After Mark Critz narrowly held on to PA-12 for the Democrats I began considering redistricting plans. Right now I expect Democrats to narrowly hold on to the State House of Representatives, and I see the Governor’s race as no worse than a toss up, with, in my opinion, Onorato having the advantage over Corbett, due to simple geography. Corbett has only barely won two tight races against second tier candidates before, while this time he’s up from against a candidate with a strong base in Southwestern Pennsylvania. No Republican can win statewide in PA anymore without holding Democrats to a very narrow margin in the SW corner of the state. Corbett is floating along in the Philly suburbs right now based on nothing more than name recognition, and the liberal lean of those areas will eventually bite him once Onorato gets his message out and points out how out of line Corbett’s views are with this blue state, (he joined the campaign to challenge the new health care laws for Christ’s sake).
So, assuming Democrats held those two areas I would figure Republicans in the Senate would pretty much have to acquiesce, I know in Indiana that however holds two of the three is able to control redistricting.
What I decided to do was mainly incumbent protection.
That is what I did to the Southeast corner of the state. First off I kept Reps Brady and Fattah in basically the same district. I might have made Fattah’s a few percentage points more black, and Brady’s a few percentage points more white.
Unfortunately there are no PA partisan numbers available yet for Dave’s Redistricting App, so I was largely left to guesswork. But my intentions were to help Patrick Murphy. He gets all of Bucks County, and the remaining population requirements are filled by a small, (and hopefully heavily Democratic), tendril of southern Montgomery County and northeastern Philadelphia.
I was fed up with the jumbled look Montgomery County had, so I cleared up the boundaries of PA-04 and PA-06, (Schwartz’s and Gerlach’s districts). PA-04 should be basically the same, partisan leanings wise, while PA-06 might have inadvertently gotten more Republican, though I did my best to change that by taking in the cities of Reading and Lancaster proper with two narrow tendrils. Both those urban areas have a fairly strong Democratic lean, (I can assume), and add a significant minority population to the district, (mostly Hispanic). So hopefully it’s current Democratic leanings, 58-41 Obama, are preserved.
CD-17 and CD-18 are basically preserved as districts that gave McCain double digit wins, or something close to that.
Now for two of the districts that I have calculated, as best I can, the new Presidential numbers.
First is the new PA-07, built for savvy Rep Tim Holden who defeated George Gekas in the biggest upset of 2002. I decided to give him a Democratic leaning swing district by taking Dauphin County, (where he seems to have established quite nice base and political machine the past decade), his home area of Pottsville in Schuylkill County, and Allentown/Lehigh County.
The result is, as carefully as I can measure it:
New District: Obama: 55%, McCain: 45%
Old District: Obama: 48%, McCain 51%
However there is a minor flaw in those numbers, which is that I simply had to figure out how much population of this district was in Schuylkill, then find what percentage of the county’s total population that was, and, making turnout and voting patterns even, take that percentage of the total votes cast in the district to get numbers for the new PA-07’s portion of Schuylkill.
I know Charlie Dent is from Allentown. It is irrelevant. I’m being aggressive here. One I expect him to lose this time around, and two, even if he doesn’t I don’t think he can beat a savvy, moderate Dem like Holden in this district. Not only did Obama win it by double digits, (and will be on the ballot again in 2012), but all the Republican areas that he needs to win are Holden’s base and are places he’s never represented before. Dent has never impressed me with his political skills, and in a difficult campaign, during a Presidential year, against a savvy, moderate Dem like Holden, I don’t think he could even win Lehigh County, (his base). Thus one Republican in the PA map is gotten rid of, and a more reliably Democratic seat is created along the edge of Central Pennsylvania.
The next one I want to discuss is a district that I made for John Callahan/Paul Kanjorski. I expect Kanjorski to lose at the moment, and Callahan to win, so this district is technically more tailored to Callahan and intended to retire Kanjorski if he somehow survives yet again.
Here the political numbers for this new PA-08:
New District: Obama: 56%, McCain: 44% w/o Luzerne County. Estimate 55.5% Obama.
Old District: Obama: 57%, McCain: 42%
And I admit the Luzerne numbers are a complete guess. I just assumed Hazelton was more conservative, and thus put areas I guess to be closer to 55% Obama in this district to keep up the Democratic lean. I think it would be difficult for this district to be won by a Republican.
Now my wider map looks like this:
The new PA-09 is my proudest creation on this entire map. I secured a Republican area, pushing it over into the realm of Democratic leaning swing district, and tailor made it for Chris Carney to defeat another Republican in the state’s delegation, Lou Barletta, who I expect to win.
New District: Obama: 52.7%, McCain: 47.3% w/o Luzerne County, I estimate that it’s 51-48 Obama.
Old District: 54% McCain, 45% Obama
Again those estimates are largely geographical guesstimates based on the overall political leanings of Luzerne County. Still Barletta has his work cut out for him. Most of the district would be new to him, and he’d be left only with with his Hazeltown base. It keeps Scranton, which is bad news for Barletta because it really singlehandedly kept Kanjorski in office this last cycle. Even worse is that Carney has dominated the outer, more conservative areas of Lackawanna County, and I can only imagine what he’ll do with the entire County.
It’s again a Tim Holden like case, on paper the Republican seems to have a chance, but the problem is all the Republican/swingish to conservative areas he needs to win are not his turf, but the Democrats. Carney has won Wayne and Pike in the past, and has a political base in Susquehanna County, and has also won Columbia. It’s another case where I can’t see the Republican managing to steal these new voters away from their Representative of more than half a decade.
Next I made an effort to help Kathy Dahlkemper. This is also one of my proud, thinking outside of the box moments. Whereas her old district went for McCain by a few hundred votes, her new district looks like this:
New District: Obama: 53.8%, McCain: 46.2%
Old District: McCain 49%, Obama: 49%
A full four point shift. It remains an Erie based district, and it extends outward into more conservative areas like Crawford and Warren that she would likely need to win, but I also went out into rural central Pennsylvania, adding Elkhart County, which is a traditional, old school Democratic county, (it even went for McGovern in 1972), and more importantly Democratic trending Centre County, which gave her a big boost.
Not having political data of course completely ended any attempts for me to do what I needed to in the Southwest corner. My intentions are quite simple; no matter how ugly it looks I wanted to split up Doyle’s 70% Obama Pittsburgh based district and create three 55% Obama districts in order to hold that area down for Democrats for another decade. Mark Critz probably got the best deal, getting the southern half of Cambria County, including Johnstown, while losing the outer and more Republican areas to Murphy, and then getting a large swath of black neighborhoods in north Pittsburgh, while Doyle gets a Washington-Fayette-Green based district along with southeast Allegheny and a good sized portion of Pittsburgh, including his base.
Meanwhile CD’s 15, 16 and 11 are all made 60+ percent McCain districts that Democrats have no shot at ever competing in.
As a whole I think this is a damn good map, and it tackles ever weak spot or want of Democrats in PA while also aggressively taking out a pair of Eastern PA Republicans.
tips, corrections, suggestions, please feel free to talk about them, or how you feel about the map.
Critz won PA-12 not PA-13.
I am just wondering, do dgb or jeffmd know when PA or any other state will get partisan data. It has been three months since the last partisan data addition so I expect we should hear something soon.
is dead wrong: all polling and history suggests that Corbett is strongly favored. The PA House is a tossup IMO.
so just because Obama lost Armstrong badly doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be in a Democratic district.
Tim Holden has a solid and overwhelming base in the county that has enabled him to win. The district is more polarized by geography than most. I would give him the whole county in whatever district is drawn, regardless of how it votes in other races.
A small point, thanks for submitting this map.
What you call CD-3 is current PA-08, etc.
I don’t know why you’d shift NE Phila from Schwartz to Brady. It just makes Schwartz’ job harder, not easier. I’d focus more on making PMurphy’s district a little more safe, and then it’s the question of what to do with PA-6 and PA-7 based on this year’s results.
Both Brady and Fattah could easily shift their districts more suburban while being safe. Brady’s only threat right now is a racially divided primary.