2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: New Jersey

[Progressive Pessimist]

I'm not permanently back from my sanity leave, but I can only endure that for so long when it comes to my state and the redistricting news I have been dorkily anticipating.

Anyway, this map is aesthetically butt-ugly. I'm not going to lie. Especially districts 2, 3, 5 (my district still, which I wish they would just renumber as 12 already for the sake of a proper numbering order from north to south!), 7, 8, 9 (Oakland and Franklin Lakes with Paterson and Passaic?), 11, and 12. I guess that's all of them other than 1 and 4, haha! But that tangent aside, it seems to have been the best possible sort of map that the New Jersey Democratic Party could have drawn for partisan purposes.

I'm glad they didn't attempt to draw out Van Drew by possibly watering down the safety of Kim's or Norcross' district, as much as I want that turncoat out of Congress. It was always the wisest choice to shore up Gottheimer, Kim, and Sherrill and cut losses between Van Drew's and Malinowski's districts becoming more Republican. I actually don't think any of those three shored up districts will backfire like with the last maps did for the GOP barring a truly insurmountable Republican wave, which I don't think 2022 will be...it will be bad still of course, don't get me wrong, but mid to high single digit wins for those three at worst probably.

And speaking specifically about district 7, which is deservedly getting most of the attention, the New Jersey Democrats did a very good job at making it as close to a lateral movement as possible. I didn't expect that they would offset the district being drawn more into Sussex and Warren (as was probably always inevitable) so much by putting more of Union County in from Watson Coleman's old district. Kean will likely defeat Malinowski in a rematch here in 2022, but in other years, it's going to be a complete tossup. Hardly the Republican sink I figured it would be. I'll take it though. I really thought this map would be worse. If this was throwing Malinowski under the bus...it's true, but it's a pretty small and slow bus, relatively speaking.

And I will say, so as to not sound like a complete hack, the Republican map really wasn't all that bad. I probably would have tolerated it, even if it's not quite ideal. It was certainly neater looking too.

Anyway, I am going to continue my break from the forum starting now! Just had to get this (and a few spare other observations and posts in not entirely stressful topics) out of my system.