Talk Elections

Forget 2016: Democrats already have a plan for 2020 (http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/2016-democrats-already-have-plan-2020)

08/26/14 07:34 AM—UPDATED 08/27/14 09:55 AM
By Benjy Sarlin

Luckily, unlike 2010, 2020 is a presidential year. Not that it guarantees Dems will do well, but it's much better than it being a midterm.

With the state legislators being so gerrymandered, it might be best to focus on governorships.

Winning PA and FL is a start for this year and having VA after 2021 would be nice as well. Even if the GOP wins MI and WI, those states along with OH will have open seats in 2018. A court drawn legislative map is a substantial upgrade over what we have now and should give dems a fair shot in a favorable year.

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This is the current state of state governments in terms of redistricting (blue and red indicate a single party control of both houses of congress and the governorship, grey is either mixed control or states with only one district in them).  Democrats really need to focus on flipping Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

North Carolina is hopeless because the legislature controls redistricting. The best way is for a future liberal Supreme Court to declare their maps unconstitutional 

A lot of the gubernatorial elections are in 2018. The Democrats massively dropped the ball in state races in 2010.


Charles Munger Jr., who gets a large allowance from his daddy, used his money to convince California to unilaterally disarm.

Yeah that hurt bc California dems could draw a 48-5 map probably if they wanted to.

We also need to account for state legislative supermajorities and veto rules.  In the states shaded 60% for a party, that party would have the power to impose a redistricting plan against the will of the governor under that state's rules.  Green is a commission:

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Now here is a realistic Democratic ceiling for 2021.  Would this be enough to make the House an even playing field?  It's remarkable to think that the all the dark blue states combined could contain as few as 10 D house seats.

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Florida also has a commission.

Well, that's complicated.  I would say Florida is more like Michigan.  They both have stricter than normal rules on paper, but in practice it is possible for a party with full control to distort things more than a court would.  There are still only 8 D-PVI seats in Florida today.  If Democrats controlled the process there, they could probably get away with 14-15D/12-13R.  A court would probably draw 15-16R/11-12D.  Similarly, a court map in Michigan would surely have more than 5 Dem seats.

How about a majority Democrat-appointed SCOTUS overturning gerrymandering in 2018-2020?

The effects of redistricting are overrated.

It's generally agreed that congressional districts should be geographically contiguous, and that when possible communities should not be divided within congressional districts. With geographic sorting, people have come to live near those who agree with them politically. Rural Arkansas will be very conservative. Harlem will be a safe Democratic seat.

The sorting benefits Republicans. Liberals are more likely to live in areas where their candidate gets more of the vote, or in small enclaves within conservative regions (ie- college towns in Nebraska.) John Sides and Eric McGhee of the Post argued that the post 2010-redistricting (when Republicans gained control of numerous states) didn't actually help them with any net house seats in 2012.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/17/redistricting-didnt-win-republicans-the-house/

The counterargument would be that Democrats might need to gerrymander just to be even with Republicans in the House, although that's not an argument anyone representative of the party wants to make.

The best thing for the country by far would be an extension of Baker v. Carr or Shaw v. Reno to require that all congressional/legislative districts be drawn without regard to partisanship.

I doubt Scalia or Kennedy will retire before 2020.

Wikipedia says they're both 78 currently while Ginsburg is 81 and Breyer is 76. Is there cumulative data on the ages when Justices step down? Those four look like prime retirement candidates in the next six years.

They may have any plan they like, but as I can see, people now seem more turned to the changes to good old conservatism which is absolutely impossible with the Democrative party at a helm!

Ginsburg (and possibly Breyer) will likely retire before 2020 if Clinton is elected. But unless their health takes a turn for the worse, I would think Kennedy and Scalia would want to hold on until at least 2020 to see if a Republican is elected.

Why would Kennedy care about who replaces him? He doesn't seem to be an ideologue. Even if he does, would a Republican pick necessarily be closer to Kennedy's positions than a moderate compromise candidate chosen by Hillary Clinton.

For those who want to seriously crunch numbers (or who can point to a source who already has): Is it possible to get every state to draw congressional districts assuring that the Partisan Voting Index is no more than 10 percentage points (one party or the other)?

Could you imagine the firestorm that would occur if Scalia were to die during a Clinton term?

I believe PVI is calculated relative to the vote shares in presidential elections. Therefore, it would be impossible to do so in any state with PVI > 10 in either direction. My knowledge of PVI is rather hazy, so if anyone wants to correct me, please do.

Also, I question why this would be a good aim. Making all districts competitive would itself be a sort of gerrymandering, since you'd have to throw out any notion of community of interest in order to make ultra-Democratic cities have competitive districts.

Your answer, from the first paragraph, agrees with what I've been thinking. But, from the second paragraph, I disagree because it should be encouraged to move the United States people off the rigged system of having mostly uncompetitive U.S. House races.

Yea, they really need to run with that after they restrained Al Gore in 2000 and kept him from mentioning anything about Clinton, including the unbelievable prosperity we had under his administration.  Gore did squeak out a win, but that election should've been a Democratic wave after Clinton used "free market solutions" to foster economic growth.   

But there's a difference between races being uncompetitive because lines have been drawn in a contrived way to make them uncompetitive, and races being uncompetitive because a natural district happens to share an opinion on who should represent it.

What makes a 'natural' district, there is no objective standard for what makes a district.

That being said, I don't think every district should be made competitive (if that were even possible).    Both very conservative and very liberal voices should be represented in the House.  They just shouldn't hold as much sway as they do now, where they prevent any sort of cooperation from happening.

I don't think "safe districts" equates to "very conservative and very liberal" districts.

I'm not versed enough to speak terribly well to the "natural"ness of districts, but suffice it to say that there are districts that better represent coherent communities of interest than do others.

I don't know.

The seven justices prior to President Barack Obama are an average age of 71.

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This depressing map is now where redistricting prospects stand.  Grey states either have mixed control, are under an independent commission, or only have a single congressional district.

Connecticut has a 2/3rds requirement (which Dems don't have), and Hawaii has a commission.  But Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois Dems can still override a veto, so they should be red.  West Virginia should be blue because they have simple-majority override and Republicans have both chambers.  Kentucky is also a simple majority state, so unless the lower house stays D for the decade, they will be able to gerrymander Yarmuth out in 2021.  And the supreme court is probably about to let Republicans redraw Arizona.  It's going to be a loooonnngggg decade for House Dems unless they get like a 61%/38% generic ballot in their favor.

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Thanks!

As bad as this is, if Dems gain the Govs in WI, MI, FL, OH in 2018 and pick up the NY senate in 2020, things will get a lot easier. Way too early to predict all this.

What grounds with the Supreme Court be able to have Republicans get to redraw Arizona, unless they kill commissions across the country? Also I think it is possible that Kentucky GOP might keep Louisville together, similar to how the Tennessee GOP kept Nashville. Also I think they'd be setting themselves up for a court case if hey split the black ares up in Louisville.

If SCOTUS kills commissions in Arizona, then Democrats get to gerrymander California, so that's not really a big loss.