I am now glad that NYS’ data is up on Dave’s App. This is my homestate. I wanted to clean the map up visually and keep minimal unnecessary county divisions.
Below are the maps.
I start from 27 and go to 1.
Operative definitions:
even as up to 52%, leans from 52-55% and strong as greater than 55%
Upstate (The black squares show about where the Upstate representatives’ residences are.)
27. Higgins gains all of Buffalo and most of Cattaraugus County. This becomes as strong Democrat district.
26. OPEN. I think this could go either way. This is a LaFalce-style district with the northtowns, then stretching through Niagara and Orleans Counties to pick up towns in western Monroe County that Rep. Slaughter may never have represented, or at least not since the 1980s. It then dips into the northern tier of Genesee County. This is probably close to even, but would most likely vote Rep.
25. Slaughter’s 1990s district was just eastern Monroe County. She now picks up just about the entire county minus Clarkson, Sweden (Brockport) and Riga (Churchville). This is a strong Dem. district.
24. Reed’s Southern Tier district becomes a Genesee River Valley and Finger Lakes. This is a strong Rep. district.
23. This is the district where Buerkle lives, but this is a strong Dem. district now with Syracuse, Auburn, and Ithaca together.
These five districts combined are three NYS tourism regions. A map of that is below.
22. This is Hanna’s district, which becomes a Central-Leatherstocking district. This is even, depending on who votes more: Binghamton/Utica or Rome/rurals.
21. The Capital Region is strongly Dem. It’s Rep. Tomko’s for the taking.
20. Owens’ Adirondack district cleans up without Madison County in his district. It’s still even, but with Owens’ now a two-term rep, he has the benefit of incumbency. This is Thousand Islands-Adirondacks as per the tourism district map.
19. Gibson’s district stops its sprawl and is now and eastern Hudson banks district. Hayworth can easily be merged into this district, but I have her on this map with Lowey. Westchester can easily me rearranged to put both freshman Republicans together. With Troy and Renssalaer, as well and Poughkeepsie and Columbia County’s liberals, this is a leaning Democratic district.
18. Hinchey loses his tendril into Binghamton and goes north and south. He picks up Delaware, Greene, and part of Albany to the north and more of Orange to the south. He keeps his core, and therefore I think, although this is pretty even, I believe Hinchey will win this. This squarely becomes a Catskills district.
Downstate
Easy to describe. from districts 4-17, all go strongly Dem. but two. Grimm’s Richmond-Southwest Brooklyn district packs a bunch of Republicans together, and so this is strongly Republican. District 7 strikes me as even. 14-15 are Hispanic majority, 8 is Hispanic plurality. Districts 9-10 are African American majority and 6 is African-American plurality. These two pluralities are over 40%. District 5 is 40% white.
District 17 puts Lowey and Hayworth together, but this is easily Lowey’s
I did not intend to redistrict any of the following representatives into a contest with another:
16: Engel
15: Serrano
14: Rangel
13: Maloney
12: Nadler
11: Grimm (Stron Republican)
10: Towns
09: Clark
08: Velazquez
07: Weiner (but could swing)
06: Meeks
05: Crowley
I did put McCarthy and Ackerman in district 4.
Long Island’s voter populations are split evenly, but I think NY-03 will go to King, NY-02 will go to Israel, and NY-01 is truly even.
So, quick synopsis in case you’ve come down here and lost count:
19 Dem, 4 Rep., 3 Swing. Are these numbers off?
westchester gets split such. And Lowey lives on the sound shore, so I am not sure that she is in this district. I cannot see which towns are in there but pretty sure she isnt there.
I dismiss the idea that splitting counties makes a district fair. For one, I think that your map could be a little better if you looked at Albany a little differently.
Rensselaer county is where I grew up for starters.
Rensselaer is very much an Albany suburb/exurb/media market. For the purposes of fairness I think your Tonko NY-21 District would be D+10 and act as nothing more than a vote sink for Democrats in the area; mind you it is very neat and easy to sell. I think that if you subtract Saratoga from the district it would be a good idea to add Rensselaer to it, but not all of it.
Saratoga is to most, part of the Capital region but it also serves as a gateway to the Adirondacks and Lake George, it would be a great compliment to your NY-20 with Owens, adding Saratoga would allow your Syracuse NY-23 to have its northern exurbs rather than the leftovers below it that you threw in.
As well as if you do this it will make these districts abit more Democratic and more of fair fights, I think your Owens district would be R+3 and your Gibson district is not as Democratic as you may claim, I’d say it is if anything Even or leaning GOP as the area is not so much partisan but also comprised of exurban Albany and NYC voters that are very swingy.