March 20, 2012
Welcome to the 23rd Congressional District
The final Congressional maps are in from the Special Master process, and Dryden (and all of Tompkins County) is now in a district that goes from here to the Pennsylvania border by Jamestown.
Special Master's Congressional districts map, 23rd District.
This is a serious Southern Tier district, resembling the ones I grew up in in Corning, with Stan Lundine (D-Jamestown) and Amory Houghton (R-Corning) as Congressmen. Despite the district's Republican tilt, neither of them was a fire-breathing conservative - current incumbent Tom Reed (R-Corning) is many degrees to the right of them, which probably makes One of Nine happy.
It's definitely a Republican-leaning district by registration. Tompkins County may have 10,000 more Democrats than Republicans, but Steuben County has 15,000 more Republicans than Democrats. However, it's not actually that impossible a district for Democrats, and I wonder how long Tom Reed will survive here.
This table shows registration for (Democrats + Working Families + Green) and (Republican + Conservative), with an other column for unaffiliated (blank), Independence, and other registrations. It isn't perfect, because Ontario and Tioga counties are cut, and so the data there is for the entire county, not just the part in the district. (Tioga in particular was cut using the Susquehanna, which makes geographic sense but cuts the Town of Owego in half.)
| County | D/W/G Enroll | R+C Enroll | Other | Obama 2008 | McCain 2008 | Kerry 2004 | Bush 2004 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allegany | 6231 | 12816 | 4742 | 7016 | 11013 | 6566 | 12310 |
| Cattaraugus | 15944 | 18673 | 9848 | 14307 | 17770 | 13514 | 20051 |
| Chautauqua | 28148 | 28185 | 21918 | 29129 | 28579 | 27257 | 32434 |
| Chemung | 16436 | 21337 | 11925 | 18888 | 19364 | 17080 | 21321 |
| Schuyler | 3422 | 4926 | 2982 | 3933 | 4542 | 3445 | 4960 |
| Seneca | 6428 | 8214 | 4589 | 7422 | 7038 | 6979 | 7981 |
| Steuben | 15512 | 30642 | 11845 | 17148 | 24203 | 14523 | 26980 |
| Tompkins | 23473 | 13010 | 12606 | 29826 | 11927 | 27229 | 13994 |
| Yates | 3526 | 6861 | 2952 | 4890 | 5269 | 4205 | 6309 |
| (Ontario) | 19153 | 26774 | 17327 | 25103 | 25171 | 21891 | 27999 |
| (Tioga) | 8657 | 14500 | 7365 | 10172 | 12536 | 9694 | 13762 |
| Total | 146930 | 185938 | 108099 | 167834 | 167412 | 152383 | 188101 |
There are about 40,000 more Republicans total, but (if the Ontario and Tioga splits don't shift things), Obama and McCain fought to a virtual draw here in 2008. George W. Bush, though, defeated John Kerry by about 36,000 votes in 2004, so I tend to see 2008 as an outlier.
Right now I'm expecting Reed to run for re-election. I've heard that Nathan Shinagawa and Leslie Danks-Burke, both of Ithaca, are running for the Democratic nomination. My preferred candidate, Dan Lamb, is running just to our east, for the Democratic nomination to run against Dryden's current Congressman, Richard Hanna.
Posted by simon at March 20, 2012 12:45 PM in politics (national)Note on photos
My guess is that the Tioga county numbers will skew more R&C if you broke the numbers out by town and removed the section of the Town of Owego. My guess (from growing up in Candor) is that that section of Owego that will be in the 22nd district would have the higher percentage of D/W/G than the section that is left in the 23rd.