2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: New Jersey

[Starpaul20]

So how will redistricting go down in New Jersey? We're not projected to lose (or gain) a seat and the state population has been relatively flat. So I suspect the map will stay mostly the same.

The wildcard in all of this is the fact that Dems gained all but one seat in 2018 and most likely will hold most if not all of them (Van Drew excluded). Could we see a map that beefs up the Dem gains?

[Nyvin]

I'd like to see NJ-4 become an Ocean County centered district with parts of southern Monmouth and get removed from the Trenton area entirely.   

Then NJ-3 can be focused on Mercer (Trenton) and Burlington counties, and NJ-2 can be the southern "Van Drew" district.

I'm also kind of hoping that a Republican district can get drawn up north, since I really think a 9D - 3R delegation will be a lot more stable than 10D - 2R going forward.



Pretty sure the AA district and Hispanic district in the NYC suburbs are set in stone,  not much else you can do there.

[EastAnglianLefty]

NJ is interesting, as previously the bipartisan nature of the process meant they always went for incumbent protection. Can't see the Republicans being keen on that this time.

I guess it basically comes down to what the tie-breaker decides. They had a Republican tie-breaker last time. Does it tend to alternate, or does the State Supreme Court just tend to pick somebody from whichever party has a majority on the court? If so, I note that it's currently 3-3-1, with the independent and one of the Democrats appointed by Republican governors.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I'd like to see NJ-4 become an Ocean County centered district with parts of southern Monmouth and get removed from the Trenton area entirely.   

Then NJ-3 can be focused on Mercer (Trenton) and Burlington counties, and NJ-2 can be the southern "Van Drew" district.

I'm also kind of hoping that a Republican district can get drawn up north, since I really think a 9D - 3R delegation will be a lot more stable than 10D - 2R going forward.



Pretty sure the AA district and Hispanic district in the NYC suburbs are set in stone,  not much else you can do there.

If you want to do that, then making Gottheimer's district an R sink is probably the easiest thing, like this:



This gives you:
NJ 1: D+52 (Sires)
NJ 2: D+26 (Pascrell)
NJ 3: D+69 (Payne)
NJ 4: D+28 (Pallone)
NJ 5: D+19 (Sherrill)
NJ 6: R+17 (Gottheimer)
NJ 7: D+17 (Malinowski)
NJ 8: D+27 (Norcross)
NJ 9: D+27 (Kim)
NJ 10: D+8 (Watson Coleman)
NJ 11: R+24 (Smith)
NJ 12: D+4 (Van Drew)

Might have some VRA issues that can be cleaned up in NJ 1, and NJ 10 can probably be shored up a bit, but this is roughly how it would be done. Given Van Drew is in a (right-trending) D+4 seat, though, it might be better to unpack NJ 8 and get 10 D+10 or better seats.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I'd like to see NJ-4 become an Ocean County centered district with parts of southern Monmouth and get removed from the Trenton area entirely.   

Then NJ-3 can be focused on Mercer (Trenton) and Burlington counties, and NJ-2 can be the southern "Van Drew" district.

I'm also kind of hoping that a Republican district can get drawn up north, since I really think a 9D - 3R delegation will be a lot more stable than 10D - 2R going forward.



Pretty sure the AA district and Hispanic district in the NYC suburbs are set in stone,  not much else you can do there.

If you want to do that, then making Gottheimer's district an R sink is probably the easiest thing, like this:



This gives you:
NJ 1: D+52 (Sires)
NJ 2: D+26 (Pascrell)
NJ 3: D+69 (Payne)
NJ 4: D+28 (Pallone)
NJ 5: D+19 (Sherrill)
NJ 6: R+17 (Gottheimer)
NJ 7: D+17 (Malinowski)
NJ 8: D+27 (Norcross)
NJ 9: D+27 (Kim)
NJ 10: D+8 (Watson Coleman)
NJ 11: R+24 (Smith)
NJ 12: D+4 (Van Drew)

Might have some VRA issues that can be cleaned up in NJ 1, and NJ 10 can probably be shored up a bit, but this is roughly how it would be done. Given Van Drew is in a (right-trending) D+4 seat, though, it might be better to unpack NJ 8 and get 10 D+10 or better seats.

It's possible. This map has both Watson Coleman and Van Drew in D+10 districts.

[Brittain33]

Watson Coleman lives in Mercer County, and I think Smith still does, too.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Obviously Democrats are maxed out here, so their proposal is mostly going to try to lock things in place. For Republicans, there are a lot of seats they'd like to target, as when they originally drew the map it was intended to be 6-6.

Given what's transpired, it's arguable that it meets the definition of a dummymander. It held up for three cycles, Garrett aside (and you can't necessarily blame that on the map when he did so much to undermine himself), but it was always vulnerable in a strong Democratic year and given how expensive the media markets are, winning back those seats is going to be an uphill struggle.

So I've thrown together a map which might represent a starting Republican proposal on the redistricting commission. I started off from the assumption that NJ is basically a Democratic state - Bush in 2004 was the last Republican to get within 10 points and before that you have to go back to 1992. That means aiming for parity isn't realistic. Instead I think the best option is to concede 7 Democratic seats, draw 4 that strongly favour Republicans and create a Republican-favouring seat in South Jersey.

To achieve this, I've aimed to draw a map that can be justified on general good government principles such as minimising county splits and following natural boundaries (so there's more chance of a neutral special master picking the map) and that gives most Democratic congressmembers what they want (because there's no point antagonising them unnecessarily, when you can instead off them lines they want and get them agitating in favour of your map.)

This is what I came up with:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/3dbe6eb1-61fc-47de-af94-b38dbd0e3de2

(The population numbers aren't equal because I drew the lines with 2016 population estimates, then redrew it on the 2010 map to get 2012/2016 PVIs.)

I started off drawing the two VRA districts, because taking territory from those isn't going to benefit Republicans, so you may as well draw lines that Sires and Payne will like. The 8th is relatively little-changed, but it's no contiguous by road, not just by water. The 10th no longer reaches into Jersey City, because that requires awkward lines and doesn't increase the black population enough to be worth it, but instead extends through Union County as far as Plainfield. As of 2010, it would still have been black majority by total population and VAP, but as of 2016 it's only 48.5% black by total population. The Democratic primary is still comfortably black-majority, however, and the lines elsewhere are pretty similar so Payne should have no cause for complaint.

The 9th goes southward to take the 10th's arm into Jersey City and in the process drops Englewood and environs. Pascrell's home in Paterson is maintained, although if he chooses to retire then much of the Passaic County portion of the district can be replaced by areas in Bergen County. As of 2016, Hispanics are a plurality here at 39%, though it's probably still white-plurality by VAP. I don't know whether black and Hispanic primary voters in North Jersey tend to support each other's candidates, but if so it could possibly be termed a coalition district, though that might be pushing it.

Trying to avoid conceding a second Democratic district in Passaic/Bergen is a fool's errand long-term. Gottheimer is a fundraising machine and he's also a pain in the neck for Democratic congressional leadership, so you may as well just give him a safe seat and make him their problem. The 5th keeps Gottheimer's home in Wyckoff and the bulk of his current territory in Bergen County but swaps the western end of the district for the Englewood area and central parts of Passaic County. Best-case scenario for Republicans is that he then spends most of the 2020s fighting off primary attempts, worst-case scenario is that he just settles into quiet backbench obscurity.

Freeing up Sussex County from the 5th means that you can dump it into the 11th instead. This, combined with carving out the most Democratic-trending parts of Morris County, makes the new 11th R+6.4, which ought to be enough to beat Sherrill within a couple of cycles. Her home in Montclair is left in the district, but it would be easy enough to cut it out (and this would also allow you to increase the black population share slightly in the 10th.)

Warren County is passed on to the 7th and the lines are cleared up somewhat, with southern Somerset County being dumped in exchange for southern Morris County. It becomes R+5.6 and whilst parts of it seem to be trending fairly rapidly Democratic, that still ought to be enough for a competent Republican to win here, especially as Malinowski has been drawn out of the district.

The 6th maintains its basic orientation as a combination of Middlesex County north of the Raritan and coastal Monmouth County. The major change was that I tried to make the Monmouth County section hug the coast a little less and to improve interior connections within the seat. This makes it a bit redder, but Pallone can't really complain about a D+8 seat and it makes it look a little nicer on a map.

The 12th is then made up of the most Democratic parts of Mercer, Somerset and Middlesex Counties. It's narrowly majority-minority by 2010 total population and may be by VAP by now as well.

Having sorted North Jersey, I then turned my attention to South Jersey. I began by compacting the 1st district so that it now consists of the entirety of Camden County and the north-west of Burlington County, but pulls out of Gloucester County completely. You can sell this as minimising county splits, but what it's also doing is grabbing the most Democratic bits of the third and adding enough population to the 2nd that there's no longer room for the entirety of Atlantic County in it.

This gives you an excuse to strip Atlantic City out of the 2nd, because it's somewhere in the region of D+35. Combined with the neighbouring shorefront settlements it looks a bit less blatant on a map, but realistically it's not subtle. That gives you a seat with a PVI of R+0.5 which looks to be trending Republican. It doesn't make Van Drew safe, but it's harder to ffer him very much more without either conceding the 3rd of drawing fairly tortuous lines.

The 3rd is then made up of the bulk of Ocean County (providing slightly more than half of the district's population; strongly Republican); Atlantic City and environs (slightly under a fifth of the district's population; strongly Democratic but less so than Ocean is Republican); and the remainder of Burlington County (around a third of the district's population, PVI close to neutral.) That combines  for a PVI of R+5.7, which ought to allow MacArthur to win a rematch with Kim.

Finally, the 4th combines a small portion of Mercer (as that's where Smith lives), the bulk of Monmouth County, northern Ocean County and leftover parts of Middlesex County to produce an R+8.9 district. Conceivably it could swap territory with the 3rd to equalise their PVIs, but that would add an extra county split and shift Kim's home in Bordentown into the 4th district, which would look vindictive and wouldn't make the 3rd that much more likely to flip. You may as well just give the Dean of the delegation an absolutely bulletproof seat and guarantee there's at least one seat that won't flip in a wave.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I would strongly disagree with the idea the 2012 lines were a dummymander, moreover they were highly successful for 2-3 cycles in creating an even delegation in a state that had not voted R for president in the past three decades and had only came within single digits less than half of the time.
The GOP definitely gained more than they lost from the map, the end was merely too much for it to handle.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I would agree, but it failed so badly and winning seats in New Jersey is so expensive that it's hard to imagine they'll get close to parity for at least a decade. Under normal circumstances, three cycles success out of five would be good enough, but if you're going to scrabbling around with only a handful of seats for a decade after the map broke, then I think it meets the definition because it will have backfired long-term.

Obviously that does rather depend upon there not being any large Republican waves in suburban areas in the 2020s, which is something less than a given.

[lfromnj]

They worked in 2012 which was a heavily pro incumbent year for NJ due to Sandy, and worked in 2014 in a R wave year. 2016 it became 7-5 and then collapsed to 11-1.

[Former President tack50]

Ok, here is my take on how a "fair map" could look like, trying to keep districts relatively compact and what not

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ed1513f0-516d-45b7-885c-03508eed97a8

And for an image and summary (the labels are the ones in the image):



NJ-01: D+12
NJ-02: D+1
NJ-03: R+3
NJ-04: R+6
NJ-05: R+8
NJ-06: D+13 (49.5% white; 22.2% hispanic, 16.7% black; 12.4% asian)
NJ-07: D+7
NJ-08: D+21 (40.2% hispanic; 37.5% white, 16% asian)
NJ-09: D+4
NJ-10: D+35 (50.2% black; 25.8% white, 18.1% hispanic, 6.5% asian)
NJ-11: D+7
NJ-12: D+6

So basically it seems like there would be 2 Safe R districts, 7 Safe D districts and 3 swing districts of some sort? (though NJ-09 should be close to safe I assume?).

I imagine in a good year for Republicans they would get an 8-4 map and in a bad year they would get a 10-2 map; which is one seat more than they currently hold.

This map also creates a plurality Hispanic district, though I don't know if a hispanic candidate would win there or if a white one would. There is a third majority minority district but it is only borderline majority minority and with the minorities split so it does not really count.

[Tintrlvr]

Ok, here is my take on how a "fair map" could look like, trying to keep districts relatively compact and what not

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ed1513f0-516d-45b7-885c-03508eed97a8

And for an image and summary (the labels are the ones in the image):



NJ-01: D+12
NJ-02: D+1
NJ-03: R+3
NJ-04: R+6
NJ-05: R+8
NJ-06: D+13 (49.5% white; 22.2% hispanic, 16.7% black; 12.4% asian)
NJ-07: D+7
NJ-08: D+21 (40.2% hispanic; 37.5% white, 16% asian)
NJ-09: D+4
NJ-10: D+35 (50.2% black; 25.8% white, 18.1% hispanic, 6.5% asian)
NJ-11: D+7
NJ-12: D+6

So basically it seems like there would be 2 Safe R districts, 7 Safe D districts and 3 swing districts of some sort? (though NJ-09 should be close to safe I assume?).

I imagine in a good year for Republicans they would get an 8-4 map and in a bad year they would get a 10-2 map; which is one seat more than they currently hold.

This map also creates a plurality Hispanic district, though I don't know if a hispanic candidate would win there or if a white one would. There is a third majority minority district but it is only borderline majority minority and with the minorities split so it does not really count.

I know it's the current map, but combining Ocean and Burlington (other than maybe rural southern Burlington only with Ocean, but the southern third of Burlington has a total population of only a few thousand) is fundamentally a really bad map. Look at them on a map: the area on the border is completely empty, and the orientations are all north-south with no major east-west connections. Ocean should go with Monmouth, and Burlington with Camden/Mercer. That probably still leaves another Republican-leaning district in the Monmouth-Middlesex area.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Ok, here is my take on how a "fair map" could look like, trying to keep districts relatively compact and what not

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ed1513f0-516d-45b7-885c-03508eed97a8

And for an image and summary (the labels are the ones in the image):



NJ-01: D+12
NJ-02: D+1
NJ-03: R+3
NJ-04: R+6
NJ-05: R+8
NJ-06: D+13 (49.5% white; 22.2% hispanic, 16.7% black; 12.4% asian)
NJ-07: D+7
NJ-08: D+21 (40.2% hispanic; 37.5% white, 16% asian)
NJ-09: D+4
NJ-10: D+35 (50.2% black; 25.8% white, 18.1% hispanic, 6.5% asian)
NJ-11: D+7
NJ-12: D+6

So basically it seems like there would be 2 Safe R districts, 7 Safe D districts and 3 swing districts of some sort? (though NJ-09 should be close to safe I assume?).

I imagine in a good year for Republicans they would get an 8-4 map and in a bad year they would get a 10-2 map; which is one seat more than they currently hold.

This map also creates a plurality Hispanic district, though I don't know if a hispanic candidate would win there or if a white one would. There is a third majority minority district but it is only borderline majority minority and with the minorities split so it does not really count.

I know it's the current map, but combining Ocean and Burlington (other than maybe rural southern Burlington only with Ocean, but the southern third of Burlington has a total population of only a few thousand) is fundamentally a really bad map. Look at them on a map: the area on the border is completely empty, and the orientations are all north-south with no major east-west connections. Ocean should go with Monmouth, and Burlington with Camden/Mercer. That probably still leaves another Republican-leaning district in the Monmouth-Middlesex area.

It's largely an academic exercise, because it isn't in either party's interest to propose it, but interestingly if you draw a fair NJ-1 and NJ-2 then the remainder of Burlington and Mercer are almost exactly the right size for a congressional district.

Paying no attention to partisan data, trying to draw compact districts and minimise the number of split counties (whilst still complying with the VRA for NJ-8 and NJ-10), I came up with this: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::53d12243-77a7-4019-a338-6469ef785796

I haven't checked the 2016 results for those lines, but it looks like it would shake out by now as two safe Republican district (4 and 7), two swing seats (2 and 6) and the rest in the Democratic column, to varying levels of safety. In particular, I'm quite keen on the way NJ-11 shapes out in this map as a reasonably compact Newark suburbs district.

[Tintrlvr]

Ok, here is my take on how a "fair map" could look like, trying to keep districts relatively compact and what not

https://davesredistricting.org/join/ed1513f0-516d-45b7-885c-03508eed97a8

And for an image and summary (the labels are the ones in the image):



NJ-01: D+12
NJ-02: D+1
NJ-03: R+3
NJ-04: R+6
NJ-05: R+8
NJ-06: D+13 (49.5% white; 22.2% hispanic, 16.7% black; 12.4% asian)
NJ-07: D+7
NJ-08: D+21 (40.2% hispanic; 37.5% white, 16% asian)
NJ-09: D+4
NJ-10: D+35 (50.2% black; 25.8% white, 18.1% hispanic, 6.5% asian)
NJ-11: D+7
NJ-12: D+6

So basically it seems like there would be 2 Safe R districts, 7 Safe D districts and 3 swing districts of some sort? (though NJ-09 should be close to safe I assume?).

I imagine in a good year for Republicans they would get an 8-4 map and in a bad year they would get a 10-2 map; which is one seat more than they currently hold.

This map also creates a plurality Hispanic district, though I don't know if a hispanic candidate would win there or if a white one would. There is a third majority minority district but it is only borderline majority minority and with the minorities split so it does not really count.

I know it's the current map, but combining Ocean and Burlington (other than maybe rural southern Burlington only with Ocean, but the southern third of Burlington has a total population of only a few thousand) is fundamentally a really bad map. Look at them on a map: the area on the border is completely empty, and the orientations are all north-south with no major east-west connections. Ocean should go with Monmouth, and Burlington with Camden/Mercer. That probably still leaves another Republican-leaning district in the Monmouth-Middlesex area.

It's largely an academic exercise, because it isn't in either party's interest to propose it, but interestingly if you draw a fair NJ-1 and NJ-2 then the remainder of Burlington and Mercer are almost exactly the right size for a congressional district.

Paying no attention to partisan data, trying to draw compact districts and minimise the number of split counties (whilst still complying with the VRA for NJ-8 and NJ-10), I came up with this: https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::53d12243-77a7-4019-a338-6469ef785796

I haven't checked the 2016 results for those lines, but it looks like it would shake out by now as two safe Republican district (4 and 7), two swing seats (2 and 6) and the rest in the Democratic column, to varying levels of safety. In particular, I'm quite keen on the way NJ-11 shapes out in this map as a reasonably compact Newark suburbs district.

Your map isn't opening for me, but I've noticed this too and agree. I created the map below, which is overall intended as a fair map though also leans D overall but isn't the type of map the Democrats would propose because, as you note, it's not in the interests of current incumbents.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/83ae6b67-d3ed-4561-ba4e-a7f13bd9ff08

[EastAnglianLefty]

Sorry, wrong link. This is the correct one: https://davesredistricting.org/join/99f5b599-f0f5-4008-ab6f-2369a337d4ba

[EastAnglianLefty]

A slight tweak to the previous map, changing NJ-12 from a Somerset-Middlesex district to a Middlesex-Union district and rotating NJ-10, NJ-11 and NJ-7 to compensate:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2484f602-1a92-456e-b971-0466f1575a61

[AustralianSwingVoter]

A slight tweak to the previous map, changing NJ-12 from a Somerset-Middlesex district to a Middlesex-Union district and rotating NJ-10, NJ-11 and NJ-7 to compensate:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2484f602-1a92-456e-b971-0466f1575a61

The Union-Middlesex seat does look nice. But why not have a Sussex-Warren-Hunterdon seat (the closest you get to a rural seat in NJ) and a Somerset-Morris seat (wealthy exurbs). Those seem like better separate COIs rather than having two seats splitting both.

[EastAnglianLefty]

A slight tweak to the previous map, changing NJ-12 from a Somerset-Middlesex district to a Middlesex-Union district and rotating NJ-10, NJ-11 and NJ-7 to compensate:

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2484f602-1a92-456e-b971-0466f1575a61

The Union-Middlesex seat does look nice. But why not have a Sussex-Warren-Hunterdon seat (the closest you get to a rural seat in NJ) and a Somerset-Morris seat (wealthy exurbs). Those seem like better separate COIs rather than having two seats splitting both.

Because Sussex, Warren and Hunterdon have fewer than 400,000 people in them, so if you're not getting the remainder from Somerset or Middlesex then you need to get it from either Mercer (which doesn't have great transport links to Hunterdon, and which means Burlington has to go with Ocean instead) or from northern Passaic and Bergen (which makes an ugly crescent-shaped seat.)

Keeping Warren, Sussex and Hunterdon together is easy enough (although it's not clear to me that they actually look more to each other than to neighbouring counties, even if they are all rural) but a Somerset-Morris pairing forces awkward seats elsewhere.

[lfromnj]

Murphy should try to appoint Malinowski in 2021 to some statewide position so they can draw a north NJ sink that would probably shift NJ 11th and NJ 5th by like 8-12 points left and make them effectively Safe D, the main problem however is NJ 3rd, Chris smith will want Hamilton and Bonnie Watson will want Trenton of course which border each other,  Which doesnt allow Kim to take in D leaning/even territory to the north of him. In the South there is Camden county which is Camden and also has some rich white suburbs like Cherry Hill. Norcross is from here and is EXTREMELY powerful, Kim can be shored up with some D leaning territory here but it will only happen if Norcross lets it happen, and even then it would only be like 100-150k people but that would be enough for Kim and the rest of the territory could come from Ocean county which is very GOP but the only remaining option. However this forces Ocean to be split 3 times.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Murphy should try to appoint Malinowski in 2021 to some statewide position so they can draw a north NJ sink that would probably shift NJ 11th and NJ 5th by like 8-12 points left and make them effectively Safe D, the main problem however is NJ 3rd, Chris smith will want Hamilton and Bonnie Watson will want Trenton of course which border each other,  Which doesnt allow Kim to take in D leaning/even territory to the north of him. In the South there is Camden county which is Camden and also has some rich white suburbs like Cherry Hill. Norcross is from here and is EXTREMELY powerful, Kim can be shored up with some D leaning territory here but it will only happen if Norcross lets it happen, and even then it would only be like 100-150k people but that would be enough for Kim and the rest of the territory could come from Ocean county which is very GOP but the only remaining option. However this forces Ocean to be split 3 times.

Or you can just screw Smith over and carve out Ewing Township for Watson-Coleman. Or just have people run outside their districts/move. Regardless, except for Sherrill, Malinowski has the most durably Democratic of the 2018 flips and giving that up seems like a very poor decision to me. Better to give Gottheimer something and make his seat an R sink.

[lfromnj]

Murphy should try to appoint Malinowski in 2021 to some statewide position so they can draw a north NJ sink that would probably shift NJ 11th and NJ 5th by like 8-12 points left and make them effectively Safe D, the main problem however is NJ 3rd, Chris smith will want Hamilton and Bonnie Watson will want Trenton of course which border each other,  Which doesnt allow Kim to take in D leaning/even territory to the north of him. In the South there is Camden county which is Camden and also has some rich white suburbs like Cherry Hill. Norcross is from here and is EXTREMELY powerful, Kim can be shored up with some D leaning territory here but it will only happen if Norcross lets it happen, and even then it would only be like 100-150k people but that would be enough for Kim and the rest of the territory could come from Ocean county which is very GOP but the only remaining option. However this forces Ocean to be split 3 times.

Or you can just screw Smith over and carve out Ewing Township for Watson-Coleman. Or just have people run outside their districts/move. Regardless, except for Sherrill, Malinowski has the most durably Democratic of the 2018 flips and giving that up seems like a very poor decision to me. Better to give Gottheimer something and make his seat an R sink.

Ds dont get total control remember. So Chris smith comes before Andy Kim,anyway because of the VRA north jersey needs a sink so I guess gottheimer could be the one to move out although a bergen based suburban district will be there still.

[Zaybay]

Looking at the redistricting system for NJ, it does appear that this cycle could favor the Democrats. While the NJ supreme court is currently Republican-leaning (3 Democrats, 3 Republicans, 1 Independent nominated by the Republicans), it likely wont be by the time they have to appoint a tiebreaker.

One of the GOP's three justices sees their term expire in a couple of months. Another GOP justice will see their term end in June of 2021. If we're going off 2010-2011, that would mean the tiebreaker would be chosen in July.

So its likely that the court will be Dem-controlled by the time redistricting comes around. If that's the case, the tiebreaker may be more inclined to side with the Democrats over the Republicans.

[Oryxslayer]

I decided to explore the hypothetical where NJ does their incumbent protection thing when the delegation is 10-2 and the two republicans do not match the locations of the two most efficient GOP packs. Turns out that it isn't too hard to get the map to work. One just needs to get the north/south border seats, 6 and 12, to reorient towards the north of the state. Getting the minority seats to support the 10-2 is also crucial.



NJ01: D+10.4, the safest non-minority seat on the map goes to Norcross of course.
NJ02: R+7.3, not enough to scare drew in the primary, but enough for him to remain safe if he remains in the Republican Party.
NJ03: D+7, takes in the near bits of Hamilton township that Smith doesn't need. Also ends up as a sort of 'exurban' seat, since Norcross desires his suburbs,
NJ04: R+10.2, standard Monmouth GOP pack.
NJ05: D+6.4, fully inside Bergen.
NJ06: D+6.6, reoriented northwards into the republican enclaves in Union.
NJ07: D+6.5, gets Plainfield plus her environs to support the seat.
NJ08: D+26.1, this seat can't really change. There are ways to rip out Bayonne  and Hoboken, but doing so just distributes the weight of the present seat into that new district, unhelpful when cracking Hudson.
NJ09: D+6.6, obvious drop in partisanship as the surrounding seats get more blue.
NJ10: D+24.4, the AA seat gets fully unpacked in a way that supports the map, but leaves the seat still with a strong >45% AA plurality.
NJ11: D+5.4, more of Essex to reinforce the seat.
NJ12: D+7.3, a reversal of the current NJ05. This is the key to the entire map, since it allows the mid-state seat to help crack the GOP areas in the NW.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I decided to explore the hypothetical where NJ does their incumbent protection thing when the delegation is 10-2 and the two republicans do not match the locations of the two most efficient GOP packs. Turns out that it isn't too hard to get the map to work. One just needs to get the north/south border seats, 6 and 12, to reorient towards the north of the state. Getting the minority seats to support the 10-2 is also crucial.



NJ01: D+10.4, the safest non-minority seat on the map goes to Norcross of course.
NJ02: R+7.3, not enough to scare drew in the primary, but enough for him to remain safe if he remains in the Republican Party.
NJ03: D+7, takes in the near bits of Hamilton township that Smith doesn't need. Also ends up as a sort of 'exurban' seat, since Norcross desires his suburbs,
NJ04: R+10.2, standard Monmouth GOP pack.
NJ05: D+6.4, fully inside Bergen.
NJ06: D+6.6, reoriented northwards into the republican enclaves in Union.
NJ07: D+6.5, gets Plainfield plus her environs to support the seat.
NJ08: D+26.1, this seat can't really change. There are ways to rip out Bayonne  and Hoboken, but doing so just distributes the weight of the present seat into that new district, unhelpful when cracking Hudson.
NJ09: D+6.6, obvious drop in partisanship as the surrounding seats get more blue.
NJ10: D+24.4, the AA seat gets fully unpacked in a way that supports the map, but leaves the seat still with a strong >45% AA plurality.
NJ11: D+5.4, more of Essex to reinforce the seat.
NJ12: D+7.3, a reversal of the current NJ05. This is the key to the entire map, since it allows the mid-state seat to help crack the GOP areas in the NW.

This is a masterpiece. Good job.

[lfromnj]

https://newjerseyglobe.com/redistricing/sweeney-will-take-seat-on-legislative-redistricting-commission/

Sweeney is part of the commision(as expected a norcross lackey)