|
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? As of right now he cannot run for both. There were some reports they are looking to change the party rules so he could run for both. The problem comes in, if he wins the primary for both, he is going to need to choose one and that could leave the Republican party without a candidate for that seat for the general.
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2014 01:18
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 07:07 |
|
|
Anubis posted:The house is hosed because gerrymandering, the only real hope there is that demographics shift enough to start putting stuff in play the further away from the census (when lines are redrawn) we get. The house is hosed because gerrymandering AND because Democrats are all in cities. We overelect people like crazy.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2014 04:16
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Granted, isn't really just gerrymandering when urban areas should be split up more equitably into districts? That is pretty much just gerrymandering in the opposite way though, isn't it? The problem is that Democrats are very concentrated in cities, while Republicans are much more spread out. So unless you are districting purposefully to spread out the dems it is going to result in fewer Democratic candidates being elected by large margins while more Republicans are elected by lower margins. Ardennes posted:Also yeah turnout was around 35.5-35.6%, it was the lowest turnout since the Second World War....and that was only because a significant portion of the country was fighting abroad. Yeah, Minnesota had ~50% turnout and was the other not so lovely state for Democrats. It was the lowest turnout in a long time for us though.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2014 16:38
|
|
|
evilweasel posted:You've got two opposite inclinations here. The first is that the point of a district is that it has its own unique interests and needs someone to represent those particular interests. That tugs in favor of 'natural' districts: you'd want to put like people together in a district so that their representative represents those interests. The second is democracy - there's a problem when the elected representatives do not represent the electorate, and you've got a, say, 50-50 state that sends 75% of one side to Congress. This leans in favor of making each district competitive so that you avoid wasted votes as much as possible. We also have minority/majority districts right now that exist pretty much solely because of gerrymandering. Geographically based representative districts actually gets really complicated in a hurry. Like evilweasel said, it's a lot easier to have a purely proportional representation system. Good luck with that here though.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2014 17:17
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Ultimately though it becomes the question of "waiting for a PR" system or pushing more complex changes with the system we are obviously going to be stuck with until we die. We can definitely still fight for more fair districts, I was pointing out that the Democrats house woes are more than just gerrymandering by the Republicans in 2010. Not to single you out specifically, I just hear that reasoning lots of places, coworkers/facebook/other forums etc. If we focus on that aspect of losing the house we ignore the larger (more complicated) problem.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2014 17:24
|
|
|
Mooseontheloose posted:One big thing the Democrats have been dancing around is local level politics. If they want to sniff a favorable gerrymander (though it can't get much worse than now) in 2020 they have to start pouring resources into things like getting people elected in governships and state house races. And the Democratic Party suuuuuucks at that right now. They should take lessons from the DFL, we are pretty good at that 
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2014 21:08
|
|
|
King of Solomon posted:Which is why the Minnesota GOP now controls the state house of representatives by a significant margin. And we held onto the governor and Franken's seat by a ton, and even a few of the House seats that we were projected to lose. We did the best of any state except Oregon.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2014 21:31
|
|
|
Reminder: the GOP controls the house for more reasons than gerrymandering in the 2010 census. Democrats are naturally denser located than Republicans, we tend to over elect candidates compared to republicans. Even without the gerrymandering of the 2010 census the republicans would still be in control of the house, just by a smaller amount. We would need to switch to a completely different system to end the republican advantages in the house, until then we can keep getting more of the popular vote nationwide in house elections while still having fewer of the seats. Democrats need to win by a very large margin to control it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2015 18:41
|
|
|
Concerned Citizen posted:Party affiliation is irrelevant. Most independents are "secret partisans." For example, right-wing tea partiers that don't want to call themselves Republicans but actually vote Republican more often than registered Republicans. Modern modeling techniques can tease out these people's true affiliations. Just because a person isn't willing to openly identify with a party doesn't mean they don't have strong partisan leanings. The lean Republican/Democrat partisan bump, ah how cynical you make me when someone says they are independent and vote "on the issues"
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2015 00:25
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 07:07 |
|
|
Alter Ego posted:They elected Bevin because of a 30% turnout rate; plus, isn't Jack Conway like universally hated? Yeah, a whole bunch of liberals were apathetic about Conway for a variety of reasons. The moderates were pissed at his lovely handling of the gas monopoly issue as AG, the greens were pissed that he had a 40 page endorsement of coal on his campaign website, and no one was actually excited for him. Plus the polls were probably off because a bunch of Republican voters said they would never vote for Bevin because of how crazy he is, but showed up and voted Republican like they always do anyways.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2016 22:00
|
|