https://adamparanich.com/articles daily 0.75 2026-04-15 https://adamparanich.com/articles/banning-gerrymandering-and-what-a-fair-map-would-look-like monthly 0.5 2026-04-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/002878a7-96bd-45e8-868b-c96685c1f5af/Screen+Shot+2026-04-15+at+12.28.54+PM.png Articles - Constructing a Fair Congressional Map: A Statistical Analysis - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/c8bdbae8-f998-4a70-815c-4324a938f6cf/Screen+Shot+2026-04-15+at+1.11.20+PM.png Articles - Constructing a Fair Congressional Map: A Statistical Analysis - Make it stand out This model shows that the district maps used has been very fair for the past three presidential elections. As is natural, it provides slight bias in favor of the winners of each of those elections, but the expected and actual seat count match nearly identically in each election. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/bd31c9d6-9b62-4490-a09b-e3dd6284a659/Screen+Shot+2026-04-15+at+1.15.34+PM.png Articles - Constructing a Fair Congressional Map: A Statistical Analysis - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/d78e3597-5890-4c08-acfa-6979ea301316/Screen+Shot+2026-04-15+at+1.22.16+PM.png Articles - Constructing a Fair Congressional Map: A Statistical Analysis - Make it stand out As is clear, the number of effectively competitive seats is quite high, representing about 40% of congressional districts and continuously increasing. Increasing the amount of competitive districts is generally seen as a universal principle of fair redistricting practices. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/61c1b760-9456-48f6-aeeb-76cb332bb91b/Screen+Shot+2026-04-15+at+1.27.52+PM.png Articles - Constructing a Fair Congressional Map: A Statistical Analysis - Make it stand out If you want a more rudimentary measure of competitiveness, we can measure the amount of seats that fall into certain margins of victory. Here, we see the same trend where the number of highly competitive seats (with margins below 5%) increased from 78 to 88 to 97 and the number of generally competitive seats (with margins below 10%) increasing from 164 to 175 to 189. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/d55e8f5a-96ec-4f57-803b-0ffbed4ef46f/article_chart_updated.png Articles - Constructing a Fair Congressional Map: A Statistical Analysis - Make it stand out Given that the nation is 60% white voting age population (VAP), and races do not perfectly sort within precinct boundaries, it is impossible by definition for seat representation to exactly match national VAP. As a result, redistricting is not a question of perfectly reproducing population shares, but of how representation is distributed—whether minority voters are concentrated into a smaller number of districts or spread across a broader set of districts where they may exert influence. These statistics show my map successfully increased racial minority representation (by 4.6%), not perfectly but better reflecting our actual population make-up. As shown in chapters one and two, this was done without sacrificing overall fairness and competitiveness, making it a win-win situation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/5b52d0e7-660c-48ac-9480-a9b9a02feacd/Screen+Shot+2026-04-15+at+1.32.33+PM.png Articles - Constructing a Fair Congressional Map: A Statistical Analysis - Make it stand out This section is included less as a tool for evaluating map fairness and more as an exploration of the broader electoral landscape. The correlations shown here reflect underlying patterns in how demographic composition relates to voting behavior, offering a psephological perspective rather than a direct critique of the maps themselves. The results align with well-established patterns in American politics. Districts with higher white population shares are associated with lower Democratic vote share (r ≈ −0.63), while Black population share shows a strong positive relationship (r ≈ 0.42). Latino share exhibits a weaker positive correlation (r ≈ 0.23), reflecting greater heterogeneity in voting behavior across Latino communities. Educational attainment, as measured by the share of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher, also shows a notable positive relationship with Democratic vote share (r ≈ 0.48). https://adamparanich.com/articles/how-coal-country-went-conservative-an-electoral-analysis-of-the-wyoming-valley monthly 0.5 2026-02-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/2e16329c-9aa8-4309-9f1b-740c9a39ddaf/unnamed.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/7b4b640e-951f-4050-8be6-c7abf58080bd/unnamed+%281%29.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/17da75da-bc9b-433d-84d0-e249042ee27e/unnamed+%282%29.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley The region of “Wyoming Valley” can be split up into the municipalities located in the physical valley cut through by the Susquehanna and Lackawanna Rivers and those that fall outside the physical valley but are still part of the cultural and social region. The physical valley was developed first, and is accordingly home to the two anchor cities of the regions: Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, and the other surrounding “valley towns” which are quite similar in terms of urban layout. These valley towns have a surprisingly high population density similar to many mid-sized cities, but also were the larger victims of depopulation and industrial decline. They have a much more Democratic voting history, voting for Obama in 2012 by almost 29 percentage points, not voting Republican until 2024 when Trump won “Valley Towns” by a mere 0.57 percent. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/517d6d4e-6411-47d4-a2c9-6c1ce1e7a232/Screen+Shot+2026-02-11+at+9.19.27+PM.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley By contrast, the area outside of the valley is much more rural, home to only a couple small towns such as Clarks Summit, Dallas, and Moscow, along with the city of Hazleton. Being less industrial and mining based, the area outside the physical valley was much less ancestrally democratic–voting for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by 10.22 percent in 2012. Still, like the rest of the region, the area outside the valley got much redder with Trump’s emergence on the political stage, but to a lesser degree to the “valley towns” who swung 29.40 percent between 2012 and 2024 to the “outside the valley towns” who “only” swung 15.85 percent. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/3f1e781d-0f3d-4b7c-8353-b8e1d664f205/unnamed+%283%29.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley In general, the Wyoming Valley is not a very affluent area. The average household income of the region is $63,656 compared to the statewide average of $77,500 and only 25.98 percent hold a bachelor’s degree compared to 36.50 percent statewide. Still, the region does hold pockets of affluence. I defined affluent regions as municipalities where 40 percent or more of the adult population hold a bachelor’s degree which creates this map where orange shows “affluent” areas and the teal shows “non-affluent” areas. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/ce0875b1-56a4-4fa5-b216-c9b6a4c30053/Screen+Shot+2026-02-11+at+9.33.40+PM.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley In 2012, the region still held on to its democratic party loyalties, backing Obama by a healthy 13.05 percent margin. The cracks in the local democratic party hadn’t quite yet emerged as Obama won valley towns by margin often ranging from 20 to 40 percent, while still showing respectable showings in the non-valley rural areas of the region. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/7bb1935a-f1e3-4d7a-abcd-e02f0e00156f/Screen+Shot+2026-02-11+at+9.36.12+PM.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley This completely changed in 2016 with Donald Trump. Tapping into populist, anti-elite rhetoric–Trump railed against trade deals formerly supported by the republican party that among many other things, furthered the process of deindustrialization that devastated the region. He also dropped the republican party’s rhetorical focus on cutting welfare benefits which the region relies on more prominently than the rest of the state–in effect moving the republican party (again rhetorically) leftwards closer to the median voter in the Wyoming Valley, while also playing into their anti-elite, socially conservative leanings. Like in many other rustbelt regions, Trump destroyed the democratic lead in the region, flipping it republican by 11.99 percent (a whopping 25.04 percent swing). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/15515b41-d731-4403-a00b-a85c6435a4a2/Screen+Shot+2026-02-11+at+9.36.52+PM.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley Born in Green Ridge, a northern neighborhood of Scranton, Joe Biden provided temporary relief for democrats in the region. He improved democratic margins across the region, from rural to urban areas alike–in the end cutting Trump’s 10.99 percent margin of victory down to 6.23 percent. A common question for political scientists is do politicians nowadays (years ago they certainly did) still receive a hometown advantage (that is, do they perform better electorally in their home regions)? It is difficult to say for certain due to the amount of confounding variables involved in how people vote–but the fact that Biden improved democrat’s margins by 4.76 percent in a state where he improved the margin for democrats by only 1.88 percent suggests that may be so–especially when considering the demographic profile of the region doesn’t fit the typical demographic profile of areas that swung heavily toward Biden in 2020 (that is affluent). Indeed we do see a divide in swings between the affluent and nonaffluent areas of the region, with the affluent regions swinging 9.21 percent toward democrats between 2016 and 2020 while the nonaffluent regions only swung 4.43 percent toward democrats in the same timeframe. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/76aaa7f0-92ac-43b2-9609-bc10a098b951/Screen+Shot+2026-02-11+at+9.37.36+PM.png Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley 2024 was not a good year for democrats and that was especially true in the Wyoming Valley. Hit especially hard by inflation (both by nature in it being a poorer region and statistically facing higher than average rates of inflation), the region swung heavily back toward Trump, leading to his widest overall margin of victory of 11.23 percent. Similar to Biden’s swing from 2016-2020, Trump’s swing was remarkably uniform across the region–still some patterns emerged where he improved more in non-white and poorer areas similar to the national trend. Interestingly, 2024 also saw the defeat of (most) of the region’s democratic congressman Matthew Cartwrtight who lost to Rob Bresnahan by less than two percent despite Kamala Harris losing the district by around ten percent. This perhaps put a symbolic nail in the coffin of the Wyoming Valley democratis–or perhaps not–who knows? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/b3331616-4a9c-4b38-9c1d-01576e3b6c4a/Scranton_AfterDark0155AccessAerial_edited_58a129a7-aa67-4896-97af-0a93cb04d496.jpg Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/64457a93-e67f-4fc8-8c0d-a73b8a26fb5a/30420094017_d2c5ea7aeb_b.jpg Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/7f720897-37b9-4da4-ab69-1e3646d3021d/476092630_551122234599818_3519853428015497344_n.jpg Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/0eb64f94-507b-4b42-8169-72ee454c4f09/DN-TTD-LAC-WaverlyCommunity-01.jpg Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/c7dbd7fd-c4a0-4219-bf41-9381f7881d78/DN-HERO-HazletonFunfest-01.jpg Articles - How Coal Country Went Conservative: An electoral analysis of the Wyoming Valley - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://adamparanich.com/home daily 1.0 2026-04-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/f2cd8daa-c128-4e13-b4a6-c50294fdbce6/ChatGPT+Image+Feb+11%2C+2026%2C+10_12_44+AM.png https://adamparanich.com/about daily 0.75 2026-02-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/698c237aa3c0b32b976ff050/12d3f2ea-bb90-4af4-b714-038bae442e80/FunnyProfPhoto.png https://adamparanich.com/maps daily 0.75 2026-04-14