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Mathematicians Study Effects of Gerrymandering On 2012 Election
HughPickens.com writes Gerrymandering is the practice of establishing a political advantage for a particular party by manipulating district boundaries to concentrate all your opponents' votes in a few districts while keeping your party's supporters as a majority in the remaining districts. For example, in North Carolina in 2012 Republicans ended up winning nine out of 13 congressional seats even though more North Carolinians voted for Democrats than Republicans statewide. Now Jessica Jones reports that researchers at Duke are studying the mathematical explanation for the discrepancy. Mathematicians Jonathan Mattingly and Christy Vaughn created a series of district maps using the same vote totals from 2012, but with different borders. Their work was governed by two principles of redistricting: a federal rule requires each district have roughly the same population and a state rule requires congressional districts to be compact. Using those principles as a guide, they created a mathematical algorithm to randomly redraw the boundaries of the state's 13 congressional districts. "We just used the actual vote counts from 2012 and just retabulated them under the different districtings," says Vaughn. "If someone voted for a particular candidate in the 2012 election and one of our redrawn maps assigned where they live to a new congressional district, we assumed that they would still vote for the same political party."
The results were startling. After re-running the election 100 times with a randomly drawn nonpartisan map each time, the average simulated election result was 7 or 8 U.S. House seats for the Democrats and 5 or 6 for Republicans. The maximum number of Republican seats that emerged from any of the simulations was eight. The actual outcome of the election — four Democratic representatives and nine Republicans – did not occur in any of the simulations. "If we really want our elections to reflect the will of the people, then I think we have to put in safeguards to protect our democracy so redistrictings don't end up so biased that they essentially fix the elections before they get started," says Mattingly. But North Carolina State Senator Bob Rucho is unimpressed. "I'm saying these maps aren't gerrymandered," says Rucho. "It was a matter of what the candidates actually was able to tell the voters and if the voters agreed with them. Why would you call that uncompetitive?"
The results were startling. After re-running the election 100 times with a randomly drawn nonpartisan map each time, the average simulated election result was 7 or 8 U.S. House seats for the Democrats and 5 or 6 for Republicans. The maximum number of Republican seats that emerged from any of the simulations was eight. The actual outcome of the election — four Democratic representatives and nine Republicans – did not occur in any of the simulations. "If we really want our elections to reflect the will of the people, then I think we have to put in safeguards to protect our democracy so redistrictings don't end up so biased that they essentially fix the elections before they get started," says Mattingly. But North Carolina State Senator Bob Rucho is unimpressed. "I'm saying these maps aren't gerrymandered," says Rucho. "It was a matter of what the candidates actually was able to tell the voters and if the voters agreed with them. Why would you call that uncompetitive?"
Did they take into account the Voting Rights Act provision that requires that minority voters be concentrated into districts that they have a good likelihood of winning? That alone has the effect of diluting minority strength elsewhere.
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It would also be the end of the two party systems.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Is subdistrict voting data available, or did they just assume a uniform voting pattern across each current district? In the latter case, what they're doing is resampling which tends to average things out, so their result isn't surprising and their conclusion is invalid.
Whilst the Republicans have played this game well in recent years, it's not that long ago that the Democrats were at it equally successfully, and in many states they still do it. Which is not to suggest that it's a good thing - but let's not get partisan about it.
He does politics for a living and has succeeded in a competitive domain, we should listen.
The issue is that Gerrymandered seats are safer, the elected official *is* communicating with voters, but the electorate he must worry most about is his own party in the primaries.
If you have a seat that is safe for one party then you get elected by activists of that party, not voters in general which leads to people getting elected from both parties who would never win on their own merits if they had to "communicate" with a more representative portion of the electorate.
They don't get re-elected by doing a good job, they get it by convincing activist members of their own party that they "represented our values".
They don't get fired by screwing up, but because some faction of their own party, be it unions, Tea party, some religious or ethnic group don't like them or because they sleep with someone that causes a fuss.
So the surprise is not that elected official are less than the best, the surprise is that they know such advanced maths as "some numbers are bigger than others" and that grasp foreign politics well enough to know that the Queen of England isn't a New York bar.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
Actually if anything they're more serious than the external ones. In an ordinary district the candidates from each major party have to compete for a majority of voters. In a gerrymandered "safe" district the other side is never going to win in the first place so the real contest isn't between each side but rather during the primary to see who's can be more extreme.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Gerrymandering has a long, proud tradition in U.S. politics. I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in advantage to one side about half the time.
It seems that political power is self-limiting. One side will occupy Congress for a while, until the other side gets fed up and makes a switch. As long as one party doesn't control the whole Congress plus the presidency, gridlock keeps us safe from most of the excesses of either side. It's only when one side runs the whole show that it's time to worry.
John
The great virtue of 'first past the post' is that it forces parties to appeal to a wider group than their obvious supporters...
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, but what FPTP does do is push everything towards a two-party state. This is why you get, effectively, extremists on both sides. Case in point: UK and USA. Minor parties are pushed out, moderate viewpoints are ignored. FPTP directly leads to "Us v. Them" contests.
In fact, thinking more about your first point: I don't think it's quite true. FPTP encourages parties to talk negatively about their opponents rather than push their own positive points.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Well, quite frankly, there wasn't any. When Republicans win, the media and academia dutifully explain to us how the election was bought and paid for, surely also the result of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement. Oh, yeah gerrymandering too. The election was stolen! Our democracy is crumbling! Peter Jennings once even told us that a Republican win was the result of voters throwing a "temper tantrum".
When Democrats win, they get a misty tear in their eye as they are overcome with pride that the will of the people has prevailed, democracy has been saved, and their party now has a clear mandate.
Morons, all of them.
"recognizing communities" is the heart of gerrymandering. Any gerrymandering algorithm should be forbidden from doing so.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
What's really startling (not really) is the fact gerrymandering is worse in blue states than red ones, but we only ever hear (on this site) that it's all the evil republicans while the democrats are the poor victims.
Each state should create a competitive contract and to build a re-districting computer program. The requirements for the program should include
* The only data fed to the program is geographic markers the will provide convenient district borders (railroad lines, roads, rivers, county and city borders, etc.) and the number of people within each section. No other demographic data (age, race, previous voting patterns, income, etc.) will be input into the program
* the program will be completed 2 years before the redistricting and be open source so that anyone can inspect it and run it and get the same result
* the program will take a random seed as input and will generate different results based on that seed.
The requirements also include obvious stuff like how spread out or compact districts must be, how many can be disconnected, etc.
The geographic data will also be made public 2 years in advance of the redistricting
When the census data comes out it will be published as well.
On the big day they'll hold a lotto-type drawing to select the random seed. At that point anyone - researchers, journalists, some kid in his basement - can run the program and know the result before it is even published by the government. If the result isn't what everyone else expects we'll know there was funny business.
The program will be fair because the kind of data that allows gerrymandering simply won't be permitted as input. Any sneaky attempts to use something like population density as a proxy will be something anyone can find and complain about in the open source code. Neither party will be able look at the results ahead of time, see that by chance it gives a slight advantage to their opponents, and scuttle the process because the outcome won't be available until the random seed is drawn.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
And which side do you fear? The Republicrats or the Demoblicans?
Both, if you're smart.
Just change to a proportional election system instead. Let the percentage of votes decide how many seats a party will get.
It will of course invite other parties to the election party as well.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
This means that, although the Republicans lost the popular vote in the state, and they lost the geographically weighted vote according to 100 randomly drawn electoral maps, they still ended up winning the state overall.
This is true, and I have absolutely no doubt that there is some serious manipulation going on in drawing districts, as there has been by both parties for centuries.
That said, there's quite a big gap of logic in one of the assumptions of this study. From TFS:
"If someone voted for a particular candidate in the 2012 election and one of our redrawn maps assigned where they live to a new congressional district, we assumed that they would still vote for the same political party."
To what extent is this assumption valid, though? The model appears based on the assumption that ALL voters are "straight-ticket" types who just vote Republican or Democrat mindlessly.
In other words, it doesn't take into account whether (1) a voter might actually care about a specific candidate and what he/she says, (2) a voter might actually respond to campaign advertising or other candidate promotions, (3) for incumbents, a voter might actually continue to vote for an incumbent is he/she is perceived to have served well. (Stats generally show that incumbents have a huge advantage in elections -- voters prefer to vote for familiar names.)
Without controlling for such factors (e.g., by looking at previous election vote counts and comparing how "faithful" voters are to a particular party over the course of a number of elections), this study is SERIOUSLY flawed.
Also, candidates run campaigns according to the rules that are in place. They may visit areas in their district because they have to win those areas and make promises they might not otherwise make because those areas are in their district. If the district lines were drawn differently, they would probably campaign differently.
This strikes me as flawed as those who get into arguments about how Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election. (To be clear, I definitely was never a Bush fan, but I'm interested in rational argument, not fantasies.)
Anyhow, Gore and Bush weren't campaigning to win the popular vote across the country. They were campaigning to win the electoral college vote, which required strategy based on regions and state boundaries. To come back later and say, "But, but... Gore should have won because he got the popular vote" is like some idiot saying, "I know I lost Monopoly, but I had the most properties -- if you changed the rules to allow me to build houses based on the number of properties I own rather than the number of monopolies I had, I could have won!" So what? Those aren't the rules of the game.
The rules of the game may be stupid (and are in the case of gerrymandered districts). But the players choose strategies based on them. The voters may respond to such strategies. None of this appears to have been considered in this model.
Duke is also the university that suspended their Lacrosse team because a bunch of leftwing idiots wanted them to. It is thta part of South Carolina that got gerrymandered into the North.
You don't vote because you're lazy and don't want to fight. And frankly, half the reason we're in this mess is because of people like you.
You mean how like domestic spying is evil since we have a Democrat in office but it was just fine while Bush was in there? Or how Obamacare is the worst thing ever but it was fine when Nixon proposed it or Romney implemented it?
Really, fuck you and all the lying two faced conservative bastards who've ruined this country, impoverished its workers, and stolen the wealth of generations for their rich friends.
Yeah, I'm sure they had some 15 year plan that was set in motion specifically to gerrymander congressional districts. Or maybe they realized that the real governing is done on a local level, and decided to create a groundswell of support.
A rising tide, and all that.
It's fantastic how the Dems just can't swallow that they got their shit wrecked in an election, and they need to crank up the excuse factory rather than see that their policies are not favored by the majority of the public.
How does gerrymandering affect gubernatorial and US Senate races again?
So we'd be voting for a party rather than an individual with his or her own ideas? That's a step backwards.
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Hmmm...how about social security and medicare, should that be handled by the states so that poor states get shafted...well, their older citizens will. That will cause a migration to a few states and leave rest to the wilderness. How about OSHA and workplace safety regulations? Each state is going to produce their own? FDA? Each state will have its own? The list goes on. We have these government agencies to regulate those well-adjusted nice companies that will cut grannies throat if they thought they could increase their profit by doing so. A collection of polyglot regulatory agencies is how we got the current insurance industry. These are those nice, well-meaning companies that want to cherry pick the healthy people and only insure them.
So your libertarian utopia is an academic exercise in futility.
I prefer to refer to the de facto one party system we have as being run by Demoncrats.
That unfortunately sounds like one of Rush's talking points.
Actually now that I think about it .. it was one of Michael Savages catch phrases.
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Would you count Tom Steyer and George Soros in that crowd or do you only have a problem with people that help to get Republicans elected? Who is really being obtuse here?