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 NEXT ELECTIONSon july 26 there's a runoff for the republican nomination in GA-03, which is safely red i do believe - the republican incumbent retired. i think a guy named crane has the cruz and tea party type endorsements, and a guy named ferguson has the more establishmenty backers. i could be wrong then on august 2 we get kansas, michigan, missouri, and washington primaries. somebody from the 'holistic party' is running for governor in washington. we can worry about all that poo poo later july's a light month, but there's more than a dozen states holding primaries in august, so there's that What? It's the lower house of our bicameral Congress. I'll pass on describing the legislative functions of the body, instead focusing on its electoral aspects. There are 435 voting members from the 50 states. The Constitution outlines a method for apportioning them as evenly as possible among the states, while Supreme Court rulings have held that within the states, each district must be as nearly equal in population as possible. Whereas in most countries with single-member electoral districts (and for most of America's history) the preferred way to reduce a group's representation has been to create districts with huge disparities in population, the 'one man, one vote' rule, which has applied for several decades now, incentivizes creative mapping to accomplish the same goal. Gerrymandering  The art of drawing electoral district boundaries so as to help a certain political party or incumbent is named after Founding Father Elbridge Gerry, who signed a gerrymandered Massachusetts State Senate map into law in 1812 which was drawn by Democratic-Republicans in an attempt to reduce Federalist influence. One of the districts looked like a salamander, a political cartoon was drawn (i guess they thought salamanders were dragons in 1812?), and the man's name went down in history. Since his time, GIS and detailed partisan/demographic data have advanced the practice to unprecedented levels of effectiveness and ugliness. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, along with subsequent legislation and court cases that would take a long time to talk about, have created an odd patchwork of semi-binding regulations on the practice of gerrymandering. I will now proceed to inaccurately summarize the current state of legal affairs. If somebody wants to make a factual effortpost I'll gladly quote or link it here. Gerrymandering for pure partisan intent is currently held as Constitutional (I think this was most recently defended in a 5-4 decision, making a Constitutional ban of partisan gerrymandering a possible topic in upcoming Supreme Court appointment battles), but gerrymandering in the service of denying representation to a racial minority is not (at least, not in states with a long history of racially polarized partisanship. I'm not sure where exactly this stands). Therefore, across the South there is generally one district per state drawn to hold a large black Democratic majority, all but guaranteeing this historically persecuted minority representation* while increasing the job security of white Republican legislators. The same applies to Hispanic populations, which is especially evident in Texas. *Technically the 'preferred candidate' of the minority community, not the right of a minority to win the seat, is what is at issue here. Most majority-minority districts are represented by members of that minority but Steve Cohen, a white Democrat who has represented a black district based in Memphis since 1983, is a notable exception. Gerrymandering of the United States House of Representatives is controlled at the state level, because each state draws its own lines. With the exception of a handful of states that hand it over to a nonpartisan committee (this is the usual approach in other countries), most states' legislative bodies draw the maps themselves. This is required once a decade, using the new Census' data, but occasionally mid-decade redistricting is performed. Court decisions in which Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina maps were declared unconstitutional gerrymanders, for example, have triggered mid-decade redistrictings. The fact that unconstitutional maps were used for more than half of the decade's elections in these states indicates how toothless even a successful court challenge against gerrymandering can be. Because most state governments are controlled by Republicans, the House of Representatives has been gerrymandered to enhance that party's margin of victory (Democrats in Illinois and Maryland have drawn gerrymanders just as ridiculous as any Republican state, but these are outweighed by Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and more). However, demographic sorting also plays a role, resulting in a map that is naturally skewed for Republicans; for example, Obama only received 18% of the vote in the Texas Panhandle in 2012, but Romney only received 3% of the vote in the Bronx. A neutral 'community of interest' map ignoring partisanship would tend to draw more hyper-Democratic than hyper-Republican seats, just because of how people are distributed. The combination of these two effects produced a rightward skew such that Romney won the median House district by a 1.6% margin in an election where he lost the national popular vote by 3.9%.  Distribution of House districts by 2012 Presidential vote - note the rightward skew Both gerrymandering and demographic sorting cause the median House district to be more Republican than the national average - a rightward skew. How can we attempt to quantify the relative effect of the two? This is the best attempt I'm aware of to draw 'fair' maps from a 'community of interest' basis while taking prevailing interpretations of redistricting law into account, correcting both Republican and Democratic gerrymanders. The partisan Democratic author phrased his findings in a mildly whiny way, pointing out that Democrats would've won his House map in 2012 - not in 2014, though, you'd need a hardcore nationwide Democratic gerrymander for that. Note that he wrote this thing up before most of the court decisions regarding gerrymandering in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina. In terms of answering the question I'm posing, though, he found that his new map's median district voted for obama by 2.7% - still more Republican than the nation as a while, but 4.3% less Republican. One possible conclusion, put in terms of Romney's vote share in the median district minus his popular vote share, is that of the total 5.5% Republican advantage, 1.2% is caused by demographic sorting and 4.3% by gerrymandering. That's kind of oversimplifying things, though. The Map Here's the overall map as of 2012, colored by presidential finish where you can't see any of the districts in the urban areas:  Here's the map of the current Congress, colored by who won in 2014. Bright red is a Republican pickup, bright blue is a Democratic pickup (there were three!)  Here's a link to zoomable Google Maps for each state with the districts on them, so you can actually see districts in places like LA or NYC - these are also probably outdated: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/1/1039756/- I'm sure there are better more up-to-date map sites out there; I'll be happy to edit them in. The Schedule Alright, so that's the playing field. How about the elections? This link contains filing deadlines and primary/runoff dates for all states: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_6M_D6QmR52g56g_H_iymgDk7mlAIIArb9lVxC9IiQw/edit#gid=1347664583 This link has everything but the filing deadlines, and is hyperlinked to extremely detailed descriptions of the electoral situations in each state: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G16/events.phtml?format=chronological Just like the other Federal positions up for election in 2016, the process begins with filing for candidacy, continues through party primaries, and culminates in November with the general election. There are a few special cases (I probably got some of this wrong):
What are some notable races? Ugh, maybe I'll edit them in later. There are 435 of these drat things, so it's hard to narrow it down, especially at this early date. But I did want to start it now, because THE FIRST PRIMARIES ARE Other Resources These are some of the better-respected Congressional election prognosticators out there. For what that's worth. Cook Political Report Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report Sabato's Crystal Ball (go hoos) These are good blogs to follow for day-by-day discussions of the insane minutiae of down-in-the-weeds elections, including Congressional elections: Daily Kos Elections. biased toward Democrats, but not nearly as much as most Daily Kos poo poo. Look for the Daily Digests. Daily Digest comment threads often have real information and sometimes even worthwhile discussion, and can be very illuminating if you want to know what Democratic partisans are thinking. They had to ban all discussion of the Democratic Presidential primary because people's feelings were getting hurt lol RRH Elections. biased toward Republicans, but establishment-y intellectual types, the kind that bitterly, desperately hate and fear Trump. Look for the Political Roundups. Intentionally constructed as a right-wing version of DKE, and their comment threads can be interesting sometimes. They had to ban all discussion of the Republican Presidential primary because, I dunno, I guess they started winding each other up talking about the death of conservatism. Here's a good place to see how much money each candidate has, which is often a very good proxy at this level for evaluating their seriousness as a candidate: OpenSecrets.org's Congressional lookup page Well, that's enough for now. Congressional electoral discussions have a thread now! I don't expect it to be a very active thread for a while (edit: like maybe itll get to page 4 by november), but I intend to update on primary results and let people know when primaries are coming up. oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 04:36 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 03:12
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~gently caress da DNC~ Seriously, even the Libertarians bothered to find four warm bodies.
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Mar 1, 2016 03:22
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Minneapolis suburbs are so shameful.
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Mar 1, 2016 03:39
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BIG NEWS all the incumbents avoided runoffs and barely anything interesting happened! this is the perfect way to kick off the house of representatives' 2016 election season. a few things that are worth mentioning: TX-01: Louie Gohmert got more than 80% of the vote, obliterating the guy who challenged him on a platform of 'louie gohmert is a clown, let me be a not-clown and vote identically to him' TX-15: the guy who [url=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/12/25/dems-force-candidate-with-same-name-as-incumbent-to-change-his-on-ballot.html]who tried to get himself put as "Ruben Hinojosa" on the ballot in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Ruben Hinojosa ended up losing under the name Ruben Ramirez, only getting 6% of the vote. since there's no incumbent in that race, it's not too surprising that both parties' primaries are going to a runoff TX-19: the mayor of Lubbock, the largest city by far in this district, placed first in his primary but only narrowly - currently with 85% of precincts reporting he's got 27% of the vote with a guy at 25% and another guy at 22%. probably a less dominant performance than he was hoping for TX-29: the former Harris County sheriff who wanted to unseat incumbent Gene Green failed, getting 37% of the vote to Gene's runoff-avoiding 59% (with less than two-thirds of precincts reporting, but the race has been called) Even further down the ballot: a lady named Twinkle Cavanaugh retained her iron grip on the Presidency of Alabama's Public Service Commission. the Democrats aren't even bothering to run against her quote:[loser who got 37%] had accused the commission of lacking transparency and serving utilities over ratepayers.  a bunch of like appeals court and circuit court positions are going to runoffs, reminding us all that almost half the states elect their judges, and many of those are partisan elections, with judges from each party running in primaries before facing off. america is creepy edit: the biggest takeaway here is that even in the year of trump, with a spike in turnout for the presidential primary, it doesn't look like This Time Is Different on the House primary level. i think this will make gop politicians in safe red seats less afraid of a trump presidential loss, since the only thing most politicians care about is getting re-elected oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 07:40 on Mar 2, 2016 |
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Mar 2, 2016 07:02
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Here is the link for Sabato's Crystal Ball for the house races, which gives a general idea of which house races will be close this year. Edit:  I'm dumb I see now you already had it posted.
nonrev has issued a correction as of 08:04 on Mar 2, 2016 |
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Mar 2, 2016 08:01
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my OP is an ungainly monstrosity so i went ahead and made it more obvious that i had linked to that and other prognostication sites. thanks for trying to make this thread, the most worthwhile of threads, a better thread
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Mar 2, 2016 08:37
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OP updated! like half of Mississippi's incumbents weren't even challenged, but the ones that were seem to have won their elections! congress is so exciting. some GOP state senator reclaimed his old seat in a special election against another Republican - apparently that was the most exciting thing the local political reporters could find http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/entertainment/article64731822.html At the start of the OP I've written a discussion of the congressional primaries up next Tuesday, in Illinois and Ohio. Boehner's old seat in Ohio, and noted non-legs-haver Tammy Duckworth's old seat in Illinois, have a bunch of people fighting it out for their party's nomination in what, in states that were gerrymandered by Republicans and Democrats respectively, should be safe seats in November. apparently the Ohio district kind of stretches between Dayton's suburbs and some other random area, and there's only one candidate from the other random area and he's hoping all the Dayton people split that vote and he goes through. I may have got that wrong. The total disrespect for communities of interest inherent in gerrymandering can result in mildly interesting strategies in primary elections with many candidates. I'm not sure what's up with Duckworth's district but the one candidate who's name is memorable is Raja Krishnamoorthi, I think he might have some money behind him, maybe he'll win or whatever NC would've been doing it on Tuesday too, but they're submitting a new gerrymandered map to replace their old gerrymandered one and they wanna wait on the primaries until they see if that's gonna work out for them. It probably will, since they replaced Constitutionally unacceptable racial gerrymandering with Constitutionally  partisan gerrymandering.congress continues to be the least exciting game in town - and that's just how the incumbents want it
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Mar 9, 2016 19:46
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This might be the thread to bring up the fact that Zephyr Teachout, prominent left-wing contender for the last Democratic nomination for New York Governor, declared in January that she is running for the 19th District (which, sadly, does not contain the city with the cutest name in America, Poughkeepsie  - wrong part of Dutchess County). Seems like the local Democrats are lining up for her against one other Democrat who is only considering running, so her challenge will be in the general. Since the incumbent is retiring, it may be more open than usual, but he is a Republican. Their field seems to be more divided. If she wins, Congress will have a very strong anti-corruption legislator: she literally wrote the book on corruption in America.
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Mar 9, 2016 20:49
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it's interesting to me that the local people, the county democratic parties, seem to have embraced her. you'd think there'd be a stigma associated with nyc politicians running for upstate seats, but on the other hand she seems to have run up huge margins in that part of the state against cuomo - they must really hate him there - and maybe that support'll transfer to the federal level i tend to associate upstate ny with split-ticket voters who go democratic at the presidential level but republican for congress and below - some of the last relevant split-ticket voters in the country seem to be people who consider themselves moderate republicans in the northeast, and one of the big medium-term questions in national politics, i think, is whether they'll disappear like their mirror images in the south did over the last decade. they're certainly less powerful than they used to be the results from her run against cuomo: http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2014/09/10/clickable-county-by-county-results-for-the-cuomo-t the 19th cd (seems to map pretty closely with one of teachout's best regions): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_19th_congressional_district how do you pronounce her name, anyway? teach+out? or is it, like, french or something oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 22:10 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 22:07
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It seems to be Teach+out. 
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Mar 9, 2016 22:39
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Bip Roberts posted:Minneapolis suburbs are so shameful. That alcoholic who had the seat before Paulsen wasn't so bad. Jim Ramstad.
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Mar 17, 2016 03:45
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I'm supporting this guy against Ann Wagner for the Missouri 2nd district: https://ballotpedia.org/Bill_Otto_(Missouri) He was elected to the Missouri State House in 2012 and he's been a fairly solid progressive since then. Wagner roflstomped Arthur Lieber to take the 2nd district in 2014 and the Missouri 2nd district used to be Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin's district so I'm not expecting great things for Otto but it's worth a shot! gently caress Wagner!!
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Mar 17, 2016 04:36
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oh cool, he won a district romney won in 2012 https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1ODhZQe5Fc62iStfGgyg5FUcpVPYgiYOlUNFjsAlb#map:id=4 that's a good sign for his ability to win, the bad sign is that wagner apparently hasn't ever gotten less than 60% in her elections but if the republican party tears itself apart they'll need candidates like otto to capitalize! wow. a casino, a landfill, an outlet mall, 'earth city', 'the family arena', some warehouses, a water treatment plant - this is a happening district. i love how electoral geography introduces me to these kinds of things edit i UPDATED the OP to reflect the fact that nothing is going to happen for a long-rear end time. may and june are when poo poo really starts heating up! yay for congress
oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 04:48 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 04:44
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oystertoadfish posted:oh cool, he won a district romney won in 2012 https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1ODhZQe5Fc62iStfGgyg5FUcpVPYgiYOlUNFjsAlb#map:id=4 That landfill is a Superfund site where they dumped radioactive waste from the Manhattan project. There's currently an underground fire raging there and it's contaminating the surrounding groundwater. One of Otto's main campaign planks is cleaning up the site and the surrounding area and that area is surprisingly affluent for how it sounds from Google Maps. I still don't think it's enough to overcome general election inertia and the fact that this is Todd loving Akin's district but you never know!
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Mar 17, 2016 04:59
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tranime scholar posted:That landfill is a Superfund site where they dumped radioactive waste from the Manhattan project. There's currently an underground fire raging there and it's contaminating the surrounding groundwater. One of Otto's main campaign planks is cleaning up the site and the surrounding area and that area is surprisingly affluent for how it sounds from Google Maps. I still don't think it's enough to overcome general election inertia and the fact that this is Todd loving Akin's district but you never know! that's cool. local issues like that where people realize the value of good government can help democrats. lots of democrats are optimistic about trump's negative coattails on lower-level elections, and the more successful local politicians they have running in those races the better the chances of taking the house are. a lot of winnable districts just don't have serious candidates. although the dude is getting heavily outfundraised, but if a wave election starts to look likely that kind of thing can be remedied! i took a groundwater class in grad school and one of the lecturers had literally spent his entire 30 year career working, among other things, on one site in pennsylvania. groundwater contamination is very, very hard to deal with, generally speaking - sometimes the first 99% is easy but the last 1% takes a lifetime, and sometimes you've got no data and no idea what to do. groundwater modeling is a very computationally intensive and error-filled task
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Mar 17, 2016 05:43
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Cook downgraded the likelihood of GOP victory in ten House races today (which was written up by matty) Takeaway: 
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Mar 18, 2016 21:52
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it was pointed out in the gop primary thread that if democrats won every seat at less than likely republican it would leave republicans with 217 reps - by my math, that's one short of a 218-217 majority in the 435-seat chamber. These are the seats in the current cook report (linked in the op!) which are between safe democratic and safe republican if my math is right, the democrats would need to win all of the seats in the five leftmost columns to have a good chance at taking a house majority. maybe they could make up for some missed shots by getting lucky with stuff in the right column, and the 379 districts not on this list may contribute a few upsets too, but the heavy lifting will have to be done in the likely democratic to lean republican range here's the table from the march 18th cook political report table. i bolded all the democratic incumbents (i think). note that while graham is a democratic incumbent, she may not even run for re-election since the district got a lot redder in redistricting pre:Likely Democratic Lean Democratic Democratic Toss Up Republican Toss Up Lean Republican Likely Republican AZ-09 Sinema CA-07 Bera AZ-01 OPEN CO-06 Coffman AZ-02 McSally FL-02 Graham CA-24 OPEN FL-13 OPEN FL-18 OPEN FL-26 Curbelo CA-10 Denham IL-12 Bost CA-52 Peters MN-08 Nolan NY-03 OPEN IL-10 Dold CA-21 Valadao IL-13 Davis FL-10 OPEN NE-02 Ashford IA-01 Blum CA-25 Knight MI-08 Bishop MD-06 Delaney NV-04 Hardy IA-03 Young FL-07 Mica MN-03 Paulsen MN-07 Peterson ME-02 Poliquin MI-01 OPEN NJ-03 MacArthur NY-18 Maloney MN-02 OPEN MI-07 Walberg NY-21 Stefanik NY-25 Slaughter NV-03 OPEN NJ-05 Garrett NC-09 Pittenger VA-04 OPEN NH-01 Guinta NY-01 Zeldin PA-06 Costello NY-19 OPEN NY-23 Reed PA-07 Meehan NY-22 OPEN UT-04 Love VA-02 OPEN NY-24 Katko VA-10 Comstock WV-02 Mooney PA-08 OPEN WI-08 OPEN TX-23 Hurd
oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 22:59 on Mar 18, 2016 |
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Mar 18, 2016 22:28
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oh yeah, these guys
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Mar 19, 2016 15:10
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There are more than enough targeted pickups this year to win back the House. The GOP majority is not so great that a wave year can't destroy it. I think Cook is, as usual, overly optimistic for the GOP.
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Mar 19, 2016 19:50
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i guess the worry is that candidates with the political ability to run a competent campaign may not be present in enough seats to take advantage of a democratic wave election - about half the states' filing deadlines have already passed. i've read democrats whining about candidate quality in possible target elections. just another thing to keep an eye on, i guess sabato and rothenberg dont seem to have updated their lists in a month so i guess whenever they get around to it those would be good comparison points oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 23:47 on Mar 19, 2016 |
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Mar 19, 2016 23:45
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Democrats won't have control of the house until 2030 at the earliest.
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Mar 19, 2016 23:52
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here are relevant data http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Re...df?la=en#page=3  2014 results here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2014#Results_summary it was d 45.5% of vote, 43.2% of seats, r 51.2% of vote, 56.8% of seats. d % seats - d % votes = -2.2 so since the new maps (and what seems to be the final demise at the federal level of the conservative southern democrats, the vestiges of the jim crow 'solid south'), democrats have been ~2% behind their total congressional vote numbers in terms of seats will that number hold in 2016? probably not, i dunno. does this tell the whole story? hell no - lots of seats are uncontested by one of the major parties and granular analyses involving the strength/weakness of local incumbents and other local issues are always relevant. i assume a lot of variance, and that it's just coincidence that the last two elections have had very similar differentials now even without the maps changing i could imagine that discrepancy moving in the democrats' favor. if the republicans lose their northeastern candidates who outrun the presidential candidate as polarization marches on, the democrats' negative vote-to-seat differential could increase. on the other hand, there's still room for democrats to fall in the south, believe it or not but i do think the democrats could win a majority in a wave election, and i don't think it's too crazy to think there could be a wave election or two between now and 2030. not that any of us really know what poo poo will be like in 2030 oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 00:36 on Mar 20, 2016 |
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Mar 20, 2016 00:34
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Bernice Anders posted:Democrats won't have control of the house until 2030 at the earliest. I don't think there's any real reason to think this is true. Gerrymandering is not so bad that retaking the House is impossible, it's just more difficult. A 5 point uniform swing in 2012 would have given Democrats a healthy majority, for example.
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Mar 20, 2016 18:13
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Concerned Citizen posted:There are more than enough targeted pickups this year to win back the House. The GOP majority is not so great that a wave year can't destroy it. I think Cook is, as usual, overly optimistic for the GOP. What was the national popular vote for Congress in 06? Wasn't it something like D+8 and they still only barely picked up a majority? Unless the top of the ticket for the GOP is an unmitigated disaster and people don't show up I dunno how you can see the Dems having a chance for Congress.
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Mar 20, 2016 19:11
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axeil posted:What was the national popular vote for Congress in 06? Wasn't it something like D+8 and they still only barely picked up a majority? Unless the top of the ticket for the GOP is an unmitigated disaster and people don't show up I dunno how you can see the Dems having a chance for Congress. Why is D+8 so unlikely in 2016? That was a 15 seat majority, too, which is fairly healthy. I mean, we already know the top of the ticket is looking pretty disastrous pretty much regardless of what happens at this point, so I don't see why it's outrageous that it would happen again.
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Mar 20, 2016 19:43
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Concerned Citizen posted:Why is D+8 so unlikely in 2016? That was a 15 seat majority, too, which is fairly healthy. I mean, we already know the top of the ticket is looking pretty disastrous pretty much regardless of what happens at this point, so I don't see why it's outrageous that it would happen again. Gerrymandering after the 2010 wave. Dems need a 10% win nationally to crack the moderately-safe GOP seats. However, if it's truly a disastrous election, the nature of gerrymandering dictates that when the wall falls, it falls hard.
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Mar 20, 2016 19:53
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Aliquid posted:Gerrymandering after the 2010 wave. Dems need a 10% win nationally to crack the moderately-safe GOP seats. However, if it's truly a disastrous election, the nature of gerrymandering dictates that when the wall falls, it falls hard. The wall just got 10% higher
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Mar 20, 2016 19:57
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What is the process for appearing on the ballot under a new political party? I assume it varies by state, but does it generally involve signature-gathering or just paying a fine? Let's say I wanted to run under the TRUMP FOR AMERICA banner for state rep in order to toss the race to the Democrats.Bernice Anders posted:The wall just got 10% higher lol
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Mar 20, 2016 20:03
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also the conservative democrats holding down red districts in the rural south are pretty much gone. john barrow and jim marshall in GA, allen boyd in FL, 3/4ths of arkansas, robert cramer in AL, charlier melancon in LA, gene taylor in MS, ike skelton in MO, bob etheridge and mike mcintyre in NC, dan boren in OK, john spratt in SC, lincoln davis and john tanner in TN, chet edwards in TX, rick boucher in VA, 2/3rds of west virginia - i think all those guys represented rural republican-voting districts, most of them for a long time, and they were a pretty large (and conservatively voting) part of the majority. even in a wave, those seats are probably almost all safely republican now i tried to leave out wave gains like heath shuler or the guy who took tom delay's district for two years but i probably left some in there. i intended to draw up a list of john barrows and mike mcintyres, long-term conservative incumbent democrats in white rural southern districts that had long since switched their presidential votes to republican. those are a lost component of the democratic caucus oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 20:18 on Mar 20, 2016 |
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Mar 20, 2016 20:14
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oystertoadfish posted:also the conservative democrats holding down red districts in the rural south are pretty much gone. john barrow and jim marshall in GA, allen boyd in FL, 3/4ths of arkansas, robert cramer in AL, charlier melancon in LA, gene taylor in MS, ike skelton in MO, bob etheridge and mike mcintyre in NC, dan boren in OK, john spratt in SC, lincoln davis and john tanner in TN, chet edwards in TX, rick boucher in VA, 2/3rds of west virginia - i think all those guys represented rural republican-voting districts, most of them for a long time, and they were a pretty large (and conservatively voting) part of the majority. even in a wave, those seats are probably almost all safely republican now Yeah, all the Arkansas reps are Republicans now and three of the four aren't even being contested by the Democrats this time. The only one that has a Democrat running is the one around Little Rock.
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Mar 20, 2016 22:03
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fun fact: the Arkansas congressional map was actually drawn to give the democrats 3/4 of the districts - it was passed by a democratic legislature and signed into law by a democratic governor. Their gerrymander backfired spectacularly because they assumed the 2010 midterms were a crazy fluke that would never happen again the democrats in the state legislature drew a failomander for themselves as well, causing their party to be swept out of power for the first time in 138 years
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Mar 21, 2016 06:33
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Concerned Citizen posted:I don't think there's any real reason to think this is true. Gerrymandering is not so bad that retaking the House is impossible, it's just more difficult. A 5 point uniform swing in 2012 would have given Democrats a healthy majority, for example. it doesn't help that the dems are just kinda giving up on certain states/districts
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Mar 21, 2016 12:54
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Baconomics posted:fun fact: the Arkansas congressional map was actually drawn to give the democrats 3/4 of the districts - it was passed by a democratic legislature and signed into law by a democratic governor. Their gerrymander backfired spectacularly because they assumed the 2010 midterms were a crazy fluke that would never happen again This owns. Has this (this meaning your particular interpretation of it) gotten any national coverage? I believe you, but I want to read more about it.
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Mar 21, 2016 19:58
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Baconomics posted:fun fact: the Arkansas congressional map was actually drawn to give the democrats 3/4 of the districts - it was passed by a democratic legislature and signed into law by a democratic governor. Their gerrymander backfired spectacularly because they assumed the 2010 midterms were a crazy fluke that would never happen again It's kind of impossible to gerrymander yourself out of a 20-point hole.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:44
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Baconomics posted:fun fact: the Arkansas congressional map was actually drawn to give the democrats 3/4 of the districts - it was passed by a democratic legislature and signed into law by a democratic governor. Their gerrymander backfired spectacularly because they assumed the 2010 midterms were a crazy fluke that would never happen again Yeah, pretty much! The senator I worked for at the time that redistricting went down was kinda salty about it because they took away a fair sized town from him that was pretty solid Dem at the time and gave him a bunch of hick country that they took from a Republican senator. He was term limited as a senator so just in case he decided to run as a a rep again they redrew that map so that it took this really obvious swing to put his house in another district from where all his votes used to come from. That house is the only one on that road in another district.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:24
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5 posts in a day - this place is hoppingAliquid posted:It's kind of impossible to gerrymander yourself out of a 20-point hole. you can't draw a map where obama wins a bunch of districts, but you can still draw ones where local democrats can win 1-3 seats. here's some detailed analysis with lots of data and maps and poo poo - the really gerrymandered one even has a 50.2% obama 2012 district! http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/1/2/1174641/-How-Dems-Helped-Cost-Ourselves-the-House-The-Arkansas-Dummymander things flipped really quickly in arkansas. take the senate, for example. from 1879 to 2011 there was only one one-term republican senator from arkansas, tim hutchinson, who won 53-47 in 1996 and was beaten by mark pryor 54-46 in 2002. mark pryor wasn't even opposed in 2008 and he lost 57-39 in 2014. meanwhile, blanche lincoln won 66-44 in 2004 and lost 56-37 in 2010. if they had been able to tell that the times really had changed and that their conservative democratic voters were finally sick of them, they could've gerrymandered one or even two democratic seats. instead they tried to shoot the moon and keep everything with all these barely democratic districts full of conservative democrats who were almost done switching parties i havent looked into it, but i wouldn't be surprised if white southern democratic politicians were more willing to follow their voters into the republican party than to risk primary losses by upping the black percentage of their democratic seats, even though that would've been better for the democratic party as a whole Paper With Lines posted:This owns. Has this (this meaning your particular interpretation of it) gotten any national coverage? I believe you, but I want to read more about it. the link i posted above has a lot of links and discussion of the arkansas dummymander, but i don't see any direct citations to links discussing it, just lots of related stuff. if you want to read more about it, that's a good data-driven article on it, i just wish it had citations on your specific question. this pdf, linked from that post, has a ton of detail on similar situations in the previous decades in other states that underwent the same post-jim-crow-era shift in partisanship http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~bgrofman/140%20Grofman%20and%20Brunell.%20%202005%20%20The%20Art%20of%20the%20Dummymander....pdf oystertoadfish has issued a correction as of 01:08 on Mar 22, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 01:00
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The amount of money that poured into ads for Tom Cotton vs Mark Pryor was fuckin absurd and if I never had to see that long necked prick on TV ever again I'd be ecstatic.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:34
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Paper With Lines posted:This owns. Has this (this meaning your particular interpretation of it) gotten any national coverage? I believe you, but I want to read more about it. Here's an article about the Congressional map: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/1/2/1174641/-How-Dems-Helped-Cost-Ourselves-the-House-The-Arkansas-Dummymander
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Mar 23, 2016 12:44
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I'll have more to say later as this race goes on, but in what universe is NE-02 Leans Dem? The Dems picked it up in a crazy fluke and it'll probably go home again next year. Much like ME-02 went GOP by a total fluke last time and is definitely headed back home to the Democrats.
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Mar 24, 2016 21:57
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apparently there's some weird thing where the gop's candidates there are raising next to no money, even less than the d guy was, and he picked up the pace. or something. i dunno, i guess they think that ev is gonna go blue and the candidates aren't strong enough to get lots of split tickets?
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Mar 24, 2016 22:56
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