Patrick, you’re correct that NY-1, my native congressional district, which was a Republican pickup in this year’s election, is closely balanced between the parties, but in idiosyncratic ways (partly because its geography, at the end of a long, narrow island, makes it difficult to gerrymander).

Back in 1968, Suffolk County, which was then more or less coterminous with the district, gave Richard Nixon the largest plurality of any county in the United States, even as it was electing Democratic representative Otis Pike to the fifth of what would be nine consecutive terms. (The affection seems to have cooled, because when Nixon’s grandson ran for Congress from NY-1 in 2010, he finished third in the Republican primary.)

Tim Bishop, the district’s departing congressman, won the seat in 2002 by ousting Felix Grucci Jr., scion of the famous fireworks firm (to whose family home I once delivered Newsday). There ensued a few moderately close elections for Bishop, including (in 2008) against Lee Zeldin, the man who defeated him this year. Then, in the Republican wave of 2010, Bishop barely withstood (by a few hundred votes) a tough challenge from investment banker Randy Altschuler, who self-financed to the tune of $2 million. In 2012 Bishop beat Altschuler again, and he was starting to look like one of those comic-book villains that you can never actually kill, until this year’s wave proved too strong to withstand.

Still, the district has a history of alternating parties, including one congressman who changed his affiliation in the middle of a term. So the next time there’s an anti-GOP trend, NY-1 will be a good bet to switch once again.