New York State now has partisan data in Daves Redistricting! Thanks to jeffmd for the ton of work he did to make this happen. Please read below the fold before trying this!
Jeffmd created all new shapefiles for New York voting districts. The population numbers are 2010 estimates (gleaned by Jeff from available data), so there’s no need to check “Use new population estimates.” And the partisan data (2008 presidential election) was put together by Jeff to match those districts.
To access this new data, you need to check the “Use Test Data” checkbox in the upper right corner of the app before selecting New York State. (Because the data format is different than I have been using, I’ve separated it into a separate directory on the server.)
Warning: the shapefiles file is very large (17MB). (Texas has the next largest at 7MB.) So it will take minutes to load — go get coffee.
As most of you know, NY will almost definitely lose 1 CD after 2010. I started trying to build a new plan (as I tested out the new data and software changes). Quite a challenge. You already have various minority majority districts in the NYC area (Black majority as well as Hispanic majority). Keeping those balanced correctly while shifting to accomodate 1 fewer district will be a challenge. (And interesting to see neighborhoods in Brooklyn where McCain kicked butt — those of you from the city understand this much better than an outsider like me.) Now, the Hispanic demographic is not broken down further, which could hinder your job. The Census Bureau does have this data and I may be able to make that change in the future, but for now, this is what we have.
Enjoy redistricting NY. Don’t stay up too late and jeopordize your job or marriage!
Update: I uploaded a new version of the app and I think you are going to like this!
(1) Fixed percentages so that they are calculated by rounding. This was simply my coding error.
(2) Made the sizes of the CD labels smaller for the smaller districts. Especially good for NYC.
(3) Made it so you can drag the new CD labels where you want them! Woohoo!
Thank you so much Dave. I can’t wait to go home and try it out.
I’m excited!
Thank you Jeff and Dave!
And for all you New York redistricting fans out there — stay tuned to SSP’s front page tonight. We’ll be posting guidelines for a very special SSP redistricting contest in a couple hours.
Dave, I really mean this, I hope a state government or redistricting commission hires you.
Now I can’t wait to test my all-Dem Upstate plan that I already have a good feeling about.
Use test data box? I could not find it.
and on winter break. no worries.
Great work and thanks a lot! 🙂
So far I have enjoyed playing around with these maps. However, in part because I do not have the patience, I feel that I can (relatively) quickly arrive at the population targets, but once done, there is no easy way to go back and determine the demographic or partisan characteristics of the newly drawn district.
Is the only way to do this is to copy the data precinct by precinct into a spreadsheet, or am I missing something?
Dave – this is an amazing tool.
Chris
(after autofill), but the app still claims that there are 42621 people in the district.
that you’ve just added up all of the fusion votes? Was that work already done for the Pres. vote by CD project?
1024×768 laptop. It cuts off at Goto on the Area Maps box on Firefox.
Great job, but in many non-metro upstate counties, you just have whole townships, not precincts within those townships. This is helpful for those of us who want to play around with remapping the State Senate or Assembly, where it is constitutionally illegal to split up townships. But, it is perfectly legal to do so for congressional seats and, indeed, necessary in some cases to get the population levels equal enough.
But great job!
I’m using a different computer. The check box is there now, but checking it does nothing. There is still no partisan data loading. I waited to make sure all loading was done.
http://politicalwire.com/archi…
Hopefully this isn’t the political equivalent of being Slashdotted.
Precinct BK57 017 in Brooklyn has 6 people but 433 votes.
That’s some high turnout.
impossible for me to fit the whole app in one window without scrolling, and I don’t have an unusually small display (1440×900).
You might want to move the bar with the demographic data to the top rather than the bottom, so you don’t have to scroll down to see it.
wasted whitespace:
is to open a browser window wider than the resolution of your screen.
Neither will show the check box.
Sometime Saturday.
in trying to put everything in one window. DRA screams for floating palettes.
load the whole app without silverlight scrollbars?
The scroll bars just weren’t working the way I hoped, so I got rid of them.
Instead, I packed the controls across the top more closely, so that if your browser’s content with is greater than about 970 pixesl, you can see the “Use Test Data” box.
Also, I put the Info bar at the top, as one of you suggested.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you still have a problem. Thanks.