Jonathan Rodden and Jowei Chen argue that Democrats are underrepresented in Congress and state legislatures because they tend to live in high-density areas. Geographically-compact districting plans will tend to pack Democratic voters into districts where they have 80% of the vote or whatever, thus wasting their votes. They do a voter- and precinct-level analysis of recent elections and find:
In contemporary Florida, partisans are arranged in geographic space in such a way that virtually any districting scheme favoring contiguity and compactness will generate substantial electoral bias in favor of the Republican Party. This result is driven largely by the partisan asymmetry in voters' residential patterns: Since the realignment of the party system, Democrats have tended to live in dense, homogeneous neighborhoods that aggregate into landslide Democratic districts, while Republicans live in more sparsely populated neighborhoods that aggregate into geographically larger and more politically heterogeneous districts. This phenomenon appears to substantially explain the pro-Republican bias observed in Florida's recent legislative elections.
I have just a few things to add to their analysis:
1. More fundamentally, I guess this might be considered a pro-rural or pro-suburban bias, or an anti-urban bias which would fundamentally alter the representation of different parts of the state, no matter which parties happen to represent them.
2. If more Democrats tend to win in super-safe districts where they get 70% or 80% of the vote, does this imply that they will be more free in their voting patterns to indulge their personal preferences, compared to Republicans who (on average) might be under more electoral pressure and have to worry more about reelection?
3. Maybe multimember districts would be a way to balance the playing field. Is this a proposal that Democrats in Florida (or elsewhere) should be making?
Further discussion here.
100 comments
Multi-member districts are a great idea, but they violate the Voting Rights Act. The VRA is also the reason for Democrats' 80-90% wins in inner-city districts, because these districts were designed to hold black majorities. The result one district that is very heavy in minorities surrounded by suburban districts with all the people of color gerrymandered out.
I understand what Rodden and Chen are getting at, but Andrew's addenda don't make sense to me - or, rather, his first point doesn't. "Geographically compact districting plans" don't result in rural or suburban bias, because they allot more representatives in high-density, compact urban areas. Rodden and Chen point out that Democrats are overcompetitive in these areas, preventing them from maximizing their voting potential, but I don't think that engenders "rural bias" in legislatures.
In Colorado, which only has one major metropolitan area, rural legislators from both parties still have to work fairly hard to get their agenda items to the floor.
Andrew is not quite correct about 1, though he is right to look for the fundamentals. Urban v rural is not a general predictor of vote homogeneity. Here is an example.
In the United Kingdom, the homogeneity of support is reversed compared to the United States. The Conservative Party has solid support in a bloc of southern rural constituencies, where as they say, they "weigh the votes" for the Tories rather than count them. Of course, beyond a certain point, these extra votes are wasted. In contrast, the Labour Party's strongholds are in urban areas, but they don't tend to have the same magnitude of wasted majorities in safe seats.
So Conservative seats are more homogenous; Labour seats are more heterogenous. If you plot ordered percentage support for the parties, the Tory plot is a 30-degree line, but the Labour plot is more like a hockey stick. This is a major factor in the partisan bias of the British electoral system; the Conservatives can have a 4-point lead over Labour and still win fewer seats in the House of Commons, because lots of those 4 extra points will stack in a wasteful safe seat.
P.S. Of course, by "fundamentally", I assume Andrew is referring to some kind of universal characteristic about cities/rural areas, rather than solely in the American context. I am sure that an rural v urban divide in a new party system in the United States would produce the same bias against the urban party. I'm just noting that urban relative homogeneity is not an inherent characteristic of cities around the world.
I would have thought that the whole point of using criteria like contiguity and compactness is to avoid the ludicrous, surreal, unwieldy results of gerrymandering with a preferred Rep-Dem balance in mind (even a so-called balanced playing field). Why should the efficient use of the party faithful, or inconvenience to one or both major parties, be of any great concern?
Edward,
I'm under the impression that British Legislative districts are not perfectly compact, which is what the paper simulations prefer to.
The point of the paper is to say that if we stop gerrymandering and have perfectly compact systems, then there will be a persistent anti-urban bias, around 9 points in the Florida example, unless you have an absolutely absurd number of seats (With 100,000 districts, the pro-rural bias drops to around +2...). (An alternative, is an absurdly small number of seats. After all, if you have 1 seat you won't ever see the minority part take power...)
Mathematically, you could say that the "Districts should be simple and compact" constraint conflicts fundamentally with the "The proportion of representatives elected should be roughly the same as the proportion of votes each party receives" constraint, as a non-trivial consequence of Tobler's law.
The solution of course, is legislative districts that are not compact (ie, gerrymandered). That is the status-quo, and the reason why as of now, the House of Representatives actually has a bias toward democrats (Democrats have 60% of the seats but won 56.7% of the votes).
I agree with Quixote. Districts are Gerrymanded for the safety of the politicians so they can avoid the actual policy preferences and quirks of the populace. Pretty much by definition, if Gerrymanded districts are safe (designed with a super abundance of one particular type of voter), then non-Gerrymanded districts will be unsafe and better represent the comparatively non-polar nature of the actual American voter.
Unsafe districts reward political parties that appear to have done a good job. Look at California, very little change in Congressional composition even in years where the Republican brand was tarnished. All because of a corrupt bargain redistricting process.
I've often thought that redistricting, should be done by a standard computer algorithm that was enshrined in the state constitution.
Although district "packing" got a lot of headlines in TX during DeLay's redistricting 5 or 6 years ago, overall the Dems have themselves to blame just as much. Way too many representatives wanted that secure, guaranteed margin that such district drawing provided.
Let's see a mandated districting that divides a state into population centered, instead of geographical centered, districts. Ie: If a state had 10 reps, the state is divided into 10 districts with the centers of population the determining factor and the geographical "radius" from that center being as consistant as possible.
No more gerrymandering!
I'm with PoliticalWiz on this one.
Gerrymandering is inherently unfair; the borders are always drawn to favor the party that gets to draw them. This is purposely diminishing equal representation in the voting booth, and to me that seems un-Constitutional.
Here in Texas, some boundaries seem purposely drawn to exclude the influence of Hispanics or ghetto-ize Hispanics to this same overwhelming majority in one House district; in essence doing exactly what this article claims compact districts would do: Make 80% of the vote Hispanic so 30% of it is removed from districts that "matter" to Republicans.
Districts should be drawn as compactly as possible without splitting any existing neighborhoods; divided only on main streets (four lanes or better) and other unpopulated boundaries of equivalent size; such as rivers, streams and lakes or public land boundaries.
Let the chips fall where they may; I am a Democrat and if this hurts us, so be it. Fair is fair.
Result: Dem districts are either VERY liberal or on the moderate side. So in spite of a supposed rift among Repubs, you get a much greater rift among Dems. Heck, a vast number of House members are closer ideologically to Repubs than to their very liberal leaders.
So, it does hurt Dems in governing, but given the Congressional Black Caucus would cease to exist if this was changed, I doubt it will.
Andrew: If more Democrats tend to win in super-safe districts where they get 70% or 80% of the vote, does this imply that they will be more free in their voting patterns to indulge their personal preferences, compared to Republicans who (on average) might be under more electoral pressure and have to worry more about reelection?
Brian: Result: Dem districts are either VERY liberal or on the moderate side. So in spite of a supposed rift among Repubs, you get a much greater rift among Dems. Heck, a vast number of House members are closer ideologically to Repubs than to their very liberal leaders.
This is why there is a civil war in Congress between Obama and the hard left Dem leadership and the Blue Dogs over Obamacare and Cap & Tax. It is also why the Dem leadership is either oblivious to or are willing to sacrifice the seats of the Blue Dogs to pursue Obamacare. No wave election will ever put the left leadeership's seats in danger.
The concentration of the Dem urban party into nearly homogeneous districts also goes a long way toward explaining their cluelessness and fears about how the rest of the country thinks. Their family, friends and co-workers are all Dems or RINOs. They only consume content put out by the urban Dem media. Thus, the majority of America outside of their Dem enclaves becomes "the Other" and the enemy. The Other must be stupid or evil because no one they know in the Dem enclaves thinks like that. See the Newsweek cover this week savaging Palin.
This isolation is also the inherent weakness of the modern Dems as a national party. The Dem urban left is a nartional minority, but a party majority. In order for the Dems to take a national majority, they must run as center right. However, when the the Dems take power, their left urban base in control of the party governs from the left and alienates the rest of the nation. See 1993 and 2009. Clinton grew up in Arkansas, had a clue, adroitly ran as far away from the urban left base as he could and won reelection. See Triangulation. On the other hand, Obama is a leader of the urban left and like is voters has no real clue about how the rest of the country thinks. He considers the rest of America to be "bitter clingers" How then does Obama possibly win reelection running openly on a left governing record in a center right country?
People should take the current demographic trends in the U.S. and carry them out till 2050. By that times more than half of the House seats in Congress will be safe seats for Democrats where black, Hispanic, and Asian voters who automatically vote for Democrats.
How will the U.S. House work when it is dominated by liberal Democrats in ultra-safe seats. Why would any moderate or conservative want to be involved in politics when the black, Hispanic, and Asian voting for ultra-liberals are the only relevant political force?
How will the U.S. House work when it is dominated by liberal Democrats in ultra-safe seats. Why would any moderate or conservative want to be involved in politics when the black, Hispanic, and Asian voting for ultra-liberals are the only relevant political force?
By 2050 a good number of the people you know will be dead. The political lines will be redrawn, at least once. The world will be different. There will be different arguments. What constitutes a "conservative" or "liberal" or "ultra-liberal" will be something different, if the terms are even still used.
Sure some Rip Van Winkle from today dropped straight into the world of 40 years from now would be confused as hell. But look back 40-45 years and see the changes...and that's been tame to what could be ahead.
Superdestroyer:
Hispanics and Asians are hardly locks for the Dems. So long as they continue to assimilate, Hispanic and Asian suburban middle class and small to medium business owners will vote conservative like other races. The only race the Dems have locked are African Americans.
sprinkleofcocoa: California attempted, by referendum (of course) to impose such an algorithm-defined redistricting plan for state offices almost 20 years ago. As I recall, it set up a series of criteria, of which the common ones mentioned here played a prominent role, and invited the citizenry to submit maps that maximized the goals. There were a dozen pages of restrictions (Census-district xxxxx through xxxxx must be part of the same district) that were surely there to protect some incumbents, but it would have certainly changed things dramatically.
It failed, of course. It was a bit unwieldy and unpredictable (nobody likes unpredictability in an initiative)
But, too, as I graphics programmer I realize that there are an infinite number of ways to make "artistic" decisions in the design of a complex algorithm. The premise that a redistricting plan flows from some objective procedure absolutely doesn't imply that it is fair, just that it is repeatable.
I don't think that repeatability is worth it.
[Ok, and California would do a lot better as five different states!]
Nice "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" item. Folks it's all about keeping a reliable party vote in office, forever. For those with a short historical perspective, "Gerrymander" comes from one of the first legislative redistrictings, wherein a district was drawn to "protect" an incumbent named Gerry. A lot of urban districts were in fact, drawn specifically to achieve and keep safe Democratic seats. Ideally, congressional and state legislative districts should be drawn to reflect population and follow the lines of existing local polities only. Ain't gonna happen under a partisan political system. And hasn't since 1790.
David: I don't understand your point. Historic boundaries are indeed more important than compactness in the UK. But on the other hand, the UK doesn't have gerrymandering that would affect the partisan balance. So compactness doesn't matter to my argument.
My point is that a bias against homogeneity in a plurality system doesn't always favour the rural party. I can't explain why broadly similar systems produce a different urban-rural split. Perhaps adding explicit socialism and welfare state support to the list of political cleavages polarises urban residents more between rich and poor and unites rural residents, who broadly speaking are wealthy if they live in the South of England.
"Hispanics and Asians are hardly locks for the Dems."
I certainly concur wrt the Asians, Bart, but the current trajectory of the Republicans is anathema to Hispanics. Sure, Hispanics and Republicans share homophobia and a dislike of African Americans, but the virulent vitriol spewed by the hard right toward illegal aliens is taken rather personally by most Hispanics. It's not pleasant to be presumed guilty until proven innocent.
If you have the votes to gerrymander a state's delegation: there's an inverse relation between the number of seats you can win, and the safety of those seats. Obvious but not always noted in the reporting on redistricting.
The science of gerrymandering is probably already far more sophisticated (a la Moneyball) than the punditry commenting on it, and will only get more finely-grained as the technology improves. Moreover, it seems likely that all of the brainpower will be, like with Enron versus the regulators, serving narrow partisan interests, and the "good government" types will always be three steps behind them.
The argument also doesn't make sense in Upstate New York. Back after the 2000 census, upstate districts were redrawn by the GOP dominated legislature so as to heavily pack the Dems in very oddly shaped urban districts (like Louise Slaughter's NY-28 which links Rochester and Buffalo with a one-township strip along Lake Ontario) while the Republicans were given geographically large safe rural districts, like Amo Houghton's NY-29. Now, nearly a decade later all of those "safe" Republican districts have been lost to the Dems except one (Chris Lee's NY-26, and that has been hellaciously close to going over). The Republicans anticipated that the status quo would remain and did not predict the general backlash against the party in the region because of their anti-conservative big-government policies. They redistricted in an attempt to maintain their majority and because of the way they redistricted they left themselves vulnerable to a general loss of support...which is precisely what happened.
Bart-nice observations. I too suspect Hispanics will become Republicans as they assimilate. They are very religious-so are already socially conservative. Once they become richer and start becoming net taxpayers-they'll change. I imagine most immigrant groups start off poor and Democratic. I think people focus on changing demographics (ie race) rather than wealth/religion...which is more an indicator.
As for blacks, yep no hope.
Maybe this would be a good time to think about some form of proportional representation in the House of Representatives.
There is nothing in our Constitution that says Congressional districts must all be single member districts, so it wouldn't take a Constitutional amendment to make this change -- just a state law.
Let's take Florida as an example: It has 25 representatives. What if we divide the state up into 13 Congressional districts and the other 12 as proportional representative districts?
One of the results would be more even districting. The extremely small urban districts (which tend to be the most gerrymandered) would be a bit bigger and be more representative of the urban area as a whole. The extensive gerrymandering between the 23, 22, and 19th districts would be harder to employ. Bigger districts make it harder to pick off small areas to grab a few voters here and there.
Another would be a reduction of the advantage of gerrymandering. Let's assume that the two parties in Florida (called Party A and Party B) have equal voter bases, but due to extreme gerrymandering, Party A gets 20 districts while Party B only gets 5. Keeping the same ratio of districts, Party A would win 10 districts while Party B would win 3. However, both parties would win six proportional representatives making the actual representation to be 16 representatives for Party A and 9 representatives for Party B. Plus, it would be much easier for Party B to challenge the gerrymandering since it could easily show that the gerrymandering is so extensive that the government does not represent the voters of the state.
I'd like to see it employed at the state government level. Right now in many states, both the Senate and the House pretty much reflect each other. Both house tend to trend to the same party. In New Jersey, they actually have the same districts (22 districts with one Senator and two Representatives chosen from the same district). Where they don't reflect the same party leadership, it's usually due to decrepit political situation where extensive gerrymandering has kept each party in a particular house despite the political will of the state. (New York is a perfect example. Heavily Democratic state, but the Senate remained in Republican hands for years).
Since the State Senates and the local Houses no longer reflect any meaningful distinction, why not make one of the house elected by proportional representation? Even better, give the power to set the representative districts in the house that elects representatives by district to the house that elects its members by proportional representation? There would still be gerrymandering, but the gerrymandering will at least be skewed towards the majority. Even better, overly ambitious gerrymandering would be easily overturned by the court since it is obvious that the districts do not represent the overall voter in the state.
I’m must be missing something.
If Democratic districts are heavily Democratic (80% as claimed in the article) and Republican districts are more heterogeneous, then the GOP districts are more likely to be upset by gentle movements that sweep across politics.
A district that is 80% Dem and one that is 50-49% GOP will tend, in a GOP wave election, to remain as they are—split between the parties. However in a Dem wave that moves the electorate say 4%, both will end up Democratic, no?
So how are the more heterogeneous GOP districts a bonus for the GOP?
Dwight,
The blacks in Congress are every similar to Barbara Jordan who was elected in 1972 or even Charlie Rangel who was first elected in 1970. The politics of the Congressional Black Caucus has not changed in over 30 years.
Also, the CBC is about the only group in Congress that is more liberal than the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The idea that Hispanics will become more conseravtive as the entire country moves to the left is laughable. Hispanic politicians would be fools to stop fighting for more entitlement spending aimed at Hispanics.
There is currently no Republican Congressman East of the Hudson and there will soon be no Repubican Congressmen left in New York, New Jersey, or PA. The Republican Party is irrelevant north of Virginia and will eventually become irrelevant in Virginia and North Carolina.
Why would anyone interested in politics want to get involved in the Republican Party when it will soon be irrelevant. A better question is whether any Green Party to the left of the Democrats will be better at attracting non-whites than the Republicans have been.
Bart is being hypocritical. He criticizes Democrats for having an us vs. them mentality: "Thus, the majority of America outside of their Dem enclaves becomes 'the Other' and the enemy. The Other must be stupid or evil because no one they know in the Dem enclaves thinks like that." Right after that, he indulges his own demonizing of the side that refuses to think the way he does: he tells Dems to run "as far away from the urban left base" as they can. He tries to force the so-called urban-left into his own Other: they're the socialists out to destroy the country. Let's see him stop trying to caricature dem voters into his one-dimensional evil strawman before he tries to cast such a beam out from Dems.
And now Clinton ran from the left base? I sure never heard that during his administration: Republicans never stopped branding him a liberal or a socialist. Just being a Democrat will get you that branding. It's useless for Obama to adjust his governing style, as no matter how he governs the Republicans will call him socialist anyway.
@Pragmatus - If you read my earlier post, I mentioned that that is precisely what happened in Upstate New York. The GOP-dominated Assembly packed the urban upstate Dems into bizarre, gerrymandered districts while they had a majority of other districts with decent, but not overwhelming majorities for the Republicans. That strategy backfired on them when there was a general loss of support for the Republicans starting in 2006. Now what used to be one of the GOP's core areas has a congressional representation that is entirely filled by Dems save for one seat (my own district, NY-26).
The Republicans would be better served examining not better means of gerrymandering but by addressing the issues that caused the limited-government conservatives in upstate to bolt in the first place.
@Superdestroyer
That is why political lines will get redrawn. You assume a static GOP. You assume one that even remotely listens to or talks about "Real America" as, roughly, any District where the popultion is 20/sq. mile or lower.
Pragmatus:
Yes, more Republican seats are lost by a nation-wide political shift to the left than democrats lose in a similar-sized shift to the right, but the point is that all of the seats they would lose were ones that they shouldn't have had in the first place, meaning they are constantly advantaged, even when the public sways against them. Go here and scroll down until you see the green graph:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/10/generic-congressional-ballot-400-days.html
Notice how the area on the area on the left is actually larger than the area on the right? In order for Democrats to actually hold a number of seats proportional to the population they represent, there would have to be a three percent shift in national politics toward them. But here's the thing: if there were a three percent shift toward them, then they would still be 3% behind their rightful representation.
Silent Cal is correct, multi-member districts have been forbidden by law since 1967.
One note about these papers: you polisci people really need to learn how to use LaTeX.
It's true that in the current political climate, more Democratic votes tend to be "wasted" in excessively safe seats, and that unconstrained district-drawing could reduce that bias. That's because Democratic areas often deliver Dem votes above 70%, above 80%, even above 90%, while the typical Republican district may be only 60% Republican, and very few are above 70%. (I'm drawing on my knowledge of Michigan, which is probably typical of industrial states outside the South.)
But under these same conditions, there's a pro-Dem bias, in that our districts tend to have fewer votes cast than Republican districts do. In Michigan, seats in the State House had an average of 45,000 votes cast last year, but seats won by Republicans averaged 50,0000, while Dem seats were just above 40,000.
These two effects don't exactly balance one another, but they do create an complicated situation, where it's not entirely clear which party receives a net benefit. In the early years of this decade, it seemed obvious the Republicans were so favored that it gave them a lock on the majority, as long as they took at least 48% of the two-party vote statewide.
But with the collapse of Republican margins in upper middle class suburbs, the Dems find themselves with a 67-43 majority in the lower house based on winning 55% of the statewide vote, and things no longer seem so obvious.
Come on now. If a district is 80-20 for the Democratic Party and 20% fewer people decide to turn out because it's a foregone conclusion (especially since incumbants often run uncontested in such races), that in no way should diminish how much the people in that district count. It's precisely this reason why presidential vote numbers are used in these analyses rather than congressional vote numbers.
A good book about redistricting, voting, and systems of representation is "Fixing Elections" by Steven Hill (2002).
In his book, he writes about proportional representation, gerrymandering, and the "median voter". He wrote about how Illinois had multi-member state legislative districts until 1980, and how that lessens the number of "orphaned voters (i.e. urban conservatives, rural liberals)" by electing those types of people and getting a more diverse set of viewpoints in a state legislature. It also forges coalitions across party lines.
About New York, my home state: Both the State Senate and State Assembly have taken full advantage of the 5%-deviation rule which, unlike U.S. House districts within a state, allows for a 5% deviation from the mean district's population. Upstate (Republican) State Senate districts are purposely underpopulated by nearly 5% while some (Democratic) New York City districts are purposely overpopulated to slightly overrepresent the Republicans in the State Senate.
This is why back in 2002 the Republicans added a 62nd State Senate district (in New York City), to lower the mean district population and make the 5% limit easier to attain for the state's shrinking upstate population and uncumbent GOP Senators. Under a 61-member map, an upstate district would have been lost to New York City.
But one of the consequences to this addition was the tied Senate chamber and the gridlock which resulted earlier this year, something which would have been avoided had the Senate remained at 61 members.
The Assembly districts do just the opposite, but with more than a 2:1 majority of Democrats, control of that chamber is not contested. Doesn't make it right, of course.
Here on Long Island, the GOP had for years had a 9-0 lock on the State Senate but now it is 7-2, still lopsided when you compare the representation at other levels (State Assembly, U.S. House, county legislatures), all of which are more evenly divided or Dem-leaning. Heavily concentrated areas of Democrats are sliced up and diluted into separate Senate districts, something which would get reversed if the Dems control redistricting in 2011.
Pragmatus said...
I’m must be missing something. If Democratic districts are heavily Democratic (80% as claimed in the article) and Republican districts are more heterogeneous, then the GOP districts are more likely to be upset by gentle movements that sweep across politics.
A district that is 80% Dem and one that is 50-49% GOP will tend, in a GOP wave election, to remain as they are—split between the parties. However in a Dem wave that moves the electorate say 4%, both will end up Democratic, no?
So how are the more heterogeneous GOP districts a bonus for the GOP?
You raise good points.
It would be more accurate to state that the concentration of the urban left minority in comparatively few districts and spreading the center right majority over all the other districts grants conservatives rather than the GOP a distinct advantage because conservatives can leverage their roughly 40% plurality into a near majority and then only need a 2-6% percent of the centrists to govern.
However, as you pointed out, this situation also places the GOP in a precarious position because they have comparatively few defensible districts dominated by their partisans. If the GOP governs left and the conservatives stay home or vote for center right Dems, the GOP can and did lose dozens of seats under "gentle movements that sweep across politics" like those in 2006 and 2008. While the GOP can exploit the center right district leverage by governing right, the party enjoys far less margin of error in diverging from the wishes of their constituents than do the Dems.
@Piddlesworth: "Come on now. If a district is 80-20 for the Democratic Party and 20% fewer people decide to turn out because it's a foregone conclusion (especially since incumbants often run uncontested in such races), that in no way should diminish how much the people in that district count...."
I was referring to the total number of voters who turned out, not the number of votes cast in State House races.
Mark Grebner said...
But with the collapse of Republican margins in upper middle class suburbs, the Dems find themselves with a 67-43 majority in the lower house based on winning 55% of the statewide vote, and things no longer seem so obvious.
That is likely more to do with being an artifact of first-past-the-post, especially with effectively only 2 parties. If the districts were even more homogenous you are likely to see even higher swings.
"That is likely more to do with being an artifact of first-past-the-post, especially with effectively only 2 parties"
No, it has nothing to do with first past the post. In fact, in two person races, all democratic voting systems give the same result.
The reason you have such a situation is because of districting, where a small majority in many individual districts can translate into a large majority in the legislature.
This is why people recommend proportional representation systems.
wv:weed imp
Mark Grebner:
My point was that the state-wide vote total over many different local elections is not a valid way of measuring the electorate. To be more accurate you would have to average the vote shares of each district (preferably weighted by the actual populations of the districts), otherwise you are effectively saying that people should be considered as not existing simply because they choose to not show up to the polls for a particular election. If half the state goes 60% for Republicans with 40% of eligible voters voting and the other half goes 90% for Democrats with 20% of eligible voters voting, the populace of the state is really 65% Democrats even though they only got 57% of the total vote.
shma:
That's exactly what he was saying, that if all of the districts were drawn to be perfectly homogeneous, then they all would've gone 55% for the Democratic Party, resulting in 100% Democratic representatives, i.e. an even bigger swing. This is something that can't happen in proportional representation, and thus is a product of winner-takes-all elections, in this case first-past-the-post.
Edward Gaffney,
My point was that the paper's claim is that the presence of compact districts implies that the urban party will be under-represented. That's all the paper and Gelman claim.
So in legislatures that do not have compact districts, like England, there's no reason to believe that the urban party would be under-represented.
To everyone else,
It seems that a lot of people here didn't understand the paper. Gelman's point is that if you make the intuitive requirement that all of your districts are "compact", that is to say, that they look roughly like circles or squares, then you ensure a very large republican bias.
That is to say, gerrymandering is necessary in order to have a representative legislature. Getting rid of "funny looking" twisted districts ensures that the urban party will be under-represented.
Shameless plug, but I explain more on my blog at http://stochasticdemocracy.blogspot.com/2009/11/gerrymandering-compactness-and-toblers.html
Who cares how "representative" house districts are when the senate is always there to suck any pretension of "representative democracy" out of the system?
American "democracy" is a farce.
Abolish the senate, add seats, elect an upper chamber with state-wide PR races, each state allocated seats by population.
Piddlesworth, you and Dwight don't seem to recognize the difference between a voting system designed to select a winner (first-past-the-post, IRV, Condorcet, Approval, etc) and a method for allocating the seats in a legislature like Proportional Representation or Districting. They are two different categories that you are mixing up.
You can abolish first-past-the-post while keeping house districts. And if you replaced first past the post with another voting system like Condorcet, while keeping the districts, you could still have a single party take 100% of the seats with a thin majority, or even a minority of the vote. It has nothing to do with the voting system and everything to do with the division of the electorate into districts, which, again, are two separate issues.
brian said...
As for blacks, yep no hope.
~~~~~~~~~~
An African/American was elected president in 2008, so more hope for African/Americans than at any time in the history of the Republic.
And that African/American nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the first highly qualified Hispanic woman to be nominated.
The Dems have a big tent ~ Reps, not so much.
but Reps do have angry, all-white, faux astro turf tea parties ...
To Minimize Opposition Representation...
If you can't win votes on the issues, gerrymandering lets you win seats instead. The more concentrated you can make a district, the less "proportional" representation it gets.
For example, if you can make a district is 90% Democratic, about 35% of the Democrats cast votes for a single Democratic Candidate X that are wasted; the candidate didn't need them to win. But in non-gerry mandered districts, those 35% of voters would have cast votes for some other Democratic Candidate Y, and therefore against a Republican candidate; endangering the Republican's seat while Democratic candidate X still gets elected handily.
That is how Republicans in Texas have gerrymandered the districts; so Republicans get elected by 5 point margins and Democrats get elected by 20+ point margins, and this has cost Democrats some of our seats in the House.
They have put Democrats in vote ghettos to reduce the net influence of our votes over representation; it is (or should be considered) a violation of our voting rights.
It doesn't make any difference which side is doing it, it should be as illegal as election fraud.
@shma
Excellent points.
Although a mixed member proportional system like Germany might work to keep districts representative but eliminate the usefulness of gerrymandering. Thus the districts could be aligned to determine the type of Representative who could be elected, but the overall makeup of the chamber would be separate from the sum of district races.
David: do you think that removing strict compactness means the results are no longer valid? I don't think so. If anything, the UK is a more pertinent example than the USA if we want to discuss compactness (see an old map here: http://www.election.demon.co.uk/redist95.gif). The rural homogeneity is striking, and anyone with even a casual knowledge of UK electoral geography could tell you that redistricting for compactness wouldn't affect the basic voter composition of urban and rural areas.
Sure, we could argue for a few minutes about what happens in the really incredibly narrow scenario envisaged by the paper of perfect computer-generated compactness, but it's clear that Andrew is also discussing the results of this paper in light of the actual congressional districts that prevail in the USA today. See his point 2. in particular, which is clearly relevant to the Democratic house leadership at the moment. If we only discussed academic papers as quantitative political theory, this would be a quantitative political theory blog.
(The point of the map being that the UK doesn't suffer from gerrymandering in the way that the USA does, because judges draw the boundaries.)
@shma
I wasn't comparing and contrasting first-past-the-post to other systems, it can happen in other systems, too. But it still stands that the more homogenous the stronger the tendancy to shift from 100% seats to 0% around 50% vote share. In practice it is very unlikely that you'd ever get 100% to 0%. Minor 3rd party candidates running is some Districts and not others and some candidates simply being more adept than their competition pretty much guarantee that. There is still a non-zero number of people that will vote for candidate over party. :) Even before the point at which one candidate is an indited/convicted criminal.
Gerrymandering can delay the innevitable but eventually that tipping point comes.
Jacob:
Yes, I should probably correct myself and say that PR is actually a class of methods for allocating seats in a legislature, and the property of proportional representation can be achieved in multiple ways, including the kind of mixed system that Germany uses (where some of the seats are chosen to represent districts and the rest are allocated in a way that achieves proportional representation overall).
Even Germany's system is not perfect, however, because they do not address the case of 'overhang' seats properly (if a party wins enough district seats so that its share of the legislature, from district seats only, is larger than its share of the vote, then the extra seats are called 'overhang')
@Dwight
As long as you recognize that the source of the problem is the use of districts themselves to fill up the legislature and not the specific system of determining the winner within the district.
"But it still stands that the more homogenous the stronger the tendancy to shift from 100% seats to 0% around 50% vote share....Gerrymandering can delay the inevitable but eventually that tipping point comes."
Well, gerrymandering combined with a polarized electorate works to minimize that kind of shift by creating many 'safe' districts that are indifferent to small swings in national voter sentiment. So instead of seeing a 100 point swing in a party's representation in the legislature as their share of the national vote passes through 50%, instead you'll see maybe a 10 or 15 point swing in the legislature from the same shift in the national vote. Of course, that's still enough to move control of the House over to the other party.
Democrats need districts of landslide proportions to win.
The political rule of thumb is if the other side has 20% or more of the vote then you must lsiten to them and represent them in order to win. Once the opposing side passes 20% elections can become unwinnable if you ignore them.
Dems dislike of anybody that doesn't mirror them in strict ideology means they must have districts of landslide proportions lest they disappear.
Democratic districts are drawn that way because Dems have a hard time when anything less than landslide numbers are on their side.
The basic rule of thumb in elections is if the people on the other side have 20% or more of the vote, you have to cater to them, listen to them and represent them if you expect to carry on election day. Since Dems do not like to listen to any ideas other than their own, they need foolproof, idiot proof districts lest they disappear.
vonwerder said...
Dems dislike of anybody that doesn't mirror them in strict ideology means they must have districts of landslide proportions lest they disappear.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dems controlled congress from 1954 to 1994 (40) years, before gerrymandering became a political scorched earth tactic and thru (2) Rep landslides, Nixon 1972 and Reagan 1984.
And after regaining congress in 2006 appear in good position to stay in control for another (40) years.
@vonwerder
Interesting thoughts--though it's odd that you give absolutely no evidence to support your bizarre conclusions.
Could that be because almost 70 Democratic Representatives were elected in districts with an R+ PVI? that figure is nearly 30% of their total caucus.
Contrast that with the 10 Republicans who come from D+ districts (about 7% of their caucus), only two of whom represent a district with a PVI of greater than D+5 (Castle and Cao).
Odd that the party that never listens to anyone else could be so dominant. Especially given the relatively even split between say progressives and moderates (i.e. DLC caucus) with quite a few outright conservatives.
But that couldn't compare to the Republicans' ability to listen to their districts right? They'll listen to anyone, be they from the right, the far right, or even the religious right (so long as you don't disagree with them on anything).
Or are you saying that this narrow group of interests to which Democrats pay attention accounts for at least 53% of voters?
@shma
Germany's system is certainly not perfect, although overhang seats would be easier to address if the PR segment of the Bundestag were based on national voteshare and not state voteshare.
There are a lot of good ideas we can glean by tinkering with the problems in existing systems.
Although there seems to be no reasonable way to fix the Senate beyond completely altering its structure.
Reps stayed in control of congress (12) years mainly because of the 9/11 effect, but (8) years of Rep control of the presidency negated the 9/11 hate, fear, misinformation effect quite nicely.
There are two potential different forms of misrepresentation in terms of the correlation of voters and representation.
The first is at the 50-50 level. We know that even in a 50-50 election, some districts will be solidly Republican and others will be solidly Democrat. The question is whether at 50-50, representation is even or not even. As a result of the last redistricting, for example, in a dead even election, the Republicans end up with a 40 seat majority in the House. This form of distortion is the bigger issue because it allows a minority to govern against the will of the majority.
The second form of misrepresentation is proportionality. Whether or not this is actually a problem is debatable. There are solid procedural reasons to allow a 7-8% majority to translate into a solid working majority. Having an exactly graduated scale where you have 4-5 districts that are even, 4-5 districts that are R+1, 4-5 districts that are D+1, etc. until you get to 4-5 districts that are D+50 and 4-5 districts that are R+50 is practically impossible.
Of course when dealing with Congress (as opposed to state legislatures), you have the added complexity that districts can't cross state lines and each state is its own redistricting authority.
Having done a little playing around with my own state and population projections, I think it is possible both to get districts that are in the 55% minority range to comply with the Votings Rights Act while bringing in enough Republican voters to lower the margin from D+30 to D+12, allowing a couple of currently R+10 suburban districts to become R+1 districts, but I suspect that Republican legislators would not go along with this.
shiloh,
You misunderstood what Brian was meaning. There is no hope that blacks would ever vote for any political party other than the Democratic Party. Most blacks alive today have probably never voted for a Republican in their life.
The real question for blacks is how will the U.S. maintain or increase its level of entitlement spending with the changing demographics of the U.S. Just like suburban public schools are perform well but inner city schools organized the same way are failures, then how can the a U.S that is more than 50% black and Hispanic produce the economic output that will be required to provide the government services that liberal black voters demand.
vonwerder:
Can you please explain your ideas more clearly? It would seem that all anyone needs is 50%+1, regardless of which political party backs them.
And are you claiming that, of the 59.3% of house members in the Democratic Party, each of their constituencies are made of at least 80% people who agree completely with the platform of the Democratic Party? If that's the case, then right there you have 47.4% of populace agreeing with absolutely everything they want to do. If for each issue you were to throw in the people that agreed with the Democratic Party on that issue but not on some of the others, then you'd easily be over 50% of the country. You should write the conservatives in the senate, I think they would be very interested to know that they are violating the will of the people.
Superdestroyer said...
shiloh,
You misunderstood what Brian was meaning.
~~~~~~~~~~
No, I understood as my post was part sarcasm. What you say is partially true, but Reps picking a token African/American, Steele, as RNC chairman and having a convention last year almost totally void of color and being the prime backer/sponsor of the faux/staged hate/anger spiced w/racism tea parties indicates, yea, Reps have totally given up on African/Africans as a group ...
As Brian indicates, African/Americans, are obviously too stupid to ever accept the political ideology of the Rep party. So why bother.
As the Marines will tell you, there's no % in quitting ie fairness and equality count for a lot as it helped get Obama nominated as the Dem nominee for president and elected by a majority of the American voters as president ...
As Americans, in general, have not given up on the contributions African/Americans can make to their country only the Rep party has given up on winning over minorities to their party.
and speaking of quitters, palin's chances of winning any political election in the future is pretty much zero. Yes, even Reps don't like quitters, I digress.
"There is nothing in our Constitution that says Congressional districts must all be single member districts, so it wouldn't take a Constitutional amendment to make this change -- just a state law."
That's wrong - nothing in the constitution requires single-member districts, but a federal statute does. It would take federal legislation to permit multi-member districts before any state could do it.
Amazing, all Repub minorities are supposedly dumb/tokens. All Dem ones are brilliant. Clarence Thomas/Steele/Rice/Gonzales....retards,right?
And yes, as long as blacks lag behind in education/income level they will be loyal Dem voters waiting for their govt crumbs.
Brian said...
"Amazing, all Repub minorities are supposedly dumb/tokens. All Dem ones are brilliant. Clarence Thomas/Steele/Rice/Gonzales....retards,right?"
Mm-hmm, and how many of them were elected? There are a total of 4 minority Republicans in Congress compared with 78 Democrats. Not to mention 3 governors and the President. And non-white voters should trust the party that will nominate almost entirely white candidates because of a few appointments?
For the record, you did list two dumb/token individuals on your four-person list, so that doesn't say much for Republican appointments either.
But what's really patronizing is the notion that a person could only want a good government that is responsive to the interest of its citizens because they're waiting for "gov't crumbs." Good luck winning over non-white voters with that attitude.
Yes, districts drawn to be relatively straightforward or organic with relation to geography and gross population will not necessarily match up with districts drawn to more evenly distribute anticipated votes for particular artificial and simplistic political factions (GOP vs Dem, con vs lib, or whatever).
That doesn't strike me as an imbalanced playing field; rather, it is a team having an advantage as a result of the players it signs and the formation in which they arrange themselves. An unfair playing field is the gerrymandered one in which the lines are constantly redrawn with an eye toward facilitating a particular outcome or scoreline (particularly when the game includes many people who aren't on either of the teams that get to draw the lines).
So this doesn't seem like anything that needs fixing, as far as I'm concerned. But to the extent that compact and contiguous districts are undesirable, or that proportional major-party distribution is a desirable result for some reason, why not just eliminate physical districts altogether and assign voters at random to virtual districts?
I always wondered why they got rid of the At-Large seats for the larger states. Even though the census divies out seats to states by population, by making them all single seat districts they are focused on the political party that dominates that small geographical area.
Wouldn't it be better to have at least one seat per state that represents the interests of everyone and not a tiny constiuency?
@Hikemasters
That's a good point, but large states (especially those that are growing rapidly) are underrepresented as it is. Plus average district size is nearing 700K people. So moving Reps into at-large districts will in some ways limit constituent services even further.
Unless of course they took the long-overdue approach of increasing the size of the House.
brian said...
~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, the Rep argument has and always will be: The 5% of African/American voters who voted for McCain are very intelligent and more politically astute than the 95% who voted for Obama.
So your faux generality As for blacks, yep no hope. doesn't hold true. Obviously there is hope, unless Reps give up on minorities altogether as they apparently have.
Amazing how Obama fooled so many scientists and academics and business leaders like Bill Gates into endorsing him for president.
Those Nobel Laureate scientists are sooo gullible ...
I'm not trying to win anyone over. Its a fact that as people get more education/money they become more conservative. Happens to young people. Married women too.
So, its inevitable that minorities will climb the economic ladder and become Repubs. I think these predictions of demographic doom for Repubs is based on static views that minorities will lag economically forever.
Brian said…
“Its (sic) a fact that as people get more education/money they become more conservative.”
Then I would be more conservative now than I was thirty years ago—and yet I am not.
What you have done is illustrate the foolishness of making blanket statements about the electorate.
By the way, some cartoonist (sorry, forgot his name) has come up with a new revised image for the Republican elephant.
The concentration of the Dem urban party into nearly homogeneous districts also goes a long way toward explaining their cluelessness and fears about how the rest of the country thinks. Their family, friends and co-workers are all Dems or RINOs.
Whereas rural Republicans are models of cosmopolitan Renaissance men, friend to prince and pauper alike.
Odd, isn't it, how urban people don't know any rural people, but rural people know urban people? Kinda strange.
Another weird thing is that I thought my family was virtually entirely rural Republicans. My mother's family are oil workers in east Texas, my father's family are corn farmers in southern Illinois. But according to Bart, they're all Dems and RINOs. Huh.
It's almost like Bart is making a ridiculous generalization that has no basis in reality in order to demonize Democrats. But surely that couldn't be.
Persuter:
BD: The concentration of the Dem urban party into nearly homogeneous districts also goes a long way toward explaining their cluelessness and fears about how the rest of the country thinks. Their family, friends and co-workers are all Dems or RINOs.
Another weird thing is that I thought my family was virtually entirely rural Republicans. My mother's family are oil workers in east Texas, my father's family are corn farmers in southern Illinois. But according to Bart, they're all Dems and RINOs. Huh.
If your family are not Dems who live in one of the concentrated urban left districts in a Blue Megalopolis, they my post was not obviously directed at them. You will have to find another reason apart from cultural isolation for your personal cluelessness and fears about the heartland.
If your family are not Dems who live in one of the concentrated urban left districts in a Blue Megalopolis, they my post was not obviously directed at them. You will have to find another reason apart from cultural isolation for your personal cluelessness and fears about the heartland.
lol, I love how you turn "the cluelessness and fears" of the "Dem urban party" into my "personal cluelessness and fears about the heartland". In a post where you acknowledge that my family's from the heartland, no less.
So yes, option A, I am clueless about and fearful of my own family, not to mention the numerous people I know from rural areas.
Or option B, you're making a ridiculous generalization that has no basis in reality in order to demonize Democrats (and me in particular, of course). Of course people tend to know people who are from their same location and share their beliefs. But to claim that people don't know anyone who doesn't share their beliefs, and in particular, to bizarrely suggest that this is somehow limited to "the urban Dem party", is ridiculous.
Bart…
What’s with you accusing everyone who disagrees with you of acting out of “fear”? The best joke of yours is that people who treat Sarah Palin as a talentless flash-in-the-pan (justifiably IMO) are really “afraid” of her.
You say a lot of silly things, and these accusations are amongst the silliest.
Cool all sort of nonsense to dispel.
1) Florida's GOP gerrymandering bias has to do with one thing Cuban Americans. When Castro dies and as we can see younger Cuban Americans are less conservative, the GOP going to have real trouble in South Florida. IF Cuba-Am drop from 80% GOP to 55% GOP all the GOP effort can't gerrymander away south Florida. We have started to see "good" Democrats start to "only" lose Cubans by 66%-33%. This is evidence (not speculation) of a swing since older voters aren't moving.
2) I'm so sick off this nonsense that the GOP has that as Asians and Latino get wealthy they will become conservative. Wealth alone won't drive them to the GOP. Upper Middle class folks (yuppies) have actaully been migrating to the Dems. College Education is one of the best predictors of being a Dem (Obama won all 10 top 10 college states) , and Asians tend to be non-Christians, so if you think that wealth will drive them to the GOP I think people are sadly mistaking since I believe they are already in the wealthiest Ethnic groups. There is a better chance they will be Jewish-light (highly college educated, tech heavy, urban, suspicious of the religious Christian right) only a little less so. In fact expect the Dems to create 3 Asian Majority districts in CA to start promoting "elected" Asian leaders after redistricting. The only two groups of Asians that don't fit that bill are Koreans and Vietnamese the only two groups the GOP has had success with. Remember many scientist think the GOP is anti-science, and Asians are a heavy represented in tech.
Latinos OTOH 1st off are mostly Catholic and Dems still have an advantage with Catholics (Obama won 9 0f the 10 most Catholic only losing LA) that is beyond the "expected" number involving religious voters. 2nd Latino still feel discrimination, and the Dems are seen by Latinos (not by conservatives I can feel the argument here) as being stronger defenders of Latinos against discrimination.
3rd this dumb idea that Latinos hate Blacks shows no electoral truth. We have 3 CBC members from majority Latino districts. Sen. Mendez and Salazar won overwhelming black support, just as Obama did in his run (Senate and Prez). Duval got it in MA, Patterson did as Lt. Gov, losing candidates in Texas (Kirk for Sen. and the Latino banker for Gov.) got support from both groups, I can name over 100 mayors (I have a list sent to me once) were blacks or Latino won by getting support from the other group. People just can't grasp that Latinos were voting for Hillary not against Obama. Obama got the highest measured Latino numbers for a 1st time Prez (non re-election) I demand anyone who makes this black v. brown claim in elections to show proof of it. Remember the GOP attempts to use immigration as a wedge issues with black have also failed because even though many (most?) blacks want immigration restrictions they hate any form of race baiting. Also on prop 8 Latinos were basically split, black were mostly for it (Yet no one thinks black will start peeling off from the Dems).
If the GOP is waiting on a "natural" swing towards it from Asians and Latinos they are sadly mistaken. It took 2-3 generation for white Catholics to get over the anti-catholic campaign against Stevens, Dems two generations later still suffer from civil rights in the White South, as the GOP does in reverse with Blacks (Goldwater), it took Dems a generation to even start making headway with Guns owners again after the Brady Bill and it still hurts them, ditto with Cubans and the Bay of Pigs (2 Generations). These "larger affinity" issues last a long time, so the GOP has to be careful with it Lou Dobbs wing, because these types of damages last a long time....
Another thing to look out for for the GOP. In the 1990's most black just wanted to get elected to congress so the cooperated with the GOP to form many of these minority-majority seats, since white Democrats practiced discrimination in primaries. But as blacks start to see white liberals greater willingness to vote for black candidates they won't demand 80% black districts. remember no Republican represents a seat with over 40% blacks (since 2008 none over 35% they loss the 3 that fit that description). 35-40% is also a large enough block of blacks to have a big "base" in a primary so they don't fear primaries. So the fact that Dems have Gov. Duval, Prez. Obama, Gov. Wilder, and in the South Harold Ford did "well", Artur Davis is expected to do well for Gov.(in Alabama?), Meeks will do well in FL if Crist loses the primary, the wall will start to fall. Before our conservative friends jump on this remember in Memphis a white Jewish guy defeated black candidates in both a primary, and in a general election for Congress so it work both ways. The CBC in the Florida state house over ruled their chairman and is supporting less compact black districts so this is documented change not my theory.
I think the greatest good news is the formation of an actual Tea Party in Florida. I say, send them all the money you can! Nothing like a good old in-fight beween different splinters of the self-appointed self-righteous. The rest of us can just sit back and watch the spectacle.
@Brian
I will concede that married woman tend to be more conservative, but your number on education and income are wrong.
Kerry only got 40% of Whites, but got 44% of those with a college degree. Obama got 43% of whites, but 47% of whites with a degree. McCain got 55% of the White vote, but 58% without a degree, Bush (2004) got 58% White, but 61% with no degree. BTW the Dem's numbers actually turn into an advantage with whites 44 years and younger.
Obama split those making over $100,000 49%/49% with McCain. In fact the GOP is in fact going "down market" and becoming more dependent on the white working class. As unions fade the whiet working class is becoming less Democratic, but most college educated wealthy folks are social liberal (they were Rockefeller Republicans). The income numbers are also coming the Dems way. The GOP has an advantage with small business and CEO's, but Dems are staring to rack up large numbers amongst professionals. Tech and Engineer (like me they think the GOP is anti-science), Lawyers, Doctors (once a very GOP group they are trending 50/50), Nurses, ect. These groups are well compensated and increasingly liberal, so climbing the social ladder isn't the great predictor it once was.
My source is from Chuck Todds "How Obama Won" pages 29-37, where he list the numbers from National Election Pool (ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC, and WSJ).
We need a new rule, please list data to back up points on this site.
DOPPER
you are correct that in the last 2002 go-round, the FL GOP did gerrymander So FL to create an additional district for the cuban-american vote.
but their 1st priority was to create a new central FL district tailor made for then FL speaker Feeney. I live in that 8th district.
they also had the goal to dilute both Orlando & St Pete DEM bases by watering down those urban core between other districts. Orlando area really got carved up...
but their demos are haunting them now as they created new districts with smaller GOP leaning margins to try to max out on their congressional seat count in the short term.
now the south FL cuban seats are in danger of flipping, and they lost both the 8th & 24th in 2008 because they spread their own base out + changing demos are catching up with them.
however, since the state GOP will almost certainly still control the reapportionment process after 2010, they will get another go at it soon enough.
the question will be, will they get greedy again for short-term gain by creating as many +5 districts as they can to grab back more seats ???
yes, I bet they will even though they still have 15 of 25 IIRC
@DCM in FL
Good points. I should have been more clear, the GOP gerrymandering in Florida really show up in the state house, and state senate. The GOP has in recent history had 30-40% margins in them, this in a state that is close to 50/50. I would argue that GOP gerrymandering gives them 1-2% in statewide margin due to party infrastructure, and the demoralizing effect it has in Dems (if you think your going to lose). Think of it as the mirror image of the GOP in WV, it should be a 50/50 state (at least, but the GOP struggles to even find candidates there) That is why I'm most concerned with winning the Florida Gov. race to at least put a break on GOP gerrymandering. Because as you note otherwise they can correct some of their over reach after 2010.
Check this guy out!
If this is the "quality" of candidate that the teabaggers have to offer, the 2010 GOP primary season is going to be an absolute bloodbath and they destroy themselves.
This guy has the brains of Palin, the racism of Beck, and the paranoia of Bachmann.
He even invokes images of the racist Jesse Helms and even has images of Theodore Roosevelt who suggest universal health care.
The message board is a hoot! "GAY MALE HOMOSEXUALS" LOL
These morons don't know if they are coming or going.
Dopper-
I take most stats based off 2008 as an anomoly. Its the best Dem election in last 40 years, although I'm sure you'll tell us its a sign of all trends.
Census.gov says 2007 median income was $52K for white, $34K for black,$39K for hispanic. The last 2 groups vote overwhelmingly for Dems. The Dem party is essentially the black/hispanic party
So as those 2 groups increase, they will either assimilate and get richer, and become Repubs. Or they won't assimilate, have stable incomes, and America will become a 3rd world country.
Although registered as an independent,I am conservative to every fiber of My being...The fact that God tells us to love one-another is what makes me vote democratically~what religious books R U reading?
So instead of seeing a 100 point swing in a party's representation in the legislature as their share of the national vote passes through 50%, instead you'll see maybe a 10 or 15 point swing in the legislature from the same shift in the national vote.
You don't see it at %50 anymore. You see it at a higher %, but when it breaks it'll break hard. Voting %55 represents at least a 10% swing, that's a lot. Setting aside of course the issue with suppressed minority party turnout in "safe" Districts, which does make thing muddier.
Of course it's still muted nationwide because you get variance by state as to what is going on.
Brian,
The third world, one party state is the most likely scenario. The current politics in the blue states is similar to third party politics like Mexcio (one major ruling party made up of the elites and the lower classes. The elites blame the middle class for all of the problems and the poor will want to take everyone above them and spend the money on themselves. See Detroit, LA, Baltimore as examples of the future.
As more districts become overwhelmingly Democratic, very few if any elections will be competative. Incumbents will have little risk of being voted out and clout instead of elections will become the most important way of affecting government policies.
@beavis
You sure that site isn't a hamhanded parody? I thought Yahoo had shut down Geocities....
@brian:
I'd certainly apply the label of incompetent to Thomas and Steele (retarded is a little offensive). Rice and Gonzales....Not stupid, just unethical.
Curious that brian left Colin Powell out of that list, seeing as he preceded Condoleezza Rice at Secretary of State.
He certainly was the beneficiary of very active racial integration. I don't mean that later in life, I'm refering to the kid out Harlem going into a military that was in the process of working very hard to remove the ghetto-izing of the military along racial lines.
No offense to Powell. He's a bit too celeb for me--but I respect his opinions on foreign policy (not economics). At least him and Rice are way better than Hillary, whose an absolute embaressment....even in her minor role. There's a reason diplomats aren't typically political hacks.
It never ceases to amaze me how intelligent people will display rank ignorance at times. Like Boehner quoting the Declaration instead of the Preamble. I'm sure I do at times.
Several post talk about at large districts, even to the point Hikemasters last night mentioned state wide at large districts.
We have such representatives now.
They're called SENATORS.
http://wizardofpolitics.blogspot.com/
@PoliticalWiz
I think those people were talking about equal representation through at-large representatives.
If CA had 53 A-L Reps to Wyoming's one, that might be reasonable, but it's not the same when each has two.
Not that A-L Reps are necessarily the better system, but the Senate is perhaps the most undemocratic legitimately elected legislative body in the world.
I have often thought it would be interesting to do away with districts altogether and to let the voters use their ballots the way they wanted. For instance, New Jersey has 13 seats in Congress. You could vote for all 13 Democrats on that slate, or the 13 Republcians, or you could take all 13 of your votes and put them toward the Green candidate, or the Libertarian, who best represented your views. Or you could vote for the three best gay-rights candidates, 5-4-4. Unlike the old days when voters could not be expected to know all the candidates, the Internet makes such information easily available today. And while there is no telling what kind of screwy results we would get, this would at least eliminate the gerrymandering that politicans use to manipulate the outcomes of elections, and would put that power in the hands of the people.
I just don't get how this discussion even takes place without the context of Supreme Court decision regarding constitutional requirements for compact and contiguous Congressional districts. (State court districts have different standards - some of which are parallel and some of which are divergent state to state.)
Miller v Georgia (1995)
Bush v. Vera (1996)
Abrams v. Johnson (1997)
The premise of the conjecture that Democrats are under-represented presuppose a fixed House size. And we can see how that zero sum game plays out when Republican legislatures pack all of the African Americans into a district.
Consider Texas and the South in general.
This is why it would make sense after 2010 elections and Census for Congress to increase the size of the House.
The automatic assignment of a number (435), as opposed to the automatic assignment of a method(see Montana case) I submit is essentially an unconstitutional INS v Chadha legislative veto, because it prevents the new executive every ten years from having a veto over the Number Congress chooses. Consider Washington's first veto of the first apportionment bill.
Someday somebody is going to figure out that Chadha is the only basis to challenge 435 not equal protection.
But now that Dems have control, they really should ram through an increase in the size of the House to maybe something like 550-600.
Legislative districts should always be contiguous, except possibly in some extremely unusual case, such as a string of islands like Hawaii. If Oahu had half, or just under half, of the state's population, I could imagine Hawaii having one district on Oahu and the other dis-contiguous district on islands to the east and west. But this is extremely unusual in the United States.
The contiguity requirement is quite reasonable and doesn't favor one party over the other, in contrast to the compactness requirement, which could favor the party that does slightly better in the suburbs over the party that does much better in urban centers.
Re: the shift towards Republicans in the Latino/Black/Asian population, I don't think the Repubs will get over the perception of them as the KKK party any time soon, but they will probably make gains as education and income increase. There are voting trends based on both education and income.
Educationally, there is a "donut and donut hole," trend, with the Democrats getting more votes from the most educated and the least educated, and the Republicans getting the middle. A BBA is a pretty strong indicator of Republican lean, and any masters other than business, and pretty much any doctorate is a strong indicator of a Democrat.
Income is simpler, the more money you have, the more likely you are to be a republican. That being said, there is a much greater difference between a wealthy and/or educated republican and their democratic counterpart. The high school and below poor voters of each party can probably get on well even talking politics if they don't mention parties or names. I always figured if the wrong guy spoke at a tea party rally in New York they might march on wall street and burn it to the ground...
On the "Best way to elect candidates," issue, what is wrong with a petition for some number of "at large," candidates?
At the extreme, anyone who could get 500,000 signitures on a petition would be part of the house, with no requirement for them to represent a given state, much less a district. I have trouble figuring out how that would be a bad thing...
But if you took 10 of California's reps and allowed anyone who got 2,800,000 signitures to hold one of those seats, you would get folks serving both the at large interests of the state, and some meaningful community (not just a group of people who live near eachother).
As we become more mobile, and more connected via the internet, geographical representation becomes less important, and with the problems we have with pork, it is probably counterproductive.
Here in Arizona we have multi-member districts (each contiguous district elects two members of the state house, plus they are identical to the state senate districts) and I certainly haven't seen how it has helped Democrats. Republicans have controlled the Arizona legislature continually since 1964.
I wonder if any of these people actually live in Florida.
What I haven't read anywhere is the fact that the 2002 reapportionment done by the Republican controlled legislature managed to do exactly what the study suggests; packing Democrats into districts resulting in far more Republican districts than one would expect. And they managed to create some of the most gerrymandered districts in the country at the same time.
And why use data that is over eight years old when Florida readily makes available precinct level data for almost any statewide election.
Bill, I am not from Florida but wasn't the big piece of gerrymandering done in that state back in 2002 the butchering of Democrat Karen Thurman's distict (FL-5) so that Ginny Brown-Waite, a Republican State Senate leader, could be elected to replace Thurman?
Thurman's home base, the city of Dunnellon, within Marion County, was removed from FL-5 so that the new lines would more coincide with Brown-Waite's State Senate district.
As a result of this, Thurman, a 5-term incumbent, lost the 2002 race by 4,000 votes (51%-49%). No other seat in the state changed party control, and the two new seats were Republican, causing the state's delegation to go from 15-8 to 18-7 (it is now 15-10).
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