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Pennsylvania Redistricting

By: freemanja1991 (Diary)  |  December 8th, 2010 at 09:42 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Now that Republicans control Both cambers of the State Legislature and the Governor’s mansion we can really makes gain during the redistricting process. Pennsylvania is expected to loose one seat. We can knock off a few more libs because of this.

PA-12, Mark Critz. I say eliminate this district and put it into neighboring districts. This would make it so that almost all districts in the western part of the state would be significantly altered. But it would benefit us in many ways.

PA-4, Jason Altmire. Jason lives at the tip of this district, if the tip he lives in is cut into PA-14 (The liberal Pittsburgh area) and then move some of the neighboring district’s lines around Jason will either move or mount a primary challenge and lose either way. He Barely  scraped by in 2010 anyway. Plus Jason needs to be gotten rid of, if the Dems move to the center he is a future leader.

PA-17, Tim Holden. He is in a very Republican leaning district R+6. So we may just need to get a solid well funded candidate, how can win since the 10 candidate didn’t have the money he needed to win.

PA-13, Allyson Schwartz. This is a long shot district Cook rates it at D+7. Allyson did only win by 10 points in 10 so it could be cut and made into a possible gain. but since most districts around it are slightly democrat leaning but held by a Republican it is highly unlike to yield good results.

COMMENTS

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  • freemanja1991

    Is it based on current population estimates or not? Or only certain states are. I’m from Iowa and it is not coming out right for me if it is uses estimates. Due to Polk county growth, it has to be 2000 numbers.

    • freemanja1991

      so can someone explain this one to me please.

      • IJB

        At least as far as the partisan breakdown numbers.

        You may be right that the overall population numbers may be 2000 Census numbers for most (all?) states, because the 2010 numbers aren’t out yet.

        So, yeah – Dave’s app is a bit of a stretch in some places. Still, it’s better than nothing, and allows people to at least start thinking about how to draw the 2012 districts…

  • IJB

    It can be found here.

    What would have made this dairy even better is if you could have used the Redistricting App to come up with a map that matches your proposals. (And PA is one of the states that the App has ‘partisan’ (2008 Pres. voting) data for, so it’s even easier to design districts in PA to achieve certain partisan results.

    Give it a whirl. If you can come up with something of a good district map for PA, come back here and show us your proposed map in a follow-up diary. :)

  • JadedByPolitics

    Obama may think he can deal with Republicans in the House and Senate and they may attempt to deal with him; but the ability to redraw lines ALL ACROSS AMERICA just makes my heart pound with pride! It is knocking off Ds from sea to shining sea that defines the election of 2010 and 2012 is giving large majorities of CONSERVATIVES to the House and Senate and Presidency so that in 2 years WE can deconstruct everything the left has done for the l last 50!

  • wonkish1

    The smart thing to do is to take the most conservative Dem district and wipe it out. This would most likely be Altmire’s district which is to bad for him because while he is a democrat he is one a few Dems that I at least respect. You want to dice the district by carving out the GOP areas and strengthening other GOP held districts and then packing the a couple of dem districts with the dems from the district.

  • freemanja1991

    where is this app? and how?

  • freemanja1991

    they are both = according to cook

  • IJB

    …at the link I provided above.

    Simply click on the link that says “Launch Daves Redistricting App 2.0″. It’s a web-based app, and runs within your web-browser. The one thing you may need to download to get the app to function is Microsoft’s Silverlight 4.0, which is also linked to from the page I linked to above.

  • froster

    but here is the run-through on PA redistricting:

    You have to understand that Barack Obama won this state by 10 points in 2008. You don’t create a 15-3 gerrymander R, as you are proposing in a D+10 state. It doesn’t happen.

    In 2002, Harrisburg’s new redistricting plan was essentially a dummymander for Republicans. Just a couple months ago, Republicans were limited in their control to PA-5, PA-6, PA-9, PA-15, PA-16, and PA-18 and PA-19. They really shouldn’t hold 6 and 15 (which are strong Obama districts). So that’s 5 districts out of 19 that are strongly Republican. After the election, they hold PA-3, PA-5, PA-6, PA-7, PA-8, PA-9, PA-10, PA-11, PA-15, PA-16, PA-18, and PA-19. That’s 12 out of 19 seats.

    Rather than try to endanger more Democrats, if the Republican state legislature was smart, they would protect the current Democratic districts with Republicans in them. (7).

    PA-01 – Bob Brady’s district. This will remain the same, maybe become majority black. It will take in more of Delaware County though.

    PA-02 – Chaka Fattah’s district – This will stay the same.

    PA-03 – Mike Kelly’s district has two options. It can lose the town of Erie (where the Obama votes come from) and go south toward Pittsburgh, taking the rural and former coal mining areas of Clarion, Forest, and Venango Counties. Or it can keep Erie, lose Warren county, and take in some of rural Appalachia. Expect this to be either a 46-47% Obama district (with Erie) or a 42-44% Obama district (without Erie)

    PA-04 – Jason Altmire…the pain of Republicans. How low do you have to bring his Obama number so he can get defeated? He didn’t lose in 2010, so he’s probably not losing anytime soon. Republicans can do two things here. They can move his district from the north Pittsburgh suburbs to Westmoreland County, and keep his district at 44% Obama. (And he might still win) But in reality, Western PA is not that strong enough to only support 1 Obama district, so I expect they have a district that goes from Erie, through New Castle through Hermitage, through Beaver Falls, to get a 52 or 53% Obama district.

    PA-05 – GT Thompson – GT Thompson’s district will either take in Erie and lose State College, or just expand West and southward. I suppose they may have it lose State College, but I wouldn’t see why, as Thompson can handle this currently 44% Obama district.

    That’s some of Pennsylvania – I have to go; if you want, I’ll post more later, with a map.

  • IJB

    What that means is that Obama only did 2% better in PA than he did nationally. That may indeed translate into a 10% margin, if his margin was 8% nationally.

    Anyway, while PA is a Dem-leaning state, it’s only *barely* Dem-leaning. It’s not a “D+10″ state, that’s for sure!

    Also, on Altmire – he was running against a low-tier opponent this time. Just because he “sailed” in 2010 doesn’t mean that he would have “sailed” in 2012 in the same district, esp. if he got a higher-tier opponent. So unless they really redistrict in such a way as to heavily *help* Altmire, I imagine he’ll face both a tougher opponent, and potentially a tougher district, next time around.

  • freemanja1991

    PA is going to start moving to the right. I’d bet $ on it. I don’t know how far to the right. But i would take the risk and have more slightly leaning Republican districts then Solid republican districts. And yes get ride of the PA-4 part that are in the suburbs, into the the Pittsburgh district. And thus giving us PA-4. PA-12 is so jacked if it was gotten ride of it could make the western part of the state easier to cut in a more favorable way.

  • froster

    Remove them and Altmire’s district goes from Obama 44 to Obama 45.

    And yes, western Pennsylvania is getting more Republican. I can’t say the same about eastern Pennsylvania, though Toomey and Corbett’s landslide wins were nice.

  • froster

    No Democrat should have won this year in a district that Obama got 44% in.

    Anyway, I think that just to be on the safe side, they will go for three Democratic seats in Philadelphia, one in the Lehigh Valley and Scranton (Holden), and two in the west. Narrowing it down to one in the west can be done, but it would keep Mike Kelly endangered (is he good?) or make Glenn Thompson in a less than safer district. And really, that’s the best Republicans can do: 13R-5D.