drawn

Urban-Rural Interface for State Boundaries?

|

Would government be effective if urban areas and those areas in the urban sphere of influence such as the suburbs where separate from truly rural areas, where residents rarely go to city? By definition, the urban-rural interface is the border between the lands within a practical commuting distance for the productive non-farming rural resident and the rural resident who rarely interacts with the city.

As I’ve written many times in the past, urban policies being applied to rural areas rarely make sense, as do rural policies applied to urban areas. The conflict between the rural and the urban is best mitigated by creating and having two separate and sovereign governments, while allowing them to come together for questions of national and international policy, for things like nation defense, transportation infrastructure, and large-source emitters’ pollution control.

Juneteenth 2022 Weekend

Political districts currently are based on haphazards of history or attempts at gaming the political system and not geographic reality. Large regional governments in urbanized areas and their spheres of influence would be far more effective at addressing the large problems of day from transportation to materials recovery or disposal. Moreover, the linkages between two urban regions of similar size (such as Syracuse Urbanized-area and Albany Urbanized-area), are far closer in many ways then a single county (Albany County’s Urban Sphere of Influence versus those areas in extreme western-portion of Albany County outside of Urban Sphere of Influence).

Urban areas really like their new found power since the awful 1964 ruling in Reynolds vs Simms, that mandated both houses of a legislature be equally proportioned, and banned the upper house (ie. Senate) from being based on geography, giving rural areas limited voice in the process. Urban and more liberal constituencies are unlikely to give up their dominance in the process, or allow more rural areas to have sovereignty, because it’s fun to boss around people you disagree with.

While maybe politically impractical, giving urban and rural areas complete sovereignty in their own matters would solve a lot of problems, and create policies more appropriate for their constituencies.

How Albany County Legislative Races Are Shaping Up

|

The New County Legislature Districts.

I recently took the County Legislative District Census Block list and imported it into QGIS using the Census Tiger Lines, then re-exported it into a Google Maps, to create this great interactive map.


View Larger Map

At One Level Looks Great for Democrats…

No current legislative district in Albany County recieved less then 50% a 2010 Average Democrats Performance. That said, with swing and other factors (e.g. candidate quality, local issues), certain Democrats are expected to lose races that a Generic Democrat could have won in the same location.

Voltage high, excite relay!

Tearing down the black snow maker

…However, In Many of Those Districts, Swing Is Very High.

In the suburban districts, while many may have gone strongly for Governor Cuomo, many chose to vote for Republicans for State Assembly or State Senate. This suggests things may not be as rosy from Democrats in the County as the Average Democratic Performance makes it seem.

Here is a list of safe districts, marginals, along with the swing and average ADP for Voting Tabulation Districts in each Legislative District.

District 2010 ADP 2010 Swing Safe District Non-Marginal District
39 50.54% 13.92% No. No.
27 51.67% 19.92% No. No.
35 53.33% 23.33% No. No.
31 53.80% 20.00% No. No.
22 54.50% 22.00% No. No.
19 55.00% 18.00% No. Yes.
38 55.14% 20.57% No. Yes.
21 55.47% 19.00% No. Yes.
23 56.33% 20.67% No. Yes.
33 57.00% 18.00% No. Yes.
12 57.43% 13.29% No. Yes.
26 57.78% 20.56% No. Yes.
20 58.11% 28.00% No. Yes.
29 58.50% 18.50% No. Yes.
24 59.00% 22.00% No. Yes.
30 59.00% 17.67% No. Yes.
37 60.20% 18.60% No. Yes.
34 63.81% 21.63% No. Yes.
11 64.07% 15.13% No. Yes.
18 67.33% 37.17% No. Yes.
17 70.50% 40.75% No. Yes.
10 73.00% 17.70% Yes. Yes.
16 73.22% 35.33% No. Yes.
5 73.76% 13.81% Yes. Yes.
14 76.00% 26.78% No. Yes.
9 77.00% 18.00% Yes. Yes.
8 77.36% 14.07% Yes. Yes.
13 78.15% 14.31% Yes. Yes.
15 78.20% 31.60% No. Yes.
3 82.81% 11.00% Yes. Yes.
7 85.40% 14.80% Yes. Yes.
6 86.50% 12.00% Yes. Yes.
2 87.00% 24.00% Yes. Yes.
1 91.24% 15.71% Yes. Yes.
4 92.25% 11.25% Yes. Yes.

Data Sources.

Methodology.

The 2010 Average Democratic Performance (ADP) is based on US Senate, US Congress, Governor’s Race, State Senate, State Assembly, State Comptroller and State Attorney General Races, broken down by voting tabulation district, then all Democrats added together and divided by the total number of Democratic and Republican votes. Swing is a caculation of Maximum Statewide Democratic Candidate Preformance, subtracted by Minimum Statewide Republican Candidate Preformance.

Election Districts have changed in Albany County since the redistricting by the County Legislature. The data used to compute Average Democratic Preformance is based on Census Standard Voting Tabulation Districts, which have in many cases changed with redistricting. The largest geographic portion of the Census Standard Voting District was counted in the legislative district it exists in.

I computed safe seats as those with a 2010 ADP – 2010 Swing greater then 50%. Marginal districts, are those where Democrats recieved a less then 55% ADP. Normally one would use less then 50% to define marginal, however Andrew Cuomo polled so highly in many districts that he distored the statistics used. The lowest 2010 ADP Standard Voting Tabulation district in all of Albany County was only 43% ADP, which is remarkably high for anywheres in Upstate NY that is not highly urbanized.