texas house of representatives

[freepcrusher]

apparently the state house website has a lot of interesting information such as how the districts voted in 2016 and what not. What surprised me a lot was the fact that the districts looked like a dem gerrymander. Like in Williamson County for instance - the most gop areas were basically put into one district and then attached to ultragop burnet and milam counties. Lower Williamson County meanwhile has one district that went for Trump by a point and another district that went for Clinton by a small amount. Overall, I counted about a dozen or so districts in Texas held by republicans where Trump got under 50% (which is very unusual for a southern state).

So what's the reason for this? Is it that the state house (which was gop controlled in 11-12) had its hands tied due to the vra? Is it that there is the rotten borough factor where dem or swing districts have less voters? Or is it that republicans are packing themselves into rural and semi-rural areas to offset dem packing in cities?

[Ebsy]

A lot of typically GOP areas of Texas had quite radical swings in 2016 towards Clinton. I would try to look at the 2012 numbers to see what the goals of the GOP mapmakers were.