2020 Redistricting in Pennsylvania

[sting in the rafters]

-Key swing districts would be Lamb's, Cartwright's, Wild's, and Perry's.
-Gave some of NE Philly to PA-01 as it's similar to Bensalem
-Factor in the Fitzpatrick effect that PA-01 will remain Likely R as long as he's their rep
-Gave Delco's district some of the Main Line in Montco
-I used the 2012-2018 composite so adjust the map accordingly w/demographic trends.
-A key factor was trying to respect the Appalachia-Acela divide as much as possible.
-Carving up Berks was a tough decision however keeping Chesco together was a biased move as my home
-In any case, Ds need to realize some of their most vulnerable districts nationwide are in NEPA. Keeping the party unified and being able to counteract high GOP turnout in the more rural parts of Luzerne and Carbon with strong margins in Wyoming/Lehigh Valley is very important.

[sting in the rafters]

2012-2018 composite (10d/7r, median district D+3.89%)


2016 pres (7d/10r, median district R+6.45%)





2018 sen (11d/6r, median district D+10.25%)




Couple of quick notes

-As a Dtown native splitting Chesco is a no-go and I'll argue the Lancaster Ave corridor and Piedmont forests make up enough of a collective community to keep it together. Still looking for a better solution regarding the
-Tried to maximize competitive districts. This meant helping Cartwright at Wild's Expense by giving her all of the Jim Thorpe area.
-Gave the BucksCo district a portion of NE Philly as its more suburban/culturally similar to nearby Bensalem.
-Is the lower Susqehanna valley district a little D-friendly? Yeah, though I felt it it would be truer to the character to have the mountainous portion of Dauphin in a different district. A true gerrymander would include Lancaster and less of the Dutch country farmland.
-Feedback is as always appreciated

[sting in the rafters]

Here's a map I made. I think it's pretty fair from a partisan perspective, but I don't know much about Pennsylvania, so it's definitely possible I've committed some cardinal sin here.

The only real issues are including Reading and its surrounding environs with the ultraconservative farmland and Amish communities around it. While the growth of Philly metro will eventually spread along US route 30 towards Lancaster, it is to swap the two cities as Lancaster's sphere of influence has much more in common with the Susquehanna Valley district with Harrisburg/York. Also am biased as a WC native but I'd also put the townships east of 202 in Chesco with the rest of the county as opposed to the aforementioned agrarian communities of the Appalachian valley. Otherwise decent enough, I do like how you have NE Philly in the BucksCo district as its population density, demographics, and love of perogies fits better.


 You took an interesting approach to solving the Lehigh Valley and Scranton district quandary. Putting all of Jim Thorpe's forests+fishing creeks in the northern district pretty much kills the Ds chances there except in a wave, yet it does shore up Wild given the trends in Lehigh Valley. It's been a while since I last drew one but I managed to create 2 D-leaning districts in NEPA via splitting Carbon and giving Cartwright the Democratic resort towns in the Poconos in Monroe, however the commission may be less forgiven and point to growth of the NYC metro reaching Monroe/Pike/Wayne as sufficient to keep the district competitive long-term.

[sting in the rafters]

New drop.



Big s/o to the little green men for the final design of a Joey district for Lamb that's >85% white and doesn't crack a single municipality, let alone Pittsburgh. Someone tell Wolf I'll take a chilled case or 10 of Victory sour monkeys directly to my Amazon storage locker and we'll call it even for saving his party's a--. And yes, that is one ugly quad-cut of Berks but it's better than the alternative of making it a 2D/1R county via stuffing all of the farmland closer to Hawk Mountain into the Lancaster district.

In all seriousness 6D/5 swing/6R. Swing districts being lower Susquehanna, Pittsburgh burbs, Lehigh, NE Coal Region, and Bucks Co once Fitzpatrick either retires or gets smoked by trendz.

[sting in the rafters]

I am once again asking people to recognize that with both Lamb and Doyle out, there is no longer any need to preserve the ugly current PA-17 Pittsburgh reach-around. Just grab all of the Penn hills region to the west of the city and use the rivers as guidelines for district borders. This near-guarantees a Biden seat, one that could even be more Democratic than the nation if you know what you are aiming for.

Problem is Rs controlling the state legislature would have a collective stroke if Allegheny is drawn too unfavorably to them.

[sting in the rafters]

I am once again asking people to recognize that with both Lamb and Doyle out, there is no longer any need to preserve the ugly current PA-17 Pittsburgh reach-around. Just grab all of the Penn hills region to the west of the city and use the rivers as guidelines for district borders. This near-guarantees a Biden seat, one that could even be more Democratic than the nation if you know what you are aiming for.

Problem is Rs controlling the state legislature would have a collective stroke if Allegheny is drawn too unfavorably to them.

We know the map is either going to the D courts or end up a D-favoring compromise (that'll leave their seats intact and favorable) because the D's used said court as leverage and got a map they liked, so why do they matter? In the latter scenario the R's would care more about securing their own then spending little capital on offense, and the courts in the former clearly wanted to do it in 2018 except Lamb lived in Mt. Lebanon and Doyle had a base in the Swissvale area.

Didn't they draw the 6D/5 swing/7 R map before the special election Lamb won or am I misremembering? Either way as hard as it is to believe 6D/5 swing/6R is D-leaning considering how f---ed the geography of the state is (inb4 "land doesn't vote!" Sorry, we've already decided property >>>> life in this country.) Any more and Rs prolly strip the 5-2 Court of the authority to appoint the tie-breaker to the commission at the first opportunity.

Granted, knowing the um... authoritarian the PAGOP has taken they'll prolly do that anyway whenever they take back the governor's mansion so maybe you're right after all.

[sting in the rafters]

TBH this map isn't bad outside of that western district.

-1.splitting the Harrisburg metro four ways
-2.splitting Philadelphia four ways
-3.splitting Montgomery four ways
-4.pairing Harrisburg proper with counties in the f-cking Northern Tier
-5.pairing Lehigh and Northampton with anything but the Stroudsburgs and their environs, let alone Carbon
-ridiculous amounts of arbitrary county splits, some of which make the portions of counties in certain seats non-contiguous

This map is a cerebral hemorrhage and a half any way you slice it.

1. What is the Harrisburg metro? Anyway yeah its bad
2. 2 of these are quite microchops and Philly gets 2 proper districts nested
3. Smaller chops  and I don't like it but we are talking about 1 township for one of these(Northern Bucks) Rotations should be relatively possible for this map. One of the chops seems to be for putting Cheltenham with PA03 likely to keep the black population up while increasing the black population of PA02.
5. No putting those 2 with Carbon is perfect. That's literally what the Lehigh valley is.

I'd define the Harrisburg metro for COI purposes as being all but the rural northern extremes of Dauphin + Mechanicsburg and everything east of it in Cumberland.

The line of demarcation here is Blue Mountain, the western and southernmost ridge of the Appalachians. The municipalities south of there have more in common with the suburban/exurban sprawl spanning west into the more pastoral meadows of Cumberland. Everything past that ridge is obviously much more agrarian and has the cultural history of natural resources-based economies.

In this regard I'd argue York/Harrisburg/Carlisle all form a shared community of mid-sized former industrial centers in the Lower Susquehanna Valley, especially considering they share athletic conferences/a sizable service economy. Granted, some of that classification is a product of it now being possible to draw a highly-competitive district along the southern Susquehanna but that's more of a function of the population growth/knowledge economy in the region than any specific gerrymandering impetus.

[sting in the rafters]

SNIP

SNIP

New Freezer 3.0. Cleaned up a lot of county splits and removed gentrifying Manayunk for relatively suburbanized NE Philly in Boyle's district.

https://twitter.com/StephenJ_Caruso/status/1469079921066708995
lol

As a Houlahan constituent I feel more insulted as a map-maker than disenfranchised as a voter that this cartographer took 100 hours to put the mushroom farms of K-Square and Oxford in the same district as Upper Darby as part of Dean's district nor split Lancaster over the demon which is the hook of Houlahan's district going into Lebanon. No, I am not going to be in the same district as the people who host the Renaissance Fair. I refuse.

[sting in the rafters]

I take back what I said - the new House map seems very fair (102-101 Biden) but the new state senate map seems more trash than what I originally thought.

Realized that my home district in Montco, currently with Katie Muth (D) is going from 42-40 R edge to a 47-36 R edge which is ... an incredibly jarring change. Especially for a Montco district which continues to trend left (and my particular township does as well)

I thought Muth lost her portion of Berks in this map? Anyway it looks like Biden got 57% of the vote in her new district, where Muth should be able to win even in 2022.

Are you sure? I used this - https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2021/12/pennsylvania-redistricting-house-senate-districts-lookup-tool/

It says Current District 44 (Muth, D) was by registration: 42.64% R, 40.08% D, 17.28% Other

Then new proposed District 24 would be: 47.15% R, 36.20% D, 16.65% Other

I know we have a ton of ancestral Rs voting D in my area, but Biden getting 57% in the new district with an R+11 registration advantage would be pretty surprising. If that's somehow the case, then I'm not as worried about Muth losing I guess.

Yoooo brotherman you and I are in the same district (live in Philly but registered at my mom's bc my vote actually matters here)? That's crisazy. Yeah the swing here is real, lots of culturally liberal voters in NE Chesco who are worried ab environmental conservation. Also as I'm sure you know hella younger heads moving around the way to start families and whatnot. Problem is you know those Amish voters out towards Honey Brook are gonna be fired up for Rs next fall, Muth's district's gonna be a real marginal.  Imo a fair district woulda paired us w/the established growth east of 202.

[sting in the rafters]

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.

[sting in the rafters]

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?

The Klan was strongest in this area historically. And considering it elected Doug Mastriano not a whole lot has changed.

This was my first thought as well given the rurals remain a hotbed (York race riots, the Klan still trying to organize around Gettysburg) however Altoona was just as if not more of a center for white supremacy and doesn’t follow the same voting patterns.

[sting in the rafters]

Could Yudichak run into difficulties with these lines?

He expressed his displeasure at Luzerne being quad-cut

He now lives in the 20th, which A) ingests a lot of land with ancestral Rs north of the Poconos as opposed to eastern Luzerne/Carbon where Ds are still strong down-ballot and B) pits him up against an incumbent R.

A relatively safe district is possible considering down-ballot dynamics if Ds connected the southern Wyoming Valley with Hazleton and the Poconos/Stroudsburg, though I'd imagine there's some ill will towards him disaffiliating a few years back.