2020 Redistricting in Pennsylvania

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it should be noted that every post that I have made in these 2020 redistricting forums (excluding non-serious ones like hypotheticals or scenario-maps), are made using Occams Razor and Game Theory to deduce likely positions. This is why in GA I consistently see Bishop's seat getting carved up, because the GOP's position suggests this move. Here in PA, it's easy to see the Dems as being on top. The dems will make rational demands to protect their 2020 seats (dems may may gain or lose various seats here), demands that are rational within the confines of COI's, present districts, and all that. They do not have the luxury of holding a position that can ignore these more rational rules. The GOP can agree to those demands, at which point they and the dems can set about to working on the rest of the map so not to leave the republicans with nothing. Or the GOP can say no, and they get nothing as the maps are tossed upstairs to a court who appears to be happy to correct for the states geographic bias.

Why would you assume that? Parties don't necessarily act in a perfectly rational manner, and incumbents, local interests, etc. often act as complicating factors in drawing maps. You can clearly see this in the 2010 maps, as discussed in the threads from last cycle.

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You can't split Bucks County!

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You can't split Bucks County!

Oh, really?

Yikes...

I mean, you definitely can--but not splitting it is one of those weird gentleman's agreements in redistricting.

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Here's my 'let's keep things relatively nonpartisan and least change' map.





Basically not too much change. Lamb's and Houlahan's districts get a lot redder, as does Perry's. I Cartwright's maybe does too? In any case that's pretty inevitable on a fair map, especially one which resembles the current map. Boyle's district also becomes plurality Black.

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Here's a slight-dem favoring incumbent protection gerrymander which might have a chance of happening, given that Dems have a slight upper hand. Houlahan and Lamb are shorn up, while Cartwright and Wild are thrown together in an extremely fair fight safe D district, as discussed above (literally about half of each person's seat).

Additionally, I made a district which splits Bucks County (!) which shores up Fitzpatrick.

Sorry for not including photos; not posting on my usual computer so I'm trying to "leave no trace."

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Here's a slight-dem favoring incumbent protection gerrymander which might have a chance of happening, given that Dems have a slight upper hand. Houlahan and Lamb are shorn up, while Cartwright and Wild are thrown together in an extremely fair fight safe D district (literally about half of each person's seat).

Additionally, I made a district which splits Bucks County (!) which shores up Fitzpatrick.

Sorry for not including photos; not posting on my usual computer so I'm trying to "leave no trace."

Still don't think Fitz will want Bucks split especially as the lower part was barely to the left of the county anyway.

Other than that East PA is fine for your goals. I guess the main argument will be with Lamb's district?

Also remove the city of York from the Harrisburg district and give it to Smucker if you are going incumbent protection.

Yeah, that's why I drew two maps since I figured splitting Bucks might would be a bridge too far.

Wrt: York, the idea was to basically preserve the current partisan balance, and since Perry's district gets more R anyway I think it probably is alright.

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Here's a slight-dem favoring incumbent protection gerrymander which might have a chance of happening, given that Dems have a slight upper hand. Houlahan and Lamb are shorn up, while Cartwright and Wild are thrown together in an extremely fair fight safe D district (literally about half of each person's seat).

Additionally, I made a district which splits Bucks County (!) which shores up Fitzpatrick.

Sorry for not including photos; not posting on my usual computer so I'm trying to "leave no trace."

Still don't think Fitz will want Bucks split especially as the lower part was barely to the left of the county anyway.

Other than that East PA is fine for your goals. I guess the main argument will be with Lamb's district?

Also remove the city of York from the Harrisburg district and give it to Smucker if you are going incumbent protection.

Yeah, that's why I drew two maps since I figured splitting Bucks might would be a bridge too far.

Wrt: York, the idea was to basically preserve the current partisan balance, and since Perry's district gets more R anyway I think it probably is alright.

That's fair enough although if Dems really want that Lamb district they probably should just concede the Likely R Harrisburg district.

Also might want to give parts of rural Chester to Scanlon while giving Christy that Montgomery part with Lower Merion.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/94312cca-7c15-4533-b9c0-110730c6c68a
There we go made those 2 changes to even the partisanship between 5 and 6 along with 10 and 11. Seems like a pretty reasonable and fair trade starting from your map?

Oooh, that's a good point. I like!

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Anyway working with Sev's principles of a fair map I worked hard and finished this fair map. The court will likely not enact this though.

sarcasm

Why is tiny Schuylkill being split, Lackawanna+Luzerne belong together, how do we have a seat going from Scranton to Williamsport? Also a tri cut of Chester is not needed, just extend the DelCo seat into Chester and pair the rest with Berks.

I'd recommend taking a closer look at that post.

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Given the big discussion, here is my attempt at a fair map:

I actually think this map is pretty decent! The only nitpicks I'd have are:
1. I don't think the cut in Somerset is necessary--if you send the 12th deeper into Butler you can keep more of the Pittsburgh area in Pittsburgh districts, and do a cut somewhere between 15 and 13.
2. Luzerne-Lackawanna-Pike-Monroe is exactly the size of 1 district, and it's a decent CoI. Carbon is a better fit with the Lehigh Valley district than with Scranton.

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FYI you can easily nest two districts in Dauphin, York, Cumberland, and Lancaster.

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I'm not cutting Chesco because my point is not to cut Chesco lol, as it's actually a cohesive community and goes with the western half of Delco more than anything.

I actually agree with this but why not take MontCo south/west of the Schuylkill too? It's all Main Line. 

I've considered that but I've never found a way to fit that in since it lies just beyond the county line, it'd complicate the other districts and bring down the AA population in CD5 too much

I think both of these options work.

Cut SW Chester:


Cut South Philly:

I've been playing with a map which does the second thing--the tricky thing is that it forces either a 3 way split of montgomery or a four way split of philly

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If you reread the 2010 redistricting thread, you'll notice a lot of people talking about the traditional taboo on putting York with Lancaster, and that was smashed to bits in the 2018 reredistricting.

Map drawers often tend to draw districts because "it's always been done this way." See KY-01 and KY-02 for a good example. These taboos aren't usually rooted in a clear eyed understanding of communities of interest--rather blind adherence to previous map-drawing.

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Here's a map which tries at a more CoI based approach, as opposed to county first. It turned out pretty similar to several other maps even though that wasn't intended, though I enjoyed the Main Line District.

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Here's my proposal for Pennsylvania, which I think has a lot going for it:
- There are just 12 (!) county chops, but the population deviations are all less than +/- 1,000
- Greater Pittsburgh keeps 3 whole districts
- Exurban Baltimore gets its own district
- There's continuity in the suburban Philadelphia districts, with compactness arguably improving
- Both Philadelphia districts are 60% minority and 40% Black
- Carbon County joins the Lehigh Valley district
DRA link: https://davesredistricting.org/join/3108f1e7-7e09-49bd-83f8-4ecdd85acfd6

Not bad at all, though I don't love separating Cumberland and Dauphin.

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Also, is Baltimore sprawl up in PA at this point? Oy vey.

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Splitting Pittsburgh is a dummymander.

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That second map looks better to me, though I don't love the split of York.

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Northern Allegheny is about as GOP as Butler and makes that fairly difficult.

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With the recent chatter about Madeleine Dean running for Senate, it might be a good opportunity to look at maps which use her territory to make Houlahan more safe.

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Here's a pass at a incumbent protection PA map which uses Dean leaving for a Senate campaign to its advantage. You still have to screw Cartwright or Wild though, but that's basically necessary given geography, and it replaces them with a Reading based swing seat.







link

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Here's a pass at a incumbent protection PA map which uses Dean leaving for a Senate campaign to its advantage. You still have to screw Cartwright or Wild though, but that's basically necessary given geography, and it replaces them with a Reading based swing seat.

Are you thinking Houlahan would run in the Lower Montgomery seat? It overlaps very little with her current district.

Sorry for not responding, I didn't see this.

That was my initial thought since her seat is in that district, but if that's an issue (which can understand) you can transfer more of Chester into the 4th and rotate accordingly (5th --> 3rd, 3rd--> 2nd, 2nd --> 4th). Had initially drawn the 4th that way to be more compact since I figured everyone would want a bipartisan fig leaf for their incumbent gerrymandering.

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Is it possible to shore up Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright?

In theory I'd love if PA-01 could become bluer but the unfortunate fact is that it's already lean blue but Fitz still has a hold on it.

You kind of have to axe one or the other unfortunately--or give both somewhat competitive districts. PA-08 doesn't really have any adjacent Democratic areas except the Lehigh Valley.

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Here's my attempt to make a fair as possible PA map. It's 10 Trump - 7 Clinton composition. I'm pretty confidant that Biden won PA-1 in 2020. So if one day DRA adds the 2020 prez data, it would become a 9R - 8D map. No city/town is split except for Philly.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/03a2ccc7-f995-4b96-a54b-68aefbdbe42e

A 9R-8D map is not fair though.

I'm confused as to how Dems get screwed in this when all of their areas had population growth and nearly every R area had population loss? Rs should be losing a district, not Ds.

Republicans will essentially lose a district from the middle of the state, which forces all the districts on the edges to move in. And that's bad news for PA-7, PA-8, and PA-17, which all would likely have to take in deeply deeply Republican territory on even a fair map. A fair map likely makes the latter 2 likely Republican districts and weakens Dems a good bit in the former.

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How is that excavation of Pittsburgh supposed to be fair?

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also just wondering in my map there’s two minority majority seats in Philly, what do y’all think? Is it likely to happen?

It's incredibly simple to draw two Philly seats with a strong black plurality and it would probably have happened decades ago if the machine hadn't been determined to protect Bob Brady.

Yeah on current numbers it's actually pretty easy to draw a straight up Black majority seat and then also a Black plurality seat where Black voters would probably determine the primary outcomes.

Not that that will necessarily happen since Brendan Boyle probably doesn't want it.