Packing and Cracking: A visual tour of Pennsylvania’s Congressional Districts
Pennsylvania’s U.S. congressional districts were fairly equitable in the 2000’s, and multiple seats switched parties through the decade. In 2004 Republicans won 12 seats, in 2008 Democrats won 12 seats, and in 2010 Republicans once again won 12 seats. In those elections, Democrats held six seats all three years, Republicans held seven seats all three years, four swapped R-D-R, one swapped R-D-D, and one swapped D-D-R.
Pennsylvania lost a congressional seat after the 2010 Census. Since Republicans controlled both houses of the state legislature and the governorship, they had full control to draw the new congressional map of 18 districts in 2011. No congressional seats have changed political parties since then, and Republican’s have held a 13–5 majority.
Here I will explore how “packing” (concentrating specific voters together so their candidate wins with wide margins) and “cracking” (splitting specific voters up so they are in the minority and their candidate looses) were used in the latest congressional maps to help cement a permanent Republican majority.
Quick background: Excluding the election map screenshots from the NY Times, I created these maps with data from the gerrymandering case Agre v. Wolf. That data was made public in this Philadelphia Inquirer article by Jonathan Lai. The data lists all 9,253 voting districts in PA, and most of the columns are publicly available data, such as vote totals by party. But, there are two calculated fields: “INDEX04” and “INDEX08,” which the Inquirer calls “2004 and 2008 partisan scores.” I’m not sure how they are calculated (if you know please reach out!), but the Democrat-leaning voting districts have a negative score and Republican-leaning voting districts have a positive score.
Here is a map I made outlining the current congressional districts in black with their voting districts outlined in white and shaded based on the INDEX08 partisan score. The darker the color the more partisan the voting district, so dark blue leans strongly Democrat and dark red leans strongly Republican.
Here’s the same map, but outlining the 19 old (pre-2011) congressional districts:
In the year 2000 (through 2010)
In 2008, the year Obama won the Presidency, Democrats won 12 of the 19 congressional districts. Here’s the 2008 election map from the NY Times:
It’s hard to tell, but Democrats won three seats around Pittsburgh. We will begin exploring gerrymandering there in a moment.
In 2010, Republicans won 12 of the 19 congressional districts. Here is that election map from the NY Times:
The Democrats maintained their three districts around Pittsburgh, but the five shaded red districts flipped from Democrat to Republican. (The shaded red represents a narrower victory.)
2011-Present
The congressional districts were redrawn in 2011. Here is the election map for 2014, which mirrors 2012 and 2016. Once again, from the NY Times:
Democrats currently hold only one district around Pittsburgh, and notice how the blue district north of Philadelphia has a new shape. Let’s explore.
Cracking and Packing
Let’s start with the old 12th district, which started at the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania before wrapping around Pittsburgh. Here is a map I made (reminder: voting districts are shaded by the INDEX08 partisan score):
The old 12th congressional district voted Democrat in the 2000s. In order to flip it, Republicans cracked the big blue block in the southwest corner in two. In the latest maps, that block is split between the 9th and 18th districts. This is the 18th, which includes the western part of that block:
And here is the 9th, which includes the eastern part of that block:
But remember how there were three solidly Democratic districts around Pittsburgh? If you want to reduce that to one then you really need to pack as many Democrats into one congressional district as possible. Here’s the old 14th congressional district:
Here’s the new 14th congressional district:
And this is a combination of the two, with the old congressional district in bold over the new one:
All of those new (lighter) blue voting districts is packing in action. And that northeastern appendage is solidly blue and meticulously added, but why? Answer: to remove those Democrat votes from the new 12th Congressional District to the north. Here is the 12th, and I circled where the appendage was removed:
Hmm, if you tilt it sideways, it kind of looks like a pumpjack.
But I digress.
Here’s a lone blue voting district (circled in green) that is used to join a large red block to the infamous 7th Congressional District, nicknamed “Goofy kicking Donald Duck”:
That lone blue voting district is used to crack two Democratic areas between the 6th and 16th districts. Here’s what that looks like zoomed in:
Now let’s look at the old 17th congressional district, which sat northwest of Philadelphia and was solidly blue in the 2000s thanks to the area around Harrisburg in the southwest and the blue area in the northeast.
Remember how congressional districts in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania went blue in 2008? They were made securely Republican by cracking the old 17th district to remove Harrisburg while packing the northeast blue area together with the most Democratic-leaning parts of northeastern PA. Here’s the new 17th district:
So the northeastern part of the old 17th district becomes the southwestern part of the new 17th district, with areas around Scranton and Allentown added on to pack as many Democratic votes into the new 17th congressional district as possible. Here’s a zoomed in view of the area around Scranton:
Democracy in action.
I’m out of time, so I’ll have to look at the Congressional Districts around Philadelphia at a later date. But let’s take another look at the latest election map:
That’s how you turn a relatively moderate state into a Republican powerhouse.
Disclaimer: None of these examples definitively prove that the Republicans used either “cracking” or “packing” methods when drawing the maps. They may have used other methods that had the same effect. Republicans have also maintained, both in the press and in court, that partisan maps are legal in Pennsylvania and should be upheld.
