U.S. House Redistricting: New Jersey

[Keystone Phil]

NJ 2 is now a Republican district.

Its still D+1.

I jumped the gun a bit but it should actually be totally even.

[Devils30]

It's somewhat ironic that based off Bush/Gore 2000 numbers this map is actually quite fair to Dems. Gore easily won both NJ-2 and 3 and nearly tied in 4. The 9/11 effect I think caused Ocean and Monmouth Counties to rapidly swing to the GOP. Both counties have decent sized white working class communities which hurts the dems but GOP overreach as with Gingrich in 1994 can cause this area to swing Dem again. NJ 2,3 don't have the low educational levels that districts with similar trend lines in Western PA have so you cant rule out a swing back to the Dems.
  As for NJ-3's Democratic bench, having almost all of D leaning Burlington County in it should solve this problem . It went from a 5.5 point Obama win to roughly a 4 point Obama win. It's really time to quit the whining and find a candidate against Runyan.

[krazen1211]

It's somewhat ironic that based off Bush/Gore 2000 numbers this map is actually quite fair to Dems. Gore easily won both NJ-2 and 3 and nearly tied in 4. The 9/11 effect I think caused Ocean and Monmouth Counties to rapidly swing to the GOP. Both counties have decent sized white working class communities which hurts the dems but GOP overreach as with Gingrich in 1994 can cause this area to swing Dem again. NJ 2,3 don't have the low educational levels that districts with similar trend lines in Western PA have so you cant rule out a swing back to the Dems.
  As for NJ-3's Democratic bench, having almost all of D leaning Burlington County in it should solve this problem . It went from a 5.5 point Obama win to roughly a 4 point Obama win. It's really time to quit the whining and find a candidate against Runyan.

Actually, it doesn't. Just about all the state and county legislative officials are Republican. Christie got 59% in NJ-03. Republican registration advantage is at least 5 points.

You don't have to take my word for it. Roberts conceded that NJ-03 is noncompetitive.

It's simply not a winnable district for the Democrats. Unlike NJ-02, which encompasses random rural areas and lower income areas in Gloucester, NJ-03 covers many higher income areas.

[Devils30]

And even adjusting for the 2010 numbers, Runyan only won it by 5 points in a heavily GOP year. Burlington has trended D for awhile so I'm not sure if they can control the county offices for long, much less the whole decade. Will Runyan lose in 2012? Odds say no but you can't rule out the dems taking it in a future cycle.
I'm a Jersey native so I'm not trolling with BS on this thread lol. In a way it's not terrible that the Dems can now concentrate on the growing areas of south jersey and ditch the machine style corruption from the north that certainly hurts the party image in moderate NJ-2,3.

[Keystone Phil]

And even adjusting for the 2010 numbers, Runyan only won it by 5 points in a heavily GOP year.

He was running as an untested Football player, not an incumbent Congressman, against someone with a moderate reputation.

[Devils30]

Not sure he's compiled the strongest legislative resume quite yet either. And congress is very popular right now

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Republicans even made Pallone's seat less Democratic. I presume that means Diane Gooch will be running again.

[traininthedistance]

Man, I hope they offered Rothman some lube first.

Rothman both has a plurality in the population in the new 'Pascrell' district, and has the district number.

It's far more accurate to say that NJ-8 was dissolved. All the white Republican towns that were surrounded by Paterson were liberated and given to Rodney.

Many of the towns in the old CD-8 weren't Republican.  Wayne, yes, but not West Orange or Bloomfield or Montclair.  There are plenty of Democrats in suburban Essex, and I don't think they'd consider it "liberating" at all to be trapped in the Morris County district.

[Brittain33]

Actually, it doesn't. Just about all the state and county legislative officials are Republican. Christie got 59% in NJ-03. Republican registration advantage is at least 5 points.

You don't have to take my word for it. Roberts conceded that NJ-03 is noncompetitive.

It's simply not a winnable district for the Democrats. Unlike NJ-02, which encompasses random rural areas and lower income areas in Gloucester, NJ-03 covers many higher income areas.

Christie got 53% or 54% in NJ-6, a district everyone recognizes as a Dem vote sink, according to the Daily Kos site I just closed out before checking which of the two numbers it was. Those gubernatorial numbers are highly variable. Not that I disagree that NJ-3 became tougher than before, but given national Republican overreach, stranger things have happened. The district probably has a lot more olds than it used to.

Aren't their D legislators along the Delaware River? Again, not that legislators have a track record of unseating Congressmen in NJ.

[Brittain33]

Republicans even made Pallone's seat less Democratic.

How did they do that? They put in some heavily Dem areas of north Middlesex which, when they left Lance's district, made it even safer for him. Perhaps I thought the district was more competitive before than it was, because it looks pretty damn uncompetitive now. Didn't they add Perth Amboy, too?

[Brittain33]

Man, I hope they offered Rothman some lube first.

Rothman both has a plurality in the population in the new 'Pascrell' district, and has the district number.

It's far more accurate to say that NJ-8 was dissolved. All the white Republican towns that were surrounded by Paterson were liberated and given to Rodney.

Many of the towns in the old CD-8 weren't Republican.  Wayne, yes, but not West Orange or Bloomfield or Montclair.  There are plenty of Democrats in suburban Essex, and I don't think they'd consider it "liberating" at all to be trapped in the Morris County district.

There's a line between partisanship and creepy racism that gets crossed a little too often.

[traininthedistance]

Republicans even made Pallone's seat less Democratic.

How did they do that? They put in some heavily Dem areas of north Middlesex which, when they left Lance's district, made it even safer for him. Perhaps I thought the district was more competitive before than it was, because it looks pretty damn uncompetitive now. Didn't they add Perth Amboy, too?

They gave Plainfield to Rush Holt.

[krazen1211]

Actually, it doesn't. Just about all the state and county legislative officials are Republican. Christie got 59% in NJ-03. Republican registration advantage is at least 5 points.

You don't have to take my word for it. Roberts conceded that NJ-03 is noncompetitive.

It's simply not a winnable district for the Democrats. Unlike NJ-02, which encompasses random rural areas and lower income areas in Gloucester, NJ-03 covers many higher income areas.

Christie got 53% or 54% in NJ-6, a district everyone recognizes as a Dem vote sink, according to the Daily Kos site I just closed out before checking which of the two numbers it was. Those gubernatorial numbers are highly variable. Not that I disagree that NJ-3 became tougher than before, but given national Republican overreach, stranger things have happened. The district probably has a lot more olds than it used to.

Aren't their D legislators along the Delaware River? Again, not that legislators have a track record of unseating Congressmen in NJ.

Yes, gubernatorial numbers by themselves are somewhat variable. But there are many more factors at play.

The Democrats have 2 assemblymen in Diane Allen's district. They can't compete in the 8th legislative district or the Ocean County portion of the district. The Democrats had a couple Burlington Countywide officials for the first time in decades but were swept out of office in 2011.

The difference between Burlington County and Middlesex County is also in registration and the relative strength of the parties. The parties are about even in Burlington and the Democrats are about 17 points ahead in Middlesex (as of a couple years ago). The fact that Christie won NJ-06 certainly counts for very little and everyone knew it; we saw GOP legislative nominees get drenched in 2011 in the legislative races in Northern Middlesex County.

In addition NJ-03 spans 2 media markets.


Edit: This is why Christie won NJ-06.

Turnout in Perth Amboy: 30%
New Brunswick: 28%
Piscataway:  40%
Carteret: 39%



In 2008 all of these were much closer to the County average and to the Republican areas of the county.

[krazen1211]

And even adjusting for the 2010 numbers, Runyan only won it by 5 points in a heavily GOP year.

He was running as an untested Football player, not an incumbent Congressman, against someone with a moderate reputation.

John Adler was one of the first Democrats to seek an extension of the Bush Tax Cuts as he saw the writing on the wall. He voted against Obamacare.

He won in a wave year in an open seat, who put up more than half his margin of victory in Cherry Hill, and who got lucky with lower turnout in the Ocean County side of the district. Good luck repeating the above.

Jim Saxton already won that seat in a snoozefest with 59% in 2006.

[DrScholl]

The House only tends to flip in waves anyway, so it's not like Democrats were going to take the House in a neutral cycle. NJ-3 is one of those seats that is not wave proof and with Democrats have a low defense list, when the next wave comes, seats like that are going to be on the table.

[Keystone Phil]

Aren't their D legislators along the Delaware River? Again, not that legislators have a track record of unseating Congressmen in NJ.

In NJ 3? Yes, there are two of them. Neither of them would beat Runyan.

[NY Jew]

It's somewhat ironic that based off Bush/Gore 2000 numbers this map is actually quite fair to Dems. Gore easily won both NJ-2 and 3 and nearly tied in 4. The 9/11 effect I think caused Ocean and Monmouth Counties to rapidly swing to the GOP. Both counties have decent sized white working class communities which hurts the dems but GOP overreach as with Gingrich in 1994 can cause this area to swing Dem again. NJ 2,3 don't have the low educational levels that districts with similar trend lines in Western PA have so you cant rule out a swing back to the Dems.
  As for NJ-3's Democratic bench, having almost all of D leaning Burlington County in it should solve this problem . It went from a 5.5 point Obama win to roughly a 4 point Obama win. It's really time to quit the whining and find a candidate against Runyan.

how about Conservative NYers moving to both of those counties.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Apparently I never hit send on this post last night, but I crunched the numbers on te Democratic map that went unchosen. It too ceded NJ-07 by making it heavily GOP. Predictably, though, it was far kinder to Democrats in NJ-05 (an R +1.5 district was created for Garrett and Rothman to duke it out in). It also put NJ-03 on the table by making it more Democratic, improving Dem performance there to D +1.5.

Presumably, it wasn't picked because the GOP map was more "minority friendly" (opening up the possibility of a minority following Pascrell) and because the Dem map was far more likely to divide up townships. Pallone's district, for example, contained many fractional towns in Monmouth in an effort to shore him up.

[krazen1211]

Primary time!

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/rep_steve_rothman_to_challenge.html

Thrown into a politically unfriendly district last week, U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman today signaled he intends to challenge a fellow Democrat in June’s primary.

Bergen County Democratic Chairman Lou Stellato would not comment on whether Rothman has decided to run. But he said if he does, Rothman will have the support of the Bergen County Democratic Organization.


Doh. Brutality time!

[krazen1211]

Numbers heavily favor Rothman.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/Rothman_to_challenge_Pascrell_for_9th_District.html

Rothman currently represents about 54 percent of the people who live in the new 9th District.

Pascrell, who revels in street-level politicking, promises to be a tough primary opponent. But Rothman no doubt recognized that that 61 percent of the 114,000 registered Democrats in the new district are among his constituents in the existing 9th District.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Numbers heavily favor Rothman.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/Rothman_to_challenge_Pascrell_for_9th_District.html

Rothman currently represents about 54 percent of the people who live in the new 9th District.

Pascrell, who revels in street-level politicking, promises to be a tough primary opponent. But Rothman no doubt recognized that that 61 percent of the 114,000 registered Democrats in the new district are among his constituents in the existing 9th District.

This was Pascrell's worst nightmare. Several years ago, when I was working for a certain website that deals with NJ politics, I called him up on an article I was writing about just such a scenario: New Jersey losing a house seat in redistricting. Early speculation was that the seat would come from slow-growing North Jersey, and since it couldn't be Payne or Sires, Pascrell and Rothman would be the ones getting screwed. Pascrell's office was very concerned, and kept asking "but this is just speculation, right? You haven't heard anything, have you?"

I wouldn't say that Pascrell is totally out of it yet -- I'd expect Passaic County Democrats to be more loyal to Pascrell in general than Bergen County Democrats to Rothman. I figure the Passaic County line is stronger. And I think you may have a lot of suburban Republicans and Independents in Passaic very interested in turning out and voting in the Democratic primary for a congressman they like. It has the potential to be a real good fight.

Then again, since he's 74, I figure Pascrell may just retire. I bet that's what Rothman's hoping.

[krazen1211]

How many suburban Republicans and Independents exist in that district's part of Passaic County, exactly? Roughly speaking, Obama got almost 80% of the vote in that section of the district I believe compared to about 60% in the Bergen portion of the district.

I can believe that Pascrell has a suburban following in Essex County, though.