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Couldn't you remove the worst effects of gerrymandering - but still keeping local representation - by requiring that a district needs to have a specific ratio between its surface area and the length of its outer boundary? The smaller that ratio is, the more the district will look like a perfect circle. Set this maximum to a reasonable value so that you can still group nearby places together but it will prohibit connecting far-off areas through a strip of land three feet wide and 15 miles long.
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Apr 18, 2021 17:38
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u brexit ukip it posted:Couldn't you remove the worst effects of gerrymandering - but still keeping local representation - by requiring that a district needs to have a specific ratio between its surface area and the length of its outer boundary? The smaller that ratio is, the more the district will look like a perfect circle. Set this maximum to a reasonable value so that you can still group nearby places together but it will prohibit connecting far-off areas through a strip of land three feet wide and 15 miles long. That's not an inherently bad thing, though. If there are two or three population centers of people with common interests who would benefit from having a single representative, you have to make really spindly, weird-shaped districts to accomodate it. Evenly-shaped districts will overwhelmingly be dominated by middle-class white people and will necessarily drown out the voices of minorities and other historically under-represented groups.
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Apr 18, 2021 17:43
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The German method has a reasonable (if complex and arguably inelegant) solution where they do constituency first pad the post voting for local representatives, but then pr is used to grant extra seats to parties which underperformed due to the first past the post system. This would allow the majority minority districts to be maintained where necessary while eliminating gerrymandering issues. I'm sure there are problems that someone more familiar with the system could explain, and it's academic anyway because I'm sure nothing like it will ever be implemented in the us in our lifetimes.
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Apr 18, 2021 19:18
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Bird in a Blender posted:It won’t solve the EC problem without also giving out proportional votes per state. The winner take all aspect of the EC is the bigger problem. That is the bigger problem, but it would at least dilute the EC votes from Senators which disproportionately favor low population states. Assuming 4500 house seats, if California gets 541 EC votes and Wyoming gets 10 EC votes, it goes from almost a 4x increase in relative voting power for someone in WY to a 1.25x increase. I don't know if that would significantly change electoral math, but it would make it a little less garbage.
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Apr 18, 2021 20:01
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You are receiving this broadcast as a dream...We are transmitting from the year one nine... nine nine ...You are receiving this broadcast in order t
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u brexit ukip it posted:Couldn't you remove the worst effects of gerrymandering - but still keeping local representation - by requiring that a district needs to have a specific ratio between its surface area and the length of its outer boundary? The smaller that ratio is, the more the district will look like a perfect circle. Set this maximum to a reasonable value so that you can still group nearby places together but it will prohibit connecting far-off areas through a strip of land three feet wide and 15 miles long. That sounds reasonable. Which is why it will never happen. Down here in NE Florida, what they do is draw a line in crayon around every zip code that has black people living in it and call that one district, then cut up the rest. Seriously, look at this: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p...o99TFPmoQxm4Ho4
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Apr 18, 2021 20:24
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This came across my twitter feed this morning and is absolutely wild. I guess the devil is always in the details although I do wonder and suspect things would be much, much different if we had competitive districts without gerrymandering. https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1355182766552477699?s=20 https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1355186871354200066?s=20
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Apr 18, 2021 20:41
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Pain of Mind posted:That is the bigger problem, but it would at least dilute the EC votes from Senators which disproportionately favor low population states. Assuming 4500 house seats, if California gets 541 EC votes and Wyoming gets 10 EC votes, it goes from almost a 4x increase in relative voting power for someone in WY to a 1.25x increase. I don't know if that would significantly change electoral math, but it would make it a little less garbage. It would definitely be better, but wouldn’t change much with our current political climate. Dems and Republicans are pretty evenly distributed with who wins big and small states. Look at the top 10 and bottom 10 states by population and both parties won 5 from each category. Expanding the house is still the right thing to do though. Even if we abolished the EC all together.
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Apr 18, 2021 20:43
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Pain of Mind posted:That is the bigger problem, but it would at least dilute the EC votes from Senators which disproportionately favor low population states. Assuming 4500 house seats, if California gets 541 EC votes and Wyoming gets 10 EC votes, it goes from almost a 4x increase in relative voting power for someone in WY to a 1.25x increase. I don't know if that would significantly change electoral math, but it would make it a little less garbage. It'd make Gore win in 2000 but I don't think it would matter for any other recent elections. Like you said, the bigger problem is that voters in California and Wyoming are both irrelevant and the only votes that matter are in large close states. (Trump got more votes than Biden in states that were within 10%, that's your electoral college disadvantage)
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Apr 19, 2021 04:30
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From YouGov and the Economist, Biden Job Approval rates by state: https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1387442493336264706 Including error bars: https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1387445438463287300 Looking forward to Senate races: lightly better news than I think the GOP'd have expected this early from Arizona, Ohio, and North Carolina but I think they were hoping for better on Colorado, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennslyvania, and Georgia. Dems have potentially tough holds in CO, GA, AZ, NH, and NV (though AZ and GA are the only two I see as risky short of a wave). GOP is trying to hold NC, OH, and PA despite retiring incumbents, and WI and FL with actual incumbents. It's difficult trying to predict where things will be as we "get back to normal" after COVID and who people will credit for the pretty dramatic lifestyle change that entails, but I think the range of plausible outcomes stretches from R+5 (you're looking at IL, CT, or OR to go any further) to D+6 (adding Iowa to the states above is a stretch, but less so than MO, NE, or IN).
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Apr 28, 2021 17:57
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How about that redistricting huh? Looks significantly less bad than the doomsayers thought, though New York being less than 100 people from not losing a seat is kind of a bummer even if they're going to for sure kill and R doing it, since it'll just get replaced by a Texas R.
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Apr 28, 2021 20:01
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Sanguinia posted:How about that redistricting huh? Looks significantly less bad than the doomsayers thought, though New York being less than 100 people from not losing a seat is kind of a bummer even if they're going to for sure kill and R doing it, since it'll just get replaced by a Texas R. To be fair, that's better than the +3 TX and +3 FL people were predicting before this month.
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Apr 28, 2021 20:50
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Sanguinia posted:How about that redistricting huh? Looks significantly less bad than the doomsayers thought, though New York being less than 100 people from not losing a seat is kind of a bummer even if they're going to for sure kill and R doing it, since it'll just get replaced by a Texas R. Better than MN losing a seat which is what would've happened if NY hadn't. You can rely on NY to stay blue at least.
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Apr 28, 2021 21:09
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Remember it's not just whether the state voted for Trump or Biden, it matters where the population change is and who control redistricting. Blue state New York losing a seat is all upside for Democrats because the seat that's eliminated (independent of gerrymandering) will be an upstate Republican one. Red state Montana gaining a seat is also all upside, because the nonpartisan commission is very likely to split the state east-west and western Montana is semi competitive (and getting bluer). It's not all good for Democrats but it's not just red state = bad. It'll be interesting to see what Texas Republicans do, I think there's a real possibility that some hyper aggressive 2010 gerrymander would backfire.
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Apr 28, 2021 21:19
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It really isn't that bad overall for Dems. I think they'll probably lose 1-2 seats. The blue states losing seats can probably make sure that Rs lose those spots, but some of the red states adding seats may have trouble making sure the new seats are R seats and not D seats. Any attempt to make those R seats means diluting support from their other districts. Since Texas is mostly growing in cities and suburbs that lean D, it'll be a struggle to do anything besides split those seats 1 for each party. WV had 3 republicans, so them losing a seat is an automatic loss for the Republicans. MT who knows if they're able to make that seat red, not sure they'd be able to do that, my guess is they may end up with 1R and 1D seat. FL is pretty evenly split as it is, 14R to 13D seats. They may be able to make sure the added seat is an R without losing a different seat.
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Apr 28, 2021 21:21
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Amazing news! https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1388160745616166923 https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1388160762955411457 https://mobile.twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1388161665187864584
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Apr 30, 2021 17:13
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Bird in a Blender posted:It really isn't that bad overall for Dems. I think they'll probably lose 1-2 seats. The blue states losing seats can probably make sure that Rs lose those spots, but some of the red states adding seats may have trouble making sure the new seats are R seats and not D seats. Any attempt to make those R seats means diluting support from their other districts. Since Texas is mostly growing in cities and suburbs that lean D, it'll be a struggle to do anything besides split those seats 1 for each party. The opening arguments podcast did a segment on this and we may be jumping the gun. On day one of his term Biden ordered that the Census be accurate and count every person. Now that the initial report has been given to the White House they now need to determine if the census is compliant with the EO. If they determine its not it will have to be corrected. I don't know how likely they are to make such a determination but even small discrepancies could impact the apportionment due to the complexities of the allocation process (See NY losing a seat by 89 people). And, well, Trump did a lot to try and gently caress with the census.
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Apr 30, 2021 17:28
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It's now been 100 days since Trump was president, and so far there's not much sign his hold on the party is weakening the way some observers thought might happen once he was out of office and banned from social media. The news today is about Mitt Romney getting booed and called a traitor and a communist at a Utah Republican convention, where the state party very narrowly voted not to censure him, by a vote of 798 to 711. That's in Utah, probably one of the most never-Trump of the Republican states because of the strong influence of Mormonism and anti-Trump Mormon Republican leaders like Romney. A CNN poll last week asked the question "Thinking about the results of the 2020 presidential election, do you think that Joe Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency, or not?" Overall response was 65% yes, Biden won legitimately and 30% no, Biden did not win legitimately. Among Republicans, responses were 23% yes and 70% no. 7 out of 10 Republicans believe the lie about a stolen election, and that's driving current Republican politics over suppressing the vote for 2022 and 2024 in key states like Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona. Another poll from two weeks ago found that Trump still has a 41-54 approval rating, basically unchanged from his presidency and the exact inverse of Biden's 53-42 approval. That poll includes these questions:  We'll see if these figures keep holding up over time, but as things stand right now it's still very much Donald Trump's party.
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May 2, 2021 14:26
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I have to wonder how much of the Trump support is being unwilling to admit they were wrong or duped. I’m also curious as to what they’d do if Trump isn’t on the ballot or runs third party.
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May 2, 2021 15:39
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Oracle posted:I have to wonder how much of the Trump support is being unwilling to admit they were wrong or duped. I’m also curious as to what they’d do if Trump isn’t on the ballot or runs third party. The second poll asked about that and this is the response they got:  So, very much up in the air. DeSantis is doing his best to claim the Trump 2.0 crown and it seems his anti-lockdown stuff in Florida has won him a decent amount of support. Trump was on TV talking him up recently too, saying he would consider picking DeSantis as his VP if he runs again in 2024. But primary polling this far out is obviously a shot in the dark. My hunch is it's way too early to claim anyone as a non-Trump frontrunner, but that it's likely the 2024 primary without Trump would end up being a bunch of people trying to prove they're the leading Trump candidate.
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May 2, 2021 15:47
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Man, that's a pretty long list of people I totally despise.
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May 2, 2021 16:57
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Crossposting from USPOL:Herstory Begins Now posted:There's been a schism pretty much fully manifested for a couple months now. It's most visible in divisions among gop donors, and you basically have pro/counter insurrectionist factions (pro-insurrection ofc is nearly synonymous for trumpists and includes the q people). On the other end you have the fundamentally pro-corporate wing of the gop which is winning a battle for business interests and corporate donors. One of the really bizarre developments has been the pro-insurrection side just outright abandoning a lot of the business friendly language and instead yelling about how they want to punish businesses that don't go along with their culture war stuff.
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May 2, 2021 17:04
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If Trump runs again and picks DeSantis as his V.P., I'm pretty sure Trump will have to change his home state again. I don't think the president and vice president can be from the same state on the same ticket.
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May 2, 2021 17:10
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IIRC they can both run, but they both can’t claim EC votes from the same state.
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May 2, 2021 17:29
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So how did the TX-06 Election go? Above or below expectations now that the deep-red district is now competitive?
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May 2, 2021 17:42
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vyelkin posted:The second poll asked about that and this is the response they got: LOL at Ted Cruz being a single digit midget and just behind Don Jr. after all his sucking off of Trump.
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May 2, 2021 17:51
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Grouchio posted:So how did the TX-06 Election go? Above or below expectations now that the deep-red district is now competitive? The Democratic vote got split 10 ways and the run-off will feature two Republicans. Failure to navigate the jungle primary aside, the overall vote was 62% R to 37% D - a blowout compared to Trump's three point margin in 2020. The Dems need to adjust to the reality that "jungle primaries" are just a return to the backroom politics of the past, or they'll continue to get schooled. https://www.vox.com/2021/5/2/22415802/texas-sixth-district-special-election-susan-wright Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:14 on May 2, 2021 |
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May 2, 2021 18:06
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That’s not encouraging, but it’s hard to read much into a special election that had like 1/4 the number of voters as the general.
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May 2, 2021 18:13
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Oracle posted:I have to wonder how much of the Trump support is being unwilling to admit they were wrong or duped. I was trying to think of a way to ask the same question until I came across your post. A certain amount of the wagon circling is going to be tribalistic theater. Then again, isn't it always? "We can't be wrong, because the other party literally serves the Antichrist." Phrased another way: for the party whose two policy positions are (1) literally any tax not going into my wallet is a tyranny (2) more genocide now please, is there any insider/outsider line brighter than "We've never been wrong, and we will never be wrong?" Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 18:37 on May 2, 2021 |
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May 2, 2021 18:33
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Potato Salad posted:I was trying to think of a way to ask the same question until I came across your post. I think we have to go a step further in this analysis, though, because the key question isn't "do Trump voters think the election was stolen?", the key question is "what are they doing about it?" If you polled Democratic voters in May 2001, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that 70% of them thought Bush hadn't legitimately won the election because of the Florida recounts and Bush v. Gore. They had a legitimate grievance about the conduct of the last election leading to their opponent stealing it away from them. But Gore didn't have a personality cult around him, and the Democrats were generally accepting of their loss, stolen as it was, and moved on with politics as usual. The Trump wing of the Republican Party is not doing that right now, they're using the lie of the stolen election to preemptively steal the next one with voter suppression and with purges to get rid of any elected officials who upheld the integrity of the election in 2020 rather than putting their thumb on the scale to get Trump reelected. The wagon circling is important not just because it's the typical tribalistic theatre, but because it's being used as the rationale behind sweeping reforms to the electoral system to make it much harder for Republicans to lose next time. They aren't just saying "We've never been wrong, and we will never be wrong" as a rationalization for the fact that they lost, they're using it as a justification for ensuring they won't be wrong next time even if the majority of the country disagrees.
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May 2, 2021 19:13
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https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1388698057663975434?s=20 Wasserman, I do wonder why the DCCC would throw away TX-06 if they knew it could be a bellweather for 2022 midterms...
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May 2, 2021 20:03
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Grouchio posted:Crossposting from USPOL: Yeah, most of the rich "keep my taxes low and make sure my workers have no rights" GOP types don't believe in the Qanon, birther, rigged elections type of poo poo and just want their voters distracted by that sort of thing, not taking over the party apparatus. Now that the crazies are winning elections though a lot of the big money people are becoming noticeably nervous. Crazy is bad for business. I have a hard time seeing that as anything but a problem for Republicans moving forward but, to some extent, a lot of that is offset by the fanatical loyalty they've managed to build. So I dunno. Roughly 1/3 of the country, assuming it's that low, and 7 out of every ten republicans believing in things like rigged elections, a fake C19 virus and that democrats are coming to take their guns any day now still makes me worried. Sane people still represent the majority of the electorate but not by as much as would make me feel comfortable. I look at like what's happening to local news and the media conglomerate in general as well. The horrible effect it has on the information people consume. For now, the MAGA's seem content to drive loud trucks and hang huge flags from them.
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May 2, 2021 20:35
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SoggyBobcat posted:If Trump runs again and picks DeSantis as his V.P., I'm pretty sure Trump will have to change his home state again. I don't think the president and vice president can be from the same state on the same ticket. Yeah, I can imagine things like "laws" really holding those 2 back and giving them pause.
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May 2, 2021 20:39
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BiggerBoat posted:For now, the MAGA's seem content to drive loud trucks and hang huge flags from them.
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May 2, 2021 20:39
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lmao at including the barstool sports guy in that poll
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May 2, 2021 20:55
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Grouchio posted:https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1388698057663975434?s=20 it's just normal pollster poo poo, if the elections went in ways that validated the pollster's views (these districts are now competitive, Trump has RUINED the GOP in them!!!) they're bellwethers, if not then actually it's very smart the democrats completely ignored it and seemed to not even understand it was a jungle primary until a couple weeks beforehand. None of these guys will admit what actual bellwethers are until post-case when they look back all 'aw geeze who coulda seen it coming?'
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May 2, 2021 21:02
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sexpig by night posted:it's just normal pollster poo poo, if the elections went in ways that validated the pollster's views (these districts are now competitive, Trump has RUINED the GOP in them!!!) they're bellwethers, if not then actually it's very smart the democrats completely ignored it and seemed to not even understand it was a jungle primary until a couple weeks beforehand. None of these guys will admit what actual bellwethers are until post-case when they look back all 'aw geeze who coulda seen it coming?' OK, so if all polls are corrupted by confirmation bias to the point of uselessness, how does on get a sense of the political playing field?
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May 2, 2021 21:35
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Sarcastr0 posted:OK, so if all polls are corrupted by confirmation bias to the point of uselessness, how does on get a sense of the political playing field? Skip the middle man of the polls and just say it all confirms my priors
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May 2, 2021 21:50
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Sarcastr0 posted:OK, so if all polls are corrupted by confirmation bias to the point of uselessness, how does on get a sense of the political playing field? I think we've seen play out plenty that in the short term for electoralism purposes polls are a very bad measure of it beyond a general macro scale look at national moods. This is especially true in the current example when all the polls in the world couldn't tell you poo poo when the core problem is the dems flooded the field in a jungle primary
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May 2, 2021 21:51
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Sarcastr0 posted:OK, so if all polls are corrupted by confirmation bias to the point of uselessness, how does on get a sense of the political playing field?
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May 2, 2021 21:52
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Grouchio posted:Experience. Taking courses. Finding patterns. Intuition. But for the informed part, I do think polling data should not be discarded out of hand. Though yeah, I think the decade or so of polls being the thing you watch is surely over.
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May 2, 2021 21:58
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