2012 New York 11th District - Grimm vs. Murphy

New York's 11th Congressional District (formerly the 13th) is based in Staten Island, which casts about two-thirds of the district's vote. Staten Island is the most reliably Republican borough in New York. Although there are Democratic strongholds along the North Shore of the island, even in the bad GOP year of 2008, John McCain managed to carry the borough by 52 percent to 48 percent. The remainder of the district is part of the Democratic gerrymander of southwest Brooklyn that survived a court-drawn re-mapping fairly intact. (Southwest Brooklyn could produce a reasonably compact district that would have given John McCain about 60 percent of the vote.) Most of Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Gravesend are in the 13th's boundaries, and gave Obama a modest 51-48 edge.

Michael McMahon captured the district after the Staten Island Republican Party suffered a series of setbacks in 2008. Rep. Vito Fossella was embroiled in a DUI/adultery scandal, and the GOP nominated a weak candidate to replace him. McMahon won with nearly two-thirds of the vote.  But he was upended by Michael Grimm in 2010.

Grimm has had his share of bad publicity this cycle, and has drawn a decent challenger in Mark Murphy, the son of a former congressman (who represented Staten Island in Congress). But Murphy has struggled to gain traction, and for now, Grimm has the upper hand.