2020 New York Redistricting

[Tintrlvr]

On a serious note Suraj Patel could run for the 10th and possibly win

I think he has little chance in our primary, which will be dominated by the ultra-progressive wing of the party centered in brownstone Brooklyn. He only came close to beating Maloney previously because Maloney was unpopular with the progressives, not because he himself had any particular appeal. He's not nearly left enough for this district when there's no incumbent to run against.

The mention of de Blasio... He would be a fool to run. He's not popular even in this district, and he would do quite poorly. An ally who is less polarizing like Maya Wiley is much more likely.

Who do you think could win it then? I think Carlos Menchaca is just outside in the 11th, and I don’t know where exactly Wiley lives Brooklyn but she’d be another possibility if we’re looking to failed mayor candidates. Maybe Yuh-Line Niou could run, though she’s from Manhattan

Maya Wiley could actually be a very interesting choice for this district, she definitely built up a ton of name recognition in the mayoral primary, she either lives here or just over the line in NY-9, and aside from Borough Park, she either placed first or second behind Garcia (or Yang in Chinatown) in most precincts in the district last year.

Also, I doubt she would run for this for several reasons, but Kathryn Garcia could definitely win here. She's a lifelong Park Sloper, came very close to winning the mayoral election, and did extremely well in most of the major neighborhoods in the district (again, aside from Borough Park). She does seem like more of an administrator than a legislator though, and currently has a major administrative job in the state government, so I don't think it's likely she runs.

I don't think Garcia is remotely interested in Congress.

In addition to Brad Hoylman, who has already announced, possible major candidates who currently or formerly held significant offices (City Council, State Assembly, State Senate or a citywide position) include Maya Wiley, Brad Lander and Stephen Levin from Brooklyn, and Margaret Chin, Yuh-Line Niou and Brian Kavanagh from Manhattan. They each have their own bases and interesting aspects.

There are other possibilities (I thought of Deborah Glick, e.g., but at 71 she's a bit old to run for Congress for the first time), but I think these are the six most likely. Of course it could also be a political neophyte or someone not from an elected office.

Wiley

Positives: Progressive, appealing to voters in this district that she is a minority, strong allies who can help smooth over a primary
Negatives: Not certain if she lives in the district, most known for losing a citywide primary, not a particularly good campaigner

Lander

Positives: Very progressive (could flank Wiley from the left), elected citywide so has a reasonably high profile outside of his old City Council district
Negatives: Maybe too progressive, could unite voters outside of his old Council district and core constituency against him (e.g., he would lose the Orthodox vote, the Chinatown vote and the ultra-wealthy Manhattan vote), could be criticized for job-hopping since he just got elected last year to a citywide position

Levin

Positives: Has a strong history of alliances with the Orthodox Jewish community and could secure their primary votes without turning off more left-wing voters, also from a political family with Congressional connections so might get more national party support
Negatives: Although he lives in the district, most of his old Council district (Williamsburg and Greenpoint) is not in this district

Chin

Positives: Strong Chinatown base, would have machine backing, might be able to secure the Orthodox Jewish vote against a more progressive candidate
Negatives: Little-known in Brooklyn

Niou

Positives: Chinatown base but also with progressive bona-fides so may have broader appeal in progressive Brooklyn than Chin
Negatives: Also little-known in Brooklyn

Kavanagh

Positives: Could lock down the white vote in Manhattan, and also Chinatown if there isn't a Chinese candidate in the race, has strong institutional machine backing
Negatives: Also little-known in Brooklyn, not known as a compelling campaigner, geographic base competes with Hoylman

Edit: Removed Levin because I learned that he now lives in Greenpoint and outside the district, although when he started his career he lived in Boerum Hill. Still possible he could run but seems much less likely. As a replacement maybe Robert Carroll, although he seems pretty anonymous and not especially active, but honestly I know less about him because he's the only one I've never been represented by (he's from pretty far into the Brooklyn part of the seat).

Edit II: Found an article on the topic that discusses some of these potential candidate (Niou and Carroll in particular) and also de Blasio. De Blasio was also "running" for NY-11 before he wasn't so I would treat that with a large dose of skepticism:

https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/5/17/23103027/hoylman-nadler-house-seat

[Tintrlvr]

Another who could try for a comeback would be David Squadron, though he might have been out of office for too long

As I recall Squadron left office very bitter about politics generally, so I doubt he'd come back in any form.

[Tintrlvr]

Why in God's holy name did Mondaire Jones decide to run in NY-10

wut

Yeah, that was... unexpected. I strongly doubt he'll make it to primary day once the full weight of actually local politicians (from all three wings of the party: establishment, liberal reform and left-progressive radical) comes to bear.

Also, the new map makes some of my previous analysis outdated. In particular, the redraw removed most (though not all) of the Orthodox voters in Borough Park from the seat, so the Orthodox vote is no longer going to be a significant bloc in NY-10.

On the other hand, it also significantly increased the Hispanic vote (not all that cohesive and with quite poor turnout so probably not very important) and the Asian, mainly Chinese, vote by adding Sunset Park. The Chinese vote tends to be very disciplined when there is an effective Chinese candidate in the race, which should lock up about 15-20% of the primary vote for such a candidate. In a highly fragmented race such as this one, that is probably enough to win: Not on its own, but getting 15-20% of the vote from Chinese voters means you only need maybe 5-10% of the rest of the vote to come out on top.

Yuh-Line Niou seems to be the likeliest prospective candidate to do so successfully. She is not friendly with the establishment, but that may matter little in the current local environment, and also makes her appealing to a lot of non-Chinese voters in this district, who tend to fall into the liberal reform and left-progressive radical camps more than the establishment camp. She has also recently (today) officially announced that she is running. So my guess for the ultimate Congressperson from NY-10 is now Yuh-Line Niou.

Also, she'd get a first, apparently: https://www.newsweek.com/yuh-line-niou-running-become-first-openly-autistic-member-congress-1708882

[Tintrlvr]

You can draw a Trump +14 Long Island pack. In a 2022 type of environment, those Biden +12 seats could still fall, but they'd have a fighting chance of withstanding it.

Yes you "can", but it'd be quite nasty; this is meant to be a "clean" gerrymander that generally abides to decency but makes a lot of D favorable decisions. I could also outright eliminate another upstate R seat if I wanted to, but it'd be really nasty

I think the issue is that going forwards, a 2022 situation where NY just happens to have a super red national environment compared to the national results just isn't going to happen. In general, at least 20 of these seats should vote to the left of the NPV, with 22 being the most likely.

Under these lines, Ds would've probably narrowly carried NY-11, NY-17, and NY-22 in 2022 but Rs still win 4 and 19 (the lines are the same). NY-03 would've been very close but Santos prolly eeks it out.

I do think you could do a better and still fairly clean-looking R-pack on Long Island than what is done here. Smithtown should be in any R-pack, e.g., and you should try to liberate some of the heavily minority areas in Islip.

Upstate I don't understand why Buffalo is drawn the way it is, which seems to make the Buffalo-based seat unnecessarily at risk compared to drawing the district more tightly around Buffalo and its immediate suburbs. The Buffalo area has a history of huge swings to the Republicans, so even a Biden+12 or so seat isn't ideal if you can draw one better.

[Tintrlvr]

State constitutions matter.

Apparently not in Florida, where the congressional map clearly violates the Fair Districts Amendment (unduly favoring one party and retrogression of minority representation by getting rid of the 5th district).

Reasonable minds can differ on that, a CD almost certainly not VRA required which was gerrymandered to cave out and join far distant black neighborhoods in Jacksonville and Tallahassee to make it black performing. A closer case is how the replacement CD was drawn to have it reach into a third county to get the Dem percentage down even while not diluting the black percentage much.

I’m not talking about the VRA here.  I am talking about the state Fair Districts Amendment, which does not allow retrogression of minority representation.  Replacing the old FL-05 with a compact Duval district would have been fine, but not splitting the county to clearly prevent an African American Democrat from representing a district in that area.

The county has to be split.  Are you sure that the Florida law prevents retrogression? If it does, that might run afoul of SCOTUS law. I think FL-05 as drawn should be struck, but don't agree with your remedy, so I guess I am in the middle of the sandwich here.
  

What's sneaky about the DeSantis map is that FL-05 and FL-10 have the same black % as reasonable alternatives, but are both less functional for different reasons.

FL-05 is less functional because it takes in deep deep red Nassau making the district outright R leaning; even if black voters control the D primary winning a GE isn't realistic most years.

FL-10 is less functional because it takes in bluer precincts of white liberals and hispanics in Orlando, hence making black voters a smaller chunk of the D primary, even though the district is safe D.

I actually think one fairly strong argument that could be made against the DeSantis map is the map is hypocritical against itself given that DeSantis didn't condense FL-20 to just Ft. Lauderdale and instead kept the pretty "unnatural" configuration. Unlike FL-05 and FL-10 though, reconfiguring FL-20 doesn't really affect the overall partisanship of the map, but if it did, I guarentee he would've done it.

Overall, the Florida redistricting language is pretty vauge and leaves a lot of room open to subjectivity as there's no definitive "bar" set forwards that'd differentiate a compliant map from an illegal map. Ds should rlly try and get a commission on the ballot, but ik FL R's will fight tooth and nail to try to stop it, and for a variety of reasons, probably have a greater chance at successfully blocking it than even OH Rs.

I don't think there's anything weird about a "wrap-around" as long as it's all the same metro area, which is the case here. Suburbs on either side of a city have more in common with each other than they do with the urban core in between, and similarly rural areas on either side of an urban area have more in common with each other than with the urban and suburban areas in between.

[Tintrlvr]

I wonder what they'll do for Long Island. It seems like it's just fundamentally more Republican now. The current map really isn't bad for them there. Weakening NY-04 might allow Despacito to survive, Garbarino is pretty strong, maybe LaLota's seat could be flipped if LI reverts to its pre-2021 partisanship. Suozzi will probably flip NY-03 though because of Santos stink.

At this point they should concede NY-02 and NY-01 in order to make NY-03 like Biden + 13.

There's no reason for Ds to concede NY-1 if they get to redraw. Compared to original map, it only makes sense to concede NY-11 into a Staten Island pack and even then if the court will let them get away with it, why not go for the 22-4? That said, I would make NY-4 bluer from the originally drawn map.

Staten Island is easy to pair with inflexibly D+80 areas of Brooklyn, some of which did not swing against Hochul at all. There's no reason for them to concede it. Doing 3-1 in LI might turn into 1-3 though, which is why 2-2 could be the way to go. Move Despacito's seat to Biden+16, Santos to Biden+17, both will flip. Creating 3 Biden +10 seats in LI is very risky at this point.

The thing is, you can do the Nassau stuff this without bothering with Suffolk really, or getting too ugly. Just go back a few pages. Oyster Bay is very easy to pack.

Here's my attempt to harmonize the Hochulmander with the map passed by the special master, while also taking into affect the reshuffling of priorities that occurred in response to that map, some of which I listed above. For example, NY-18 was made and remains a Ulster county seat - cause that's Ryan's base - and NY-17 is drawn to both be sensible but also insert a lot of new voters and make the seat bluer - to specifically get rid of Lawler. Colors are the 2020 election results:








The linchpin of much of the downstate portion of the map is NY-10, which once again heads deep into Brooklyn., but not in a crazy way like the first map. And there is now a justification one can defend, and its a justification that all but forces NY-11 to go up towards red hook:



Also it's a reason that has the ironic effect based on 2022 results of removing a bunch of progressive and Niou areas even though the Asian VAP goes way up. This is cause the Brooklyn Asians were less progressive and did not vote for her based on precinct results, her areas besides NYC Chinatown were Park Slope and the downtown Brooklyn. Those regions are mainly tossed in NY-11.

The partisanship in selected districts, going from Hochulmander -> Court Remap -> This Map. As you'll see, the 2022 results drove actions in certain seats:

NY01: Biden+10.8, Biden+0.2, Biden+8.5

NY03: Biden+14.2, Biden+8.1, Biden+15.5

NY04: Biden+12.1, Biden+14.5, Biden+18.1

NY11: Biden+9.5, Trump+7.6, Biden+11.9

NY17: Biden+13.3, Biden+10.1, Biden+17.8

NY18: Biden+8.2, Biden+8.3, Biden+12.2

NY19: Biden+10, Biden+4.6, Biden+9.6

NY22: Biden+18.1, Biden+7.4, Biden+13.1

The one problem here is that the "Asian opportunity district" approach has the effect of drawing out Dan Goldman. (He lives in Tribeca.) I'm not sure how much institutional support he has, but the legislature will definitely be taking incumbents into account. After all, incumbents were the cause of much of the messiness in the original map. You might be able to solve the problem by extending NY-11 up to lower Manhattan, although Staten Island/Bay Ridge Democrats would be annoyed.

[Tintrlvr]

And on the staten Island point from the last page:

https://twitter.com/qlzsu/status/1679582626791735296

This is the obvious D gerrymander move in the area, but you have to finish it up by giving Goldman Chinatown so you can justify it as keeping the Chinese community together.

In the event of a redrawing in NYC, if they're willing to have more erosity in return for grouping communities of interest together I'd suggest this.

Six districts modified (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). 11th is anchored in Goldman's strongest areas in Manhattan and is Biden+17, so I'm sure Goldman would be happy with it; 7th regains Park Slope; the new 10th is plurality Asian.

Grouping SI with parts of Manhattan works too.  It can be done without looking erose.

I will laugh if we ever see something like the above. In a twisted way it makes a lot of sense, and couldn't have been passed with the 2020 incumbents, but is also very clearly a pretty partisan move.

NY-10 after 2020 took in the Hasidim of Brooklyn, that is now very unlikely. Back then there were two White incumbents in Upper Manhattan rather than one, and now Jeffries's CBC allies are bolder and empowered to desire the whole of Republican Brooklyn. NY-10 after the special remapping takes in Park Slope and other downtown Brooklyn Working Families strongholds. These areas did not vote for the primary winner Goldman, and represent a fertile base where future progressive challengers will emerge from.

Goldman wants to be protected from Progressives despite there being no more upscale Liberal areas easily available for him: White Staten is weirdly the best option. Nadler previously had to negotiate with Maloney for every neighborhood in Manhattan - now there is only one and the master gave Nadler incumbency over the Upper East Side. NY-11 currently takes in south Chinese Brooklyn - that is maintained for continuity. But the growing NYC Chinese community was uniquely mistreated during the congressional special master's remap, splitting it between four districts. Lets remedy that with an access district which will probably elect a Chinese-American, perhaps the same one who if not sidetracked in this manner will challenge Jeffries's African American ally in the mayors office.

Its also not a change so easily undone. Besides the fact that the Chinese population of Brooklyn is growing, all types of minority constituents raise loud voices and legal claims if their access seats are destroyed during remapping processes. Something like this would be effectively reducing NYC's White districts from 3 to 2, and Staten-Manhatten would remain the simplest option in future redistricting processes to pack Whites and not dilute a minority seat into a White one.

I see you posted this one separately. It's worth noting that the Staten Island-Manhattan district existed throughout most of the 20th century - connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn instead was an innovation of the 1991 redistricting.

[Tintrlvr]

Except I don't think Schumer's 2022 numbers are a very good baseline - turnout was clearly lopsided in favor of Rs in a way that is unlikely for 2024, plus local dynamics pretty heavily favored Rs. Same way that Whitmer numbers in MI aren't a good baseline for Biden in 2024.

I don't think Rs were really thinking much about the redraw when choosing to get rid of Santos but may of just thought of him as an electoral liability in the future - regardless of how NY-03 is redrawn, it'll be a seat where Rs have at least a remote possibility of winning, and Santos throws that remote possibility away.

The redrawn NY-03 is unlikely to be safe for Democrats as long as NY-04 isn't being made into an R sink at the same time.

Have you even looked at Nassau electoral geography? Pushing both districts a good deal to towards the Democrats is literally the easiest thing, cause you are more or less just restoring the allignment from last decade. The most reliable GOP voters are all fairly densely concentrated in the Southeast corner centered on Massapequa. It was previously in NY-02 but then the master divided it up between the two Nassau seats. And Dems are obviously throwing it right back in NY-02, which is gonna become a pack of varying strength depending upon what happens further to the east.

Like the map below has both Nassau seats over Biden+20 and nominally only plurality White. Obviously it comes at the expense of NY-01 only going from Biden+0 to Biden+6 and not like Biden+10 or more, but Nassau is not this GOP bastion that needs to be spiderwebbed.

What overlay are you using and what’s it represent?

The overlay is not native to DRA, its NY towns/hamlets/CDPs. This can be found easily at the census tigerline "place" shapefile and imported accordingly.

Such boundaries are VERY important on Long Island (and the rest of the downstate suburbs) IMO, cause the city lines native to DRA are bulky, uninformative, and don't really show the diversity of suburban communities in the region. I've had it imported in DRA since like 2021 when for some reason it was changed from the towns to the present lines, leading to a mass of squares upstate and uninformative blobs downstate.

DRA used to have it and replaced it with the towns at some point, which was very disappointing. The towns basically do not matter at all in Nassau and only a little bit in Suffolk, but the villages and hamlets are very important.

[Tintrlvr]

One thing Dems will want to consider is which upstate district will get Spring Valley and Kirya Joels. These fast growing ultra-Conservative Jewish communities could shift a Biden + 10 seat right in the long run.

Why not put them in Bowman’s district (NY-16)?

I tried drawing what that might look like:

You have to remember that these areas have a tendency to swing dramatically, and while they are usually solid R Presidentially (not in 2016, but they were in 2004-2012 and in 2020), they very frequently vote Democratic for both state and federal elections other than President. So the Republicans cannot rely on them to make competitive seats, and the Democrats should be less worried about growth in them than you might think - although particularly if the Democrats get the right candidate in there (the Democrats really should be running Jewish candidates in any district containing Rockland County, and not doing so is electoral malpractice - even your average everyday Reform Jew should be able to get a solid minority or in some cases majority percentage of the vote in those enclaves, enough to put any district containing them out of reach for a Republican).

[Tintrlvr]

Well, before any maps are finalized at least, I wanted to share my Democratic map of Long Island:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/236eca69-d22c-4260-b0fd-0824d8092483

This is better for Suozzi than the Assembly map (Biden+14) while also pressuring LaLota in a Biden+8 district.

NY-01: Biden+8
NY-02: Trump+15
NY-03: Biden+14
NY-04: Biden+16