Analyzing New York’s Adjusted Redistricting Data

Overview

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

• 20,201,249 total population in the original PL file
• 20,193,858 total population in the adjusted PL file
• -7,391 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 York’s redistricting, the average district sizes in New York are:

• 134,625 people per state House district
• 320,537 people per state Senate 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.

• 288,819 census blocks in New York
• 265,558 census blocks have the same population following modification
• 23,195 census blocks gained population following modification
• 66 census blocks lost population following modification (Of the 66 census blocks that lost population following reallocation, 64 contained facilities according to our analysis conducted with PPI data.)
• 37 census blocks have a negative population following modification.

Official Language

The official language for New York’s adjustment is:

Until such time as the United States bureau of the census shall implement a policy of reporting each such incarcerated person at such person’s residential address prior to incarceration, the task force shall use such data to develop a database in which all incarcerated persons shall be, where possible, allocated for redistricting purposes, such that each geographic unit reflects incarcerated populations at their respective residential addresses prior to incarceration rather than at the addresses of such correctional facilities. For all incarcerated persons whose residential address prior to incarceration was outside of the state, or for whom the task force cannot identify their prior residential address, and for all persons confined in a federal correctional facility on census day, the task force shall consider those persons to have been counted at an address unknown and persons at such unknown address shall not be included in such data set created pursuant to this paragraph. The task force shall develop and maintain such amended population data set and shall make such amended data set available to local governments, as defined in subdivision eight of section two of the municipal home rule law, and for the drawing of assembly and senate districts.