2020 Redistricting in Pennsylvania

[lfromnj]

Splitting the core Wilkes Barres area in 4 districts to create 4 Shapiro/ Dem downballot seats totally isn't a gerrymander. Instead to compensate for the lack of a Biden seat here they chopped the core of state college. PA legislative redistricting is pretty sad because a map could naturally end up at 26 state senate Biden seats while a house map would probably still be a Trump majority. Instead its reversed and its literally the worst of all worlds.

Also the way they designed Harrisburg is bad. There should be 4 Biden seats but instead there are only 3 but all 3 are Safe D.

[lfromnj]

https://mobile.twitter.com/StephenJ_Caruso/status/1481686726770839552

This Luzerne ancestrmander might fall quickly.

[lfromnj]

https://mobile.twitter.com/sarahnferris/status/1481795943079063555

Procedural although perhaps increases the chances Democrats come to to the table on a compromise map

[lfromnj]

I do believe at this point if the court map does split Pittsburgh it will involve a PA07 taking Carbon instead of Monroe. It helps keeps the map Proportional in 2016 prez and 2020 treasurer while not really hurting Democrats overall as it would help preserves Cartwright's seat to some degree.

[lfromnj]

All things considered Cartwright's district is pretty compact for how D-leaning it is. Interesting to go after Smucker instead of Perry, though it may be prudent as York's pastorals/ex-sundown towns are more conservative than Lancaster's.

Lancaster is quite fertile ground in general for Democrats. The city itself is growing, the suburban areas of the county are trending Blue, and the blood red rurals are losing population quite quickly. Lancaster County could flip in a decade or two.

Aren't the rurals gaining population due to Amish growth ?

[lfromnj]

All things considered Cartwright's district is pretty compact for how D-leaning it is. Interesting to go after Smucker instead of Perry, though it may be prudent as York's pastorals/ex-sundown towns are more conservative than Lancaster's.

Lancaster is quite fertile ground in general for Democrats. The city itself is growing, the suburban areas of the county are trending Blue, and the blood red rurals are losing population quite quickly. Lancaster County could flip in a decade or two.

Aren't the rurals gaining population due to Amish growth ?

Technically you're right, the Amish f*** like rabbits. However, for political purposes, this fact is largely irrelevant, since barely any Amish people vote. They just aren't a significant factor in electoral politics. Plus, Lancaster City and its suburbs are growing at a much faster rate anyway.

The actual city of Lancaster shrunk still for the decade FYI.

[lfromnj]

So National Democrats prefer equalizing Wild/Cartwright.

[lfromnj]

I believe the GOP congressman for Western PA, Mike Kelly, is from Butler so I doubt they would draw him out of his district. I was able to make two Dem districts in the Pittsburgh area through Beaver, parts of Washington including the city of Washington, the geographical Northwestern half of Allegheny then stretching into the Black eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. Mt. Lebanon and all of Southern Allegheny would be in the Pittsburgh seat in this scenario.

If Democrats are proposing maps to the courts, I don't think they should be trying especially hard to protect Mike Kelly.

I drew the Washington County district the way I did for compactness reasons (in order to make it more appealing to the courts).

That's true, but Kelly's district remaining intact allows for least change to be argued. Even a Dem leaning court will show some deference to Republican incumbent legislators. All of these people know each other and won't want to anger a colleague even on the other side of the aisle.

The Persily map from 2018 had no qualms messing with incumbents. I don't see why it should be different this time.

And honestly, it shouldn't. Drawing districts to favor incumbents is a disgusting subversion of the democratic process.

Except the Conor Lamb mander who had a decent amount of name rec at that point.

[lfromnj]

I believe the GOP congressman for Western PA, Mike Kelly, is from Butler so I doubt they would draw him out of his district. I was able to make two Dem districts in the Pittsburgh area through Beaver, parts of Washington including the city of Washington, the geographical Northwestern half of Allegheny then stretching into the Black eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. Mt. Lebanon and all of Southern Allegheny would be in the Pittsburgh seat in this scenario.

If Democrats are proposing maps to the courts, I don't think they should be trying especially hard to protect Mike Kelly.

I drew the Washington County district the way I did for compactness reasons (in order to make it more appealing to the courts).

That's true, but Kelly's district remaining intact allows for least change to be argued. Even a Dem leaning court will show some deference to Republican incumbent legislators. All of these people know each other and won't want to anger a colleague even on the other side of the aisle.

The Persily map from 2018 had no qualms messing with incumbents. I don't see why it should be different this time.

And honestly, it shouldn't. Drawing districts to favor incumbents is a disgusting subversion of the democratic process.

Except the Conor Lamb mander who had a decent amount of name rec at that point.

This seat was definitely drawn to be a Dem opportunity seat but I'm not sure if it was for Lamb as such? Most of the seat Lamb originally won ended up in the solid-R Southwest district instead.

It could have been slightly more dem friendly and compact ny just drawing north. It was certainly made for Conor Lamb.

[lfromnj]

By the does anyone know more about the York-Gettysburg Carlisle area historically? Why was this area relatively Democratic relative to PA in the late 1800's/early 1900's? I assume the same type of settlers?

[lfromnj]

Can someone explain why there’s such a stigma around splitting Bucks, when other counties around Philly that are simillar in size can be split like 3 ways no problem? One could argue that the Northern and South end of Bucks are very different.

There's actually like 3 layers of Bucks. Overall any split of Bucks in most cases would just split other counties and everyone likes their county lines over there. So ergo little reason to split Bucks. As it stands most maps would probably start from SEPA  as PA01 anyway.

There is a Minnesota style map argument to split Bucks in the 3 ways similar to how Anoka county gets split 3 ways for example but it doesn't work well for PA overall.

 

Here's a map that doesn't fully ignore county lines but places flavor of a district ahead of that.
Chester goes with Upper Delaware which is mostly just an upscale district Dem trending district. The portions of Delaware are actually a bit more red than Chester but it should be Safe D at this point.  After that lower Delaware goes with West Philly for a 47% black VAP district. Then Philly gets another 46% black VAP district. Anyone from PA forgive me if I split Philly wards in a terrible manner I just did this map as a thought experiment . Not actually proposing this.

The remainder of East Philladelphia goes with Lower bucks for an interesting "urban" WWC swing district. Biden +8.1 down from Clinton +8.8. After that Middle Bucks goes with most of Lower Montgomery for a white liberal district along with that part of NW philly which seems to go well with the district? Anyone forgive me if that area is not like Lower merion. Lastly a Biden +0 district with Upper Bucks, Upper Montgomery County and Berks. Probably an Obama district in 2012 as well. Basically partisanwise it doesn't switch to much overall but everyone would scream anyway.

Both the Delaware Philly district and Bucks Philly do include a few upscale suburbs in each of their districts although they mostly seem working class.

[lfromnj]

Can someone explain why there’s such a stigma around splitting Bucks, when other counties around Philly that are simillar in size can be split like 3 ways no problem? One could argue that the Northern and South end of Bucks are very different.

There's actually like 3 layers of Bucks. Overall any split of Bucks in most cases would just split other counties and everyone likes their county lines over there. So ergo little reason to split Bucks. As it stands most maps would probably start from SEPA  as PA01 anyway.

There is a Minnesota style map argument to split Bucks in the 3 ways similar to how Anoka county gets split 3 ways for example but it doesn't work well for PA overall.

 

Here's a map that doesn't fully ignore county lines but places flavor of a district ahead of that.
Chester goes with Upper Delaware which is mostly just an upscale district Dem trending district.  After that lower Delaware goes with West Philly for a 47% black VAP district. Then Philly gets another 46% black VAP district. Anyone from PA forgive me if I split Philly wards in a terrible manner I just did this map as a thought experiment . Not actually proposing this.

The remainder of East Philladelphia goes with Lower bucks for an interesting "urban" WWC swing district. Biden +8.1 down from Clinton +8.8. After that Middle Bucks goes with most of Lower Montgomery for a white liberal district along with that part of NW philly which seems to go well with the district? Anyone forgive me if that area is not like Lower merion. Lastly a Biden +0 district with Upper Bucks, Upper Montgomery County and Berks. Probably an Obama district in 2012 as well. Basically partisanwise it doesn't switch to much overall but everyone would scream anyway.

Both the Delaware Philly district and Bucks Philly do include a few upscale suburbs in each of their districts although they mostly seem working class.

Ye I feel with some fine tuning this map could be really good from a COI  and VRA standpoint. I feel like people just think of Bucks as a giant politically even suburban brick throughout, when really it goes from WWC to Wealthy Suburbs to exurbs. Kinda gets me annoyed that no one is at least willing to play around more to just see what would happen if Bucks were split, but we prolly gonna end up with soemghing like the current map

Well County lines are pretty important in PA overall. It doesn't really matter from a VRA perspective as one black majority district right now is considered compliant anyway. It does however create that 2nd district by taking that portion of Lower Delaware if you care enough of that.

It would be interesting to see how SEPA incumbents shuffle if this was the map. Houlahan probably just takes her Chester seat and Dean takes the Lower Montco seat but Scanlon's seat got cut in 2. Does she run in the black seat or against Houlahan or just retire?
Evans probably takes the central Philly seat?

Fitzpatrick has an interesting choice, he can either keep the lower bucks philly seat or "carpet bag" to the Berks seat which is Trump+0.2 actually(I accidently had a precicnt from Lower merion in it).

And lastly Boyle also has 2 tough choices especially if Fitzpatrick doesn't carpetbag. Does he want the new swing working class district or does he go for the central Philly seat?  I am wondering who runs in the Lower Bucks seat if Fitzpatrick carpetbags north. The best candidate for the GOP would be Martina White.

[lfromnj]

Can someone explain why there’s such a stigma around splitting Bucks, when other counties around Philly that are simillar in size can be split like 3 ways no problem? One could argue that the Northern and South end of Bucks are very different.

There's actually like 3 layers of Bucks. Overall any split of Bucks in most cases would just split other counties and everyone likes their county lines over there. So ergo little reason to split Bucks. As it stands most maps would probably start from SEPA  as PA01 anyway.

There is a Minnesota style map argument to split Bucks in the 3 ways similar to how Anoka county gets split 3 ways for example but it doesn't work well for PA overall.

 

Here's a map that doesn't fully ignore county lines but places flavor of a district ahead of that.
Chester goes with Upper Delaware which is mostly just an upscale district Dem trending district.  After that lower Delaware goes with West Philly for a 47% black VAP district. Then Philly gets another 46% black VAP district. Anyone from PA forgive me if I split Philly wards in a terrible manner I just did this map as a thought experiment . Not actually proposing this.

The remainder of East Philladelphia goes with Lower bucks for an interesting "urban" WWC swing district. Biden +8.1 down from Clinton +8.8. After that Middle Bucks goes with most of Lower Montgomery for a white liberal district along with that part of NW philly which seems to go well with the district? Anyone forgive me if that area is not like Lower merion. Lastly a Biden +0 district with Upper Bucks, Upper Montgomery County and Berks. Probably an Obama district in 2012 as well. Basically partisanwise it doesn't switch to much overall but everyone would scream anyway.

Both the Delaware Philly district and Bucks Philly do include a few upscale suburbs in each of their districts although they mostly seem working class.

I would drop the third split of Philly; it's a lot more dense than Montco and doing so would keep more of NW Philly, NE Philly and central Bucks respectively together. Center City and South Philly are both split right down the middle when you can very easily put all of the former with North Philly and the latter with West Philly

Interesting, it didn't feel much more dense than Lower Merion and demographically it feels pretty similar. Well anyway I just did this for fun and it doesn't really matter in the end.

[lfromnj]

Can someone explain why there’s such a stigma around splitting Bucks, when other counties around Philly that are simillar in size can be split like 3 ways no problem? One could argue that the Northern and South end of Bucks are very different.

There's actually like 3 layers of Bucks. Overall any split of Bucks in most cases would just split other counties and everyone likes their county lines over there. So ergo little reason to split Bucks. As it stands most maps would probably start from SEPA  as PA01 anyway.

There is a Minnesota style map argument to split Bucks in the 3 ways similar to how Anoka county gets split 3 ways for example but it doesn't work well for PA overall.

 

Here's a map that doesn't fully ignore county lines but places flavor of a district ahead of that.
Chester goes with Upper Delaware which is mostly just an upscale district Dem trending district.  After that lower Delaware goes with West Philly for a 47% black VAP district. Then Philly gets another 46% black VAP district. Anyone from PA forgive me if I split Philly wards in a terrible manner I just did this map as a thought experiment . Not actually proposing this.

The remainder of East Philladelphia goes with Lower bucks for an interesting "urban" WWC swing district. Biden +8.1 down from Clinton +8.8. After that Middle Bucks goes with most of Lower Montgomery for a white liberal district along with that part of NW philly which seems to go well with the district? Anyone forgive me if that area is not like Lower merion. Lastly a Biden +0 district with Upper Bucks, Upper Montgomery County and Berks. Probably an Obama district in 2012 as well. Basically partisanwise it doesn't switch to much overall but everyone would scream anyway.

Both the Delaware Philly district and Bucks Philly do include a few upscale suburbs in each of their districts although they mostly seem working class.

I would drop the third split of Philly; it's a lot more dense than Montco and doing so would keep more of NW Philly, NE Philly and central Bucks respectively together. Center City and South Philly are both split right down the middle when you can very easily put all of the former with North Philly and the latter with West Philly

Interesting, it didn't feel much more dense than Lower Merion and demographically it feels pretty similar. Well anyway I just did this for fun and it doesn't really matter in the end.

You're right that they're demographically similar. It's not bad per se but you don't really want the Montco district to effectively be pushing the NE Philly district further from Philly itself while also pushing it past Lower Bucks

Fair enough the lower montco district would then pick more upscale areas in Middle Bucks. This moves the swing Philly district to biden +10.  I think its D enough where Boyle goes for it except maybe if Fitz runs there.

[lfromnj]

What about something like this pertaining to our Philly convo from earlier?



3 way Bucks split:

Explain why what the Ohio GOP did with Cincinatti(city of 300k ) and placing it with its conservative exurbs instead of inner ring suburbs is a gerrymander but what you did with pittsburgh(city of 300k) is fair?

About Philly, Its a thought experiment, just use county lines, I guess the first one doesn't add any extra splits though.

[lfromnj]

Explain why what the Ohio GOP did with Cincinatti(city of 300k ) and placing it with its conservative exurbs instead of inner ring suburbs is a gerrymander but what you did with pittsburgh(city of 300k) is fair?

Cincinnati and Pittsburgh aren’t really comparable politically. In Cincinnati a fair configuration would have one strongly D-leaning district surrounded by several strongly R-leaning districts, while a pro-R gerrymander would have no D-leaning districts in the area. A more apt comparison for Pittsburgh would be Columbus: in both of these areas, pro-R gerrymanders would have a single strongly D-leaning district surrounded by several strongly R-leaning districts, whereas a fair configuration would have two D-leaning districts (one of which leans somewhat strongly D and the other less strongly D).

Why should a 2nd be D leaning? Even with the Dem favorable map of the PA supreme court one is barely D leaning. Both districts already have to expand and why should the suburban one expand more into the most D parts of the urban districts?

The fact is the same, Democrats want to do to Cincinatti what R's what to do with Pittsburgh, split off inner ring suburban areas or the city itself in order to get an extra seat. The PASC court can do what they want but both are gerrymanders.

[lfromnj]

Explain why what the Ohio GOP did with Cincinatti(city of 300k ) and placing it with its conservative exurbs instead of inner ring suburbs is a gerrymander but what you did with pittsburgh(city of 300k) is fair?

Cincinnati and Pittsburgh aren’t really comparable politically. In Cincinnati a fair configuration would have one strongly D-leaning district surrounded by several strongly R-leaning districts, while a pro-R gerrymander would have no D-leaning districts in the area. A more apt comparison for Pittsburgh would be Columbus: in both of these areas, pro-R gerrymanders would have a single strongly D-leaning district surrounded by several strongly R-leaning districts, whereas a fair configuration would have two D-leaning districts (one of which leans somewhat strongly D and the other less strongly D).

Why should a 2nd be D leaning? Even with the Dem favorable map of the PA supreme court one is barely D leaning. Both districts already have to expand and why should the suburban one expand more into the most D parts of the urban districts?

The fact is the same, Democrats want to do to Cincinatti what R's what to do with Pittsburgh, split off inner ring suburban areas or the city itself in order to get an extra seat. The PASC court can do what is needed but both are gerrymanders.

yeah i fail to see the analogy when the partisan makeup between the pittsburgh and columbus areas is about as similar as georgia and colorado….

Here's actually a pretty similar analogy. Let's say that FL 05 isn't needed. How should the Jacksonville metro (red leaning metro with almost exactly 2 seats worth of population) be drawn? Desantis drew a pretty compact map based on a natural geographic boundary which is the St.John's river. It doesn't really split the core black community although it reduces it a bit. It's still a gerrymander and a Half donut option makes way more sense with one district based in most of duval and then a remainder district. I used Cincinatti though because both are similar size.

[lfromnj]

When is the court picking a map?

Yesterday

Great job, I love it when deadlines are missed.

https://twitter.com/adambonin/status/1488218438854184960?s=20&t=t7Buoe5iPcYR...

It was intentional. As was expected for months, Persily is probably gonna be coming back.

All hail the Mapmaker in Chief!

The guy who drew ny 10 as it is right now and cracked southern Brooklyn into 3 CD s?

[lfromnj]

When is the court picking a map?

Yesterday

Great job, I love it when deadlines are missed.

https://twitter.com/adambonin/status/1488218438854184960?s=20&t=t7Buoe5iPcYR...

It was intentional. As was expected for months, Persily is probably gonna be coming back.

All hail the Mapmaker in Chief!

The guy who drew ny 10 as it is right now and cracked southern Brooklyn into 3 CD s?

Persily had a hand in that? I had no idea.

Yeah pretty sure he was the special master. Forgive me if he wasn't.   The solution would have been to cut a Manhattan cd but not southern Brooklyn just got screwed to give up to their Manhattan overlords.

[lfromnj]

When is the court picking a map?

Yesterday

Great job, I love it when deadlines are missed.

https://twitter.com/adambonin/status/1488218438854184960?s=20&t=t7Buoe5iPcYR...

It was intentional. As was expected for months, Persily is probably gonna be coming back.

All hail the Mapmaker in Chief!

The guy who drew ny 10 as it is right now and cracked southern Brooklyn into 3 CD s?

Persily had a hand in that? I had no idea.

Yeah pretty sure he was the special master. Forgive me if he wasn't.   The solution would have been to cut a Manhattan cd but not southern Brooklyn just got screwed to give up to their Manhattan overlords.

Persily was not the special master. He was the data guy hired to assist U.S. Magistrate Judge Roanne Man, who was said special master. he was hired in that instance because of his success in Connecticut. In this instance, evidence suggests he was just the computer guy, taking orders from Mann whereas in PA he had loose orders but specific goals.

Ah my bad. I do remember reading he was involved so  I assumed he was the special master.

[lfromnj]

Pretty easy overrule even from a non partisan perspective. The GOP was greedy, they can't go after Wild to give her a tossup and try to give Meuser a better seat against Cartwright.

[lfromnj]

Pretty easy overrule even from a non partisan perspective. The GOP was greedy, they can't go after Wild and try to give Meuser a better seat against Cartwright.

Even a district like the current one leaves Wild very vulnerable.

Of course, but I meant they wanted to give her a tossup instead of a Lean D while at the same time moving Cartwright drastically to the right. I wonder what the PA court will do. Probably safer to give her a tossup and give Cartwright a Trump +3 instead of 8 seat and then they have more cover to shore up Lamb's seat as the map is still relatively proportional while not really hurting Democrats in the short run atleast as Democrats overall are split on what to do with Cartwright/Wild.

[lfromnj]

https://twitter.com/Elaijuh/status/1490742868008390660?s=20&t=XmuZ1nlsNIlpvl...

Unsurprisingly, the now-sidelined Conservative gives her powerless opinion in favor of the GOP maps. The PA supreme Court will now collect opinions on this map, at which point they will overrule her decision.

It will be very easy to justify overruling this decision, as the chosen map has more county splits than necessary.

Where? I only count 17.

[lfromnj]

Pretty easy overrule even from a non partisan perspective. The GOP was greedy, they can't go after Wild and try to give Meuser a better seat against Cartwright.

Even a district like the current one leaves Wild very vulnerable.

Of course, but I meant they wanted to give her a tossup instead of a Lean D while at the same time moving Cartwright drastically to the right. I wonder what the PA court will do. Probably safer to give her a tossup and give Cartwright a Trump +3 instead of 8 seat and then they have more cover to shore up Lamb's seat as the map is still relatively proportional while not really hurting Democrats in the short run atleast as Democrats overall are split on what to do with Cartwright/Wild.

Wouldn’t Dems be better off giving Wild a lean D seat while sacrificing Cartwright (make his seat something like Trump + 12 or so)?

Democrats are clearly split on what to do based on all the Democratic plaintiff maps so the PASC . I would say they would be better off protecting Wild but it isn't certain and the overall penalty wouldn't be too great.

[lfromnj]

Exactly. If you want to go for clean maps, then there are essentially two possibilities:

1) Wild gets Stroudsburg. Then the 2020 numbers are:
Wild: ca. Biden +5
Cartwright: Trump +7.5 (up to Trump +10 with more R-friendly lines)

2) Cartwright gets Stroudsburg. Then the 2020 number are:
Wild: ca. Biden +1
Cartwright: Trump +3 (up to Trump +5 with more R-friendly lines)

Somewhere in the range of Biden +5 to Biden +6 is the reasonable maximum for Wild. Any attempt to shift more democrats from Cartwright to Wild (making Cartwright's seat Trump +12 or so) would involve very ugly gerrymandering.

Yeah it seems like the base GOP map without the Luzerne gerrymander. is probably the best fair map one could create for Democrats in the region. Wild has like a Biden +1.5 district instead of biden +0.8 if she took Carbon and Cartwright would get his best district possible if it was kept compact.