2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: New Jersey

[If my soul was made of stone]

I tried making a fair legislative map, but ended up with a 29-11 blowout for both HRC and Biden (and for Murphy '17, but there are two Trump-Murphy-Trump and two HRC-Guadagno-Biden seats). DRA rates it as very proportional for '16, '17, and Menendez '18 (who wins 23 seats, one less than the Dems currently hold in the State Senate), but a mess for '20.




Four Hispanic seats (not as heavily Hispanic as desired, but the geography isn't ideal and hopefully Passaic County's racial polarization will ensure performance), two Black seats, two Asian >30% seats.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Made an attempt at an 11-1, with a heavy bias towards South Jersey 'cause Burlington and Camden Counties and the Shore are the only parts of the state of which I have worthy firsthand knowledge:



Four seats are majority-minority, including a Black seat based in Newark and a doozy of a Hispanic seat that snakes from Paterson to Elizabeth (allowing a potential Hispanic-opportunity seat based in the bulk of Hudson County, though arguments for concentrating the vote more are clear). An unfortunate side effect of this configuration is the absence of potential for an Asian-opportunity seat, which I've attempted in all of my (God-awful) fair or 10-2 maps but doesn't quite work out here.

DRA scores it a 0 for both proportionality and county splits–only Cape May, Hunterdon, Ocean, and Warren are left unmolested.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I've been playing around with a different configuration for the VRA seats in Northeast NJ in a fair map (so not taking incumbent preferences, machine politics, etc. into account).

Here's an updated version of this concept, with the current census numbers.

NJ-10 is actually majority Black by CVAP (barely)!

This is an excellent configuration of the VRA seats, though I have some gripes with how you organized things elsewhere.

In response, here's my latest (and only decent thus far) attempt at a fair map, with municipal splits avoided as much as possible:



I'll freely admit that the county splits not done for VRA reasons are a bit of a mess, though.

[If my soul was made of stone]

A majority-minority state leg seat in Cumberland and Atlantic (not that this would ever happen, just a proof of concept):



40% white, 30% Hispanic, 23% Black VAP. Three is far too many municipal splits to pass muster, but in this case it's necessary to ensure that the other districts could be contiguous, as well as population equality in this messy part of the world.

[If my soul was made of stone]

10/1/1 map.

Majority black seat based on Newark/the Oranges, 2 40+% Hispanic seats bc given partisanship primary control matters more than getting an outright majority. Ds should really go for 10/2 w/the Highlands and Ocean County as R-sinks bc any 10/1/1 map turns to 3/8/1 in an R-wave and the party's done nothing in the ground game to give faith they'd hold that

All these municipal splits are giving me a headache.

The 12th seems very weak for a Hispanic seat, given the turnout dynamics of its component parts and all. Paterson's just sitting on its hands there in the Bergen seat and could easily be added there while balancing things out by moving the heavily white/Asian parts of Bergen up north, without that much change in partisanship in what'll already be a tough hold for the Dems in a Dem midterm.

Props to you for having the willpower to draw Perth Amboy into a Hispanic seat, though. That's something that I always joke about but never works out.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I've been playing around with a different configuration for the VRA seats in Northeast NJ in a fair map (so not taking incumbent preferences, machine politics, etc. into account).

Here's an updated version of this concept, with the current census numbers.

NJ-10 is actually majority Black by CVAP (barely)!

This is an excellent configuration of the VRA seats, though I have some gripes with how you organized things elsewhere.

In response, here's my latest (and only decent thus far) attempt at a fair map, with municipal splits avoided as much as possible:



I'll freely admit that the county splits not done for VRA reasons are a bit of a mess, though.

Interested in your critiques!

I suspect we have some sort of zone of disagreement on how exactly to handle central Jersey (with corresponding rotations to the south).

Sorry for the slow response, have been busy.

I have Strong Opinions on South Jersey and the Shore given my personal associations with those areas. My main objection to your configuration is the split of Atlantic County, which in my view is best paired wholesale with similarly racially-polarized Cumberland and Salem, grouping its most minority-heavy areas with the bulk of heavily white Ocean. Ocean is a very convenient size to keep whole, though some might consider it a bit of an R pack, as evidently the commission for the 2010s map did. I see Monmouth as a more logical split given the divide between the shore and parts inland which can be paired with Ocean, although my configuration requires some of it being paired with Mercer and Burlington (less than ideal) simply because there's nowhere else left to put it. I prefer keeping Camden whole as well, though here it ends up with those weird "wings" cutting into both Burlington and Gloucester, which are admittedly a bit more divided internally.

The outer parts of Bergen and Passaic I see as having more in common with the exurban northwest, which tourism boards want you to call the "Skylands", than the rest of those counties, especially since your configuration requires gratuitous splits of Somerset. In the Hudson seat I included Palisades Park instead of Secaucus to boost the Asian % a bit, since it's frustrating how close-but-not-quite a proper Asian influence seat is between Mercer and Middlesex is to being possible, but that's highly subjective.

None of your choices are glaringly offensive to me, though. My experience, again, is heavily biased towards South Jersey, so I may be granting it undue attention.

Is there a chance NJ Dems choose to cut a different Democrat, like Kim or Gottheimer, or is it defiintely going to be Malinowski?

Gottheimer and Kim both live in solid Dem turf, while Malinowski lives in Hunterdon County. There's absolutely no reason why they'd cut anyone else.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Here's a version of New Jersey which tries to do an Asian (aka Indian) influence district in the Middlesex County area, while taking into account Discovolante's critiques:



Sorry about the 3rd district, but I think most other things work well? Prioritized city and township integrity over counties--the only splits are Newark, which is inevitable, and Neptune. It might make more sense to give Warren to the 3rd than the pieces of Somerset.

Tbh, this exercise has persuaded me that drawing an Indian influence district in Middlesex is a waste of time. Even when drawing the 6th district explicitly to maximize Asian percentage, I was only able to get it to 1/3rd VAP--and probably a lot less in terms of CVAP. The community is too diffuse--there are a lot of places which are like 20-40% Asian but nowhere where the community predominates to outweigh other groups. Maybe next census.

My own efforts at this configuration were rather fruitless. The population simply is too concentrated in smaller areas separated by vast nothings to be coherent as a community or capable of sustaining a district.

Besides that, I would again keep Atlantic whole by instead having the Camden seat take in more of inner Gloucester–also placing the Burlington split more along the Delaware–and focus the Monmouth split on inland townships rather than the shore (though some of both may be needed for population equality).