The below shows just how "good" the "non-partisan" commission's Democratic gerrymander was in AZ:
Arizona: 1,467,617 (9 Districts)
Republican: 817,178 55.7% 5 (8 Candidates)
Democratic: 577,947 39.4% 4 (8 candidates)
Libertarian: 23,767 1.6% (3 candidates)
American Electors: 44,924 (2 candidates)
Independent: 3,496
Write In: 305
It strikes me as the biggest differential of any of the 50 states. I don't think anywhere the minority party got that high a percentage of the CD's with around 40% of the vote. If AZ-02 has swung the other way, it would have been even more spectacular.
40% of the vote equating to 44% of the seats is fairer than 33% of the seats. Yes, if AZ-2 had stayed Dem you'd have a reason to complain, but as it stands...
Except as the margin between the parities increases, the seats lost to the party at the short end, is an exponential one in a non partisan line drawing, not linear. That is why a "fair" map in Mass might net the Pubs one seat, two at best, far below the percentage of their vote. AZ was partisan in the sense in did a Dem gerrymander to offset the exponential effect. Make sense? The reason I bitch about the AZ map is that it was supposed to be non partisan. I don't begrudge what the Dems did in MD, effectively, and in Illinois, ineffectively, as it turned out because they got greedy, and ignored the trends.
