2020 New York Redistricting

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

a) It's not going to a court, if the commission don't draw a map that the Democrats are happy with they can just pass their own through the State Assembly and Senate
b) Of course it's possible to draw three performing Hispanic districts. It's not even that complex - just adding Corona and Elmhurst to Velazquez's district would do it, although that's using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I believe the Dems need a two thirds majority in the State Senate to draw their own map.

In other words, a net gain of two or more seats in the State Senate   IIRC, they're pretty widely expected to clear that barrier in 2020.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Anyone else think concerns about their post-redistricting districts is the real reason that Zeldin, Reed, and even Stefanik are suddenly toying with running for Governor?  Reed is the most obviously vulnerable of the three in that it seems like a widely agreed upon given that his district will be merged with that of Chris Jacobs.  Reed has had at least one real scare against an unheralded C-lister so he probably isn’t the strongest incumbent and might well have concluded that he’d lose such a primary.

There have been maps showing that you can easily turn Andrew Gabarino and Lee Zeldin’s seats into a from two R-leaning seats into a Safe R and a D-leaning seat.  Both incumbents seem well-liked by the local Republican big-wigs, but maybe Zeldin thinks he’ll be at a disadvantage due to the Safe R district’s composition and/or that Gaberino will get more institutional support in an incumbent vs. incumbent primary.  He’s definitely acting like someone looking for a possible escape hatch.

I have seen at least one map showing that you can definitely draw Stefanik out with some creative line-drawing w/o making a dummymander, upsetting Dem incumbents, or conceding a seat elsewhere.  However, the map looks pretty ugly.  That said, Stefanik has become a high-profile Trumpist and is clearly angling for House leadership, so it could be pretty tempting to draw her out if possible.  However, NY Democrats may prefer a cleaner map that leaves the GQP with three seats to an ugly one that leaves them with only two and Stefanik has seemed less enthusiastic about potentially running for Governor than Reed or even Zeldin.

So what?  Well, this kinda makes me wonder if word is starting to come down the grapevine that NY Democrats are planning to play hardball with congressional redistricting and target folks like Zeldin and Stefanik in addition to the more obvious goners like Malliotakis.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Here are the maps I was thinking of:

Here is a properly aggressive 25 district NY Democratic gerrymander. It has 23 Dem seats and only 2 Republican seats. If Republicans are really going to be doing things like gerrymandering TN-05 into oblivion, then Dems should do things like this in states like New York. Although what they really should do is a 25-0 map (spaghetti strings from Manhattan to western New York). Maybe if they went 25-0 with ridiculous spaghetti string districts, then the partisan GOP Supreme Court might finally do something to stop partisan gerrymandering.

Anyway, here is my 23-2 map:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/cd0c6d55-3f16-48e5-abd3-714345b3d5c9


NY-01: D+4.24, 55.6% D composite, 58.4% Obama 2008
NY-02: D+9.95, 61.5% D composite, 62.6% Obama 2008
NY-03: D+4.92, 56.4% D composite, 58.1% Obama 2008
NY-04: D+8.68, 60.2% D composite, 57.8% Obama 2008
NY-05: D+12.26, 63.8% D composite, 60.7% Obama 2008 (44% Asian plurality)
NY-06: D+13.08, 64.5% D composite, 66.0% Obama 2008 (42% Black plurality)
NY-07: D+32.86, 84.3% D composite, 79.9% Obama 2008 (36% Hispanic plurality)
NY-08: D+24.35, 75.8% D composite, 73.7% Obama 2008 (44% Black plurality)
NY-09: D+28.61, 80.1% D composite, 77.9% Obama 2008 (44% Black plurality)
NY-10: D+33.85, 85.6% D composite, 84.3% Obama 2008
NY-11: D+12.42, 63.8% D composite, 63.3% Obama 2008
NY-12: D+26.23, 77.9% D composite, 73.4% Obama 2008
NY-13: D+41.46, 93.0% D composite, 90.9% Obama 2008 (54% Hispanic majority)
NY-14: D+11.59, 63.1% D composite, 63.3% Obama 2008 (36% Hispanic, 46% White)
NY-15: D+39.99, 91.5% D composite, 62.6% Obama 2008 (63% Hispanic)
NY-16: D+10.52, 62.1% D composite, 60.5% Obama 2008
NY-17: D+7.53, 59.1% D composite, 59.1% Obama 2008
NY-18: D+5.27, 56.8% D composite, 57.8% Obama 2008
NY-19: D+4.4, 55.9% D composite, 57.3% Obama 2008
NY-20: D+4.8, 56.3% D composite, 56.5% Obama 2008
NY-21: R+13.15, 38.3% D composite, 43.2% Obama 2008
NY-22: D+4.03, 55.6% D composite, 56.2% Obama 2008
NY-23: R+13.64, 37.9% D composite, 43.2% Obama 2008
NY-24: D+5.31, 56.9% D composite, 58.7% Obama 2008
NY-25: D+6.59, 58.1% D composite, 57.9% Obama 2008


Upstate:



If you want to do 23-2, it seems like you have to do something a bit weird upstate to make it work, because the clusters of Dems in the middle of upstate don't quite work out to a whole number of sufficiently Dem districts. The key thing done to solve that issue in this map is that Syracuse is combined with the more Dem parts of the North Country. Onodonga County is cut with the north part of it (including the whole city of Syracuse and the large share of the population) going in NY-24 (D+5.31), and the southern suburbs go into NY-22 and contribute to making it pretty strongly Dem-leaning (D+4.03). It is possible Katko might try to run in NY-22, but if so Brindisi should be favored due to the partisanship of the district, and it should include more of Brindisi's territory. Or possibly Katko might even try to run in NY-21 (presumably along with Stefanik and who knows who else), and who knows who comes out on top in that Republican primary.

There might be some better alternatives to how I did NY-24. Maybe NY-22 could be drawn up to the Vermont-Canada borers directly instead (but that seems hard because of how red the rural areas are that you have to go through). The other alternative that might be better would be to bring back the Buffalo-Rochester earmuffs. Buffalo alone is not enough to support 2 Dem districts, but it could be enough for 1 district and part of another one, if the other part of the second district came from Rochester. Then the remainder of Rochester/Monroe County could be combined with the Dem areas in NY-22/24. That might make it possible for NY-21/22 to have more normal-looking shapes. In that case you would need to draw either NY-20 or NY-19 up to the Canadian/Vermont border though to not waste Dem votes and avoid having to concede a 3rd upstate GOP district. So if you are willing to split Buffalo/Rochester and bring the main Buffalo district down to maybe D+5-6 or so, that might make things more compact elsewhere.

Speaking of Buffalo, NY-02 is moved from Long Island to Buffalo solely in order to keep the numbers of the other districts linked to their current incumbents. So "NY-02" is basically the current NY-26.



NYC/LI:



There are 0 Republican seats downstate. Long Island is exquisitely carved up to make everything be at least D+4. NY-01 is D+4.24, NY-03 is D+4.92, and there is nothing else between that and NY-04, which is D+8.68. So worst case, maybe the Republicans somehow manage to win both NY-01 and NY-03, in which case they get... exactly the same number of seats they have now (minus the Staten Island district). Also, NY-01 is 57% White and NY-03 is 59% white, so Republicans are probably not going to win either of those without doing at least relatively well with BOTH non-white voters and college educated whites. It would be useful to see how Trump did in 2016/2020 though.

NY-04 in particular is messier than it really needs to be while being safe Dem, but the reason for that was just trying to make NY-05 have as high of an Asian population as possible, which led to some awkward precinct choices. If not for that, NY-05/04/14 could be made at least somewhat neater.

AOC gets in on the Long Island cracking action with NY-14. She shouldn't complain. It is definitely better than having her district be eliminated, and in a way it could be a good thing for her. If she ever wants to go anywhere other than the House, it would be good practice for her to figure out how to make her messaging appeal to voters in areas other than urban heavily Dem base areas. Even so, she is in no real danger of losing a D+11.59 majority minority district which also includes the heavily Dem white progressive areas of Astoria. Similarly, Jamaal Bowman gets NY-16 to go a little bit more upstate in order to help out Sean Maloney, but he should also be in no real danger of losing and it is a lot better for him than having his district be eliminated.


All the Dem incumbents which are in remotely competitive districts get improvements in their PVIs, with the one exception of Tonko (NY-20), but that is still D+4.8, which ought to still be safe given that it is based in Albany/Schenectady. Yes, it is possible that the Republicans might on occasion in a strong Republican year win one or 2 of these districts that are about D+4/D+5, but if so in that case Dems will already have lost the House elsewhere in other tipping point districts in other states, and Dems should be able to win them back right away as soon as a Dem year or neutral year comes along. But overall the districts here are generally as safe or safer than those on most maps with 3 or 4 GOP seats. The main thing that could go wrong are further GOP trends in rural upstate areas, but upstate seems to have snapped back to Biden fairly well, and in addition the Dem upstate districts are mostly not that reliant on truly rural votes (but are more reliant on votes in towns and cities which are less likely to trend hard GOP).

I tried re-doing upstate with un-packing Buffalo. It seems like doing that causes some quite beneficial changes for Democrats in terms of partisanship, via a series of chain reactions. It enables more efficient packing of Republican votes overall, and also a better distribution of Democratic votes between the upstate districts, so they are basically all safer and all have a minimum PVI of at least D+5.5 to D+6 or so.



https://davesredistricting.org/join/64b7c0e7-b1a0-4e58-99ee-49feee3bcaf1

I didn't change the downstate districts change, and the upstate or partially upstate district PVIs are now:

NY-02 (moved to be the Buffalo district): D+5.54
NY-16: D+10.39
NY-17: D+7.51
NY-18: D+7.76
NY-19: D+6.1
NY-20: D+6.69
NY-21: R+13.1
NY-22: D+5.82
NY-23: R+16.05
NY-24: D+5.86
NY-25: D+5.47

The thing that sets this all in motion is un-packing the Buffalo district, and adding back a Buffalo-Rochester earmuffs district (NY-25). Using some of the extra Buffalo Dem votes on NY-25 means there are some left over Rochester Dem votes that NY-24 can take (and indirectly pass on to NY-22). It also means that NY-24 doesn't need to go up into the North Country to the Vermont border in order for both NY-22 and NY-24 to be made strongly Dem.

As a result, both NY-22 and NY-24 are stronger Dem, up to nearly D+6 each. That ought to be pretty much unwinnable even for Katko, and in addition Katko's Syracuse base is split up between two districts, both of which have a lot of other Dem territory which is new to him (mainly either in Rochester or in Ithaca/Binghampton). So I would be quite a bit more confident that this map would actually knock out Katko and end up with the advertised 23 D - 2 R result. I think this map would most likely end up producing a Katko-Stefanik primary in NY-21, because Stefanik would not have a realistic shot of winning NY-20, and Katko would not have a realistic shot in NY-24 or NY-22.

Since NY-24 doesn't need to take the Dem (or at least competitive) North Country areas which are near Vermont, NY-20 takes them instead. This also means that NY-18 can pull back from a lot of the heavily R rural areas that it took on in the previous version, which means it can take Republican or competititive territory from NY-19 (and indirectly from NY-20). That allows BOTH NY-19 and NY-20 to become more Democratic, even while NY-18 also becomes more Democratic.

So this is definitely a significant improvement for Dems in terms of the partisanship of the districts. It would be necessary to check against 2016/2018/2020 results, but I would think this should be a pretty sturdy gerrymander. None of the districts are really that dependent on an unreasonable number of rural Dem votes, so as long as Dems maintain reasonable support levels in the cities/suburbs in upstate, these districts ought to hold even if rural areas trend further Republican. The bulk of the heavily R rural areas are packed into NY-21 and NY-23. I would think the only way these districts would fall is in an extreme Republican wave year where the GOP already picked up probably at least 250 seats in other states.

In terms of the aesthetics, it is less clear if it is an improvement. The main aesthetic improvement is NY-21 is definitely more compact (though still not really compact) since it no longer wraps the entire way around NY-22. On the other hand, NY-02 and NY-25 are less compact since they are no longer simple pure compact Buffalo/Rochester districts.

NY-24 and NY-22 in particular have a bit less good PVIs than is possible in order to make them at least minimally compact. Most of these districts can be made more Democratic by making them a bit less impact, or alternatively can be made a bit more compact without much loss of PVI (some of the tentacles only improve the partisanship very slightly, so if you carefully tweak it you can end up with pretty much the same effects and maybe make it look a bit better).

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Calling it a dummymander is a stretch, but one could probably draw a better map upstate.  There’s no reason to draw two Republican vote sinks in western NY though nor is there any real danger in splitting Buffalo, especially when you consider that Higgens is both a firmly entrenched incumbent who probably won’t retire anytime soon since he’s “only” 61 and was the single-biggest over-performer of any Democratic House candidate in 2020 (random some dude opponent or not, that’s pretty d*** impressive).

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Well, it will be interesting if Dems go for the 23-3 and someone challenges on the "favoring one party" rule. That would seem to have potential if all of the others (including compactness) will be easy to avoid.

I am working on a map that would give the Dems the best objective function given the constraints. It is not easy. But I suspect that the objective function will have to cede to the Pubs 4 seats, with some more in a bad year a tad vulnerable. In other news, my former (I changed my principal residence to Hoboken - I live in Jersey now, where the garbage meets the sea, can you imagine?) Congressman, Delgado (NY-19)  is running hard, as if he thinks that assuming an easy ride is stuck on stupid, and he's right. I think I have received about 5 meet and greet offers from him in the last month via email.

There is no universe where conceding 4 seats makes even a modicum of sense here

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Personally I don't expect a 23-3 map; it requires a lot of messing around with NY-25 and NY-26 and a lot of ugly lines which I can't see the entire caucus agreeing to. A 22-4 map, on the other hand, is very feasible and is probably what I'd bet on, since weird lines need to be drawn in the east for good incumbent protection anyway and two flips downstate don't really disadvantage any incumbents. Here's what I hope the map might look like:






(I know more about NY than PA, but still not that much, so it's possible I've done something very wrong here. Also don't pay too much attention to the NYC lines, I attempted to keep the districts basically similar but it's very possible that I double bunked incumbents or something. All the upstate Democrats definitely live in their districts though.)

Anyways, this map was drawn to mostly minimize county and town chops, except in Long Island, where the lack of political geography makes that basically impossible. Rochester and Buffalo get their own Safe D seats in exchange for an additional R pack upstate. All blue districts are Biden+10 or more: the least blue district is Delgado's new (and substantially changed, it now goes from his home in Rhinebeck out to Binghamton) 19th at Biden+10.2. Malliotakis is probably doomed in her new Biden+13 seat that goes up to Cobble Hill, and the new Biden+11 NY-01 should be an layup in most years for the Democrats. Katko's NY-24 gets fed all of Tompkins to make the district Biden+15; if he still wins, especially with Trump doing his utmost to keep him from doing so, he's honestly earned the seat. Other districts of note are Sean Patrick Maloney's NY-18, which goes from his home in Cold Spring up to take in the city of Albany and Paul Tonko's NY-20, which takes in much of the rest of Albany County and goes up to his home in Amsterdam and all the way up to Plattsburgh. This map also holds up for 2016, although a few districts are within 3 points.

Thoughts?

I’d guess more like 21-5.  Now that NY-03 is open they are likely going to have to concede two LI seats in order to keep NY-03 and NY-04 Dem.  They will also likely need concede three upstate seats (two in western NY and one in the Adirondacks).

They really don’t need to do that, especially in Long Island

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/NYElectionNews/status/1476731839234691073?s=20

NY continues it's slow march towards the D-mander.

IIRC there is no constitutional process for when the commission fails to agree on a map? The redistricting amendment put up last November was supposed to establish that, but it failed. So what happens now?

I think either a 2/3rds vote in the state legislature or some judge. A judge drew their current map.

Either way, it is worth noting that a hard gerrymander is gonna be extremely difficult to pull off here. Democrats just barely have 2/3rd majority in the Senate and I'm sure some people will have parochial concerns stopping them from going all in. Worth noting before Dems on this thread get their hopes up.

Ehh, yes and no.  I think we’ll definitely get a Democratic Staten Island seat b/c most Dems don’t really care about its parochial concerns.  Long Island shouldn’t be a problem and I imagine most Long Island Dems want a Democratic house seat where they have a shot at advancing rather than getting washed away in the 2022 wave (Zeldin’s seat probably becomes Dem-leaning).  

No one from downstate is gonna care how upstate feels about being carved up and I imagine most upstate Dems are going to want House seats that give them (or their allies/patrons/etc) a shot at advancement.  

The real issue is that the ripple effects of a strong gerrymander may cause NYC/downstate folks to get cranky.  IIRC Jamaal Bowman already implied months ago that he has no intention of being a team player with this and while I doubt he has all that much pull in the legislature on his own, other NYC Dems definitely do and there’s no way he’s going to be the only problem child in the delegation with respect to redistricting.  

Also, Delgado has a top-tier A-list opponent and definitely needs to be shored up which is fine as long as it is done efficiently.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Neither of these are going to be the map

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

FWIW:
https://twitter.com/JosephSzymanski/status/1480675503451389953

This is pathetic. Most if not all of them are in ultra-blue seats. Unless they are entering an incumbent v incumbent primary - they might, I don't know about that for sure - they should shut up or be ignored. I can't think of any good reason other than that any of them would have to complain. Imagine being an incumbent representative whose biggest reelection-related fear is being put in a seat that (gasp!) only went for their party by some 30 points instead of 40-70. Those who complained should have their names publicly released so Democrats nationally can humiliate them and hopefully primary them. You have to have extremely low self-confidence to think you could somehow lose in an NYC district as a Democrat. You have to be absolutely pathetic, spineless, and weak.
So, does anyone know who all complained and what 'reason(s)' they had?

Not a credible source

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Let’s see what the map looks like before we panic/celebrate/etc

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/EvanPerc_/status/1487901460050362374

NY-19 is definitely vulnerable with a candidate as good as Molinaro. NY-17 is worth watching with the rapid growth of the Orthodox Jewish population.

Nah, Molinaro is screwed.  He might as well drop out at this point tbh.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/EvanPerc_/status/1487901460050362374

NY-19 is definitely vulnerable with a candidate as good as Molinaro. NY-17 is worth watching with the rapid growth of the Orthodox Jewish population.

Nah, Molinaro is screwed.  He might as well drop out at this point tbh.

Biden +9 is not safe in an environment like this.

Ehh, the new district is pretty safe for Delgado.  He's a very strong incumbent who was working his a** off campaigning long before Molinaro got in the race.  And in the highly unlikely event that it flips, it'll flip right back in 2022.  With all due respect, I think you're wishcasting a bit with both this race and the SPM seat.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Did any of the NYC incumbents get inconvenienced? 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I mean… isn’t this almost certainly overturned?

Or am I wrong

You’re wrong

EDIT: If this gets through the State Senate, then I give it about a 2/3 chance at worst of surviving the courts.  It will likely be due to hackery (although I disagree with Torie about hackish the map is, there's certainly no need to create an Orthodox Jewish seat and the map is less absurd than the original Republican map in Ohio.  Granted, low bar and all that; we're really just talking degrees of awful ).  That said, I'll never complain about an anti-Republican gerrymander's ugliness or brutality until national Republicans come out for a nationwide ban on gerrymandering.  It's like what Robin Williams said about having nuclear weapons: Until both have sides agree to give all of them up or it makes no sense for anyone to give any of them up.

Incidentally, Paul Tonko deserves a big shout out for being such a team player here.  Tonko and especially Morelle have strong enough ties to the New York legislature.  They could effectively draw their own districts and while Morelle only looked out for himself, Tonko clearly encouraged the legislature to unpack his district to help shore up Delgado.  Delgado is a very strong, hard-working incumbent, but he'd have been in real trouble in his old district.  

Reminds me of how IIRC McHenry lobbied NC Rs to put Asheville in his district in the 2010s redistricting to make NC-11 more R.  Even if it is in service of gerrymandering, I kinda respect folks like Tonko and McHenry for doing what they can to help out.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/NYSBOE/status/1509899743396311059

Glad to hear that Republican hacktivist judge’s ruling was stayed, hopefully New York’s higher courts follow the law and uphold the legislature’s constitutional, fair, and non-partisan congressional, state senate, and state assembly maps.  

Good news for Democrats.

Good news for democracy and good governance

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Do you think Dems will pull a Ohio on this and just try to stall out the timeline for as long as possible and hope for a favorable ruling from the court of appeals? It seems like they have no real reason not to.

Agreed.  Until we have a national ban on gerrymandering; the Democrats should go scorched earth whenever possible with this stuff.  What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Hopefully these rogue activist judges are impeached for flagrantly betraying their oath of office in this sad, pathetic effort to bolster their #ModerateHero credentials.  Every judge who voted to strike down these maps deserves to be disbarred, but alas, we live in an imperfect world where people don’t always get what they deserve.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Sorry for posting so much in this thread, but Dems need to figure out something ASAP. This is unacceptable!

New York is going to have good and fair maps for 2022 and you're going to have to suck it up!

It had fair maps, the court just struck them down

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The Democrats should just ignore this legally meritless ruling and print primary ballots for the legislature map’s district lines

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

New York Dems should really just pull an Ohio GOP and ignore the courts. Its what all the cool kids are doing now.

Yeah, they should ignore the ruling and print ballots for the districts from the legislature’s maps.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

New York Dems should really just pull an Ohio GOP and ignore the courts. Its what all the cool kids are doing now.

Except, the Court ruled the IRC has the power to redistrict, and, the legislature does not. That is a very hard ruling to ignore.

The Ohio Supreme Court blinked, apparently, for the Congressional map, and, federal courts intervened on the legislative ones.

I don't foresee the Federal Courts not deferring to the New York Court of Appeals.

Let ‘em enforce it

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I see Torie got back to his roots with a Republican gerrymander

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Hot take- Tories map will be chosen

All due respect to Torie, but gross.  There is no reason New York should have a Republican gerrymander like that as its congressional map.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Apparently, Nadler and Carolyn Maloney are gonna be running against each other

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Cervas is kind of an old school neutral map drawer. It is the kind of map that I would have drawn 10 years ago. The metrics are:

1. Minimizing chops is job one.

to be continued ...

Torie, we love you but sometimes you need to take the L. Any truly neutral map would have a Trump seat for NY 19. And maybe an orthodox seat. Dems clearly got a break here

I say this with all due respect, but what are you talking about?  There is no even remotely compelling argument for an orthodox seat existing on anything even remotely resembling a neutral map.  And NY-19 would be a Biden seat on most neutral maps.