With Pennsylvania set to lose a congressional district in 2010, and with the GOP now in charge of the process (again), here’s what a 12-6 map might look like. It’s quite ugly but ugliness is perhaps the only way the GOP can take a light blue state and cement a 12-6 hold on its congressional delegation! (Bear in mind, Bush II never carried PA). Even as is, I think a 12-6 map, eliminating just one Democratic congressman, is perhaps a dummymander. Southeastern PA, especially, is trending away from them. But I see no way the GOP is going to sacrifice one of their own to make a more sensible 11-7 map.
Ok, here goes… and I’ve renumbered the districts roughly west to east… can’t understand why PA, OH, FL, TX, and a few other states have district numbers that jump all over the place!
District 1 (blue): Altmire (D) OR Dahkemper (D): Erie, New Castle, Dem areas of SW PA
Obama 55, McCain 44
This is perhaps the ugliest district in the entire map, and its purpose is as a Democratic vote sink so that neighboring CD #2 becomes much safer for the GOP. Still surprising that it isn’t all that Democratic-performing going by Obama’s vote percentage.
District 2 (green): Kelly (R)
Obama 42, McCain 57
Kelly gets a considerably safer district with the removal of Erie into CD #1.
District 3 (purple): Doyle (D)
Obama 68, McCain 31
Still a ridiculous vote sink around the Pittsburgh area. District extends south a bit to gain some of the southern-most suburbs and thereby helps Murphy’s district become a bit redder.
District 4 (red): Murphy (R)
Obama 42, McCain 57
Republican suburbs in southern Allegany County, most Republican areas of Washington County, and almost all of now GOP-leaning Westmoreland County. Murphy should be happy with this district.
District 5 (yellow): Thompson (R)
Obama 44, McCain 54
A more condensed version of the PA wilds district that you drive through on I-80.
District 6 (teal green): Shuster (R) vs. Critz (D)
Obama 41, McCain 58
If you were to get rid of a Democrat out of the 7, Critz is the safest one to get rid of. The ruby-red mountains of PA drown out whatever Democratic votes Critz may be able to get out of Johnstown or Fayette/Somerset counties. This should be safe for Shuster, unless he forgot how to campaign like Gekas in 2002.
District 7 (grey): Platts (R)
Obama 42, McCain 57
Stays largely the same.
District 8 (purple): Marino (R)
Obama 44, McCain 54
The GOP is faced with a real dilemma in NE PA in that they have 2 GOP freshmen incumbents to protect in an area that should by rights only elect one of them. Because of this, they realistically cannot target Holden as they did in 2002. Because of the need to give safer districts to Barletta (and, realistically, Dent – certainly if I were a GOP mapmaker I’d hedge my bets there), this district shifts south to grab all of Dauphin County. The Democrats of Harrisburg are drowned out by the Republicans of Lycoming and other GOP counties between the two…. Best of all, while it is possible for a Democrat to win this district, Christopher Carney no longer lives in this district.
District 9 (sky blue): Barletta (R)
Obama 45, McCain 54
Through clever conceding of the most Democratic areas of his current district to Tim Holden’s neighboring 10th, this district becomes a carbon-clone of the 9. Goes from the Republican T south to northern Berks County, but aside from swingy areas in Lackawanna and Luzerne County, this is a lean-GOP district, although it includes the home of Chris Carney, most of the district would be unfamiliar to him.
District 10 (pink): Holden (D)
Obama 61, McCain 37
This is Northeastern PA’s Democratic vote sink. It accordingly helps out Baretta and Dent. It helps out the latter by removing Bethlehem, the city of Dent’s 2010 challenger, and about 1/2 of Allentown, through a narrow ugly tendril southward from Carbon County. Hoping that the part that Dent lives in is in neighboring CD 11; if not, it can easily be rectified by swapping precincts in Allentown. From there it extends north to include all of the Democratic-rich areas of Scranton and its environs; ditto with Wilks-Barre and other Democratic areas of Luzerne. It also includes the more Democratic eastern half or so of Schuylkill County, where Holden lives.
District 11 (neon green): Dent (R)
Obama 53, McCain 46
This district becomes a bit safer for Dent by extending north a bit along the Delaware River to Monroe, Pike, and Wayne counties. It loses Bethlehem and part of Allentown through a narrow tendril in the 10th district. Although Dent easily gets reelected in his district, his 2010 opponent, the mayor of Bethlehem, presented Dent with a tough race. He now can run in a Democratic primary against Holden if he wishes.
District 12 (slate blue, I guess): Gerlach (R)
Obama 52, McCain 47
For slaving it out cycle after cycle, Gerlach gets a much safer more exurban district. Lebanon, the rest of Berks not in CD 10, including all of Reading, which Gerlach can handle, a bit of northern Montgomery, and the northern half or so of Chester, where Gerlach is from.
District 13 (peach): Pitts (R)
Obama 47, McCain 52
Lancaster and the southern bit of Chester, where Pitts is from. One is tempted to make this even more Democratic still to help out fellow SEPA Republicans elsewhere, but Pitts would be endangered if this district got any bluer than it is. Indeed, if Lancaster follows Chester in becoming the next red-to-blue suburb of SE PA, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pitts retired and was replaced either with a more moderate Republican or a Democrat.
District 14 (ugly green): Meehan (R)
Obama 53, McCain 46
mostly the same as before in Delaware County, with a few more heavily-Democratic areas such as Media, the areas around Swarthmore College, and heavily black areas in Upper Darby and Lansdowne removed into Brady’s 18th. The district extends a bit further into carefully chosen precincts in Montgomery County, with Schwartz taking the most Democratic ones. Meehan should be fine.
District 15 (orange): Fitzpatrick (R)
Obama 52, McCain 47
Bucks County finally gets partitioned, with Bristol, the home of Murphy, and the most Democratic areas nearest Philadelphia removed into Schwartz’s 16th and replaced with more GOP areas in Montgomery County. The district gets 2-3% more Republican than currently is the case as a result. About the best that can be done for Fitzpatrick.
District 16 (light green): Schwartz (D)
Obama 64, McCain 35
There we have it, an effective Democratic vote sink in SEPA that helps out all of the endangered GOP congressmen surrounding it. It carefully takes in the most Democratic areas of Montgomery and Bucks and connects the two through also taking in a large part of NE Phily.
District 17 (dark purple): Fattah (D)
Obama 88, McCain 12
55% black, 34% white, 5% Hispanic
Largely the same as before, gaining more areas in NE Phily to equalize its population. Black % drops but still VRA-compliant by a long way.
District 18 (yellow): Brady (D)
Obama 87, McCain 13
44% black, 30% white, 18% Hispanic
Again, largely the same as before. Extends a bit further into Delaware County to vacuum up heavily-Democratic precincts in favor of Meehan; likewise it takes a bit more of NE Phily than it did before. Still, it retains its position as a minority-majority VRA-complaint coalition district.
I have downloaded jpeg images from Dave’s redistricting software on my computer desktop, but can’t figure out how to link to them here. How do you do that?
In most states, they’re loath to do mass reshuffling of district numbers, which they would have to do if they reordered them geographically in situations where the state gained or lost seats in reapportionment.
The current PA-03 is in the NW corner of the state because that’s where PA-21 was until it disappeared. The district that got effectively eliminated was the Philadelphia-based PA-03; big parts of it ended up in PA-13, which used to be entirely confined to Montgomery County.
That way, only one returning representative had to switch district numbers instead of shifting everyone else up or down one or two.
You can see the same thing with added districts. Wherever there’s enough population growth to create a new district, that area tends to get the highest number – again, so no one currently there has to change numbers.
Once you include your maps.
except that I think Altmire might take Johnstown instead of Erie and Holden might taken Harrisburg instead of Allentown/Bethlehem.
Using Schwartz’s district (which I still think of as the 13th, rendering your number scheme confusing) as a Democratic vote sink will take care of many of the problems Republicans were facing on the current map. This is much less of a dummymander than before.
I was working on one but I think you’ve nailed it.
pretty much how I think it will come out. I previously thought that the GOP would draw Harrisburg and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre into one district, but this one here actually makes more sense with Allentown combined with Scranton.
Does Barletta still live in his dictrict, or did you combine him with Dent? He is the mayor of Hazzleton currently.
You can get a map that has Pitts (47% Obama), Meehan (51% Obama), and Gerlach (48% Obama) which has Holden getting Reading.
And I like your Holden district better; Harrisburg can easily be put in with the really Republican areas of Southern Pennsylvania.
Platts is sitting at 57%, Marino at 54%. Can you shift a piece of Harrisburg into Platts’s district?
I call it the stick figure man.
I’m going to try and get around to posting it since I’ve been working on it the past couple days off and on, but I took a situation where the GOP feels like making life difficult for Altmire and threw McCandless (Altmire’s base) out of PA4 into Mike Doyle’s district, combined Critz with Platts into a district (R+8), and managed to make Mike Kelly slightly safer even though Erie is still in his district (R+5).
It really doesn’t change as much as I first thought. The big winner is Joe Pitts.
Earlier I said you can get Gerlach down to 50/50, and you can. The problem is it leaves Meehan too exposed.
So those guys tend to end up where they are in jsramek’s excellent map, which I mostly duplicated.
Holden’s (purple) district goes up to 65% if you really cherry pick precints.
Barletta’s (lime green) district stays at 46% Obama.
Dent’s (orange) district stays at 53%.
Brady, Chaka, Schwartz (dark blue, dark green, peach) stay the same.
Fitzpatrick (purple) goes down to 51%, but that’s probably just an accident as I’ve drawn it.
Meehan (grey) and Gerlach (slate green) still sit at 53%. You can essentially solidify Gerlach by getting him out of Montgomery and getting Meehan out of Chester County. That pushes Meehan up to 55% and Gerlach down to 50%.
Pitts’s (bright green) district goes back to current form and 43% Obama. Big dip from 47%.
Marino and Platts (pink and blue) are sitting in 43% Obama districts as well.
Rest of the map is exactly the same, with 1 change. I put Mark Critz and Cambria County in Mike Kelly’s (purple) 43% district.
I think Kelly is less likely to get caught with his pants down, and its completely new territory for Mark Critz.
I got something that might be a 13-5. Only two Republicans representing lean Democratic districts.
The counter to that, on the other hand, is that five represent districts Obama won and Joe Pitts has a 49-51 district, so he’d have to moderate somewhat. In a really bad year, it could go 11-7 Dem.
Still, I think it’s possible to remove Altmire pretty effectively. I didn’t have to give any Republican a district worse than 47% Obama, nor split any townships.