2020 Redistricting in Pennsylvania

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What did the Harrisburg area ever do to the PAGOP? The lines in that corner of the state somehow manage to be the ugliest despite it being one of the most easy to draw as safe R places in the state.

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If PA Dems want to replace Boyle with Street, it's pretty easy to make both Philly districts Black influence without all the other ugliness (and honestly they should--pretty messed up currently to be honest).

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If PA Dems want to replace Boyle with Street, it's pretty easy to make both Philly districts Black influence without all the other ugliness (and honestly they should--pretty messed up currently to be honest).

Well that would mean outer Montco goes with Berks making a swing seat. It seems the main goal is more to protect Houlahan while giving up Lambs seat(which would sorta happen anyway in a fair map but with certain preferences from Mike Kelly.) However in exchange for those preferences they place Indiana college instead to keep it at the same partisan level.  After that Perry just gets to stay secure.

Also Fitz gets a marginally better district I guess but the shift is quite small.

Not necessarily:



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Houlahan gets a 51-44 Clinton district. The purple district is plurality Black VAP at 36%, while the green is 47% (and an outright majority on total population.) I mixed up the numbering on the Philly districts accidentally, my bad.



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This one is better at both shoring up Houlahan (53-42 Clinton) and increasing BVAP in the both Philly districts (38% in Green and 48% in Purple). It is more of a shakeup though.

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Trying to show that these districts would be pretty safe for Democrats even in a weaker year in Pennsylvania.

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Here's a fairish map designed to please the PAGOP--perhaps like the sort of fair map a Republican court would have made in overruling a Dem gerrymander.

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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 ?

IIRC a lot of the Amish are actually leaving Lancaster County because the land is too expensive. That's part of why the Amish population is exploding in Eastern Ohio and Eastern Indiana, in addition to the birthrates.

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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.

That's a better analogy, though the Jax metro area has its own idiosyncrasies (why is this monster city as big as Orange County CA lmfao). Tbh the DeSantis configuration in Jax isn't actually terrible (I'd just switch Clay for more of Duval) and it's honestly better than all the maps in this thread that keep snatching Penn Hills and other proximal suburbs from Pittsburgh

I think Indy is pretty analogous too; in that case putting North Indy with Hamilton/Boone/Hendricks naturally happens to produce a Biden seat. Sometimes Dems benefit and sometimes Reps do, effectively neutralizing each other. Drawing maps with predetermined outcomes usually results in a pretty ugly headache. Just do North Hills-Beaver-Butler and call it a day lol. It'd only be narrowly GOP and trending Democratic anyway

Agreed--all the attempts to create two Biden districts in SWPA are pretty dumb. Just suck it up and draw a Democratic pack--you know it's better districting!

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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.

It's also hard to clearly shore up one or the other without kind of getting ugly.

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SWPA is very unfortunate.

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Ironic/grim that if Summer Lee loses, it will be due to the map putting Westmoreland areas in with PGH.

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The CookieDamage Association for Fair and Ungerrymandered Congressional Districts has released its proposal for a mid decade redistricting for Pennsylvania

You're not allowed to post in this thread unless you fess up to being pbower or solid

/s