Unequal Representation

thanks for this (4.00 / 2)

Given that any form of proportional representation is not going to happen in the next few months (or in our life-times)and given that reapportionment is going to be controlled by incumbent politicians, chances are that Democrats will lose representation disproportionately even within NY.  But, if Texas gets to pick up 4 new Republican seats, it seems only fair that the two seats NY loses should be currently held by Republicans?  

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by: jmcbride @ Tue Dec 21, 2010 at 20:17:58 PM UTC

I understand that most of Texas' (4.00 / 3)

gain in population is in Hispanic population. Given their mid-decade gerrymander this last time around you never know what is going to happen in Texas but I am lead to believe that the 4 seats will likely be split between likely Republican and Democratic districts because of the preponderance of Hispanic voters. That doesn't solve the Electoral College problem but it does mitigate the US House problem.

In New York the loss of population has been almost totally upstate and more specifically western New York. While I am sue there will be pressure to try and gerrymander districts in order to split the 2 lost seats between upstate and downstate I don't think it can actually be done. I strongly suspect both seats will be lost upstate. It will be very difficult to cut out one of the upstate Democrats.

Bill Owens in NY-23 is easily the one most at risk. I can see a scenario in which the Republicans do their best to put Buerkle in NY-25 and Owens in NY-23 at most risk though the shape of the state and the demographics of their voting populations protects Owens to a certain degree. He remains much more vulnerable then Slaughter, Higgins or Tonko. But I can see them sacrificing Buerkle in order to save and strengthen Hanna, Lee and Reed in NY24, NY26 and NY29 respectively. The question is whether their holding the Senate by such a slim margin will be enough juice for them to insist on Owens being eliminated or whether they have to acknowledge that the 2 loses will have to be Republicans in order to save their other seats. Both King in NY-3 and Grimm in NY-13 could easily see their districts redistricted into Democratic strongholds. Similarly, one of the most logical of all scenarios would be to see NY-19 and NY-20 greatly combined thereby eliminating either Gibson or Hayworth. I suspect the Senate Republicans first priority will be to save their own Senate majority and then save as many Republican House incumbents as possible.

Buerkle is probably the lowest on their totem poll. Who is next after that amongst their other first termers I don't know but I can easily see that insisting on Owengs being eliminated would cost them either King or Grimm and I doubt they'd want to do that because they would never get those seats back.  

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by: Andrew C. White @ Tue Dec 21, 2010 at 21:13:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Owens' district isn't going away. (0.00 / 0)

My prediction is that Herkimer Co. will be the western edge of whatever district represents the eastern suburbs of Albany.  A bigger chunk of Oneida Co., including the City of Utica, will get sucked up into that vast district comprising the North Country, which will pit Owens against Hanna.  Likewise, the remainder of Oneida Co., including the City of Rome, will get sucked up into whatever district represents Syracuse.  All the districts get bigger, and the numbers go down by one to two, depending on how far west you are.

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by: Steaming Pile @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 23:55:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I agree that NY-23 isn't going away (0.00 / 0)

the question at hand is how the Republicans will try to readjust it so that it becomes more strongly Republican so they can take it back. They would either have to move more of Herkimer and Oneida, republican strongholds, into it or perhaps Montgomery and parts of Saratoga. In either case they risk making NY-20 even more Democratic in exchange and I doubt they will be willing to do that.

But if the Republicans want to try and eliminate a Democratic district upstate then it is going to have to be either NY-23 or NY-22. II think they'll be hard pressed to do either.

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by: Andrew C. White @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 17:39:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Herkimer Co. is in the 24th. (0.00 / 0)

Probably to counter more heavily Democratic Utica.  Anyway, because the 23rd is so vast, you can't just carve it up as easily as you could the 24th, which lost a lot of population.  I say the 23rd will survive as the new 21st District (depressing, I know), and the 24th will get partitioned off between Syracuse, the Southern Tier, and the North Country.  Yep, I wouldn't be surprised if Oneida County got split three ways.

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by: Steaming Pile @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 20:17:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Florida is actually good news though (4.00 / 2)

as they passed an independent redistricting ballot referendum this year. How well it will end up working in practice remains to be seen but Democrats ought to pick up a few seats there under a fairer redistricting program. Also, it is under legal challenge at the moment so stayed tuned for further developments.

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by: Andrew C. White @ Tue Dec 21, 2010 at 21:16:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Republican seats will be lost in NY. (0.00 / 0)

Unless Sheldon Silver is even more of a sleaze than we think he is.  From a power politics point of view, there's no point at all in allowing the Republicans in the State Senate to draw their own districts.  Democrats win if it goes to the courts, Democrats win if the State Senate knuckles under, Sheldon wins if Democrats win.

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by: neroden @ Wed Jan 19, 2011 at 23:37:12 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Slightly flawed analysis (0.00 / 0)

First, you have to round off to exact integers for each state; New York happens to round down while Florida rounds up.  That's the way it is, and not just here.  Washington, for instance, picks up a 10th congressional district by fewer than 1,100 people.

Second, this isn't nearly as bad as the composition of the Senate, where every state is entitled to the same number of representatives that every other state gets.  In other words, New York gets one senator for every 9.7 million people, while Wyoming gets one for every 280,000.

That's life in the big, cruel world.  We can complain about it, but we're not going to be able to change it.  The best we can hope for is that in 2020 New York gets to round up.

In NY, it appears that NYC will end up with almost exactly the same number of representatives.  Currently, there are 11 districts (CDs 6-16) entirely within the city, and two more (CD-5 and CD-17) partially within the city.  From a quick look, I believe NYC will lose a little bit; if Long Island stands to lose it seems that the 5th CD will move even farther into NYC, and the 17th will probably move completely out of the city.

The real losses, however, will be upstate, and the odds are it will mean the loss of one seat for each party (as they're currently held).

Meanwhile, the idea of proportional representation is intriguing.  It would take an act of Congress, since federal law requires single-member districts.  I wonder what kind of support such a bill would get -- and from whom.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 00:03:35 AM UTC

Well, no, that's not the case (0.00 / 0)

first, if it was done by simple rounding then Florida would have 26 seats not 27 as they come in at just under 26.5 so rounding would be downwards for them as well as for New York.

Seats are apportioned based on a rank ordered method based on fractional remainders formula which can be found in the wikipedia entry here. A 2001 CRS analysis of various alternate methods (mostly using varieties of rounding) can be found in a PDF here.

Third, I am baffled by the comments "That's the way it is" and "That's life in the big cruel world." They play no part in a mathematical analysis and are... baffling... in a political discussion particularly amongst folks that generally focus on reform. If your intent was to say something like "I don't think this particular problem is our highest priority amongst the various reform issues facing us today" then that's a reasonable statement worth discussing but your statement appears to outright dismiss the rather HUGE inequity in representation... not the 81.27% of a seat between us and Florida (which is in fact a statistically significant enough difference) but rather the 7 seats we lose in comparison to Wyoming both in the House and the Electoral College (which by the way is where your mention of the Senate properly comes in)... and that I simply can't agree with at all.

The Senate is a completely separate issue and was never designed to be democratic in nature as the House was. The Senate achieves its design. Whether that is a good design or not is a point that can be argued at length and from many angles. But the House was designed to be representative in a democratic fashion and these numbers show its current design fails to achieve that.

Yes, I think downstate representation will be roughly the same as now and the 2 lost seats will be lost from upstate. There is a certain about of fudging that can be done with the drawing of district lines but not enough to make up the difference and force a seat loss downstate.

I think Republicans will try to force a loss of a currently Democrat-held seat but I think they will have a hard time being successful.

Currently only Higgins around Buffalo, Slaughter stretched between Buffalo and Rochester, Tonko around Albany, Hinchey stretching from Ulster County to Ithaca and Owens in the North Country are Democrats. Of those there is no way to take a Democrat away from Buffalo, Rochester and Albany. That leaves Hinchey and Owens. Hinchey is a long-termer that Democrats won't allow to be gerrymandered out (unless he decided to retire) and the fact of the matter is that cracking his district would likely result in 2 Democratic friendly districts where there is currently only one. The same is true of Slaughters horrible district that stretches from Rochester to Buffalo... which is why those districts were drawn that way.

That leaves Owens as both the least tenured Democrat and the weakest democratic district. However, there is a significant portion of that district (the northeast corner of counties) that are a fairly strong base of Democratic voting and the geographic considerations of Canada to the north, Vermont to the east and a weak-republican NY-20 snaking in-between NY-23 and the Democratic stronghold of the Capital District based NY-21 that will make it very difficult to eliminate NY-23.

NY-23 can be weakened by stretching it to the republican strongholds to the west (east of Rochester and north-northeast of Syracuse) but that requires handing off democratic areas in the eastern part of that district to what is currently NY-20 and I don't think they want to risk that given Democrats winning NY-20 through 2 full elections and a special recently.

In other words, Republican options are very limited.

What I can see happening is a deal that eliminates 2 upstate Republican districts... say NY-25 and NY-24... while strengthening the other upstate Republican districts, weakening Democratic hold on NY-23 to the point of giving Republicans a chance to retake it (thereby potentially evening out their 2 seat loss)... and preserving NY-13 and NY-03 for Republicans both of which could easily be redrawn into Democratic strongholds.

Proportional representation in multi-seat districts is the best possible answer for true democratic representation but realistically there isn't much chance of it happening. It is a completely constitutional option and varieties of "at-large" seats have existed in the past but it was eliminated by act of Congress.

As it threatens the 2 party stranglehold on power the chances of single-seat winner-take-all districts being overturned is about nil.

In order for it to happen it has to happen at lower levels first, city, county and state, and to such a degree that it gains popularity while strengthening actual third party power at these lower levels. Only then would we have any real chance of seeing a proportional representation system come in... without some revolutionary catastrophe forcing major changes in our system that is.

Peace,

Andrew

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by: Andrew C. White @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 17:38:47 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Actually (4.00 / 1)

Both Higgins' and Slaughter's districts lost population -- a lot.  There will be huge pressure to combine them.  The other probable loss will be in the 24th CD, where Richard Hanna will be taking over next year.  (See chart here.)

It appears that Steve Israel (CD-2) will be picking up some of Tim Bishop's (CD-1) area, as well as points west.  The obvious bet is that Gary Ackerman will get more NYC and less (if any) Nassau County, while Eliot Engel (CD-17) is moved completely out of NYC.

Everything else moves north and west, with CD-24 and (probably) CD-28 being the likeliest candidates for districts that go away.  That removes a freshman Republican and a Democrat who would probably be retiring soon anyway (Rep. Slaugher is 81, 10 months older than Charles Rangel).

The rest is politics.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 18:07:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Retirements do make a difference (4.00 / 1)

in reapportionment years given how much incumbency protection plays into the line drawing. Get 2 retirements and then draw the lines to accommodate them so that no incumbent gets merged with another.

however, even given that Higgins and Slaughters districts lost population, and even given a potential Slaughter retirement, the fact is that Buffalo and Rochester both guarantee 2 Democratic districts. Same with Albany. There is no way to eliminate them as Democratic strongholds and no way to combine them into only one or dilute them into surrounding Republican districts sufficiently to eliminate them while leaving the Republican in a safe district. That leaves the districts of Hinchey and Owens as targets for the Republicans.

Hinchey's highly gerrymandered district would be a good target for cutting in two but the fact is that Ithaca and Tompkins County being included in a west/central district where it really belongs would greatly threaten whatever Republican had to absorb it. Similarly having to then include Ulster County in with either NY-19 or NY-20 would throw them over the edge into becoming Democratic districts. You could try to join Ulster and Albany but that would probably jeopardize NY-20 as it would have to swallow more democratic areas currently in NY-21.

The Republican margin in most of these districts is very thin. As evidenced by our having won all but 1 of them in recent elections.

It is difficult to talk about districts being eliminated because of course that is not how it happens. NY-28 and NY-29 are going away but the rural republican strongholds represented by NY29 aren't going anywhere and they aren't going into the Democratic column. The Erie County Democrats represented by NY-28 aren't going anywhere either.

What happens instead of course is that portions of districts get moved around as you describe with NY1 and NY2, etc. Hence some form of NY-29 will exist as a Republican district possibly shifting westwards to swallow more Republican portions of NY-28 and perhaps some of NY-26 or NY-24. The rest of (democratic portions of) NY-28 shift north and take the Buffalo portions of Slaughters district. NY-26 takes Republican portions of Slaughters district while Slaughters district moves east to Monroe County (taking away from NY-25). NY-25 as we know it basically disappears as eastern portions get moved into NY-23 to make it more Republican. NY-24 similarly gets dismembered into NY-23 and NY-20 (perhaps NY-29 too).

Losing 2 seats requires major shifts of district lines. In upstate it will be more than just line shifts to adjust as it will be downstate. The good news for Democrats (and bad news for Republicans) is that you still have population anchors in Buffalo, Rochester and Albany that guarantee 3 Democratic districts. In reality Syracuse and Tompkins County should make a 4th but they are just far enough from each other to allow gerrymandering to solve that problem for the Republicans. They gave Ithaca and Binghamton over to Ulster County and buried Syracuse in the surrounding heavily Republican counties. It will be interesting to see how they solve that problem this time around.

You are right about NY-17. It will still hold a small portion of northern Bronx but not much. The bulk of it will be in Westchester. This will in turn push NY-19 northwards which will push NY-20 northwards which is how Republicans will try to deal with NY-23 by then pushing it westwards into stronger Republican territory. The problem is that moving NY-20 north into NY-23 moves it into democratic portions of NY-23 (Essex, Clinton and Franklin) so they have to be real careful or else they lose NY-20.

It's all politics. :)

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by: Andrew C. White @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 20:25:25 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

False (0.00 / 0)

Slaugher lost a bunch of people who moved to Lee and Higgins' Lee's district but Higgins moved from the northern part of his district to the middle of it. The total population of WNY is actually quite stable; its just fleeing Buffalo for the suburbs.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 22:38:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Should read (0.00 / 0)

Slaugher lost a bunch of people who moved to Lee and Higgins' districts, and Higgins district barely changed - people just moved from the northern part of his district to the middle of it. The total population of WNY is actually quite stable; its just fleeing Buffalo for the suburbs.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 22:46:13 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

What? (0.00 / 0)

Higgins' district lost 11.8% of its population.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 00:21:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

you made it sound like a 50% reduction (0.00 / 0)

which is simply not the case

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by: Amherst Guy @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 05:21:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not at all (0.00 / 0)

You wrote that "Higgins district barely changed," but it did change, and pretty significantly.  Slaughter's district did even worse.  There will be a large push, coming mostly from the state Senate (of course), to eliminate one Democratic seat, and they're going to have numbers to back up their push.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 13:32:25 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

No,they won't have the numbers (4.00 / 2)

to get rid of a Democratic district. Buffalo and Rochester remain democratic population anchors for 2 western democratic held districts. That has not changed at all. The population of both remains too large to be successfully combined... or successfully divided and swallowed by surrounding rural republican areas.

Higgins and Slaughters districts may look very different when the lines are drawn but there will remain 2 solidly democratic districts in western New York along with 2 solidly Republican districts.

The 2 city democratic populations are big enough to swallow (most of) the rural republican population but the rural republican population is not large enough to swallow either one of the city populations.

Republicans only chance is to eliminate Hinchey's or Owens seat and I don't think they will be successful there either.

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by: Andrew C. White @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 17:19:14 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Also (0.00 / 0)

"Combining" to districts that have 1.3 million people living in them leaves about 600000 people needing to go somewhere else.

The districts "Lost" will come from Albanyish and NYCish.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 22:42:00 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It will be impossible (4.00 / 1)

for the Republicans to eliminate a Democratic seat. They'd have to create about 7 seats that are 33-33-33 to do that; people in NYC don't seem to realize this but Upstate NY ALSO has a lot more Democrats than Republicans.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 22:40:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Especially as rural population upstate drops (0.00 / 0)

Last I checked Ithaca (hardcore Democratic) was one of the only upstate conurbations which was actually growing.... but the rural Republican areas are all shrinking faster than the Democratic cities.  2 lost seats upstate are going to be lost from the "Republican heartland", and only aggressive gerrymandering could change that.

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by: neroden @ Wed Jan 19, 2011 at 23:40:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

We will have to change it. (0.00 / 0)

That's life in the big, cruel world.  We can complain about it, but we're not going to be able to change it.

The malapportionment in the Senate is killing this country.  It's going to have to be changed.  Britain stripped its House of Lords of power back in the 1910s -- we're overdue to change it.

Upstate?  Any fair distribution of seats upstate loses two Republican seats.  Look at the internal changes in population upstate.

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by: neroden @ Wed Jan 19, 2011 at 23:38:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Real issue (4.00 / 3)

For me the real issue is under representation. Consider:

* There were 105 House seats in the 1790's -- one for every 39,000 citizens

* House seats were limited to 435 in 1912 -- one for every 215,000 citizens

* Today, House districts represent 709,758 people

* House districts are now 18 times larger than they were in 1790

I'm not suggesting that we revert back to the 1:39,000 ratio, but I think consideration to a smaller ratio of representatives to constituents would be a good idea.  

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by: MattS @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 15:19:20 PM UTC

We're both pointing in the same direction (4.00 / 1)

the problem of the disparities I detailed above are caused by the arbitrary decision to lock in at 435 representatives while also requiring each state to have at least 1 representative.

This makes an optimal district size 709,758 people but leaves places like Wyoming at only 563,636 and several more states with 1 rep for their populations under 700,000. Further, the formula used to apportion seats to the states creates situations like we have with Rhode Island where they have a population a bit over a million but qualify for 2 representatives thereby creating the highest representation percentage of about 520,000 per rep while places like New York that just miss out on an additional rep under the formula have 717,707 per rep. A huge disparity caused by locking in at 435 rather than basing it on a variety of possible population targets that would make for A) greater representation as you say and B) greater equality as I was saying.

Peace,

Andrew
 

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by: Andrew C. White @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 16:56:58 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Maybe (0.00 / 0)

But I don't have a problem with Wyoming having a Representative even if they do have a ~500k population. Nor do I have a problems with RI getting two even if they have ~1M population.

No matter what the formula used I think there will always be some state(s) that gets an extra representative(s) and some that get screwed.

My issue is more with the pure number of people each Congressperson represents. I'm not too concerned with the discrepancy of the rounding issues.

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by: MattS @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 18:30:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

i agree on the number of people (4.00 / 1)

a rep reps. And if the discrepancy was only half a representative here or there I wouldn't worry about that much either. There is no perfect system. But the discrepancies are much greater then that and that makes a big difference to me. And as I said, they are two sides of the same problematic coin. Stop locking us into the arbitrary and 100 years old number of 435 and base the number of reps on population instead and you go a long way to solving both problems.

Peace,

Andrew

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by: Andrew C. White @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 20:32:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

They should compute according to the least populous state. (0.00 / 0)

Wyoming gets one.  Everybody else gets one per $Wyoming, rounded to the nearest unit.  That comes to 547 Representatives.  It's a lot, but there are 50 states and 309 million of us.  They'd manage.

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by: Steaming Pile @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 20:22:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Or, as an alternate (4.00 / 1)

Start with the least populous state and add 10%.  That way, Wyoming would qualify for 0.91, rounded to 1, and the total would be 498.  It's a little more manageable -- except that they'd have to build a new House Office Building pretty quickly, or double-up offices.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 21:26:42 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

As long as we're discussing the impossible (4.00 / 2)

Make Puerto Rico a state.  Under the current formula they would get 5 members of Congress and two senators, most likely all Dems.  

Also we might consider a rule that says a state cannot have more Senators than it has house members. Also reduce the electoral college votes accordingly.  There would be 95 Senators, PR +2; AK, DE, MT, ND, SD, VT, WY all lose one.  

Now that would shake things up!

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by: jmcbride @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 19:49:34 PM UTC

I would be very much in favor of Puerto Rican (4.00 / 1)

statehood. As you say, it would give us 2 more Democratic Senators and probably 5 more Democratic Representatives. But that's up to them and I doubt it will happen anytime soon. As I understand it they are better off monetarily as a territory.

The Senate is a whole other nightmare.  

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by: Andrew C. White @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 20:27:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

More than a rule needed (0.00 / 0)

In order to create a difference in the number of senators any state has, it would take a constitutional amendment.  Both the original document and the 17th amendment state that there shall be two senators from each state.

The problem with passing such an amendment is that there are currently seven states that would only have one, and there are several other states that would worry that they might, at some future point, drop to one as well; you'd never get 38 states.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 20:51:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I was talking "impossible" (4.00 / 1)

Depends on your definition of "rule."

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by: jmcbride @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 04:30:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Rhode Island (4.00 / 1)

Actually has the fewest people per Congressman, with 527K per each of its 2 congressmen.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 22:44:13 PM UTC

I did the actual math. (4.00 / 1)

The 2009 populations of districts 1-20 are 630,000 short of averaging 717,707. Districts 21-29 are 631,000 short of averaging 717,707. That means one seat will come from Upstate and one from Downstate.

The downstate one will likely be a melding to break up a seat of any retiring congressman (*cough Rangel cough*) into a thousand little pieces, scattered so carefully that people don't really realize their seat has been eliminated. Although it should be noted that District 3 is the downstate district that has the biggest population deficit - it will need 58,000 people added to it. Hmmm...

The upstate one will be interesting. Slaugher and Higgins will both obviously keep their seats as the Assembly will give the 2 powerful Democrats whatever they need - likely you will see Slaughter's district retreat almost entirely to Monroe County and Higgins pick up a lot of her Buffalo area population, with Lee taking on a chunk as well. Reed will then take a chunk of Higgins' seat. I would not be surprised to see the Arcuri seat, soon to be held by Hanna, be the one to go. It seems to make the most sense to simply just carve that seat up and proportion it out as needed in various directions. He's a freshman congressman in a state with 2/3 of its government controlled by the opposing party - he's in a bad spot.

So my early guesses for seat losses - 15, 24.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Wed Dec 22, 2010 at 23:17:26 PM UTC

I'll have to reevaluate when the official local stats (0.00 / 0)

come out but I don't see any downstate districts going away. Drawing districts from the end of LI on into the city and then up the river continues to place NY-17 and NY-18 from the northern edge of the city into Westchester and Rockland Counties as they are today. A little further northwards even. I don't see anyway for downstate to lose a seat.

Personally I think everything will get compressed towards the center of the state much as you describe with NY-24 and NY-25 essentially melding into one as Higgins moves north into Buffalo and Slaughter back east into Monroe as you describe. How exactly districts east of there but north of the Bronx get squished together remains to be seen.

I wonder what your population numbers would look like if you made the division at districts 1-16 and 17-29 instead.  

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by: Andrew C. White @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 17:33:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

They would be (4.00 / 1)

1-16 516,000 short of averaging 717,707 and 17-29 755,442 of averaging 717,707. 1-16 is still almost an entire seat short with this math. The only seat in the state that kept pace with national population growth was CD-1. The other 28 grew slower than the national average, meaning that they contributed to the loss of seats for the state. 1-20 contributed just as much as 21-29 (and actually, I had the numbers wrong - its 640K for 1-20). Districts 3, 4, 6, and 15 have numbers as bad or worse than many of the upstate districts.

Downstate is losing a seat. There's no way around it.  

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by: Amherst Guy @ Fri Dec 24, 2010 at 19:24:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

What about the prison population reassignment?.... (0.00 / 0)

...or does that not apply to the Congressional apportionment?  It will make a huge difference to the state allocations though.

You know the one I mean, where prisoners were counted as "residents" of the prisons, and they won't be any more.

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by: neroden @ Thu Jan 20, 2011 at 00:41:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

It depends on how one defines "downstate" (0.00 / 0)

The number shift will probably start somewhere just south of Albany.  Most locations west of Syracuse will shift by two.

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by: Steaming Pile @ Thu Dec 23, 2010 at 20:24:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This is incorrect. (0.00 / 0)

Check your numbers.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Fri Dec 24, 2010 at 19:25:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Number of people short of 717,707 (4.00 / 1)

by district:

1 -1432
2 24017
3 58723
4 54353
5 12667
6 57627
7 38507
8 16350
9 20646
10 31174
11 43679
12 23467
13 13177
14 45755
15 50383
16 27515
17 43158
18 42236
19 1870
20 36394
21 52035
22 49759
23 59464
24 78874
25 65394
26 65378
27 88166
28 107703
29 65011

You can see that the halfway point is between 20 and 21.

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by: Amherst Guy @ Fri Dec 24, 2010 at 19:28:29 PM UTC

[ Parent ]