Month: April 2011

For the first time in ages, there may be a relatively competitive election. I’m going to discuss it here.

Parliament of Singapore

Singapore operates under the Westminister system, with a unicameral legislature comprising of 84 MPs. Additionally, there are provisions for NCMPs (Non-Constituency MPs), who are selected from the best-performing losers, and NMPs (Nominated MPs), who are nominated to represent independent views. The former was introduced to provide greater opposition representation in Parliament, but both are not able to vote on constitutional amendments or matters of confidence. A 2/3rds majority of MPs is required to amend the Constitution, but the PAP has always held this majority since the 60s.

Currently, 82 MPs are from the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party), 1 MP is from the WP (Workers’ Party), and 1 is from the Singapore People’s Party (SPP). Interestingly enough, one minister has argued that this situation is normal in small jurisdictions, citing the dominance of Democrats in cities such as NYC and Chicago.

Electoral System

Singapore operates under the first-past-the-post system. However, constituencies are either GRCs (Group Representation Constituencies) or SMCs (Single Member Constituencies).

The former, comprising 4 to 6 members, were introduced, officially, to promote minority representation in Parliament, but has the effect of raising the barriers to entry for opposition groups. (To digress, the implementation of VRA-style minority districts is not viewed as a viable solution as the PAP’s objective has been to prevent the creation of minority enclaves). The NCMP scheme mentioned above has also been criticized as a means of diluting the voter desire for a stronger opposition voice in Parliament.

Political parties

The dominant political party here is the PAP, which has been ruling Singapore ever since 1959. The most credible opposition parties are usually the WP and the SPP. Additionally, there are various other parties such as the SDP (Singapore Democratic Party) and the NSP (National Solidarity Party). In public discourse, all opposition parties are generally grouped under the “opposition”.

State of Play

SMCs are generally considered to be more lucrative opposition targets, as assembling a well-qualified group to take on the PAP in a GRC is considered more difficult. Both opposition-held seats are SMCs. The GRC where the opposition had its best showing in 2006 (the last election) was won the PAP with 56.1% of the vote against the WP, well illustrating the difficulty of the opposition winning a GRC.

This year, however, a larger and better-qualified group of candidates (Singapore is very conscious of educational qualifications) has joined the opposition, so this election is likely to be more competitive. Further, while the traditional media is generally considered a PAP stronghold, as it were, the advent of “new media” is much more critical of the PAP and is viewed with hope by the opposition.



Issues

The current debate is mainly about economic policy, with income inequality, increasing competition from immigrants, and cost of living issues (especially housing and car prices)being the issues on which the opposition hopes to capitalize. Immigration, as usual, is a particularly emotive issue, especially since the immigrant population in Singapore has increased rapidly in the last decade.

The PAP tends to advocate an open-door immigration policy, and has traditionally been reluctant to provide unemployment benefits and to legislate a minimum wage (both are seen as being harmful to economic growth). In recent times, however, there has been a move towards somewhat greater income redistribution. Seeing as 80% of Singaporeans live in public housing, the cost of public housing is also a major issue. Related to this is the PAP’s use of the “carrot” of upgrading of housing estates as an electoral tool (estates in opposition-held constituencies are denied upgrading priority).

There has been no major discussion on social issues, given that Singapore remains an overwhelmingly conservative society. Abortion, for instance, was only legalized as a means of reducing the birth rate back in the 70s, and homosexual activity remains illegal.

Given that Singapore is a city-state, issues under the remit of local government in the US are also potentially potent electoral issues.

The lack of opposition voices in Parliament is also an issue on which opposition parties hope to make gains.

Election Day

It’s May 7! I can’t think of anything else to say at the moment, discussion is welcome.

This diary attempts to somewhat futilely mash together recent Pennsylvanian federal election data with the d’Hondt method of proportional representation, just for kicks.

Lately Pennsylvanians have been a swingin’ crowd. The House delegation went from a Democratic disadvantage of 7-12 in the 109th to a majority of 11-8 in the 110th, which then hit 12-7 in the 111th before snapping back to 7-12 in the 112th. In the Senate, the same four congresses brought two Republican Senators, a Republican and a Democrat, two Democrats (sort of), and now a Democrat and a Republican again. It’s emotionally exhausting. And now I’m stuck with Tom Marino and Pat Toomey.

After reading about the recent Finnish parliamentary elections, I wondered how their Nordic variety of open party list, highest averages seat allocation would work if applied to a bothersome dummymandered state like Pennsylvania. Thus inspired, I applied the d’Hondt method, which they use in Finland, to the 2008 and 2010 election results. The d’Hondt method metes out seats according to party vote totals across a large jurisdiction — a state, in the US.  There would be no general election districts and no first past the post (FPTP) competitions.

Without districts, Pennsylvania’s parties would nominate a list of 19 candidates. In an open party list system like Finland, the party’s full list is shown on every ballot, and the electorate votes for a specific candidate on the list. That vote counts toward the party as a whole but also the candidate’s ranking on the party list. For this exercise, both parties have conveniently decided to select their list of 19 candidates through regional primaries in jurisdictions that just happen to match up with with the 19 current House districts. Thanks, imaginary parties. An alternative might be statewide primaries with the first-19-past-the post making the list. Of course, the primary campaigns would have been different under such circumstances, but let’s not worry about that just yet.

The 2008 election

In 2008 Democrats won a new seat, with Kathy Dahlkemper taking PA-03. Does the Obama wave wash another seat up on the shore with proportional representation? For now let’s imagine that voters were given a ballot with all of the Democratic and GOP candidates and chose the exact same candidate that they did on actual election day 2008.

Here’s the Democratic party list:

List rank	Primary district	Total votes	Candidate
1	PA-02	276,870	FATTAH, Chaka
2	PA-01	242,799	BRADY, Bob
3	PA-14	242,326	DOYLE, Mike
4	PA-07	209,955	SESTAK, Joe
5	PA-08	197,869	MURPHY, Patrick
6	PA-13	196,868	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
7	PA-17	192,699	HOLDEN, Tim
8	PA-04	186,536	ALTMIRE, Jason
9	PA-06	164,952	ROGGIO, Bob
10	PA-10	160,837	CARNEY, Chris
11	PA-12	155,268	MURTHA, Jack
12	PA-03	146,846	DAHLKEMPER, Kathy
13	PA-11	146,379	KANJORSKI, Paul
14	PA-15	128,333	BENNETT, Sam
15	PA-16	120,193	SLATER, Bruce
16	PA-18	119,661	O’DONNELL, Steve
17	PA-05	112,509	MCCRAKEN, Mark
18	PA-19	109,533	AVILLO, Philip
19	PA-09	98,735	BARR, Tony

Notably, FPTP losing candidate Bob Roggio (who challenged Jim Gerlach) received more votes than FPTP winning candidates Chris Carney, Jack Murtha, Kathy Dahlkemper and Paul Kanjorski. There were quite a few wasted Democrat votes in eastern Pennsylvania. In western Pennsylvania, Murtha won convincingly with 57.9% in his FPTP race but received an underwhelming number of actual votes in his underpopulated district.

Now the Republican party list:

List rank	Primary district	Vote total	Candidate
1	PA-19	218,862	PLATTS, Todd
2	PA-18	213,349	MURPHY, Tim
3	PA-15	181,433	DENT, Charlie
4	PA-06	179,423	GERLACH, Jim
5	PA-09	174,951	SHUSTER, Bill
6	PA-16	170,329	PITTS, Joe
7	PA-05	155,513	THOMPSON, Glenn
8	PA-04	147,411	HART, Melissa
9	PA-08	145,103	MANION, Tom
10	PA-07	142,362	WILLIAMS, Craig
11	PA-03	139,757	ENGLISH, Phil
12	PA-11	137,151	BARLETTA, Lou
13	PA-10	124,681	HACKETT, Chris
14	PA-12	113,120	RUSSELL, William
15	PA-17	109,909	GILHOOLEY, Toni
16	PA-13	108,271	KATS, Marina
17	PA-02	34,466	LANG, Adam
18	PA-01	24,714	MUHAMMAD, Mike
19	PA-14	0	None

In 2008 Republicans didn’t oppose Mike Doyle, which is a bit inconvenient for this exercise, so there are only 18 candidates on their list. The seven Republicans who won their FPTP races in 2008 hold the top seven party list spots. But Melissa Hart, who lost her FPTP contest with 44.1%, is not too far behind Glenn Thompson, who won his with 56.7%. Coincidentally, FPTP opponents Jason Altmire and Melissa Hart both hold the eighth slot on their party lists.

In total, Democratic candidates won 3,209,168 votes, and Republicans received 2,520,805 votes. Third party candidates did not receive enough votes to matter. The seats would be distributed thus:

House seat	Allocation value	Party	Party seat	Candidate elected
1	3,209,168	Dem	1	FATTAH, Chaka
2	2,520,805	GOP	1	PLATTS, Todd
3	1,604,584	Dem	2	BRADY, Bob
4	1,260,403	GOP	2	MURPHY, Tim
5	1,069,723	Dem	3	DOYLE, Mike
6	840,268	GOP	3	DENT, Charlie
7	802,292	Dem	4	SESTAK, Joe
8	641,834	Dem	5	MURPHY, Patrick
9	630,201	GOP	4	GERLACH, Jim
10	534,861	Dem	6	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
11	504,161	GOP	5	SHUSTER, Bill
12	458,452	Dem	7	HOLDEN, Tim
13	420,134	GOP	6	PITTS, Joe
14	401,146	Dem	8	ALTMIRE, Jason
15	360,115	GOP	7	THOMPSON, Glenn
16	356,574	Dem	9	ROGGIO, Bob
17	320,917	Dem	10	CARNEY, Chris
18	315,101	GOP	8	HART, Melissa
19	291,742	Dem	11	MURTHA, Jack
20	280,089	GOP	9	None (MANION, Tom)
21	267,431	Dem	12	None (DAHLKEMPER, Kathy)
22	252,081	GOP	10	None (WILLIAMS, Craig)

Democrats win 11-8 rather than 12-7 under FPTP. The Obama wave fails to bring in new seats, and d’Hondt limits Republican losses. Democrats Kathy Dahlkemper and Paul Kanjorski miss out on the seats they won in FPTP, and Democrat Bob Roggio and Republican Melissa Hart take their spots.

As a result, there are no representatives from PA-03 and PA-11, the northwest and the northeast, while there are two each from PA-04 and PA-06, in the Pittsburgh and  Philadelphia suburbs. The FPTP data favor districts with high turnout and close races over modest winning candidates in low turnout and low population districts.

But

Of course, there are several huge and massive and very large flaws with this exercise.

For one, Republicans certainly would have fielded a full party list of 19 candidates, since every vote helps the party. But the Republican list would have needed an additional 104,882 votes for Tom Manion to pass Jack Murtha. The missing Republican in Doyle’s Pittsburgh district was succeeded by a candidate in 2010 who failed to clear 50,000. Even with the increased 2008 presidential turnout, it seems unlikely that a Republican would have won 100,000 votes in central Pittsburgh. (PA-14 representatives went unchallenged in 2000 and 2004, so there’s no good reference.)

It is also unlikely that parties would use geographic primary districts in the first place, at least not in the same configuration as current congressional districts.

But the more glaring issue is that candidates would campaign differently under a proportional system, and many voters would have selected different candidates on their party list or a more palatable candidate from the other list.

Campaigns would probably be centered on media markets. The candidates in PA-01, PA-02, PA-06, PA-07, PA-08 and PA-13 would campaign in “greater Philadelphia” and compete for many of the same votes, while candidates in PA-10 and PA-11 would campaign in “northeast Pennsylvania.” A cursory scan suggests that the only big media market base splits are for the PA-03 and PA-12 candidates. The discrete media market of the Lehigh Valley would be virtually guaranteed a representative.

Without head to head competitions, voters would be free to find their best ideological fit in what might otherwise be a “lesser of two evils” situation. I’m not sure how this would pan out for the Blue Dogs or “moderate” Republicans. Independent voters in PA-11 who supported Lou Barletta over unpopular incumbent Paul Kanjorski would have had other Democratic options like Chris Carney.  

Also, candidates with demographic advantages or clear ideological differentiation could perform better within party lists by grabbing same-party votes from other parts of the state. Schwartz, Dahlkemper and Hart might benefit from the dearth of women on the ballot. Doyle would likely earn progressive votes from Altmire’s district, while Altmire could win more conservative Democrats from Doyle’s district. Similarly, Republicans turned off by Pitts could have switched their votes to a more palatable option like Platts or Gerlach.

There would also be the question of ordering the party list. In the Democratic party, the urban politicians would probably be ranked first, regardless of whether the metric is seniority, primary vote totals or power broker decision-making. On the Republican side I’m less clear who would benefit. But high ballot position would be an advantage.

So, yes, there are huge problems with applying data collected from one type of election to a completely different system. If this method were actually implemented in the 2008 election, I imagine the primaries would have produced a Democratic party list with an eastern urban/suburban bias and a Republican list with at least a couple strong urban candidates — the wealthy businessmen and lawyers who live in cities but aren’t stupid enough to run in Democratic strongholds under FPTP.

An 11-8 party split sounds reasonable in 2008, but the big city/suburban to small city/rural split could approach something like 14-5.

The 2010 election

In 2010 four Democratic incumbents lost and Republicans flipped a Democratic-held open seat. Proportional representation buffered the 2008 Obama wave — what about the 2010 tea tsunami?

Here is the Democratic party list:

List rank	Primary district	Vote total	Candidate
1	PA-02	182,800	FATTAH, Chaka
2	PA-01	149,944	BRADY, Bob
3	PA-14	122,073	DOYLE, Mike
4	PA-07	118,710	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
5	PA-17	118,486	HOLDEN, Tim
6	PA-08	113,547	MURPHY, Patrick
7	PA-04	110,631	ALTMIRE, Jason
8	PA-07	106,536	LENTZ, Bryan
9	PA-06	100,493	TRIVEDI, Manan
10	PA-12	94,056	CRITZ, Mark
11	PA-10	89,846	CARNEY, Chris
12	PA-11	84,618	KANJORSKI, Paul
13	PA-15	79,766	CALLAHAN, John
14	PA-18	78,558	CONNOLLY, John
15	PA-03	77,562	DAHLKEMPER, Kathy
16	PA-16	70,994	HERR, Lois
17	PA-19	53,549	SANDERS, Ryan
18	PA-05	52,375	PIPE, Michael
19	PA-09	52,322	CONNERS, Tom

The Democratic list doesn’t change too much from 2008 to 2010. But FPTP winner Mark Critz brought in fewer votes than the three Philly area candidates who lost their FPTP races, and Kathy Dahlkemper drops down close to “some dude” territory. It’s clear that the Democratic list is powered by the east, where blue votes are squandered in relatively close FPTP losses and massive FPTP wins.

Now for the Republican list:

Seat rank	Primary district	Votes	Candidate
1	PA-19	165,219	PLATTS, Todd
2	PA-18	161,888	MURPHY, Tim
3	PA-09	141,904	SHUSTER, Bill
4	PA-07	137,825	MEEHAN, Patrick
5	PA-16	134,113	PITTS, Joe
6	PA-06	133,770	GERLACH, Jim
7	PA-08	130,759	FITZPATRICK, Mike
8	PA-05	127,427	THOMPSON, Glenn
9	PA-10	110,599	MARINO, Tom
10	PA-15	109,534	DENT, Charlie
11	PA-11	102,179	BARLETTA, Lou
12	PA-04	99,867	ROTHFUS, Ketih
13	PA-17	95,000	ARGALL, Dave
14	PA-13	91,987	ADCOCK, Dee
15	PA-12	91,170	BURNS, Tim
16	PA-03	85,384	KELLY, Mike
17	PA-14	49,997	HALUSZCZAK, Melissa
18	PA-02	21,907	HELLBERG, Rick
19	PA-01	0	None

In 2010 Republicans again fielded only 18 candidates, with Bob Brady getting a free ride. Charlie Dent drops from 3rd on the party list in 2008 to 10th in 2010. I guess he benefited from Obama surge ticket splitters in the Lehigh Valley? Or just less tea fuel in 2010. Patrick Meehan does very well, besting Philly suburb veterans Jim Gerlach and Mike Fitzpatrick.  Mike Kelly, who won a seat in FPTP, occupies the 16th spot on the list, below four FPTP losers. Somehow he got fewer votes than Allyson Schwartz’s opponent. PA-03 really got wiped out in this election.

In total, Democrats won 1,860,644 votes and Republicans won 1,990,529. The third party vote was again not big enough to matter. The seats are allocated thus:

House seat	Allocation value	Party	Party seat	Candidate elected
1	1,990,529	GOP	1	PLATTS, Todd
2	1,860,644	Dem	1	FATTAH, Chaka
3	995,265	GOP	2	MURPHY, Tim
4	930,322	Dem	2	BRADY, Bob
5	663,509	GOP	3	SHUSTER, Bill
6	620,214	Dem	3	DOYLE, Mike
7	497,632	GOP	4	MEEHAN, Patrick
8	465,161	Dem	4	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
9	398,105	GOP	5	PITTS, Joe
10	372,128	Dem	5	HOLDEN, Tim
11	331,754	GOP	6	GERLACH, Jim
12	310,107	Dem	6	MURPHY, Patrick
13	284,361	GOP	7	FITZPATRICK, Mike
14	265,806	Dem	7	ALTMIRE, Jason
15	248,361	GOP	8	THOMPSON, Glenn
16	232,581	Dem	8	LENTZ, Bryan
17	221,169	GOP	9	MARINO, Tom
18	206,738	Dem	9	TRIVEDI, Manan
19	199,052	GOP	10	DENT, Charlie
20	186,064	Dem	10	None (CRITZ, Mark)
21	180,957	GOP	11	None (BARLETTA, Lou)
22	169,149	Dem	11	None (CARNEY, Chris)

Republicans win the first seat and alternate with Democrats afterwards, for a close split of 9-10 in favor of the GOP. Proportional representation helps keep down Democratic losses; although four FPTP incumbent Democrats still lose, the party overall does two seats better than under FPTP.  Carney, Kanjorski and Dahlkemper still don’t make the cut, but the fourth candidate out is Critz rather than Patrick Murphy. In fact, Patrick Murphy wins the 12th seat just ahead of the Republican who beat him under FPTP. Lentz and Trivedi, also FPTP losers, win seats as well.

The unlucky Republicans are Lou Barletta and Mike Kelly, while Charlie Dent, who got the 6th seat in 2008, just squeaks by with the 19th seat.

Manan Trivedi wins the 18th seat despite having fewer votes than Charlie Dent or Lou Barletta, the two Republicans immediately below him; the padding provided by competitive lower candidates like Critz, Carney, Kanjorski, Callahan et al was enough to compensate for his  modest vote count. Although Brady lacked an opponent in this election, the Republicans were very far from winning their 11th seat at the expense of the Democrat’s 9th seat.

Following the election of this group of candidates, there are no representatives from PA-03, PA-11, and PA-12 while there are two representatives each from PA-06, PA-07 and PA-08. The west and the northeast seats migrate to the Philly suburbs, basically. It’s worth noting that the threshold for Seat 19 is only 199,053. Several strong Libertarian (or other third party) candidates could plausibly round up enough votes (~10,000 per primary district) to seat one of their own in congress.

—

Given the flawed data, this system appears to effectively moderate swings and realign geographic representation in Pennsylvania, which is probably what would happen in similar states like Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. Bye bye, Joe Walsh? But then Massachusetts, for example, would have Republican representation, and Democrats could probably win additional seats in South Carolina and Louisiana. Third parties would also have a decent shot at a seat in big states like California and Texas. One unattractive feature for mappers: decennial reapportionment would be as simple as cutting one slot off the list in Pennsylvania. But otherwise it seems like it could be fun.

It’s based on a novel by a man named Nir:

Happy birthday, DavidNYC!

UPDATE (David): Thanks for all the birthday wishes! Also, please wish a happy birthday to several other 4/22 SSPers: RTHK, swamisurfer14, and TheGradyDem!

House:

• CA-26: More eliminationist rhetoric from the right (not that they’ll ever cease): Anthony Portantino, the Democratic Assemblyman running against Rep. David Dreier, is featured on some second amendment-related Old West-style “WANTED” poster.

• LA-02: Daily Kingfish says that Public Service Commissioner Lambert Boissiere III (son of a former state senator of the same name) is rumored to be interested in a primary challenge to Rep. Cedric Richmond in the newly-redrawn 2nd CD. The post points out that Bossiere’s PSC district has a lot of overlap with the new borders of the 2nd, including a dog-leg up to the Baton Rouge area. (Bossiere, like Richmond, is also African-American.)

• NH-02: It’s nothing like the town hall craziness of 2009, but it’s nice to see idiots like Charlie Bass take heat in public forums for voting for Paul Ryan’s Medicare-killing budget. Pretty pathetic political instincts on the Bassmaster’s part. This vote will haunt him – and it’s already haunting several other colleagues, like Bob Dold!, Lou Barletta, and Paul Ryan himself.

• NM-01: Oh no. I really had hoped we were done with Marty Chavez, but the maddening former Albuquerque mayor is apparently considering a run to replace Martin Heinrich, and is even supposedly meeting with the DCCC. The good news, though, is that ex-LG (and 2010 gubernatorial nominee) Diane Denish is also thinking about entering the race. This could be a very crowded primary.

• NV-02: You know Jon Ralston is enjoying this one. After a report came out in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (which Ralston not-so-affectionately refers to as a “newspaper,” in scare quotes every time) that state GOP chair Mark Amodei was planning to seek the 2nd CD seat being vacated by Dean Heller, Ralston spoke with Amodei who says he didn’t announce anything. In the LVRJ piece (which oddly quotes Amodei himself, so I don’t know how they got the story wrong), Amodei also said that Republican state Sen. Greg Brower told him he also planned to join the race (and Ralston confirms via Twitter.)

Of course, who knows what’s going to happen with this seat, given the unsettled legal questions about how a special election should be conducted if Gov. Brian Sandoval taps Heller for John Ensign’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.

• TN-06: I wonder what’s up with Diane Black. The GOP frosh gave her own campaign two-thirds of a million bucks in Q1 – not a loan, an outright donation. I’m guessing that she’s trying to ward off a potential primary challenge, given that she won the open-seat Republican primary last year with just 31% of the vote (her two nearest competitors both got 30%, so there must have been much gnashing of teeth).

Other Races:

• NJ-St. Sen.: An administrative law judge ruled that Olympian Carl Lewis, who is running as a Democrat, does indeed meet state residency requirements. However, it sounds like Republicans plan to appeal this ruling.

• WI Recall: All sorts of recall news. First up, Dem state Rep. Fred Clark says he’ll challenge Luther Olsen in the expected recall election, another strong get for Team Blue. Democrats also filed a huge 30,000 signatures against their fifth recall target, Alberta Darling. That leaves just three eligible Republicans left: Rob Cowles, Glenn Grothman, and Mary Lazich, the latter two of whom are in very red districts (so I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get hit with a recall).

Republicans also finally filed signatures against three Democrats: Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin, and Robert Wirch. Democrats, though, charged that the GOP’s petition-gathering efforts were sloppy and flawed, and vowed to challenge the signatures.

Redistricting Roundup:

• California: California’s new independent redistricting commission is set to release a draft set of maps by June 10th, with final maps due on August 15th (after a period of public comment).

• Colorado: Things don’t seem to be going so swimmingly in Colorado’s attempt to go back to the redistricting drawing board, with a special committee begging for more time to finish a new set of maps. The Republican co-chair says he thinks they can produce new plans in 10 days, but as Al Swearengen says, announcing your plans is a good way to hear god laugh.

Meanwhile, Gov. John Hickenlooper sounds like he has no intention of vetoing any map that the legislature sends him. Since Dems control one body and Republicans the other, this means they’ll have to produce a compromise map – or no map at all, and kick it to the courts. I think Hick’s hands-off approach (which is totally in-character for him) increases the likelihood of the latter, because it eliminates a key piece of Dem leverage which could be used to force an agreement.

• Missouri: Utterly embarrassing: Barely more than a day after finally agreeing to a conference committee to resolve differences between Republicans in the state House and Senate, work has ground to a halt, and nothing more will happen until Tuesday. One state Rep. offered this hilariously nonsensical assessment: “I think we’re close, but obviously we’re far.” Meanwhile, the House passed a new map this morning that supposedly tries to address some Senate concerns, but given that there is no actual agreement, I’m guessing this is just a negotiating tactic.

• New Jersey: Teabaggers are suing to block implementation of NJ’s new legislative map. It’s not quite clear what the grounds are, but WNYC summarizes: “The suit alleges that the commission over-packed the southern half of the state and ‘illegally split Newark and Jersey City from three districts each to two.'”

• Louisiana: The state House submitted its own map to the DoJ for pre-clearance, which I believe makes it the first such plan to go before Justice this cycle. The hotly-contested congressional map, though, has yet to be sent in.

• Victims: Dave Wasserman and Julia Edwards try their hand at the most likely redistricting victims this cycle, with separate lists for the 10 most endangered Democrats and Republicans.

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: I keep saying that there’s no way Jeff Flake waltzes to the GOP nomination, but the Republican party has yet to prove me right. Fortunately, my deliverance may come in the form of rich guy Wil Cardon, who is supposedly giving the race a “very strong look” – and can self-fund.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov, etc.: Like another failed Republican gubernatorial candidate before her, it looks like we won’t have Meg Whitman to kick around anymore. Actually, that’s kind of confusing, because of course we did get to kick Dick Nixon around quite a bit more… but not until he kicked all of us around first. Anyhow, uh, where was I? Oh yeah, the former eBay chief says she “doubts” whether she’ll run for office again. Let’s hope she means it.

• MA-Sen: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, and Deval Patrick still won’t run for Senate.

• MT-Sen: For once, I’m hoping a Republican schedules more fundraisers – at least, fundraisers like this. Denny Rehberg just did an event in Denver that was co-hosted by BP’s “director of government and public affairs” (i.e., their chief in-house lobbyist)… on the one-year anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Good optics!

• ND-Sen: This should scare absolutely no one off, from either party: Republican Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk, the only declared candidate to succeed retiring Sen. Kent Conrad, raised all of $32K in Q1. John Hoeven he ain’t. While we’re on the subject of North Dakota, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, who retired last year, just donated the bulk of his remaining campaign funds – $1 million – to a new charity he founded, the Center for Native American Youth. A worthy cause, I’m sure, but I’ll bet Joe Sestak would have really appreciated that extra mil.

• OH-Sen: It’s weird how the GOP went from utterly dominating last year’s Senate election in Ohio to digging out their barrel-bottom scrapers from the back of the utility shed. Ken Blackwell says he’s talking to the NRSC about a possible run… though I guess it’s not really clear if the NRSC is talking back. A lulzy quote: “You don’t just come out and build the sort of support base that I have overnight.” True – you probably need to spend two years running a crappy campaign to do as terribly as he did in the governor’s race back in 2006.

• TN-Sen: This is a little odd: Sen. Bob Corker said he “came close” to not seeking re-election this cycle. Too bad we don’t have a candidate who could make hay out of Corker’s lack of fire in the belly (a phrase he actually uses with respect to some fantasy presidential run, but seems applicable to his day job, too).

• VA-Sen: It’s starting to feel like the wingnut candidates are doing everything they can to make life easier for George Allen by piling into the clown car that is the GOP primary field. The latest is rich dude Tim Donner, whom we mentioned last month. Almost all of these weirdos claim to be teabaggers in good standing, so this almost assuredly means we’ll see some People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front nonsense, rather than a united effort to stop Allen. Lame.

Gubernatorial:

• KY-Gov: Republican frontrunner David Williams raised just $450K in Q1 and has $670K on hand. (This compares to Gov. Steve Beshear, whose numbers we mentioned previously: $1.3m/$3.3m.)

• NC-Gov: PPP’s monthly home-state poll shows Gov. Bev Perdue inching up against Republican Pat McCrory, trailing 49-38 instead of 50-36. That’s very similar to a new SurveyUSA poll which has McCrory up 51-39.

• SC-Gov: The issues are a little too complex for me to try to summarize here in a digest bullet, but the link will take you to an interesting story exposing some pretty naïve political incompetence on the part of supposed GOP wunderkind Gov. Nikki Haley. One thing I’d like to remind folks of is that despite the Republican bloodbath of 2010, Haley didn’t perform all that impressively. In fact, she had the second-narrowest win out of all 20 victorious GOP gubernatorial candidates, just 4.3%. Only Rick Scott won more narrowly, and he’s Rick Scott. Dem Vincent Sheheen got almost no national attention but should have, given his strong performance in a tough state in an impossible year. If Haley continues to stumble, I think she could prove surprisingly vulnerable in 2014.

Via the National Journal:

Two-term Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada will resign on Friday, Republican sources tell National Journal, ending a once-promising career that had the former veterinarian and casino manager eyeing a possible presidential bid before an ugly sex scandal and subsequent ethics probe snuffed out his ambition and, eventually, his Senate tenure.

Ensign’s resignation will clear the way for GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval to appoint GOP Rep. Dean Heller, already an announced candidate for Ensign’s seat, to the Senate vacancy.

Ensign, 53, began notifying Nevada friends of his intentions late Thursday. The senator has kept his distance from official GOP circles in Washington for months, but word quickly spread to GOP figures inside the Beltway who tell NJ they are certain Ensign will resign.

“We have no reason to doubt that it’s true and believe it’s happening,” a senior GOP official told NJ.

I’m pretty surprised to see this happen – Ensign had many chances to resign over the years, and sooner would have been better for him than later. But with his announcement six weeks ago that he wouldn’t seek re-election, there just didn’t seem to be a reason for him to quit early anymore. So either he’s doing one last solid for the GOP (as the National Journal notes, this will give Heller an easy and instant move into the Senate), or he’s worried that the still-pending ethics investigation against him will somehow make him look worse than he already does, or both.

I’m not sure whether a year-and-a-half of incumbency will make a huge difference in next year’s race (Heller would have to stand for re-election in November 2012), but I’m guessing Shelley Berkeley, the almost-certain Democratic nominee, would rather face Rep. Heller rather than Sen. Heller. I’ll be very curious to see how she reacts if this comes to pass, and what her strategy looks like.

One final observation: Assuming Sandoval does the obvious thing here, this would also create a vacancy in Heller’s 2nd CD seat. That would prompt a special election, presumably under existing district lines, which could be a very entertaining affair. Candidates have already been lining up for the GOP primary to replace Heller, so I’d guess they’d all likely run in a special election, too – and that includes Sharron Angle. If Dems put up a strong candidate, we could potentially steal this seat. It’s going to be interesting.

UPDATE: Ensign in fact decided to announce today, via press release. He says his resignation will be effective May 3.

One expected, one not as expected:

New Mexico State Auditor Hector Balderas, the youngest Hispanic statewide official ever elected in the country, filed statements of candidacy and organization with the FEC on Wednesday.

Former Florida State House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, previously in the exploratory phase of his deliberations, sent in statements of candidacy and organization on Monday, according to the office of the Secretary of the Senate. …

Sources familiar with both campaigns signaled that formal announcements were likely to come next week, after the Easter holiday.

I can’t work up much energing over Hasner’s pending entrance into the GOP field in Florida, but Balderas moving forward is definitely interesting. As you may recall, he sounded very bullish on a run when Jeff Bingaman first announced his retirement two months ago, but then waited to pull the trigger. In the meantime, Rep. Martin Heinrich became the first Democrat to actually launch a campaign, and in so doing established himself as the likely frontrunner. It looked like Heinrich might have boxed Balderas out, and indeed, Democratic power-brokers were supposedly suggesting that Balderas could instead run for Heinrich’s now-open House seat.

But it looks like it’s full steam ahead for Balderas, setting up what ought to be a serious battle with Heinrich. It’s hard to know exactly where the fault-lines will fall in this race, though ethnicity may play a role here (Balderas is Hispanic, Heinrich is white) – but I’d caution against coming to any facile conclusions about how things might shake out on account of this. In any event, I think Heinrich is probably favored, but I don’t think anything is set in stone.

Arkansas rounds out the first batch (along with Iowa and Louisiana) of states finishing their redistricting tasks, so we’ve crunched the data to see how the last few elections went in the newly-designed districts. (If you’re unfamiliar with the new map, which wound up without the infamous “Fayetteville Finger,” you can take a gander here.)

Unlike last decade’s map (which placed in Arkansas in the company of only Iowa and West Virginia in keeping every county intact), the new Arkansas map splits several counties down the middle, making this a more difficult task than Iowa (and more difficult than Louisiana, which seems to have more useful data). Jeffmd’s data crunching involved not only some estimation of how to allocate absentee ballots, but also some approximation of Sebastian County (i.e Fort Smith, now split between the 3rd and 4th) votes, which aren’t listed by precinct but rather by polling location, meaning rather tediously mapping the county and pinpointing polling places. (You can check out the full spreadsheet here.)

Despite controlling the redistricting trifecta here (the Gov. plus both legislative chambers), it doesn’t seem like Arkansas Dems did much to advance their cause here, leaving the numbers pretty much as is, despite shifting around a lot of counties (especially in the dark-red northwest, where there’s now an unsightly bulge of the 4th into the former 3rd). The old districts were 38 Obama/59 McCain in AR-01, 44/54 in AR-02, 34/64 in AR-03, and 39/58 in AR-04… hardly any change at all, although the 1st improved very slightly at the expense of the 4th. If there was any consideration given to either improving Dem chances at picking up the 2nd or strengthening the 4th in the event of a Mike Ross retirement, it didn’t pan out.

I like to think of interesting topics for diaries and this is one that came to me. If Puerto Rico was a state it would have six seats. I looked at the census data, did a spreadsheet and filled in my map based on my calculations. I took a few guesses on splitting municipalities, so the deviations aren’t exact at all. It would be nice if this was made available on the Redistricting App if possible (obvious hint to Dave), so everyone could work with this just for hypotheticals.

Now, since Puerto Rico has no presidential vote, it’s hard to say how any of these districts would vote or how they’d lean. Since Puerto Rico has it’s own parties, I assume elections would be decided on issues relating to those parties and it doesn’t seem to heavily lean toward either of the main ones there. Many in the PPD align with Democrats, while the PNP has a mix of those who align with the US parties, with those leaning toward Republicans having the edge.

PR-1:

Mayaguez anchors this district. Looking at previous election results, the PPD  seems to do very well in and around Mayaguez, so it would probably lean PPD/Dem.

PR-2:

Ponce is the population center and leans PPD, but it also includes many of lower population density areas, which seem to lean PNP. I would guess it would be a toss-up.

PR-3:

Toa Alta and Toa Baja make up the biggest share of population here, both of which have PNP mayors and seem to vote PNP in most gubernatorial elections, which indicates a PNP lean for this district.

PR-4:

Bayamon is largest municipality and has a pronounced PNP lean, but PPD leaning Cauguas makes a up a good share of the district as well, which adds balance. It might be a toss-up or slight PNP lean.

PR-5:

The capital of San Juan anchors the district smallest in size. San Juan swings between both parties, with a slight edge to PPD. PPD leaning Carolina is also a portion of this district, which should equal a PPD edge overall for this district.

PR-6:

Has a portion of PPD leaning Carolina, but all the rest, save for Humacao, leans PNP. It doesn’t appear that there is a huge edge toward either side, so I’d all it a toss-up.

Overall, none of this analysis counts for much, as we have no idea how Puerto Rico would swing on a federal level. The island is socially conservative, but economically liberal in many aspects and that could be what determined a lot of voting patterns.