Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

If this is too much gerrymandering...

This 2011 map of Pennsylvania's Congressional districts - our current map - may go down in history as one that helps America understand how much partisan gerrymandering is too much partisan gerrymandering.

On Jan. 22, it was ruled unconstitutional by a 5-2 majority of the state Supreme Court for diluting the votes of Democratic voters, though the fight still rages over whether it will be used in the 2018 campaign cycle or not.

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Define "better"

Which raises the question. How can we do better?

That's an exercise the brainiacs at FiveThirtyEight.com - journalism's answer to baseball's sabermetrics - set out to answer in a recent project aimed at looking at how mapmaking can be used to achieve various goals. And what we sacrifice to get them.

Each state's Congressional map was drawn to achieve seven specific goals, and then compared with the current map as a baseline.

They spoke with PennLive.com to share the revealing results for Pennsylvania. Click through the links that follow to see interactive versions of the map.

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Using precinct-level election data from 2006 through 2016, the analysts drew each of the seven maps with a different goal in mind. They looked to maximize partisan advantage, geographical compactness, maximizing political competition, representation of minorities and mirroring recent elections results.

In each category, they pretty much went all in on the goal.

As visual journalist Ella Koeze explained, "The Constitution says we have to elect people, but it's really pretty vague as to how you do that... So we wanted to look at the question of what is a district for? Should it represent a locality, or some arbitrary goal?

"And when you break it into these different categories, what do you lose in the process?"

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PennLive.com file photo

Tony Gutierrez / AP

Running the race

A note about the seat projections that follow.

Koeze stressed that FiveThirtyEight's analysis is not intended to be a predictor of any single Congressional election. Those outcomes will always depend just as much on the quality of candidates, the issues, and the prevailing mood of the electorate.

"We're dealing with the world of what could be possible," she explained. "We're not trying to say that the probability that we assess to has a bearing on any one race this year."

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The Associated Press

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

The "red state" swing state

Registered Democratic Party voters may own a 5:4 edge on registered Republicans statewide, and Democratic candidates do win their share of races in statewide elections.

But Republicans have a natural edge when it comes to legislative races - here and nationally - because of the way the Democrats tend to concentrate themselves into cities.

In Pennsylvania, look at this map of how voters broke for in the 2016 presidential election: A razor-thin races by any measure. And then look at the vast swaths of red in all the maps that follow.

That has real consequences when it comes to building legislative districts.

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

The Democratic "edge"?

For example, here's a map that pulls out all the stops for the Democratic Party.

FiveThirtyEight set its algorithms to find and join together as many Democratic voting blocs as they could.

And... they get nine reliably Democratic seats, defined as those expected to be won by Democratic candidates in five out of six races; seven Republican seats (red), and two competitive, but leaning R, seats, including the blotch of purple crossing over Harrisburg.

(Competitive is defined here as both parties having at least a one-in-six chance of winning the seat over time - a pretty low bar.)

The predicted result is a nine-nine party tie over time in the computer's best-case scenario for the Dems.

The upshot: This lack of geographic diversity in the party really stunts their chances in the state's Congressional races, as compared to...

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

GOP world

"To gerrymander for Republicans was ultimately easier than it was to gerrymander for Democrats just because of the political geography," Koeze said. "With the Democrats so concentrated... there's just a lot more room to work with for the Republicans."

FiveThirtyEight's GOP gerrymander special, ironically enough, predicts the same 13-5 partisan edge, over time, as we have today. This map is actually more compact, too, so note to GOP party leaders, you might want to screen shot this one.

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

A winning platform

Besides the Democrat clustering, there's also no denying the fact that the Republican Party - at least in this political era - have been winning the political game when it comes to appealing to independent voter and center-right Democrats.

Keep in mind that the current map, seen above according to FiveThirtyEight's analysis, is supposed to yield a delegation of 12 Republicans and six Democrats.

Our current delegation is 13 to five.

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A post-gerrymandering age?

Dream with us. Let's suppose we're in a post-gerrymandering world now.

Assume the courts have ruled in a string of cases before them now, and partisan politics - while still permitted to be a part of the equation - is no longer going to be the only part of the equation.

So what else could you come up with?

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

Seeking competitive elections

Some reformers have argued for years that more competitive elections will lead to better, more honest and more accountable government.

OK.... So the folks at FiveThirtyEight set their computers to charting districts that would create the most competitive elections in the largest number of districts across Pennsylvania.

The map above has 12 districts in the competitive category, though in more cases it would be still be predicted to break 10.5 R and 7.5 D.

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It is actually more compact than the map that's just been overturned, so there's that.

But, it's got its imperfections, too, like the Central Pennsylvania snake curling west from northern York County toward State College.

And that sprawling 5th District? We get that there are more pine trees than people in the northern tier, but 300 miles from end-to-end seems a little much.

Next.

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

Proportionate representation

A cousin to competitive seats, this map seeks to produce a Congressional delegation that would most closely match the actual vote for major party candidates in recent presidential elections.

It's a purely academic exercise, but reflecting Pennsylvania's swing state tendencies it is expected to give a nine-nine split in the Congressional delegation.

But it's also certainly gerrymandered.

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Do the Lancaster County Amish really need to be paired with people in Bucks and Northampton counties, for example?

What about those carefully crafted veins collecting the Democratic bases of Allentown, Reading and Lancaster? Call it the "Third-Class City District"?

It smacks of the same kind of grouping voters by their past votes - albeit with a different goal in mind - that was the focal point of the just-completed lawsuit.

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

Racial politics

Another policy goal is improving the representation of those who have been historically under-represented in American government: Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans.

In Pennsylvania, there are two so-called "majority-minority" district anchored in Philadelphia now: The 1st, in which white voters still hold a plurality; and the 2nd, which is 56 percent black.

We have one African-American congressman, U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans.

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PennLive.com file photo

Could Pennsylvania improve on that score?

Not really. Even done to the max, this map shows that Pennsylvania would never have more than two majority non-white districts based on current population.

But there is a chance that, with U.S. Rep. Bob Brady's announced retirement this year, Philadelphia could elect a second African-American Congressman in 2018.

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

What's left? Compactness

Another oft-cited goal of redistricting reformers is working towards greater compactness of district lines, within the confines of federal mandates for equal population.

So here's a map that was designed solely to minimize the average distance between each constituent and his or her district's geographic center, without regard to city or county boundaries, voting history, or racial makeups.

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You appreciate the intent, but the randomness of the of the lines produces 72 county splits, far more than any other version.

That disrespect of communities of interest probably makes this map a non-starter.

So, the FiveThirtyEight folks then layered in county lines, and...

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FiveThirtyEight.com

Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

Respecting boundaries

Here's a map that leads the league in compactness, as measured by the total length of the perimeters of the district boundaries, and also has the fewest numbers of county being split in multiple districts.

It still reflects the Republicans' geographic edge, and predicts to an 11-7 GOP in Pa.'s seats over time.

But, it also produces a map that much more truly reflects Pennsylvania's regions.

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If only it were so simple.

FiveThirtyEight's analysis did not figure in, for example, the home addresses of the 12 incumbent House members from Pennsylvania who have declared their intent to seek new terms next year, and will likely demand that they are not paired against each other in any new map.

Republicans here have also said one of their objectives - assuming there are to be new maps - will be minimizing the number of voters who are moved into new districts. In other words, they ain't starting from scratch.

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Humans still matter

That's where the art of redistricting comes in.

"I would definitely agree that this project falls in the category of academic exercise," FiveThirtyEight's Koeze said.

"We weren't trying to say that any one of these maps is really problematic or excellent for a state. We were just trying to demonstrate that these tradeoffs do exist."

It's the humans that have to score those trade-offs and, ultimately, make the trades.

In Pennsylvania, the trading season may be about to begin.

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