Washington state megathread

[Antonio the Sixth]

Pardon my ignorance, but how come the Congressional District map in Washington is so favorable to the GOP? Back in time WA CDs used to be clearly divided by the Cascade Range, with Democrats winning the 7 seats west to it while republicans won the two eastern seats. This time around, it looks like there are two seats which cross this border, and both went republican. Since Washington gained a seat in reapportionment, it seems logical that the East gets more than two seats, and thus a district has to cross the border. But why two instead? And why the GOP seems to be easily ahead in both?

I can't see how the republicans could have passed a gerrymandered map, so... how did democrats agree to this?

[Antonio the Sixth]

What's up with Whitman County? Why did it have the largest swing to Romney in the state?

Probably lower turnout among WSU's students.

Pardon my ignorance, but how come the Congressional District map in Washington is so favorable to the GOP? Back in time WA CDs used to be clearly divided by the Cascade Range, with Democrats winning the 7 seats west to it while republicans won the two eastern seats. This time around, it looks like there are two seats which cross this border, and both went republican. Since Washington gained a seat in reapportionment, it seems logical that the East gets more than two seats, and thus a district has to cross the border. But why two instead? And why the GOP seems to be easily ahead in both?

I can't see how the republicans could have passed a gerrymandered map, so... how did democrats agree to this?

Well, bipartisan redistricting tends to give incumbent protection a high priority.

But also, a minority advocacy group lobbied hard for a majority-minority district. The Republicans cleverly realized that if they supported the plan, they could pack a lot of Democrats into it. The Democrats caved. Of course, for our state legislature, when it came to making a truly majority-minority district in Eastern Washington (around 75% non-white, that they could've maybe won by the end of the decade), the Republicans refused and got their way. We talked about it a lot in the redistricting thread.

That's pretty sad... We Dems can't even draw a decent map when we hold the governorship and the legislature...

And this whole majority-minority thing is killing the Dems throughout the country. We need to realize that's bullsh*t.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Any chance the legislature changes their mind before 2014?

[Antonio the Sixth]

So Sawant has pulled ahead!! Thank goodness.