2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: New Jersey

[lfromnj]

I’m thinking something like this is what gets drawn, but potentially with Smith picking up a bit more Ocean from Kim and Kim getting a bit more of Mercer.

Smith is from that part of Mercer in Hamilton township. Its fairly swingy at that part, at only like Biden +10 so its not a big loss for Ds to keep him happy there although yes Kim will need to find a way to get shored up a bit more.The best option might be to give Norcross all of Gloucester while giving Kim Cherry Hill wokesters.




This is the best map to start with for South Jersey upto Hamilton and Long Branch.  Kim has a 56%D Composite while Van Drew and Smith keep safe seats. One can also give Andy Kim Cherry Hill if they want to shore him up a bit more while removing the least machine part of Camden county for Norcross.

[kwabbit]

I threw a map that I thought the commission might actually end up drawing.

The idea is that they permit 3 GOP seats. NJ-02: Jeff Van Drew is a Norcross acolyte, so they will keep his district as is, allowing him to maintain his seat in most years. The second GOP seat is NJ-07. Kean came close in 2020, he has a seat on the commission, and Malinowski has run into trouble. They give Kean a GOP sink in Northern Jersey, taking Sussex, Warren, and red parts of Somerset, Morris, and into Union, where his home in Westfield lies. The third GOP seat is the traditional sink in Monmouth and Ocean,, snaking into Hamilton, where Chris Smith resides.

There are three minority seats. NJ-12 captures the minority-heavy areas along the Route 1 corridor. It is just over 50% non-White. Watson-Coleman would occupy this seat in most cases. NJ-10, held by Donald Payne, captures Black-heavy areas such as Newark and its immediate environs, as well as into Union and a snake into Jersey City. NJ-08, held by Albio Sires, captures Elizabeth, the Hispanic parts of Hudson and Essex. This is the ugliest district of the map.

NJ-03 captures almost all of Burlington and the less red parts of Ocean. If they keep Hamilton in Smith's district, which I think they might, there's not much opportunity to make this seat bluer, but Kim is quite strong and could continue winning.

NJ-11 captures much of Morris and Western Essex. It extends into Passaic to make it bluer. Sherrill should be able to keep the seat comfortably.

NJ-05 contains Bergen and the less Hispanic parts of Hudson. Gottheimer should be able to win easily in this district.

NJ-09, held by Bill Pascrell, becomes a lot less blue to shore up Gottheimer and Sherrill. Much of the area around his hometown of Paterson belongs to other district. It contains Paterson, northern Morris, and parts of Bergen. Should be safe regardless.

NJ-06 contains Eastern Middlesex and the Monmouth coast. Frank Pallone lives in Long Branch, thus the snake down the coast.

NJ-01 is centered around Camden and will be held by Donald Norcross.

Keeping incumbents in their districts really makes it difficult to make an aesthetically pleasing map. Watson-Coleman, Smith, and Kim live in neighboring towns essentially. Same with Pascrell, Sherrill, and Gottheimer. Maybe they won't consider this, upon which the map gets a lot simpler.

I’m thinking something like this is what gets drawn, but potentially with Smith picking up a bit more Ocean from Kim and Kim getting a bit more of Mercer.

Smith lives in Hamilton in Mercer though, which is why I have that ugly extension into the county. If they didn’t care about that, Kim would grab a good bit of Mercer.

[beesley]

That’s a great map for COI. Your NJ-11 is a Dem vote sink but that’s not ridiculous in the service of a fair map.

What happens if you move Perth Amboy into the Hispanic district and move some of the more Democrat towns in the Middlesex county part of 5 into 6? If you put East Brunswick, Cranbury, East Windsor into NJ-6, it should make the district more Asian and potentially able to elect an Asian-American representative while making 5 safer for Republicans.

But I don’t know where you’d best make up the population in 5 without messing up 2 and 3.

Just had a go at that. The unwanted by-product of doing that was that it did make 6 a lot whiter as well as more Asian - they are still a minority in a lot of the towns you mentioned, and, as you predicted, it was hard to do that without messing up 3 and making 11 even more of a vote sink.

[Stuart98]

How's this for a fair map?

[Sol]

I've been playing around with a different configuration for the VRA seats in Northeast NJ in a fair map (so not taking incumbent preferences, machine politics, etc. into account).



A lot of Hudson County along the Hudson River is getting fairly white these days, and Jersey City is very diverse--so it's a bit challenging to get your Latino VRA seat without doing an awkward cut to grab Hoboken. So I figured it might be a better bet to do a Paterson-Elizabeth seat, and create an extremely diverse seat in Eastern Hudson County.

NJ-09 is 55% Latino on total pop., 45% on CVAP. NJ-10 is 48% Black on total pop., 47% on CVAP (is this due to Carribean immigration?)

NJ-08 is extremely diverse--plurality Latino on total population, but plurality white on CVAP--but no group crosses 40%, and there are very big Latino and Asian communities too.

Here's the link--ignore the rest of the state, still playing out scenarios.

FYI, it is possible to draw a Black majority district but it seems like it probably has to take Elizabeth, which is also necessary for the Latino district.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Inspired by Sol's post above regarding an extra VRA seat:

I started in northern Jersey, with a district linking Paterson with northern Hudson County, and then tried to make a second district with maximized Latino potential. Then the black seat was drawn. I then did some tweaks to the districts so that one CD could be nested entirely within Bergen, and then still more tweaks to ensure a third district didn't cross the Essex-Union county border. In general I tried to keep county splits down and things aestetically good looking, and I kept township splits to the minimum. I kept to Michigan Rules (i.e. no two districts can split two distinct counties) throughout, also making use of the VRA exemption from that.

Before anyone asks: the demographics of the current NJ-08 are very close to my Paterson-to-Union City CD, being only 2 points less Latino in total population. And the total population % of my NJ-10 is just 3 points less black than its current version.

This is a pretty decent fair map - with 7D, 4R, and 1S being probably the closest one can get to the state composition. NJ-11 goes from Trump+1 to Trump+5; NJ-07 from Clinton+1 to Trump+6; NJ-03 from Trump+6 to Trump+14. On the other hand, NJ-02 loses its entire share of Ocean and Burlington, since this is Michigan Rules and I wanted to get rid of those county splits anyway. The result is that the seat goes from Trump+5 to Trump+2.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/f996a258-e778-4b51-a238-7932fd7a15a8
(also, I am not reconsidering pairing Burlington and Ocean counties on this map, period. My stance on this has not changed)

[Roll Roons]

In terms of redistricting, it's kind of annoying that Smith lives in blue Mercer and Pallone lives in red Monmouth.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

In terms of redistricting, it's kind of annoying that Smith lives in blue Mercer and Pallone lives in red Monmouth.

For sure.

[Torie]

In terms of redistricting, it's kind of annoying that Smith lives in blue Mercer and Pallone lives in red Monmouth.

For sure.

You chopped the most beautiful city in America! 

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

In terms of redistricting, it's kind of annoying that Smith lives in blue Mercer and Pallone lives in red Monmouth.

For sure.

You chopped the most beautiful city in America! 

A municipal split there was inevitable. I wish I didn't have to split Hoboken, but it is what it is.

[Torie]

Our flat in Hoboken is directly below the "t" in the "1st St" label on the map.

[S019]

I highly doubt anything with less than 8 Dem seats get passed, Democrats are on track to get back state Supreme Court control by the time redrawing happens and Murphy is Governor, both of those should lend itself to the tiebreaker being D favored and Dems would control all of the levers of power, with 10 incumbents to satisfy (remember this is a politician commission, so incumbent concerns matter), there's no way they're sacrificing more than 2, if they have the votes, which they in all likelihood will. In fact, the person that Murphy nominated to replace LaVecchia clerked for RBG and two other Clinton appointed judges, even if she doesn't have a political party per Wikipedia, it's very clear where she leans.

The most that Republicans can hope for is a safe North Jersey seat, a safe South Jersey seat, and two competitive south Jersey seats, I personally think the end result is 9-3 with a safe R north Jersey seat and the 3rd and 2nd shored up for their respective parties. 10-2 would probably be an absurd gerrymander that would break norms and if the tiebreaker sides with the Democrats, then there's absolutely no reason for them to cede 5 or more seats to the Republicans, even four is probably a stretch in that case.

[Sol]

I expanded on my New Jersey map. Again, this is intended as a fair map, ignoring partisan advantages and incumbents.





link

The only split municipality, unless I screwed something up (plausible) is Brick Township.

Traininthedistance [rip] used to post little summaries of each district, and I kind of liked that, so I'll revive that tradition for this post since he is one of the forum's more eminent New Jerseyans.

NJ-01: 67%W- 17%B- 13%L; 50-45% Clinton.
The successor district to NJ-02 in some respects. It includes most of the Southwest suburbs of Philadelphia, west of the Pine Barrens. Has been swinging right recently but remains a Democratic leaning area. Norcross could run here--iirc a lot of the towns along the Delaware river are in his machine? but NJ-03 is probably safer.

NJ-02: 75%W-12%L; 58-39% Trump.
The Jersey Shore. Needless to say, this is GOP turf, despite Atlantic City. Jeff Van Drew would be pretty safe here.

NJ-03: 60%W-20%B-14%L; 60-35% Clinton
Camden and its innermost suburbs+Burlington County. Has a lot of left-leaning inner suburbs. Andy Kim and Donald Norcross live here--this is probably closer to Kim's old seat but Norcross might have a better shot of winning given his institutional strength.

NJ-04: 78%W-11%L; 56-40% Trump
Most of Monmouth County plus bite out of Ocean, including heavily Orthodox Lakewood. Even though Chris Smith doesn't live here, it's the obvious seat for him. Pallone lives here but couldn't win.

NJ-05: 52%W-18%A-16%B-14%L; 61-34% Clinton.
The Trenton area, plus Princeton, Southern Somerset, and Southern Middlesex. Central New Jersey is kind of frustrating--I'd like to keep the large Indian community along US-1 and I-95 together, but it's a little too diffuse and doesn't follow township boundaries. A bit more is in NJ-06, but it's basically split. Bonnie Watson Coleman should be fine--Malinowski lives here too but this is sort of the obvious continuation of her old seat.

NJ-06: 44%W-23%A-22%L-12%B; 58-39% Clinton
Most of Middlesex County, minus Carteret and plus South Bound Brook and bits of Monmouth. Has most of the area's Indian community. Not as Democratic as you'd expect based on the demographics, white people here must be hard R. Pallone doesn't live here but would probably run here.

NJ-07: 79%W-11%L; 57-39% Trump.
This is your requisite exurban North Jersey district. Very affluent and very white. Despite big Democratic swings in recent years, it probably still voted for Trump in 2020. Malinowski could run here but he would lose.

NJ-08: 66%W-15%L-12%A; 52-44% Clinton.
Sort of the mid-suburbs of NYC. Fairly affluent, but more diverse, with some small industrial cities in the mix, like Plainfield. Leans Democratic these days, but if Republicans improve in suburbia it could be swingier. Neither Sherrill or Malinowski lives here, but I assume the former would be advantaged?

NJ-09: 48%B-28%W-19%L; 80-18% Clinton.
The Black neighborhoods of Newark and its suburbs. Swung a good bit to Trump but still quite safe. Payne should be fine here.

NJ-10: 55%L-24%W-17%B; 73-25% Clinton.
The Latino neighborhoods of Newark, Elizabeth, Passaic, and Paterson, linked up by the Meadowlands. More Republican than you'd expect because of the Meadowlands. Presumably had a big Trump swing, but still quite safe. Pascrell lives here so he'd probably run here--idk how his relations with the Latino community are.

NJ-11: 39%L-30%W-20%A-13%B; 73-24% Clinton.
Urban NW Jersey, west of the Hackensack. Extremely diverse, with a decent Republican performance due to Bayonne. Undergoing gentrification in parts. Sires lives here and could run here too, but he could be vulnerable to a primary challenge.

NJ-12: 60%W-19%L-15%A; 55-42% Clinton.
Suburban Bergen County. Reasonably safe for Democrats, though as for NJ-08 it is a bit of a place which could return to the GOP if things got more favorable. Gottheimer lives here and as a Tory Dem type is perfect for this area.

[Roll Roons]

Decent map. I played around with it a bit to make NJ-08 slightly less blue. Kean would likely run in that district against Sherrill, which would be one of the most hotly contested House races in the country.

[Sol]

Decent map. I played around with it a bit to make NJ-08 slightly less blue. Kean would likely run in that district against Sherrill, which would be one of the most hotly contested House races in the country.

Would be curious to see your map!

[Roll Roons]

Decent map. I played around with it a bit to make NJ-08 slightly less blue. Kean would likely run in that district against Sherrill, which would be one of the most hotly contested House races in the country.

Would be curious to see your map!

https://davesredistricting.org/join/bf72bced-3dec-481c-9f1c-ad8e04cf50b7

TL;DR taking Plainfield out makes a massive difference. There were also a few other small shifts in various places, but NJ-08 is the only district where the partisanship significantly changes from yours.

[Sol]

Decent map. I played around with it a bit to make NJ-08 slightly less blue. Kean would likely run in that district against Sherrill, which would be one of the most hotly contested House races in the country.

Would be curious to see your map!

https://davesredistricting.org/join/bf72bced-3dec-481c-9f1c-ad8e04cf50b7

TL;DR taking Plainfield out makes a massive difference. There were also a few other small shifts in various places, but NJ-08 is the only district where the partisanship significantly changes from yours.

That makes sense--it does look like you split a few towns/townships though.

I'm not super familiar with New Jersey--but it seems like it's better CoI to put Plainfield with North Plainfield, Watchung, etc.--maybe there's a way to throw South Plainfield in there too.

[Sol]

You could also draw the two North Jersey districts on the horizontal axis rather than the vertical axis.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The main aim of this map was to create an as-Asian-as-possible CD centered on Middlesex. It wound up having more consequences than I expected. NJ-07 had to eat much more of Morris, which caused NJ-11 to have to eat into Bergen. I was forced into abandoning the possibility of a all-in-Bergen CD. I suppose the Morris CD could have gone into Essex instead, but that would make the map less fair and probably intrude too much into minority areas. In the end, I found myself drawing a white sink in Northern Jersey, drawn to collect white liberal areas. NJ-08 is now containing all of Hudson, but it retains a robust Latino plurality and is probably still performing. All-in-all, the map makes some different choices in both South and North Jersey, generally geared towards increasing the number of seats with generally lower white %.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/92521fc3-ee6e-44d9-a283-1067385f48a4

[Brittain33]

Sol, I love your two Jersey Shore districts. Things look so much better if you stop trying to protect Smith and Pallone’s residences.

[Sol]

Sol, I love your two Jersey Shore districts. Things look so much better if you stop trying to protect Smith and Pallone’s residences.

Thank you for your kind words!

[beesley]

Our flat in Hoboken is directly below the "t" in the "1st St" label on the map.

Visited Hoboken a few times. Lovely place.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

redid North Jersey.
Created a very similar arrangement to my 3 VRA seat map previously. This marries the two maps I made most recently together.
This produces a grand total of 4 performing majority-minority seats.

[Torie]

Our flat in Hoboken is directly below the "t" in the "1st St" label on the map.

Visited Hoboken a few times. Lovely place.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Our flat in Hoboken is directly below the "t" in the "1st St" label on the map.

Visited Hoboken a few times. Lovely place.

For some reason, Sesame Street comes to mind when I see that image.