oystertoadfish posted:

NEXT ELECTIONS

on 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):

• Some states will hold a runoff election later in the election season if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first round of a party primary; the party primary winners face off in November.
  
  • Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, South Dakota, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Louisiana follow this method.
• Three states have a 'Top-Two' or 'Jungle' primary system; all candidates, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, everybody, compete in one primary, together; the top two finishers, even if they're from the same party, go head to head in a later election
  
  • California and Washington do the logical thing, holding a primary then having the top two face off in November; Louisiana is a silly-rear end place, so they have the first round on the general election day on November 8, then have a special election on December 10 for races where nobody got over 50% in November.

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 TOMORROW!guess i should edit this out huh. let's just say nothing interesting happened and move on

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.

TARDISman posted:

I'm a little unsure on rules on presidential primary campaigns and senate races. If Paul ran for the Republican ticket and didn't get the nomination, my assumption is they'd have to put someone else up for his Senate seat, is that correct?

Nameless_Steve posted:

(Poll results as of 2014.11.06, unless otherwise noted by *)

Nameless_Steve posted:

first Iraq War veteran to hold the office of United States Senator.

evilweasel posted:

You know there's a guy who will be looking for a job in 2016 that has been successful in Illinois races

quote:

And in their most audacious plans, Tea Party groups are preparing to recruit challengers to run against high-profile Republicans they accuse of betraying them — as they did when they toppled Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader. At the top of their list of potential targets are politicians like Senator John McCain of Arizona, a proponent of an immigration overhaul. Their fantasy candidate: Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain’s former running mate who now spends much of the year at her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. Two prominent conservative activists, who spoke anonymously to divulge private discussions, said leading Tea Party figures planned to reach out to Ms. Palin to see if she was interested in running against Mr. McCain.

De Nomolos posted:

Dave Brat has a Posse.

My Imaginary GF posted:

2010 explained as: "Obama placing his trust in Senate Democrats."

Never loving place your trust in Senate Democrats.

GhostofJohnMuir posted:

For what it's worth, I think Harris and Villarigosa have by far more name recognition than Steyer.

Cliff Racer posted:

Yeah I'm sure he has some sort of very populous constituency that isn't already filled by another, better candidate.

Cliff Racer posted:

The Newsom/Harris deal looks set to eat up Cali's top slots for another decade and if these other candidates want a position they had might as well seek it now.

quote:

6. The Utah chairman originally called Mitt Romney "George Romney" then quickly corrected himself. The 2 Romney votes from Utah were announced aloud by the Chair.

Litany Unheard posted:

quote:

Former Rep. Todd Akin, a conservative who lost to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., in 2012, after he made controversial comments about rape that became national news, told the Post-Dispatch this week that he is still exploring his future and that he has not ruled out challenging Blunt in a primary.

“Roy has burned a lot of bridges with a lot of conservatives in the state,” Akin said, adding: “Anything is a possibility.”

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

she was too abrasive

Joementum posted:

Add Rep. Chris Van Hollen to the list of likely Maryland Senate candidates.