US House Redistricting: Pennsylvania

[Torie]

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. 

What reason is that again?

[minionofmidas]

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. 

What reason is that again?

That they care about more than the sheer numbers, at least in some parts of the state, and also have some - not necessarily correct - notion of what kind of candidate will play best in what place. You may have noticed that gerrymandered plans that look okay at first glance usually just means that the people who drew it despise all their subjects ("citizens") equally, while the egregious-at-first-glance maps come about because some areas' regional identities and historical ties were respected, forcing crasser splits in the remaining places.

[Torie]

That is all a bit too abstract to me.  The idea is to defeat the opposition and maximize your influence in the public square. The two parties are at war with each other, and seem to agree on next to nothing these days.  All of this regional stuff is just so yesterday.  Surely the political class has got that memo by now I would think, unless they're totally obtuse.

[minionofmidas]

Some of them. Whether Pennsylvania's has... I don't know. The two legislative parties still are aligned at an odd angle compared to Presidential or even Congressional voting patterns, for one thing.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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.

Well they don't have to to still elect Republicans from those areas. But the Democrats would be letting lots of votes go to waste by just preserving the counties as is.

[MaxQue]

That is all a bit too abstract to me.  The idea is to defeat the opposition and maximize your influence in the public square. The two parties are at war with each other, and seem to agree on next to nothing these days.  All of this regional stuff is just so yesterday.  Surely the political class has got that memo by now I would think, unless they're totally obtuse.

Well, some areas have crazy rivalities.

Suppose than a district has Area 1 and Area 2, with a big rivality.
Party A runs a candidate from Area 1. Party B is campaiging hard on "Party A candidate is from Area 1, he hates you".

A bit exagerated, but I already saw people not voting for someone because he was from the bad part of the district.

[jimrtex]

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.

I think it goes back to the war.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

I think it goes back to the war.

Much like the difficult relationship between Yorkshire and Lancashire then.

[jimrtex]

Went a little further than that...



7 (York - Franklin) 88% White, 58.9% McCain. Platts
8 (Harrisburg) 82% White, 53.4% McCain. open
10 (Lehigh Valley) 77% White, 14% Hispanic, 55.9% Obama. Dent
11 (Wyoming Valley - Stroudsburg) 85% White, 57.5% Obama. open.
Utterly safe for the lucky sod who wins the first Democratic primary.
12 (Schuylkill - Hazleton - Williamsport) 92% White, 55.8% McCain. Barletta, Holden.
Barletta wins.
13 (North) 97% White, 58.6% McCain. Marino
Just barely in, he lives in a township (Lycoming) that I'd rather have kept with Williamsport but I had to move something from cornflower back to tan, and this and its immediate western neighbor seemed the best candidates.
14 (Altoona - Johnstown - State College) 93% White, 54.4% McCain. Thompson, Shuster, Critz.
Come at me with more innocuous-sounding change proposals that somehow affect the center of the state, and eventually I'll come up with a map where Critz beats Shuster. (Actually... not happening unless it gets taken into Fayette next.)

I would eliminate the triple split of Butler, and the quadruple split of Chester.

and also the cases where two districts split multiple counties:

Butler-Armstrong, Cumberland-York, Centre-Mifflin

The extra splits of Chester, Delaware, and Philadelphia are being caused by keeping Bucks whole.

If you force cyan and salmon out of Delaware and Chester, then bring the blue Philadelphia district further out into Delaware, while extending the Philadelphia districts out to the Montgomery County line.   You can then pull the Bucks district into north Philadelphia.  The outer part of Bucks can then be added to the cyan or salmon district.  This would give you a 3-way split of Philadelphia, and 2-way for Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester.

[minionofmidas]

Went a little further than that...



7 (York - Franklin) 88% White, 58.9% McCain. Platts
8 (Harrisburg) 82% White, 53.4% McCain. open
10 (Lehigh Valley) 77% White, 14% Hispanic, 55.9% Obama. Dent
11 (Wyoming Valley - Stroudsburg) 85% White, 57.5% Obama. open.
Utterly safe for the lucky sod who wins the first Democratic primary.
12 (Schuylkill - Hazleton - Williamsport) 92% White, 55.8% McCain. Barletta, Holden.
Barletta wins.
13 (North) 97% White, 58.6% McCain. Marino
Just barely in, he lives in a township (Lycoming) that I'd rather have kept with Williamsport but I had to move something from cornflower back to tan, and this and its immediate western neighbor seemed the best candidates.
14 (Altoona - Johnstown - State College) 93% White, 54.4% McCain. Thompson, Shuster, Critz.
Come at me with more innocuous-sounding change proposals that somehow affect the center of the state, and eventually I'll come up with a map where Critz beats Shuster. (Actually... not happening unless it gets taken into Fayette next.)

I would eliminate the triple split of Butler

Boundary in Beaver is the Ohio River. Obviously you could put some piece of Warren or Venango in instead, but I don't see the point.

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Easily possible. Just gonna look damn ugly.

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No. Just no. That was done for two very good reasons. The northernmost township of York is a fast growing suburb of Harrisburg, and the Cumberland-Franklin line splits Shippensburg in two.

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Easily possible and not affecting many people. Just gonna look damn ugly.

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Not the ones in Delaware - one keeps very heavily Black areas just outside the town limits (and bordering just as Black areas of Philly) in with the Philly Black seat, and the other is caused by following the instruction to move the Main Line towns in with Lower MontCo (and by the desire to split no towns except Philly and Upper Darby.) They could theoretically be removed without much change elsewhere. And cyan could also be gotten out of Chester without serious remap - it just forces a less sensible split of MontCo (and/or a split town there). It's still the most reasonable one of your suggestions.
You even missed one more double county split - Lycoming/Clinton. Of course, that too was done for a reason.
One thing I think probably would improve the map is exchange Wyoming County for part of Wayne.

[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.  

[jimrtex]

I would eliminate the triple split of Butler

Boundary in Beaver is the Ohio River. Obviously you could put some piece of Warren or Venango in instead, but I don't see the point.

Your claim is that your proposal is "fair".  One characteristic of fairness is that you apply rules consistently and uniformly.  It would appear that one of your rules is to not split counties, except where it is necessary for population balance.

Beaver County is not being split because the Ohio River goes down the middle of it (if it were a significant barrier, the county itself would be split).  Erie County is way short of a district and you would have to go way east in thinly populated northwestern Pennsylvania.  So instead you come south into the Beaver Valley, which becomes a major population center in itself.  If you needed some more population, you wouldn't have worried about including the whole of Beaver County.  If you come across the Ohio River on the numerous bridges, you can eliminate the 3-way split of Butler County.  Since the areas in Butler County are along the interstate, they are quite likely to be Pittsburgh suburbs and not associate with Erie or the Beaver Valley at all.

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Easily possible. Just gonna look damn ugly.[/quote]

Not really.  You use the northern boundary of Westmoreland further east, and it doesn't look ugly.  It looks like a stream boundary.   You could include all of Armstrong in the Northern district, and extend the Pittsburgh suburban district further out into Butler County.

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No. Just no. That was done for two very good reasons. The northernmost township of York is a fast growing suburb of Harrisburg, and the Cumberland-Franklin line splits Shippensburg in two. [/quote]

Almost all of the population in Shippensburg is in Cumberland County, so you have come across the county line to put the town in a district dominated by York County.  I'd guess that the university gets a relatively large part of its student body from Harrisburg.

I suspect that Newberry has had more population growth than Fairview as both lie along the interstate south of Harrisburg.  So you have split the high growth areas.

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Easily possible and not affecting many people. Just gonna look damn ugly.[/quote]
That is saying that Centre County has an odd eastern extension where Clinton County includes areas along the West Branch of the Susquehanna.   What if you included all of Clearfield in the northern district, put all of Centre in the brown district and pushed the blue district a bit more north?

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To deny effective representation to voters in the northern parts of the two counties?

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Not the ones in Delaware - one keeps very heavily Black areas just outside the town limits (and bordering just as Black areas of Philly) in with the Philly Black seat, and the other is caused by following the instruction to move the Main Line towns in with Lower MontCo (and by the desire to split no towns except Philly and Upper Darby.) They could theoretically be removed without much change elsewhere. And cyan could also be gotten out of Chester without serious remap - it just forces a less sensible split of MontCo (and/or a split town there). It's still the most reasonable one of your suggestions. [/quote]
The others are quite reasonable.  This one is just eminently so.

I didn't object to the split of Delaware and Chester counties, just the three and four way splits.  It is the Montco seat lapping into those counties that is the extraneous district.   I was suggesting extending the Philadelphia district further into Delaware county.  Can you get to the city of Chester?

The Bucks plus a bit of Philadelphia district makes sense in isolation.  I have seen similar situations where a district would have almost an ideal population, but it ends up forcing all kinds of other compromises.

A Berks plus outer Montco and Bucks would make a lot of sense.

So you would have:

York 435, Chester 259

Chester 240, Delaware 454

Delaware 106, Philadelphia 588

Philadelphia 694

Philadelphia 244, Bucks 449

Bucks 176, Berks 411, Montgomery 106

Montgomery 694

So you keep the two Philadelphia seats; 3 suburban districts, one each for Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware-Chester; and two exurban districts which are dominated by an smaller city, York and Reading (3 exurban if you include the Lehigh Valley). 

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The northern district is not going to look pretty no matter what you do, because it doesn't have any cities.  You aren't doing any favors by chopping up lots of counties.

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What if you bring the green district into Carbon (or maybe Northampton), pushing the blue district out of Carbon, but further north in Lycoming, and then moving part of Wayne into the northern district.

[minionofmidas]

I would eliminate the triple split of Butler

Boundary in Beaver is the Ohio River. Obviously you could put some piece of Warren or Venango in instead, but I don't see the point.

Your claim is that your proposal is "fair".  One characteristic of fairness is that you apply rules consistently and uniformly.  It would appear that one of your rules is to not split counties, except where it is necessary for population balance.

No, not really. Although it will look a lot like it in those parts of the country that don't have universal township organization.
Nor do I really think "applying rules uniformly" is really a characteristic of fairness - at least, the rules would have to be very very detailed for that to be true. But that's neither here nor there, really. Mostly, these maps try to be based on "community of interest" as far as feasible, and counties, like townships, population density (not splitting smaller population centers if it can be avoided, especially), race, and occasionally even partisan leanings are all determinants of community of interest. Along with theoretically more important "soft" factors like what feels itself to belong together - I say "theoretically" because I frequently don't know enough about the places to get it right. And thus need input.

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I wouldn't... but I would worry about including just a little sliver south of the river. Which does appear to be a fairly significant boundary, actually. You wouldn't need to go that far east, either... there's actually more population than I really think ideal just outside the four West PA districts.

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Fair points, of course.

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To deny effective representation to voters in the northern parts of the two counties?[/quote]No, to not split Lock Haven and to not split it from Williamsport.

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Of course you can - the current seat does. There's just no rationale for it beyond partisan gain. You're carving a corridor through "normal" suburbia to get some hardcore dem (and quite Black) enclave purged from the Delaware district. There's plenty of Blacks in Philly itself; unless you're going with the two Black Philly seats scenario.
Apart from cutting through the Main Line, your Philly Metro map would also make it impossible to use the Outer Northwest as one of the shed parts of Philadelphia. And that Berks seat is gonna look quite strange. I'm not saying it's not also a possible alignment, it is. I'm saying it's not probable to come out better than mine. Though, draw it yourself and prove me wrong.

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What if you bring the green district into Carbon (or maybe Northampton), pushing the blue district out of Carbon, but further north in Lycoming, and then moving part of Wayne into the northern district.

[/quote]Well, the idea was more the impression that Tunkhannock looks to Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and would thus be a better fit there than Wayne and Pike are... but a threeway exchange of territory with Wayne or parts of Wayne; additional territory in Lycoming; and... not Carbon, but Luzerne... actually does sound a reasonable suggestion, yeah.

[Devils30]

Im not sure how much the GOP can gain in metro philly

[Devils30]

PA-07, PA-08 should be competitive again no matter what. PA-06 will be too if they dont strengthen Gerlach

[TeePee4Prez]

Im not sure how much the GOP can gain in metro philly

They're maxed out.  I think they'll protect Fitzpatrick as much as possible, give Gerlach an ok seat and sacrifice Meehan, but give him a fighting chance.  That's what I'd do if I were the GOP.  The districts as is I could see all 3 GOP held seats eventually flipping/flipping back.  And talk of putting Dem areas in Pitts' district I'd say go right ahead!  If the GOP wants to get aggressive like that I'd say make a run at Pitts in a more favorable Dem climate!  PA 16 almost went for Obama and is rapidly trending D probably more than any other district in the state.  My prediction is the GOP will attempt to salvage Meehan, but lose not only him but Pitts as well sometime in the 2010s similar to PA 8/13 this past decade!

[Keystone Phil]

They aren't sacrificing Meehan by any means. It will surely be a competitive seat but I don't know of any top tier candidates yet. Fitz is looking like he'll get luck in the 8th, too, with Murphy running for Attorney General instead of going for a rematch. Gerlach will benefit the most from all of this.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but in news from the other end of the state, rumor is that Critz might be thrown into Shuster's district. I believe Critz's own spokesman said it would be "political suicide" if Critz decided to challenge Shuster. I agree.

[Keystone Phil]

enhance

Thanks for just barely putting me into the Bucks county district!   Just a precinct over and I'd be out (though that's the way it is now anyway).

Very interesting and fair division of Northeast Philly. The Far Northeast (my area) would best fit in a Bucks district. The Lower Northeast district (green) would be good except for the Montco part. Talk about a culture shock going from one end of the district to another. The red area of the Northeast in the Montco district is fair, too, since Schwartz will have to keep at least some of this area.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

They aren't sacrificing Meehan by any means. It will surely be a competitive seat but I don't know of any top tier candidates yet. Fitz is looking like he'll get luck in the 8th, too, with Murphy running for Attorney General instead of going for a rematch. Gerlach will benefit the most from all of this.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but in news from the other end of the state, rumor is that Critz might be thrown into Shuster's district. I believe Critz's own spokesman said it would be "political suicide" if Critz decided to challenge Shuster. I agree.

Not exactly as the alternative would be to just retire.

[Keystone Phil]

They aren't sacrificing Meehan by any means. It will surely be a competitive seat but I don't know of any top tier candidates yet. Fitz is looking like he'll get luck in the 8th, too, with Murphy running for Attorney General instead of going for a rematch. Gerlach will benefit the most from all of this.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but in news from the other end of the state, rumor is that Critz might be thrown into Shuster's district. I believe Critz's own spokesman said it would be "political suicide" if Critz decided to challenge Shuster. I agree.

Not exactly as the alternative would be to just retire.

Well, it isn't a done deal that he'll be in Shuster's district but if he was, it might not be crazy to just walk away. He won't win in Shuster's district.

[whaeffner1]

Here's some advice to the Republican's in the Pennsylvania state legislature: don't be greedy!  Your greediness cost you this past decade and you just gained back from the greediness in this wave election.  Shore up your gains and don't try to go after ANY more democrat seats.

[TeePee4Prez]

Here's some advice to the Republican's in the Pennsylvania state legislature: don't be greedy!  Your greediness cost you this past decade and you just gained back from the greediness in this wave election.  Shore up your gains and don't try to go after ANY more democrat seats.

I think the GOP will have problems as drawn.  They may have to toss Fitz, Gerlach, or Meehan to shore 2 of them up and throw one under the bus.

[TeePee4Prez]

Me thinks the GOP will be greedy enough to ensure Democratic Congressional seats will cover every square inch east of the Susquehanna River in a reverse wave election.  Hey, it could happen.  The R strength in all districts isn't that strong as PA-5/9.

[Keystone Phil]

Here's some advice to the Republican's in the Pennsylvania state legislature: don't be greedy!  Your greediness cost you this past decade and you just gained back from the greediness in this wave election.  Shore up your gains and don't try to go after ANY more democrat seats.

I think the GOP will have problems as drawn.  They may have to toss Fitz, Gerlach, or Meehan to shore 2 of them up and throw one under the bus.

And they aren't doing that.

Me thinks the GOP will be greedy enough to ensure Democratic Congressional seats will cover every square inch east of the Susquehanna River in a reverse wave election.  Hey, it could happen.  The R strength in all districts isn't that strong as PA-5/9.

Flyers, you have no reason to think this. You haven't even heard credible redistricting rumors so you're just pulling stuff out of thin air.

As someone who has actually heard real rumors, the plans seem to be very fair and, if anything, somewhat generous to Dems.

And no, you aren't covering every square inch east of the Susquehanna. Are you out of your mind? Even in a reverse wave, you wouldn't possibly get every Republican seat. You aren't getting Platts' seat. You likely wouldn't even get Marino's seat in a reverse wave. You only won it in 2006 because Sherwood was scandal-plagued in the worst possible wave.

[krazen1211]

http://www.politicspa.com/redistricting-watch-brady-accused-of-complicity-with-gop/27137/


Brady is going to deliver votes in exchange for drawing his own district. Naturally its to ensure that the Philadelphia blacks are mostly in Fattah's district.