A Republican gerrymander of New York with only three congressional districts

For my first diary and first map, I seek to answer a question than I’m sure many of you have asked yourselves: if Republicans gained control over redistricting in New York, what would their Congressional map look like if the state lost 90% of its House seats?

This may seem fanciful, but there are a number of ways in which it might happen. New York’s population could stay static while the population of the country as a whole grew to 3 billion. New York’s population could uniformally plummet to around 2 million. The House of Representatives could be reduced to around a fifth of its present size, making New York one of only a dozen or so states with more than one House seat. The United States could join a worldwide legislature with single member constituencies around 6 million people in size. Or perhaps some combination of the above occurs. Assuming that none of any of this results in any changes to voting patterns in New York, here is my proposed map:

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All districts have a population deviation no greater than 200.

District 1 – Gold

74% White, 6% Black, 7% Asian, 11% Hispanic, 2% other

52% Obama

Suburbs of NYC, plus the most Republican/relatively less Democratic parts of NYC itself.

District 2 – Navy

23% White, 32% Black, 8% Asian, 32% Hispanic, 4% Other

89% Obama

All of Manhattan, the vast majority of the Bronx, most of Brooklyn and Queens, part of (mostly heavily minority areas) Staten Island, Westchester County and Nassau County.

District 3 – Dark Red

87% White, 6% Black, 1% Asian, 3% Hispanic, 1% Other

54% Obama

Upstate New York, pretty simple – no real need for crazy gerrymanders.

Analysis

It is true that none of these districts voted for John McCain in 2008. However, there are two alleviating factors: (1) Obama’s high nationwide perfomance – the CPVIs of these districts are probably about D+1 and (2) the willingness of New Yorkers, especially Upstate, to vote for local Republicans.

Furthermore, while is it likely possible to draw a McCain-voting district, to do so would require some extremely elongated protrusions. It is probably not a worthwhile excercise in any case, since Republicans stand a good chance of winning both District 1 and 3 and strengthening one would simply weaken the other.

District 3 has a higher Obama vote than District 1 because a) the traditional Republican strength in New York and b) there are a number of McCain-voting groups in NYC (like Ultra-Orthodox Jews) that cannot be depended upon to vote for a Republican Congressional nominee. Neveretheless, if you think these factors are minor, it’s simple to adjust the boundaries between the two to equalise them.

Conclusion

As soon as Republicans are fortunate enough to find themselves in such a favourable position, they will be pleased to find how easy is it to pack one uber-Democratic district. This stands in sharp contrast to say, Massachusetts, in which Republicans will find it hard to draw themselves seats the next time they have a trifecta there.  

I hope you enjoyed my diary. For my next diary, I plan to post a series of maps using the “California rule”, a whimsical twist on the “Wyoming rule” in which the standard Congressional district population is set equal to the size of the largest state.  

10 thoughts on “A Republican gerrymander of New York with only three congressional districts”

  1. I can hope we are a few years away from NY having 3 congressional districts.  Of course what was that Movie with Manhatten as a prison–that was a stark view of the future.

  2. It’s almost funny to see any media depiction of NY from the 1970s or 1980s nowadays, when it seemed like everyone making movies thought the place was going to sink into the very bowels of hell.  

    “Escape From New York” is obviously way over the top, but watching “Taxi Driver” or “Fort Apache, The Bronx” or “Do The Right Thing” or “New Jack City” is odd given how Disneyfied much of NY seems to tourists nowadays. The big city (NY being first in line, but DC and Boston and Chicago are part of the trend to) became glamorous again.  

  3. Never in a million years would I have guessed that the most Republican district in New York would include parts of four of the five boroughs. That really tells you as much about changes upstate than anything else.

    My “you know you’re a political geek moment” for the day……..getting excited over the prospect of a Republican representing substantial parts of the Bronx (possible in real life if you run a district along the north shore of Long Island.)

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