2015 county predictions

[muon2]

Largest percentage gain in NY was... the Bronx!  Warms my heart.

NY State would have had a population loss were it not for the City.

That used to be true in IL, but apparently no longer. Cook lost 10K which is about half of the overall loss for the state. The Chicagoland area no longer makes up for losses in downstate IL. In fact the greater Chicagp metro extending into IN and WI lost 7K last year in the new estimates.

[muon2]

My question is how much the macrochop of Saratoga hurts. You can trade a pack chop of Albany for a county chop and get rid of the macrochop. I get that doesn't get the political result for Hudson you would like, but should that be relevant for a neutral map?

[muon2]

My question is how much the macrochop of Saratoga hurts. You can trade a pack chop of Albany for a county chop and get rid of the macrochop. I get that doesn't get the political result for Hudson you would like, but should that be relevant for a neutral map?

What county chop is lost by Columbia being absorbed into the Albany CD?

That depends on the numbers, since mine are not the same as yours. I presume that is because I'm using a baseline back to 4/1/10 then projecting the 7/1/15 estimates forward another 4.75 years. For example I find that I don't need to chop Broome as that plus the other 3 most western CDs are only 1550 off in population for 4 CDs.

Given my numbers I found two different ways to use all but one of the Albany UCC counties in a  whole county CD within 0.5%. Adding Montgomery and Schoharie to the UCC minus Renssalaer is 0.47% over quota and quite compact.

Taking Albany out of the UCC and adding Warren, Washington, Columbia and Greene creates a CD at 0.38% over quota. It's not as compact, but it also allows a whole county CD for the North Country so it eliminates two chops. That bring the number of upstate chops to 3 plus the macrochop of Erie and pack penalty for Albany. Depending on actual population growth it may also be possible to swap Montgomery for Greene in 2020.

[muon2]

Yes, I assume the growth rates stay the same as for the past three years (NYC continues at a slower growth rate, which seems reasonable to me).  But that would not make much difference for upstate, which has a steady population decline in most places, or a steady uptick in a couple of places, like Saratoga County. Your map is certainly creative. You detached Albany from the rest of its metro area! That map won't happen in real life. Is there a danger with our metrics, that such a map would knock all the other maps out of the box, because it wins on both erosity and chops, while detaching the inner city county and putting it with an otherwise rural zone? That is not good. The folks on the Fruited Plain won't like it.

I don't like what you did to Erie either. Why did you do that? It seems bad form to create more of a chop of Erie, but having its inner core take in another county. That's just bad policy to me. Does it reduce highway cuts?

One penalty point for each county severed off from the core county in a metro area, and a penalty point for increasing the size of a chop of a county larger than a CD, are rules that one might consider. Yes, I know, you won't like it.

Indeed I won't like it. I've never been a fan of insisting that large counties necessarily have a district nested within, especially when the UCC has two or more counties (nb Niagara is a central county in the UCC just like Erie, the MSA is even called the Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls MSA). A chop is a chop and it shouldn't matter whether that chop created a nested district or not, erosity takes over for me at that point. Since Niagara is in the corner of the state it does reduce erosity to put a district in the corner, so I did that. Putting a district in a corner instead of wrapping around an edge would improve compactness with most methods.

My map above won't necessarily win on erosity. As I mentioned there's a more compact Albany CD that drops Renssalaer. I just liked my North Country CD, so I used the version I displayed. Personally I like the swap of Greene for Montgomery in my plan, since it makes the Albany green CD quite compact and reduces erosity by 2, but it would cost me a microchop based on current estimates, so I didn't use it.

What hurts your plan is the macrochop of Saratoga, because it opens the door to viewing erosity on an urban scale, not just as rural links. But the way it stands now, obeying the pack rule in the Albany UCC requires a macrochop. That's the trade off in the system - improving the chop score at the expense of erosity.

[muon2]

This arrangement of the Albany area might be more politically palatable. It has the same number of chops and reduces erosity by 2 compared to my previous plan. This district arrangement is suggested by the previous CDs from the 2000 redistricting.

[muon2]

Much better (although your NY-19 does snake around but that's life), although the underlying issue remains. It would only really obtain however for metro areas about the size of Albany, where substantially more than one CD, but less than two CD's, are in play, with more than two counties involved. Still, that involves a fair amount of places.

Albany's issue is complicated because the UCC lacks any small counties (ie under 10% of the quota). In this case it forces a macrochop to maintain the pack rule. If Schoharie, which is in the MSA, urbanized enough to meet the UCC standard, then the pack could be addressed with a simple chop.

The situation was similar in the Grand Rapids UCC when we were first fleshing out the UCC rules. By use of a number of plans, and some detailed analysis, we came to the conclusion that the UCC rules and macrochop erosity were reasonably balanced.

[muon2]

Much better (although your NY-19 does snake around but that's life), although the underlying issue remains. It would only really obtain however for metro areas about the size of Albany, where substantially more than one CD, but less than two CD's, are in play, with more than two counties involved. Still, that involves a fair amount of places.

Albany's issue is complicated because the UCC lacks any small counties (ie under 10% of the quota). In this case it forces a macrochop to maintain the pack rule. If Schoharie, which is in the MSA, urbanized enough to meet the UCC standard, then the pack could be addressed with a simple chop.

The situation was similar in the Grand Rapids UCC when we were first fleshing out the UCC rules. By use of a number of plans, and some detailed analysis, we came to the conclusion that the UCC rules and macrochop erosity were reasonably balanced.

In Grand Rapids, you have only two counties in the zone, and severing them from each other is not that much of an issue. It is when you sever the core county out of a pack of three, or if a four pack, have two counties each in separate CD's and so forth, that the common sense rule is put under a lot of strain, and becomes something that folks won't like.

And as I found out here, cutting the core county out was much more harmful to erosity than taking a perimeter county. Core counties tend to be well connected to their neighbors. Perhaps that will be true elsewhere, and if so mitigate the issue.

[muon2]

I think this has a bridge chop, too. Otsego connects to neither Madison nor Oneida.

Here's what I have as the connection map.

[muon2]

This might be even better politically, and it's hard to see any serious complaints from the fruited plain. It keeps chops the same and reduces erosity by 3, so it is certainly better by the basic rules. Two points of the erosity reduction is in a more compact Buffalo-Niagara Falls CD, the other point comes from a reduction of 3 from the Hudson CD with an increase of 2 from the North Country. Everything still projects within 0.5% of the quota for 2020.

[muon2]

Yes, that map is the winner.

Feel free to share it with Yandik, et al.