Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Who Gerrymanders More Republicans Or Democrats

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More Than Half Of Young Americans Are Going Through An Extended Period Of Feeling Down Depressed Or Hopeless In Recent Weeks; 28% Have Had Thoughts That They Would Be Better Off Dead Or Of Hurting Themself In Some Way

Democrats Vs Republicans | What is the difference between Democrats and Republicans?

Fifty-one percent of young Americans say that at least several days in the last two weeks they have felt down, depressed, or hopeless19% say they feel this way more than half of the time. In addition, 68% have little energy, 59% say they have trouble with sleep, 52% find little pleasure in doing things. 49% have a poor appetite or are over-eating, 48% cite trouble concentrating, 32% are moving so slowly, or are fidgety to the point that others notice and 28% have had thoughts of self-harm

Among those most likely to experience bouts of severe depression triggering thoughts that they would be better off dead or hurting themself are young people of color , whites without a college experience , rural Americans , and young Americans not registered to vote .

In the last two weeks, 53% of college students have said that their mental health has been negatively impacted by school or work-related issues; overall 34% have been negatively impacted by the coronavirus, 29% self-image, 29% personal relationships, 28% social isolation, 25% economic concerns, 22% health concernsand 21% politics .

Redistricting In The 2020s: An Overview

In 1981, Indiana Republicans enacted a partisan gerrymander of the Hoosier State designed to help Republicans net several seats. Even the Democrats here concede that the newly drawn congressional district lines are a political masterpiece and that they face a much tougher task now in retaining their one-vote majority in Indianas congressional delegation,reported the Washington Post.


But that following year, Republicans failed to make significant inroads in Indiana the delegation went from 6-5 Democratic to a 5-5 split after the state lost a district because of reapportionment. By the end of the decade, Democrats held an 8-2 edge in Indiana, despite the Republican gerrymander.

Three decades after the creation of that failed GOP gerrymander in Indiana, a new Republican-controlled state government sought to create a 7-2 Republican map. Republicans held a 6-3 edge at the time after netting two seats in the 2010 Republican wave. The new map worked. While then-Rep. Joe Donnelly ended up running for U.S. Senate and he surprisingly won now-Rep. Jackie Walorski narrowly won a more Republican version of Donnellys old seat. Indiana elected seven Republicans and two Democrats to the House for the entire decade.

North Carolina Republicans drew two immensely efficient gerrymanders before Democratic-controlled state courts forced a third remap that cut the GOP edge from 10-3 to 8-5 in the 2020 election.

There Are No Standards For Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is distasteful, said Justice Samuel Alito during the Wisconsin arguments. But if we are going to impose a standard on the courts, it has to be something thats manageable, and it has to be something thats sufficiently concrete. Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed the social science used to identify gerrymandering as sociological gobbledygook. This is not a new concern for the justices: In the 2004 case Vieth v. Jubelirer, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, There are yet no agreed upon substantive principles of fairness in districting.

But today, political scientists have developed a number of concrete tests to measure partisan gerrymandering, such as the number of wasted votes for a party or when a party receives far more seats than its share of votes. At the Wisconsin argument, Justice Stephen Breyer laid out a workable standard for the court: Were the maps drawn by one party? Do they unfairly benefit one party over the other? Does that partisan advantage last over a series of election cycles? And, if so, was there any good reason for the map other than achieving partisan control? I suspect thats manageable, he said.


Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on and .

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Analysis Of The House Of Representatives

If Democrats are correct in their arguments that their votes are being taken away in House elections, it should be reflected in the national vote. In other words, they should be getting more votes across the country, only to have them unfairly portioned out in various districts in various states, so that the Republicans get a majority, right?

Democrats often suggest switching to a continental European system thats based on party lists or proportional representation systems. Your vote percentage tends to equal your seat percentage with this option, with tiny parties not crossing a threshold being eliminated and those parties getting more votes than the minimum dividing up the rest. What would happen if we had something like this gerrymander-killing electoral rule?

To do this, I looked at all 10 House elections from 2000 to 2018. I examined each partys share of the vote, which party gained seats, and which party won in terms of control of the lower branch of Congress itself. And heres what I found.


As you can see, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is not as great as one thinks in these elections. In three cases, Democrats have won 50 percent or more of the nationwide vote three times, while Republicans have won 50 percent or more of the vote across the country three times as well.

Despite Recent Wins For Democrats Gerrymanders Dim Hopes For 2018

Why can

For Democrats, signs everywhere suddenly look rosy.

They won smashing victories last week in Virginia and other states. With voters giving the Trump presidency and the Republican-led Congress dismal grades, and the Democratic grass roots re-energized, hope is widespread for a takeover of the House of Representatives and a strong run in the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections.

But for all the optimism, the elections in Virginia last week vividly reflected why the reality might be a good deal harsher. While Democrats won the governorship by nearly nine percentage points and won a similar margin in total votes in legislative races, it appears likely, unless recounts reverse seats, that they will fall just short of taking control of the states heavily gerrymandered House of Delegates.

And around the country, gerrymandering, refined to a high art, and increasingly restrictive voting laws have left many experts wary of assuming that the intensity of Democratic voters will translate into equally robust electoral gains.


For some, the lesson of Virginia is that grass-roots organizing and voters eager to turn out can pull off big wins in unlikely places. But for others, the gap between votes and legislative seats is a cautionary reminder that Democrats face daunting structural obstacles in turning around Republican majorities in Congress and in state legislatures.

Still, Mr. Holder added firmly, The House of Representatives is certainly in play.

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How Republicans Use Redistricting To Their Advantage

As the redistricting process begins, were carefully watching for ways Republican can potentially game the system to increase their power in Congressat the expense of democracy. In todays Data Dive, were looking back at a 2020 study that dove into the impact of redistricting on the partisan seat share in the U.S. House over the last 50 yearsand how Republicans have manipulated the redistricting process for their own benefit.;

Redistricting is the process of drawing congressional and legislative districts, which are updated every ten years after the completion of the Census. The shape of districts matters because their borders determine who votes in an electionand if drawn in certain ways, a district could artificially inflate or restrict the representation of a group of voters. This is called gerrymandering: the act of drawing electoral districts for political gain. Republicans are gerrymandering experts; instead of running on popular ideas, they redraw the electorate to retain power. The study, Political Control Over Redistricting and the Partisan Balance in Congress,, finds the numbers for what we all knew was true: Republicans disproportionately benefit when they control redistricting, and voters lose.;


Key Takeaways:

Republicans Gerrymandering Increases Seat Share by 9.1%

Republican Redistricting Affects 1 in 10 Voters

Gerrymandering Has Gotten Worse this Centuryand Benefits Republicans More and More

Society Today Than To Say The Same Thing About Blacks And Whites The Rich And The Poor And Other Social Groups

Are americas richest families republicans or democrats? Then, we split the dataset, stratified according to the party variable so as to have approximately similar proportions of democrats & republicans in. Live science is supported by its audience. The republicans used to favor big government, while democrats were committed to curbing federal power. The answer may surprise you. Are there more republicans or democrats? Once you know which party you belong to, it will be easier to decide which candidates to vote for during elections. . In the current 112th congress of the united states of america, there are 242 republicans in the house and 190 democrats. Of the top 25 most dangerous american cities, on top of poverty between 18 and 39 percent, most have unemployment between 4.4 and 9.3 percent. And its largely liberal democratic. However, thanks to gerrymandering, voter suppression, and anemic voter turnouts, these numbers are not always reflected in the elections. Society today than to say the same thing about blacks and whites, the rich and the poor, and other social groups.

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Why Possibly Changing The Filibuster Brings Threats Of Political Nuclear War

And Smith says its really hard to change because the Senate is enshrined in the Constitution.

But Wegman says this is not what the Framers had in mind. For one thing, when they wrote the Constitution, they thought only white men with property could vote. And they certainly couldnt have imagined how the population would grow and sort itself out.


At the time of the founding, the biggest state was 13 times the size of the smallest state. Today, the biggest state is 70 times the size of the smallest state, he said. So a few hundred thousand people in Wyoming have as much power as tens of millions of people in California or New York. And I think that violation of majority rule is going to continue to haunt us through the Senate, which is not really alterable in any meaningful way other than by just adding more states.

Democrats dont currently have the votes to grant statehood to Puerto Rico or Washington, D.C., or the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Republican And Democratic Parties Effectively Switched Platforms Between Their Presidencies

More Republicans registered to vote than Democrats

Executives of americas large public companies have long played a role in public policy by advising leaders of both parties but those corporate chieftains themselves are far more likely to be republicans than democrats, a new study shows. The republican party has been corrupted by donald trump and his best pals, vladimir putin and moscow mitch. How do we explain this? Conservative democrats, have more in common with republicans than liberal democrats. The us has dealt with the worlds largest number of cases and deaths from the pandemic. The democrats are more supportive of government programmes to support minorities. Learn vocabulary, terms and more with flashcards, games and other study tools. Throughout most of the 20th century, although the republican and democratic parties alternated in the democrats support in the formerly solid south had been eroded during the vast cultural who controlled both chambers in 27 states versus the republican party having total control in only. But we must not forget that both parties share varied ideologies. Supporters of this party are known as democrats. Take the democrat or republican quiz to find out which political party you should join. It said in a statement that once. Start studying democrat vs republican.

Republicans gained two new state trifectas after winning majorities in the new hampshire house and democrats did not concede defeat.

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Other Factors Affecting Redistricting

At a federal level, gerrymandering has been blamed for a decrease in competitive elections, movement toward extreme party positions, and gridlock in Congress. Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight argues that decreasing competition is partly due to gerrymandering, but even more so due to the population of the United States self-segregating by political ideology, which is seen in by-county voter registrations. Enten points to studies which find that factors other than gerrymandering account for over 75% of the increase in polarization in the past forty years, presumably due largely to changes among voters themselves. Because the Senate has been passing fewer bills but the House has been passing more , Enten concludes gridlock is due to factors other than gerrymandering.

The Republican Drift Against Democracy And The Courts Role In It

But gerrymandering is just one piece of a much broader GOP offensive to rig the system in their favor. This isnt some kind of master plan to destroy democracy so much as a series of discrete tactics, each a power grab in its own right, that add up to imperil American democracy itself.

Voter ID laws pushed in Republican states have created not-insignificant barriers to voting for many black and Hispanic voters. Republican state governments have conducted voter purges that disproportionately clear minority voters from the rolls. After two elections where Republicans lost control of the governorship, North Carolina in 2016 and Wisconsin in 2018, the state legislatures stripped power from new Democratic governors before they could take office. Floridas Republican-controlled legislature just defanged a ballot initiative passed in 2018 that would allow ex-felons to vote, literally denying the franchise to a heavily black constituency.

While these examples come from the state level, as thats where electoral law is primarily set in the US system, theyve been either directly supported by the national party or tacitly approved.

All of this talk about Roberts being the swing vote, or worried about appearances of being political: not on the issues he cares about the most, which are politics, race and power, Hasen writes. See Shelby County, Citizens United, and now … Rucho.


Citizens United

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Democrats Hate Gerrymanderingexcept When They Get To Do It

In Maryland, New Mexico, and elsewhere, Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans are in other stateswhich tells us that the real problem is deeper.

With Republicans clinging to the House of Representatives facing a blue midterm wave, and the 2020 census right around the corner, gerrymandering has suddenly become a hot topic. Democrats are particularly worried that Republican-drawn districts will be too high a wall to breach, no matter how hard they campaign, or how big the wave.

In 2006, a roughly five-and-a-half-point lead in the national popular vote was enough for Democrats to pick up 31 seats and win back the House majority they had lost to Newt Gingrich, write Michael Li and Laura Royden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. But;our research;shows that a similar margin of victory in 2018 would most likely net Democrats only 13 seats, leaving the Republicans firmly in charge.


Imagine a scenario where 2016 is immediately followed by a midterm election where Democrats feel just as cheated. This kind of repeated failure would breed more than just frustration on the leftit would lead to the kind of paranoia that defined the right for the Obama years.

These were, of course, blatant, anti-democratic, power grabs. But my point isnt to say Both sides do it, therefore theres nothing we can do!

What Is Different This Year

Republicans Rigging are Elections by Gerrymandering Districts

The biggest immediate concern is a months-long delay in the release of census data due to the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, officials said states would not receive detailed figures until September.

As a result, the two states that hold legislative elections in 2021, Virginia and New Jersey, will use their old maps. Meanwhile, around half of U.S. states have legal deadlines calling for new maps to be completed in 2021, which could be impossible given the delay; experts say many states will likely ask courts for extensions.

Some good government groups are worried the delay could lead to more extreme gerrymandering, since it would leave little time for any legal challenges to make their way through the courts before the 2022 elections in November.

The Supreme Courts decision in 2013 to eliminate a key section of the Voting Rights Act will also make it more difficult for civil rights groups to prevent gerrymandering. In years past, states with a history of racial discrimination in elections were required to get preclearance from the federal government before making any changes to voting laws, but the court struck down that provision.

Another difference this year: Voters in several states, including Colorado, Michigan, New York and Virginia, approved the creation of redistricting commissions designed to lessen partisanship, though they have varying degrees of autonomy.

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Forty Percent Of Young Americans Expect Their Lives To Be Better As A Result Of The Biden Administration; Many More Feel A Part Of Bidens America Than Trumps

  • Whites: 30% better, 28% worse
  • Blacks: 54% better, 4% worse
  • Hispanics: 51% better, 10% worse

Forty-six percent of young Americans agreed that they feel included in Bidens America, 24% disagreed . With the exception of young people living in rural America, at least a plurality indicated they felt included. This stands in contrast to Trumps America. Forty-eight percent reported that they did not feel included in Trumps America, while 27% indicated that they felt included . The only major subgroup where a plurality or more felt included in Trumps America were rural Americans.;

  • 39% of Whites feel included in Bidens America, 32% do not ; 35% of Whites feel included in Trumps America, 41% do not .
  • 61% of Blacks feel included in Bidens America, 13% do not ; 16% of Blacks feel included in Trumps America, 60% do not .
  • 51% of Hispanics feel included in Bidens America, 12% do not ; 17% of Hispanics feel included in Trumps America, 55% do not .

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