NY having a fair map isn't the end of democracy.

If you're not talking about redistricting and just politics as a whole, the Democrats have reaped electoral gains from the backlash to conservative courts. In any case, LaSalle would not finish any one off. He would not advance conservative judicial causes; he would just also not promote dishonest progressive judicial causes either. There's really no legal basis for NY's map to be overturned and LaSalle wouldn't support that, but he's not dangerous.