Politics in New York can be divided into four regions: Long Island (Nassau County and Suffolk County), New York City, the New York City suburbs (Westchester County, Rockland County, Orange County, and Putnam County), and the rest of the state. It’s not that the rest of the state is a coherent region. It’s just that New York City is a barrier between Long island and the rest of the state. And the southeastern corner of the state is a funnel leading down to New York City. Once you get north of Orange County and Putnam County, the state quickly widens.
And this geographic reality is reflected in the current maps. The First District is entirely within Suffolk County at the eastern end of Long Island. The Second District is contained within Nassau County and Suffolk County. The Fourth District is entirely within Nassau County. The Third District spans from Suffolk County to Queens County. The Fifth District contains parts of Nassau County and Queen County. The Sixth District, the Seventh District, the Eighth District, the Ninth District, the Tenth District, the Eleventh District, the Twelfth District, the Thirteenth District, the Fourteenth District, and the Fifteenth District are entirely contained within New York City. The Sixteenth District is partially in New York City and partly in Westchester County. The Seventeenth District contains part of Westchester County and all of Rockland County. The Eighteen District contains the rest of Westchester County, Orange County, Putnam County, and part of Duchess County. The remaining nine districts gradually spread out as you head north and west from the New York City suburbs. Simply put, there are a lot of very narrow districts in the New York City area leaving little room for the districts north of New York City to reach into New York City to gain Democrats and for the New York City districts to reach north and gain Republicans. This geography is not good for Democrats as New York City is very, very blue. In essence, the Democrats have self-packed themselves into the New York City districts, and the Republicans only have to do a little bit of cracking in the rest of the state.
Under the current maps, the best districts for Republicans are around 60-40. Meanwhile, the Democrats hold eight seats in which they are expected to get over 80% of the vote. That is a lot of wasted votes. In short, political geography has created a “natural” pro-Republican gerrymander, and the struggle for Democrats is how to undo this gerrymander.
As would be expected from a state that lost a seat and will have to consolidate somewhere, most of the current districts in the state are short on population. The new district will need around 753,000 people. But while most districts will need to grow, there are two districts that will need to shrink. The Fifth District (southeastern Queens and southwestern Nassau County) and the Eighth District (Southeastern part of Brooklyn and a tiny part of western Queens) are both around 18,000 over the target population. Based on current population estimates, the biggest shortfall is the Twenty-third District in southwestern New York (currently held by Republicans), but, even there, the shortfall is under 60,000 (around 8% of the district). In other words, there is no clear, here is the district that needs to be chopped up. Instead, we are mostly looking at gradual shifts of lines from the north and west toward New York City and from Long Island up into Manhattan and the Bronx.
And, in drawing the lines, there will be issues dealing with the Voting Rights Act. The Fifth District and the Eighth District have African-American majorities. The Thirteenth District and Fifteenth District have Hispanic majorities. The Sixth District has an Asian-American plurality. The Seventh District and Fourteenth have Hispanic pluralities. The Ninth District and Sixteenth District have African-American pluralities.
One more factor complicating any effort to project what the new lines might look like is how many of the members of Congress are from New York City. In most states, it is easy to draw lines that keep the incumbents base in their districts. In New York, however, we have two representatives from Queens, three from Brooklyn, three from Manhattan, and two from the Bronx. In a state like Virginia or New Jersey, no city is large enough to have a single representative so you merely need to keep the representatives hometown in the district. In New York City, you need to know the neighborhood and precinct of the incumbent. So any approximate lines drawn by an outsider will be off.
New York law has changed since the 2011 redistricting cycle. Under the new law, there is a bipartisan commission that will put forward a draft plan for legislative approval. In the first two rounds, the legislature’s role is limited to approving or rejecting the draft. But, upon submission of the commission’s third draft, the legislature can amend the draft maps. Thus, while there may be some public pressure to approve the commission’s draft(s), the legislature has the ultimate power to draw the maps that the legislature wants. Democrats have a majority in the legislature, but, historically, have had trouble staying unified.
With those caveats, let’s look at the Democratic goals in this process: 1) change Republican-leaning swing districts to Democratic swing districts (the First District, Second District, Eleventh District, Nineteenth District, and Twenty-First District all have average Republican vote totals under 54%); 2) short up Democratic leaning swing districts (Third District and Eighteenth District have average Democratic vote totals under 54%); and 3) eliminate a safe Republican district. Of course, drawing favorable lines is no guarantee of a win. Right now a Democrat represents the Nineteenth District and a Republican represents the Twenty-fourth District which should be a Democratic district. Candidates still matter.
While the Democrats would like to achieve all three goals, geography poses a big burden. The goals related to Long Island and New York City are easy to achieve. Democrats have a lot of strong precincts in western Long Island and New York City. So all that has to be done is shift some precincts from a strong Democratic district to a weaker district. But, once you get north of the Westchester County and Rockland County, there are only so many Democrats to around between the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-first, and Twenty-second, and Twenty-fourth districts.
By careful movement of Republican precincts from the First District to the Second District and the Third District and Democratic precincts from the Second District and the Third District to the First District, I managed to draw lines that moved the First District from a 53.4-46.6 Republican lead to a 50.2 to 49.8 Democratic lead. Meanwhile, the Second District and the Third District would gain heavily Democratic precincts from the districts to their west. The Second District flipped from a 51.3-48.7 Republican advantage to a 50.3-49.7 Democratic lead. The Democrat expected vote in the Third District grew from 52.3% to 54.2%. There were slight changes in the Democratic percentages in the solid Democratic districts in Queens and Brooklyn. The Eleventh District (Staten Island and part of Brooklyn) by careful line drawing to move some Republican precincts to the Ninth District and grabbing Democratic precincts from the Seventh District and Tenth District, I was able to flip the Eleventh District from a 51.7%-48.3% Republican advantage to a 50.4-49.6 Democratic advantage. It took careful line drawing between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth District to keep the Seventeenth District at 54% (a big decline from the current 59.1%) expected Democratic vote.
But at that point, things become very, very difficult. With careful line drawing, I was able to move the Eighteenth District slightly toward the Democrats but only by about 1%. And by making the Twentieth several percentage points closer by giving Democratic precincts to the Nineteenth(but still on paper a safe Democratic district) and stretching the Nineteenth District to the Canadian border, I managed to move the Nineteenth from a 50.2-49.8 Republican lead to a 51.3-48.7 Democratic advantage. And the description of what it takes to get the Nineteenth is a hint for what happened with the Twenty-first. The Democratic parts of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second go to the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth and the Republican parts of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second become a new Twenty-first District which is slightly more Republican than the current Twenty-first District, but slightly less Republican than the current Twenty-second District. And, as a bonus, Representative Stefanik finds her home area split between the Nineteenth District and the Twentieth District. (It is pretty hard to draw a map in which Representative Stefanik gets a district that mostly resembles her current district. Regardless of how you slice and number things, The numbers in Western New York will have to shift down by one, and the question will be whether the old Twenty-first will represent around 400,000 of the new Twentieth or if those 400,000 will get split between the old Twentieth and old Nineteenth which will remain the majority of the new districts. With Democrats in charge, it is hard to see them allowing the split up district to occur in anything south of the Twentieth District, and Ms. Stefanik lives too close to the current line between the Twentieth District and Twenty-first District.)
Taking some Democrats out of the Twenty-second and Twenty-third and moving them to the Twenty-fourth — primarily by stretching the Twenty-fourth south to Ithaca (while taking Republicans out of the Twenty-fourth) makes the Twenty-fourth District even more Democratic by around 3%. While the Democrats will need the right candidate, the legislature can make John Katko’s life very difficult. The Twenty-fifth District and Twenty-sixth District stay mostly intact with the new Twenty-Third District being most of the western parts of the current Twenty-third District and Twenty-seventh District with the eastern parts forming the new Twenty-Second District.
The bottom line is that it is possible to draw a 23-3 map in New York to replace the current 19-8 delegation. Democrats will still need to find good candidates in these districts. And the need to shift people around to meet the requirements will cause some shifts in the districts that have significant minority populations. My read is that there will be more influence districts, but fewer districts in which a single minority group has a majority.
Obviously, the question will be how far the Democrats in New York are willing to push things to get favorable lines. I would not be shocked if they were a little less aggressive, but the current lines are very close to the 23-3. Getting to that 23-3 merely requires moving swing districts 3-4% in favor of the Democrats and the population shifts do a good part of that change even without much of a thumb on the scale.
If Democrats are aggressive in New York, it might offset some of the gerrymandering that we are likely to see in other states. If they are not, then we could see the median seat depart even further from the median voter. And that could make it very hard to keep the House in 2022.
