2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: New Jersey

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1456643016668684289

That's a nice looking map. Perhaps too nice looking to be realistic.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I tried to make a non-partisan state legislature map, avoiding municipal splits and county splits as much as is feasible, while still having compact districts.
Of 565 municipalities in the state, only four are split: Newark, Jersey City, Clifton, and West New York. The former two are unavoidable due to population, while the latter two are forced by county nesting.

This is what I got.
County nestings:
Cumberland+Cape May 1
Salem+Gloucester+Camden 4
Burlington+Atlantic+Ocean 6
Monmouth+Middlesex+Union 9
Mercer+Somerset+Morris+Sussex 6
Warren+Hunterdon 1
Essex+Passaic 6
Bergen 4
Hudson 3
https://davesredistricting.org/join/d7305d78-fc39-4f4e-a10b-038b7fadad1c
Menendez won 25 of these seats. Murphy '17 won 29 of them. Clinton won 29. Not sure about Murphy '21 or Biden.
Btw I've added the edited blank map I made to the Gallery. Anyone is free to use it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It won't be 10-2 in a year like 2021 but that isn't the point. Dems need as many winnable seats as possible in a D+0 type of election.

NJ-7 also barely swung at all from 2017-21 while the rest of the state swung sharply right. Not sure Malinowski is the one to throw under.

There are a lot of factors working against Malinowski. He was the worst performing of the four swing district Dems in the state, even though his district was Biden’s best of the four. His opponent is the outgoing Senate Minority Leader who’s a household name in his state and sits in a very Democratic State Senate district. He lives in a very Republican part of his district, which is not the case for the other Democrats in the delegation. And, he is being investigated for ethic issues.

Bingo, Malinowski is easily the most toxic out of Sherrill, Kim, and even Gottheimer. Although Gottheimer may be the slimiest.

Which is the strongest electoral performer of them all? Kim, then Gottheimer?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It seems that DRA finally added 2020 data for NJ!!

Wonderful news!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Hmm it looks like results by municipality and not precinct

For some reason this doesn't seem to be so in Winslow and Monroe townships in Gloucester and Camden counties.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Also did a GOP dummymander. 7-5 GOP that probably became 9-3 DEM by 2018.

Actually 12-0 DEM in 2020 lol.

[congressmen interested in having secure tenures disliked this]

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Quick NJ Realistic Map

Great point from Progressive Moderate.

I drew this quick realistic map. 9-3. The Northwest seat goes into Union to pick up Westfield for Kean. But even as a 'sink', it's still only Trump +2. Not winnable for Dems in 2022, but definitely could be in the future. Maybe not if Kean gets a good grip on it like he ought to do given his overperformance even in 2020.

The big factor in South Jersey is how much of Camden County Norcross is willing to cede. My prior is 0, given him and his brother's disregard for anything but maintaining their own power, but we'll see. If Norcross allows Kim to take in Cherry Hill and Pennsauken, then Kim stands a chance in 2022. If not, I don't see how he survives if his district is anything like the current form given the Red wave that swept South Jersey a few weeks ago.

If Watson-Coleman retires, then Dems ought to go for a 10-2 and slice up her district. Kim getting Trenton would be a massive boon.

NJ is not the type of state where incumbents would be likely to support the greater good of the party, so I think Watson-Coleman keeps her seat mostly intact if she doesn't retire at the expensive of Kim and Malinowski.

All Kim needs is to get most or all of Ocean county out of his district and split between NJ-02 and NJ-04.  Any replacement territory would be substantially better for him.

Kim’s district is bounded by Norcross and Smith’s districts. The Dem territory in the area is in Camden County and Mercer County. Unless the commission throws Smith under the bus and removes his hometown from the district his entry into Mercer is blocked, and unless Norcross cedes some of Camden county which might be unlucky because of his brother’s institutional power Kim’s district struggles to get bluer.

There could be land exchanged between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. The 1st pulls out of Burlington County, which pushes the 2nd further into Ocean, and gives the 3rd a more Dem profile.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/davesredist/status/1464650589162323969?s=20

Christmas is coming early.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Omg the 2021 GOV precincts are gonna look brutal for Dems I can see it just now guys i'm shaking

Do you think it's possible to draw 7 Ciaterelli districts?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Omg the 2021 GOV precincts are gonna look brutal for Dems I can see it just now guys i'm shaking

Do you think it's possible to draw 7 Ciaterelli districts?

I'm guessing 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 11 went for the GOP. That leaves 6. I think it's possible that Ciatarelli won it but it includes New Brunswick, Perth Amboy, Piscataway etc so it might be hard for him to crack it.

It should be easier than that. Ciaterreli did well in Southern Jersey. So crack the 1st and pack Ds in 5 seats in Northern Jersey+Trenton.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

A Biden+25 seat may as well be Safe D, no matter how good the R candidate is.
Biden+10 would be a different story.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

My attempt at a fair NJ map that keeps COIs together.

Colored by 2020; not as many competitive districts as I'd like, but it is what it is.

One thing that gets me annoyed about the NJ commission is political deals will prolly be cut (i.e. drawing Kean a seat that involves a weird snake into central Jersey) that end up with maps that benefit specific politicians rather than people (though it should in theory curb extreme partisan gerrymandering).

Do you have the DRA link? I'd like to see the margins on each seat.

Sure:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/31c650fe-999a-4943-abb7-e2d31847a651

Overall it's pretty simillar to the current map in terms of net partisanship, at least on 2020 numbers, just the seats are re-arranged a bit. Kinda interesting how a true R-Pack in NW Jersey can't really happen under today's politics whereas just a decade ago Rs were able to squeeze 3 seats out of the region.

A map like that puts a lot of pressure on Kean. He can either run in the 7th and have an easy path to congress. Or Republicans could push him to run for the 11th instead and turning an otherwise tough race into a toss-up.

The 7th is likely to go Republican with or without Kean. The 11th on the other hand becomes a lot easier to win with him.

I also don't think Pascrell is going to want to lose Paterson, and Sherrill would probably want to keep Montclair.

One person who's definitely not going to be happy with this map is Frank Pallone: it makes his seat a lot more competitive.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/c4e6c7d4-9f8d-4e57-b85f-ae77abe5c5a3
I drew this map with Tom Kean in mind. It has all the major areas in his state legislative district in the 7th. Biden won this seat by 6.4 but Kean could make it competitive. If the district had these borders in 2020, he'd likely have beat Malinowski; Biden won the current NJ-07 by 9.9 points.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I guess I wanted to see how hard an 11-1 map is to make.





https://davesredistricting.org/join/13df5dd4-bbc8-44c5-b3be-b844f9af6b45

It has the respective VRA seats and everything is at least 55% Biden except 4 and 6.  NJ-4 is the R sink and NJ-6 is 54.5% Biden.

The only municipality splits are in 8 and 10 (VRA seats).

Seats bias   0.41%   Half the difference in seats at 50% vote share
Votes bias   0.06%   The excess votes required for half the seats
Declination   -35.14°   A geometric measure of packing & cracking
Global symmetry   0.72%   The overall symmetry of the seats-votes curve
Gamma   -26.31%   The fair difference in seats at the map-wide vote share
Efficiency gap   -22.44%   The relative two-party difference in wasted votes
Partisan bias   -2.26%   The difference in seats between the map-wide vote share and the symmetrical counterfactual share
Proportional   -30.51%   The simple deviation from proportionality using fractional seat shares
Mean–median   1.42%   The average vote share across all districts minus the median vote share
Turnout bias   -1.21%   The difference between the map-wide vote share and the average district share
Lopsided outcomes   4.65%   The relative two-party difference in excess vote shares
Proportional seats   6.97   The fractional Democratic seats for the map-wide vote share
Geographic seats   9.49   The fractional Democratic seats implied by county political geography
Geographic bias   -21.04%   The bias due to county political geography
Map seats   10.63   The fractional Democratic seats for the map
Boundary bias   -9.47%   The bias due to district lines

Lol. Good job.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Redid my other gerrymander because all of them were either plurality or majority white



District 1 is majority hispanic at 50%
District 2 is plurality black at 49%

Every other Biden district is at least 57-40 or 58-40 or so. The two exceptions are districts 5 (55-43) and 12 (55-42)

https://davesredistricting.org/join/54d13aca-ce9c-4245-827f-74745b0a8c01

Seats bias   -1.67%   Half the difference in seats at 50% vote share
Votes bias   -0.23%   The excess votes required for half the seats
Declination   -43.59°   A geometric measure of packing & cracking
Global symmetry   -0.85%   The overall symmetry of the seats-votes curve
Gamma   -30.07%   The fair difference in seats at the map-wide vote share
Efficiency gap   -23.31%   The relative two-party difference in wasted votes
Partisan bias   -1.56%   The difference in seats between the map-wide vote share and the symmetrical counterfactual share
Proportional   -31.38%   The simple deviation from proportionality using fractional seat shares
Mean–median   1.46%   The average vote share across all districts minus the median vote share
Turnout bias   -1.35%   The difference between the map-wide vote share and the average district share
Lopsided outcomes   3.07%   The relative two-party difference in excess vote shares
Proportional seats   6.97   The fractional Democratic seats for the map-wide vote share
Geographic seats   9.49   The fractional Democratic seats implied by county political geography
Geographic bias   -21.04%   The bias due to county political geography
Map seats   10.73   The fractional Democratic seats for the map
Boundary bias   -10.34%   The bias due to district lines
Somehow it's even more Dem biased than before. Lol.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Dem leg gerry

That Southern Jersey R pack is a work of art.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nice preservation of the Keith line

I love the East and West Jersey historical divide.

Average North vs South Jersey fan
Average East vs West Jersey enjoyer

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Light blue district is +6 Biden and it meets all basic requirements lol.

Looks compact and doesn’t unduly favor one party. Well done!

This is what my non-partisan map would look like. It preserves counties and townships and strongly protects communities of interest.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If Dems had any brains, Gottheimer is the North Jersey incumbent they should dump. He's been nothing but trouble for the party.

The positioning of his district makes that harder to do.

It would be very easy to put Wyckoff, Gottheimer’s hometown in a red district by combining it with Sussex, Warren, western Passaic, etc. Whether he’d just carpetbag to a safer district is a different question.

What I hope will happen is they include his home in a Kean sink to make all the other North Jersey seats Titanium D, and then he carpetbags and loses his primary to an actual Democrat, but unfortunately this has a very small chance of coming to pass.

To produce such a district would require very odd lines to both be a sink and have Westfield and Wyckoff in it. I think Gottheimer would run in any Bergen-based seat, even if it didn't include his home, and he would be favored to win the primary. As far as I can tell he seems like a good fit for his district, being an anti-tax moderate Dem, which very much exemplifies suburban Jersey. His primary opponent would likely be Pascrell, who just seems too old to defeat Gottheimer.

Pascrell's home territory is also in Passaic County, and he'll run in whichever district Paterson ends up, so it's very unlikely a map would be able to draw Pascrell and Gottheimer into the same seat while not drawing a Bergen-centric district Gottheimer could run in regardless of where Wyckoff itself was placed.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/289d3c90-9645-4866-9b71-088cafdf212d
this should be able to draw out Gottheimer and destroy his re-election chances. But it's extremely ugly.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I don't get why you all use the word "Suburb" so much in this thread.

"Suburban New Jersey" is redundant.

Fair point.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Looks like Chris Smith might have to move to Ocean County.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://davesredistricting.org/join/289d3c90-9645-4866-9b71-088cafdf212d
this should be able to draw out Gottheimer and destroy his re-election chances. But it's extremely ugly.

Seeing you split Bergen County like this is extremely painful as a Bergen native lol, but yeah that would probably kill Gottheimer's chances

He'd be forced to run in the 9th is my guess, where he'd very likely lose to Bill Prascell.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

First of all, I didn't lay out a formula. I provided principles.

Secondly, your "fair map" has only 2 Dem districts in Wisconsin and your hypothetical map creates a Likely Dem district in Oklahoma, both of which I disagree with, but that's central to your comparison about which is "extreme."

There may be interesting ideas in your post but the numbers and proof are without value as far as I can tell. 

The problem is that drawing anything other than 6-2 in Wisconsin sort of necessitates some ugliness. The best I can do while still making it reasonable within other fair redistricting principles is shoring up WI-03 for Dems slightly by giving it Eau Claire and the Janesville/Beloit area while pushing WI-02 in Jefferson and Dodge.

That's not terrible, but it's not really ideal either--the counties to the north, west, and south of Dane have stronger connections to Madison than Jefferson does, and splitting Eau Claire and Chippewa is splitting up a metro unnecessarily. A map without Rock and Eau Claire counties in WI-03 is way nicer...but that locks in a 6-2.

Following fair redistricting principles means that occasionally vote distributions will be stacked against you due to unfavorable geography--Wisconsin just having 2 Democratic districts sucks, but it's no worse than there being no Republican seats in Connecticut or the Dem over-representation you see in Texas on fair maps.

Yeah thanks for backing it up. One thing though, technically speaking a split of Madison could still be pretty clean atleast by compactness standards but just like the OKC/Norman district its clearly not a very good district.

IMO splitting Madison is way worse than OKC/Norman, but yeah, I prefer neither.

As proportionality-minded I am, I think splitting Dane is a price too high to pay to advance that. I'd rather pair Dane with heavily R counties nearby to allow WI-01 to take all of Rock County.