Category: Uncategorized

Welcome to the Sixty-Six Wards District Profiles!

Democrats need to pick up 20 seats to tie up the PA House, and 19 districts currently held by Republicans voted for Clinton in 2016. All of them are in the Philadelphia region. I’ve profiled Delco’s District 168, and Philadelphia’s District 177. Both of those are nested in Congressional Districts that FiveThirtyEight considers “Solid”, and all “Solid Democrat”.

The only Congressional District in the region that is considered “Likely”–the step lower–is Bucks County’s CD 1, where Incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick R is favored to defeat challenger Scott Wallace, with a 78% chance as of the time of writing this.

Bucks County has within it some fascinating State House races. Maybe the most interesting is District 178.

District 178

District 178 covers Northampton Township, to the West of Newtown, and stretches up to the NJ border, including New Hope.

Until December 2017, the district had represented by Scott Petri (R), who stepped down to become the Executive Director of the PPA. He was replaced in a Special Election in May, in which Democrat Helen Tai beat Wendi Thomas by the narrowest of margins.

How close was the special election? Tai won by 101 votes, 6,366 – 6,265. Less than 1% of the vote. In fact, in the separate primaries that happened the exact same day, Thomas received 6,649 votes, and Tai received 6,269. Tai won by the margin of people who forgot to push both buttons. It was close.

The two are facing off again in November. Could the Special Election result be carried over to a higher-turnout general?

The district swung hard towards the Democrat in the Special Election. In 2016, Petri won 61% of the state house vote, even as Trump won only 51%.

[Interactive State House Map]  [Interactive Presidential Map]

New Hope and neighboring Solebury voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, and even marginally for Democratic Rep Dougherty. The entire south of the district voted for Petri and for Trump.

Every single precinct in the District voted more heavily for Petri than for Trump in 2016.

[Interactive Plot]

​Here’s the corresponding map for the Special Election. Every precinct swung towards the Democrats.

[Interactive Map Here]

The swing was huge. Below is a similar scatter of precincts, but comparing 2016 to the 2018 Special election. Points above a 45-degree line mean that they voted more Democratic in 2018 than 2016. (Every point is above that imaginary line)

[Interactive Plot Here]​

The district is heavily White. Some 89.5% of the residents are non-Hispanic White, with 4.5% of the residents Asian, 2.6% of the residents Hispanic, and 1.5% of the residents Black.

[Interactive Map Here]

The turnout of the district typically favors the south, where population and votes are denser. Here is the turnout for 2016.

[Interactive Map Here]

But turnout changed dramatically for the Special Election. Comparing the relative change in turnout from 2016 to the Special Election, the north lights up. In 2016, 38,588 votes were cast. In the Special Election, 12,631 votes were, for an average ratio of 33%. But the north voted at rates up to 40% of 2016, while many of the southern district was below 30%. Overall, the south still can carry the day, but by much less than before.

[Interactive Map Here]

[Interactive Plot Here]

​In 2014, 23,544 votes were cast for Governor, with Corbett beating Wolf with 54% of the vote. Petri ran unopposed for the PA House.

So we should probably expect at least twice as many voters in November as in the Special Election. Will the Republicans from 2014 and 2016 show up as they do in every midterm? Or is the shift more substantial?

This race could serve a sign of a huge Democratic wave in November. If Tai wins reelection, that will mean that a District that voted for Trump in 2016 and had a long-serving Republican representative was caught up in a Democratic. It would have been impossible to imagine a Democrat winning this district four years ago, but Helen Tai did it in May.

Sources:
Election data from the Open Elections Project
Population data from the 2016 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
Boundaries and GIS data from election-geodata
Base maps provided by maps.stamen.com/

Welcome to the Sixty-Six Wards District Profiles! Democrats need to pick up 20 seats to tie up the PA House, and 19 districts currently held by Republicans voted for Clinton in 2016. All of them are in the Philadelphia region. Yesterday, I profiled Delco’s District 168, where DSA supported Kristin Seale is challenging Republican incumbent Christopher Quinn. But what if you wanted an interesting election, but insisted on taking the El? Well, we’ve got a fascinating race right in Port Richmond.

Today: Philadelphia’s PA House District 177

District 177 covers the River Wards above Lehigh, with an arm that stretches up to the Boulevard and Rhawn. The district has been represented by John Taylor since 1984, who headed Philadelphia’s Republican City Committee until recently stepping down. It largely contains the River Wards, while carving out a space for Taylor’s home, which lies in the Frankford arm of the boundaries.

With Taylor stepping down, this race doesn’t have an incumbent for the first time in 34 years. Democrat Joe Hohenstein will be facing off against Republican Patty Kozlowski. Hohenstein challenged Taylor in 2016 and lost 55-45, and won a crowded Democratic Primary  with a plurality of 37% of the vote. Kozlowski ran unopposed.

In 2016, Taylor beat Hohenstein by 10 points, even though Clinton beat Trump by 17 among the same voters. Taylor won 44 of the 71 divisions

[Interactive map here]

​The spatial map can be a little misleading, as those divisions along the river are largely commercial/industrial, and have low population densities. A map of votes per mile shows the relative strengths of the districts.

[Interactive map here]

The district also manages to gerrymander out significant chunks of non-White Frankford. The one nub that ventures into predominantly Hispanic and Black neighborhoods along Castor Ave are also the divisions that voted the strongest for Hohenstein two years ago.

[Interactive map here]

So how close is the race overall? The plot below lines up divisions by their 2016 percent Democrat, with widths denoting a division’s total votes. A ton of divisions sat between 40-50% Democrat in 2016, which would mean FiveThirtyEight’s 16 point swing towards the Democrats (an 8 percent increase in the vote) would easily put them over.

[Interactive plot here]

Presidential Results
There are two huge good signs for Democrats: the retirement of Taylor, and how well Clinton did in 2016. She won by 17 points, even as Taylor carried the district. Every single division voted more strongly for Taylor than for Trump in 2016, indicating either favor for the incumbent or anti-Trumpism.

[Interactive map here]

[Interactive plot here]

Turnout
A huge question in this district is going to be turnout. The district is extremely diverse, racially and politically, and the relative mobilization of precincts could determine who wins.

Turnout in the 2014 midterm was extremely weighted towards the Republican divisions. While the district as a whole saw 2.8 times as many voters in 2016 as in 2014, many Democratic divisions say *four times* the turnout. The heavily Republican divisions, because they turn out so strongly in midterms, had less relative growth.
​

There’s one more data-point, and it’s a doozy. Democratic turnout in May’s primary was 4,533 voters. Only 1,541 Republicans voted in May, but Kozlowski was running unopposed.

Four years ago, only 13,237 people voted in the *general*, for the Governor’s race. It’s hard to figure out exactly what this means, since in 2014 this district didn’t even have a Democratic Primary, though it *did* have a Governor’s primary, with 2018 didn’t.

The map of Democratic turnout, though, is revelatory. The map belows shows votes in the May primary as a fraction of total votes in 2016. This gives a good measure of relative mobilization, assuming that the 2016 election represents a peak attainable turnout.

The very bottom of the district, along Lehigh Ave, went bonkers in the Primary, with over 40% of 2016 turnout in some divisions. Those are also where Hohenstein cleaned up:

Sources:
Election data from www.philadelphiavotes.com
Population data from the 2016 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
Boundaries and GIS data from www.opendataphilly.org
Base maps provided by maps.stamen.com/

Updates: I’ve edited this article to reflect the fact that Representative Taylor lives in the Frankford arm of the district, explaining at least that part of its odd shape.