U.S. House Redistricting: New Jersey

[muon2]

I'm curious as to the number of municipalities that had to be split in Verily's map. I note that the last two cycles had 20-30 splits in order to get exact population equality. I'd be surprised if the commission goes much further than that in splits this time.

[muon2]

It doesn't seem there are any rules or constraints as to how Congressional districts are drawn in NJ, so it seems that the default option is a map drawn by the nominee of one of the two parties, with the one chosen being made by the Chief Justice as to which of the two the Justice thinks is most qualified, and will represent the interests of the people.

So I suspect the default option, unless both parties nominate hacks, or the judge selects the hack over the straight shooter, is a non partisan map. So to me the game is looking at what a non partisan map looks like, and whether there is any other map that both parties would favor over that one. So only if 1) a non partisan map does not really favor one party for whatever reason, and 2) the two parties would prefer over a non partisan map that does not help either party, a map that makes everyone safe and happy, except that two incumbents would be pitted against each other in a fair fight district, will it seem reasonable that any other than a non partisan map will be adopted.

Make sense?

It does, but I would add some priority for incumbent protection, except for the seat that pits two incumbents against each other. That seems consistent with NJ practice, and a non-partisan map maker would likely look at precedents from the previous couple of maps.

[muon2]

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/01/tea_party_group_in_nj_redestri.html

With tools like Dave's App and others that will be coming online this spring with the 2010 numbers, I expect more groups to take an interest and draw their own maps.

[muon2]

I idea I looked at last spring was to create a strong Hispanic influence district as well as a majority Hispanic district. This can be done by splitting the current NJ-13. The north half links with Patterson as CD-8 with 57% HVAP and the south half links with New Brunswick as CD-7 with 31% HVAP. That still leaves room for a BVAP 51% CD-10, and none of the districts has to go crazy splitting towns, though some splits are unavoidable.

[muon2]

Muon,
I looked into a map like this as well. I preserved a black majority district, with one Paterson-North Hudson district and one Central Hudson-New Brunswick district both in the 40s for Latinos. South Belleville, North Newark and most of Elizabeth were in the latter. I like that your second one also connects the South Asian vote in Jersey City and Edison/Woodbridge.  What is the Asian VAP in your new "7th"?

The above CD-7 has the following VAP demographics in DRA:
White 37.4%
Black 13.1%
Asian 16.9%
Hispanic 30.7%
Others 1.8%

A coalition candidate from just about any ethnicity could succeed here.

[muon2]

Did you move all of Elizabeth out of Payne as well?

I put all of Elizabeth in my CD 7 stretching from south Jersey City to New Brunswick. My goal was to keep as many towns whole as possible.

[muon2]

The thing about combining Rothman and Garrett is where Garrett lives. A "fair fight" district in Bergen is totally feasible, but a district that includes a large portion of Bergen and stretches all of the way out to Sussex is almost impossible due to population constraints and very unlikely to be a fair fight. I suppose they could put Garrett and Frelinghuysen (or Garrett and Lance) together and then make Rothman's district marginal to "compensate" (unfair since Republicans are already overrepresented, and Lance's district is obviously the one that "should" be eliminated, in addition to Pallone being drawn out of his district [but the district itself surviving as a D seat], but whatever), but that doesn't seem like what the commission is suggesting.

Republicans have nearly as many seats as the Democrats because the voters of New Jersey chose to elect them. It simply isn't for you to decide which parties are "overrepresented," and which are not.

This is correct. A fair map doesn't just reflect the general partisan leaning of a state, but also should reflect the mood of the electorate. For example, the CA map for the last decade was so locked in that swings in the electorate were not reflected in its delegation and only 1 of 53 seats changed parties during the decade. By contrast the IL map during the last decade was better in that the initial 10 R - 9 D delegation shifted to 7 R - 12 D by 2008, then to 11 R - 8 D in 2010.

[muon2]

I grew up in Pascrell's district and always thought it was the best-looking, most compact district in NJ, so I really want to see it survive.  Southern Passaic and suburban Essex is a very logical combination.

Except for the inclusion of the low income city of Paterson, yeah,

Paterson is surrounded by suburbs, and it has to go somewhere.  Putting it in with the same district as the rest of Southern Passaic (and note the city of Passaic itself is similar) is easily the best option.  You can't just string urban core to urban core without creating a horrible mess.

I still like my option of using Paterson as part of a 57% HVAP district as I posted a while back. It's less messy than either the current NJ-6 or 13.

[muon2]

Here's my reconstruction of the NJ map based on the pdf at the link earlier in the thread,



Here's the DRA stats from this map:

NJ-01: D 62.6-37.4; Obama 65.1-34.9
NJ-02: D 52.0-48.0; Obama 53.7-46.3
NJ-03: R 50.8-49.2; Obama 51.6-48.4
NJ-04: R 55.1-44.9; McCain 53.3-46.7
NJ-05: R 52.6-47.4; McCain 51.3-48.7
NJ-06: D 58.6-41.4; Obama 59.2-40.8
NJ-07: R 57.4-42.6; McCain 53.0-47.0
NJ-08: D 72.5-27.5; Obama 72.5-27.5
NJ-09: D 64.2-35.8; Obama 64.1-35.9
NJ-10: D 81.0-19.0; Obama 84.5-15.5
NJ-11: R 55.1-44.9; McCain 53.3-46.7
NJ-12: D 60.7-39.3; Obama 65.4-34.6