Busting the "both sides do it" myth

[traininthedistance]

http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1-busting-the-both-sides-do-it-myth/

An analysis of the asymmetrical impacts of gerrymandering from the inimitable Sam Wang.  The conclusion, obviously, is that the Republicans got a pretty massive unfair advantage this time around.

Worth noting: the state most badly gerrymandered in the Dems' direction was not Maryland or Illinois, but Arizona, since it was the one and only state which had a higher R vote but elected a D delegation.  Maryland, in particular, was within one seat of a fair outcome: the state is so solidly Democratic, but is arranged in such a way as to favor the Republicans, that a Democratic gerrymander is required for the state to fairly represent its partisan lean.  It's at least as fair as, say, Alabama's 6-1 delegation, for instance.

Ilinois was a wee bit Dem-skewed, sure, but that doesn't make up for PA, MI, NC, WI, etc. etc. etc.

[traininthedistance]

What a batch of liars. They forgot Massachusetts.

Sam Wang is one person.

And nice to see you resort to name-calling when you can't refute the central argument.

As for Massachusetts, Obama won every county both times.  You could probably gerrymander one single Republican seat snaking across Plymouth and the Worcester suburbs if you really wanted to, but an all-Democratic delegation is entirely fair.

[traininthedistance]

Maryland, in particular, was within one seat of a fair outcome: the state is so solidly Democratic, but is arranged in such a way as to favor the Republicans, that a Democratic gerrymander is required for the state to fairly represent its partisan lean.  

As for Massachusetts, Obama won every county both times.  You could probably gerrymander one single Republican seat snaking across Plymouth and the Worcester suburbs if you really wanted to, but an all-Democratic delegation is entirely fair.

Lol. This type of mathematics is, well, interesting. I wonder if the same mathematics dictates that Republicans get 0 seats in Connecticut.

It is also the same math that dictates the Dems get 0 seats in Oklahoma.  

And, once again, if you have an actual argument with the points raised in the article, make it.  No, "lol" isn't an argument.

[traininthedistance]

Maryland, in particular, was within one seat of a fair outcome: the state is so solidly Democratic, but is arranged in such a way as to favor the Republicans, that a Democratic gerrymander is required for the state to fairly represent its partisan lean.  

As for Massachusetts, Obama won every county both times.  You could probably gerrymander one single Republican seat snaking across Plymouth and the Worcester suburbs if you really wanted to, but an all-Democratic delegation is entirely fair.

Lol. This type of mathematics is, well, interesting. I wonder if the same mathematics dictates that Republicans get 0 seats in Connecticut.

It is also the same math that dictates the Dems get 0 seats in Oklahoma.  

And, once again, if you have an actual argument with the points raised in the article, make it.  No, "lol" isn't an argument.

What is the purpose of arguing with someone who pretends that large swaths of the country do not exist?

Neither I nor Mr. Wang have done any such thing.  Now, if you're trying to obliquely admit that your worldview ignores the existence of millions of Americans, and that therefore I shouldn't take you seriously, then very well.  I'll keep that in mind for next time.  Otherwise, explain yourself.

[traininthedistance]

Neither I nor Mr. Wang have done any such thing.  Now, if you're trying to obliquely admit that your worldview ignore the existence of millions of Americans, and that therefore I shouldn't take you seriously, then very well.  I'll keep that in mind for next time.  Otherwise, explain yourself.

Obviously, his chart and graph ignores numerous states in the United States. So are you.

A more honest batch of non-liars would present the data for all the states.

He explicitly says that he's only picking out the states which either a) fail the minimum fairness test (elect a majority of reps from the wrong party), or b) are more than 1 representative off the expected result.  The states not mentioned were analyzed, but did not fit either of those criteria.  I's sure that if you were curious, you could ask and he'd provide the data.  And, of course, the big point that the United States of America as a whole fails the minimum fairness test is valid no matter what states are highlighted.

This does not make him a liar, it simply makes you utterly devoid of reading comprehension. 

Or a liar.  Either way.

[traininthedistance]

In any case, I'd be interested to get beyond krazen's threads***ing and hear what sort of response Republicans of intelligence and integrity have to Wang's work.  (Muon, I'm looking at you.  No pressure. )

[traininthedistance]

The approach used was interesting and seems plausible for some states. For example, WI is probably accurate. I think his analysis misses the impact of VRA districts. Unless the VRA district is made by joining the minority voters to an overwhelming population of R white voters, the state is left with a net deficit of D voters compared to the state that does not create a VRA district.

For example, I know from the OH competition that one needed to push a mild Dem gerrymander to get the desired partisan outcome for the state. One of the measures was how closely the delegation matched the overall state percentage which was quite close to 50%. The black-majority district took up 4 times as many Dems as Pubs and with only 16 CDs that left way too many Pubs to naturally spread into 8 of the remaining CDs. So one had to make 2 or 3 strong R districts that were 2 to 1 to compensate. That meant the rest of the state had to divide 7 to 6 D to get it back to an even delegation. The best competition strategy made 4 strong R districts and just 1 strong D district, then built 7 lean D districts from the rest.

IL is one state where Wang finds a clear D tilt of 1.7 seats. But that assumes no VRA districts in the analysis. Based on the OH experience, and the fact that IL has 4 VRA districts out of 18, the map is more gerrymandered D than Wang's analysis would suggest.

Thanks, that mostly makes sense.  The one thing I would say in response is that I'm not entirely sure how easy it is to disentangle the issue of VRA districts from the "natural" packing of Democrats in urban areas, since most VRA districts outside of the "black belt" in the Deep South are, in fact, just compact urban areas.  While he asserts that the vast majority of the Republicans' margin is due to gerrymandering, if you look closely it appears that under "fair" maps the Republicans would still have a margin of up to 5 seats.  So there's still room for those factors to tip the balance of individual states, and the nation as a whole.  (And it appears that, say, for a state like Pennsylvania they might in fact flip it to a bare majority-R delegation, but it can't get you to 5-13 all by itself.)

[traininthedistance]

http://election.princeton.edu/2013/01/02/gerrymanders-part-2-how-many-voters-were-disenfranchised/

Part 2 is up.  And it includes a chart with deviations for all 50 states.

The largest pro-Democratic deviation is actually Texas, and interestingly enough it is the one state where the VRA actually really does skew things in favor of the Democrats. VRA seats in most urban areas tend to be Democratic seats surrounded by other Democratic areas, so they reflect the "natural packing" of Dems in urban areas rather than force the most egregious Republican gerrymanders.  (Though they do tend to bias otherwise fair maps, and once in a while they do in fact force R gerrymanders, such as in NE Ohio.)  VRA seats in the Deep South tend to ensure those states get fair representation, rather than cracking the AA population for partisan gain in either direction.  But Texas... Texas has the fajita strips.  And in that area you could very easily pack a Brownsville-McAllen district and get 2 R-leaning districts to the north, and defend it on CoI grounds.  Which is basically the entire margin by which Texas' map is D-skewed.

[traininthedistance]

It is quite bizarre to claim that 7-1 "fairly represents [Maryland's] partisan lean." Certainly, Republican candidates receive more that 25% of the total vote, or they would if it meant anything to contest every seat.

It's not a linear scale.  Democrats receive 40 percent of the total vote in Texas, but it would be an egregious Democratic gerrymander if they were to receive 40 percent of the seats there.  A state that is 50/50 should have an evenly divided delegation; if you're at say 52 or 53 percent you should have an extra seat; but by the time you get to 60 percent vote share than you should be taking way more than 60 percent of the seats.  In either direction.

Mind you, 7-1 is still skewed a little bit- a perfectly fair Maryland map would probably give you 6-2 most years.  It's just not skewed by more than one seat.

[traininthedistance]

Well, really, if you want fully fair representation you have to go over to some sort of PR and drop geographical constituencies entirely.  Until then, though, it's still worth trying to redress imbalances in the name of achieving a more perfect union- I'm not one to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[traininthedistance]

At least at the state level in Wisconsin Democrats got more votes then Republicans, but in the 74 contested races Republicans had a 155,000 vote majority. The other 21 races where Democrats got their "majority" was by running uncontested races mostly in Dane and Milwaukee counties. So yes, the Dems got more votes but in actual contested races Republicans held the edge.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/dec/05/sandy-pasch/pasch-says-democrats-outpolled-republicans-statewi/

How many votes would the Republicans have received in those 21 uncontested races, had they bothered to run even a generic placeholder?  (I presume there were also safe R districts where the Dems put up a sacrificial lamb, so doing such a thing should not be so difficult, no?)  Would it have been enough to receive more votes than the Dems overall?  I assume if they didn't bother to run someone in a D+20 district, that's a source of potential votes... but if these are all D+45 vote sinks, there are so few potential Republicans that there really wouldn't be any difference in the vote total.

And, had the Republicans ran candidates in all these districts, would the Dem turnout in those districts have been increased?

I mean, sure, if you excise the quarter of the state which is most solidly Democratic, then you can obviously achieve a Republican majority.  But that doesn't mean a darn thing, because you can't just handwave away parts of the state you don't want to count.