Analyzing New Jersey’s Adjusted Redistricting Data

Overview

New Jersey uses adjusted (or modified) data for US congressional and state legislative redistricting.

• 9,288,994 total population in the original PL file
• 9,283,016 total population in the adjusted PL file
• -5,978 total population difference between the two

Even in states where where the total population is unchanged, the distribution of population within the state can be affected.

To give you a sense for how these population shifts affect New Jersey’s redistricting, the average district sizes in New Jersey are:

• 232,075 people per state House district
• 232,075 people per state Senate district
• 773,584 people per Congressional district

The dataset used to create this report is the official redistricting dataset.

County Level Analysis

See the appendix for a detailed breakdown of county level population changes.

Block Level Analysis

In general, the changes in block population are not uniform: most blocks are unaffected by modification, while a handful of blocks lose a large amount of population that goes to a larger number of blocks in smaller quantities.

• 137,972 census blocks in New Jersey
• 127,510 census blocks have the same population following modification
• 10,419 census blocks gained population following modification
• 43 census blocks lost population following modification (Of the 43 census blocks that lost population following reallocation, 34 contained facilities according to our analysis conducted with PPI data.)
• 7 census blocks have a negative population following modification.

Official Language

The official language for New Jersey’s adjustment is:

Pursuant to P.L.2019, c.385 (C.52:4-1.1 et seq.), the New Jersey Secretary of State is required to reallocate the population of certain incarcerated persons to their last known residential address for legislative redistricting purposes. Pursuant to section 1 of P.L.2021, c.198 (C.52:4-1.6), the State’s congressional districts must also be drawn using this adjusted data. The congressional districts must meet equal population requirements under both adjusted and non-adjusted data sets, to the greatest extent possible.