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The House of Representatives is currently in Democratic hands, so the system there would appear to be working as intended. Meanwhile, the Senate and the Presid

by ctlby 8y ago

The House of Representatives is currently in Democratic hands, so the system there would appear to be working as intended. Meanwhile, the Senate and the Presidency are controlled by Republicans, and gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to those outcomes.

bduerst 8y ago
You asked how "these things explain >1% of Republican electoral success", but have now moved the goalposts to "It's still not enough to control the entire house".
- ctlby 8y ago
  I'm really not trying to move the goalposts. It just seems weird to use the House to argue about the incredible effectiveness of the Republican's underhanded tactics--when they don't even control the one body where those tactics should help! In any event, the House sits beside the Senate and the Executive. As another commenter pointed out, this case at best explains ~2% of the dynamics of one out of three legislative bodies offices. And sure, other states might contribute a bit more. Fine, maybe it clears my 1% threshold; but just barely.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    You did though, and when faced with the evidence you shifted the burden of proof to maintain your opinion that gerrymandering by Republicans isn't a problem. The fact you continue to minimize it and ignore the other problematic Republican behavior shows confirmation bias.
    - ctlby 8y ago
      You're unnecessarily fixated on the 1% threshold I set out earlier. While nothing you said has changed my mind (my estimate is still <1%), I'm not really interested in the exact number. My point is that your concerns are qualitatively irrelevant (practically, not morally). So what if, in the absence of gerrymandering, there would be 100 fewer Republican congressmen? The Senate still isn't passing NN, and Trump is still stacking the judiciary with conservatives. I'm not here to defend Republicans (I think they're pretty bad) or the practices you described (I also think those are bad). But that doesn't change the fact that gerrymandering and power grabs and Fox News are nearly completely inconsequential in explaining the world in front of us. Quit with the liberal wishcasting. People don't vote Republican because they've been misled by some sinister conspiracy. They just don't want what you're selling.
InitialLastName 8y ago
> gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to those outcomes. You're correct that at the first order gerrymandering is irrelevant to the Senate and Presidency. Gerrymandering comes into play as a second-order effect, though; when used at the state level, it can cause state legislatures to effectively lock to a party. These state legislatures can then make changes to the way voting is organized in their state, enfranchising and disenfranchising voters in ways that support their party, and funding/defunding polling districts per the same. This has an effect that can be plenty large enough to swing statewide elections: see the last election's shenanigans in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida if you're in doubt.
- ctlby 8y ago
  I cannot overstate my doubts enough. Can you point me to evidence (aside from Stacey Abrams' sour grapes) that this swung an election?
hannasanarion 8y ago
The Democrats won the largest popular vote margin of any party in American history in 2018, but only the 53rd largest congressional majority in history, mostly because of Democratic voters in North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin who were "packed and cracked" so that their votes counted far less.
- ctlby 8y ago
  Suppose they had in fact won the largest House majority in history. What exactly would it change? How would NN be faring right now? Moral grandstanding aside, I don't see the relevance of any of this.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    The relevance to this is that you asserted that Republicans haven't given themselves any electoral advantage at all or that, if they did, it accounted for less than 1% of their success, when that cannot be further from the truth. You said "explain your reasoning", and that's what I did. No need to get defensive over it and try to pretend like it's irrelevant to the discussion. This is literally the discussion you explicitly asked for. If you don't like the fact that the Republican party has acted in a decades-long effort to guarantee their own power in perpetuity with or without public support, don't get mad at me, get mad at them.
    - ctlby 8y ago
      I’m not mad at anyone, you simply haven’t explained anything. You just keep repeating the standard litany of Republican sins. I never disputed Republicans’ attempt to give themselves an electoral advantage. I just disagree that this is consequential, much less decisive. As you yourself argued elsewhere in the thread, NC Republicans’ chicanery could mean a 2% swing in the House. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re telling me that by attributing 100% of R success to trickery, in a state that’s the worst of the worst in this regard and so yields the biggest effect size, you can create a counterfactual where Democrats have 2% more seats in just one half of Congress? Your smoking gun is a rounding error. So I’m asking again: how do these sorts of numbers lead you to believe what you apparently believe?
tangent128 8y ago
Gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to the Senate and the Presidency... in the sense that, if you lift the restriction for representative districts to have comparable populations, the resulting distortions of the popular will no longer count as mere "gerrymandering".

by ctlby 8y ago

bduerst 8y ago

You asked how "these things explain >1% of Republican electoral success", but have now moved the goalposts to "It's still not enough to control the entire house".

ctlby 8y ago
I'm really not trying to move the goalposts. It just seems weird to use the House to argue about the incredible effectiveness of the Republican's underhanded tactics--when they don't even control the one body where those tactics should help! In any event, the House sits beside the Senate and the Executive. As another commenter pointed out, this case at best explains ~2% of the dynamics of one out of three legislative bodies offices. And sure, other states might contribute a bit more. Fine, maybe it clears my 1% threshold; but just barely.
- bduerst 8y ago
  You did though, and when faced with the evidence you shifted the burden of proof to maintain your opinion that gerrymandering by Republicans isn't a problem. The fact you continue to minimize it and ignore the other problematic Republican behavior shows confirmation bias.
  - ctlby 8y ago
    You're unnecessarily fixated on the 1% threshold I set out earlier. While nothing you said has changed my mind (my estimate is still <1%), I'm not really interested in the exact number. My point is that your concerns are qualitatively irrelevant (practically, not morally). So what if, in the absence of gerrymandering, there would be 100 fewer Republican congressmen? The Senate still isn't passing NN, and Trump is still stacking the judiciary with conservatives. I'm not here to defend Republicans (I think they're pretty bad) or the practices you described (I also think those are bad). But that doesn't change the fact that gerrymandering and power grabs and Fox News are nearly completely inconsequential in explaining the world in front of us. Quit with the liberal wishcasting. People don't vote Republican because they've been misled by some sinister conspiracy. They just don't want what you're selling.

InitialLastName 8y ago

> gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to those outcomes. You're correct that at the first order gerrymandering is irrelevant to the Senate and Presidency. Gerrymandering comes into play as a second-order effect, though; when used at the state level, it can cause state legislatures to effectively lock to a party. These state legislatures can then make changes to the way voting is organized in their state, enfranchising and disenfranchising voters in ways that support their party, and funding/defunding polling districts per the same. This has an effect that can be plenty large enough to swing statewide elections: see the last election's shenanigans in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida if you're in doubt.

ctlby 8y ago
I cannot overstate my doubts enough. Can you point me to evidence (aside from Stacey Abrams' sour grapes) that this swung an election?

hannasanarion 8y ago

The Democrats won the largest popular vote margin of any party in American history in 2018, but only the 53rd largest congressional majority in history, mostly because of Democratic voters in North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin who were "packed and cracked" so that their votes counted far less.

ctlby 8y ago
Suppose they had in fact won the largest House majority in history. What exactly would it change? How would NN be faring right now? Moral grandstanding aside, I don't see the relevance of any of this.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  The relevance to this is that you asserted that Republicans haven't given themselves any electoral advantage at all or that, if they did, it accounted for less than 1% of their success, when that cannot be further from the truth. You said "explain your reasoning", and that's what I did. No need to get defensive over it and try to pretend like it's irrelevant to the discussion. This is literally the discussion you explicitly asked for. If you don't like the fact that the Republican party has acted in a decades-long effort to guarantee their own power in perpetuity with or without public support, don't get mad at me, get mad at them.
  - ctlby 8y ago
    I’m not mad at anyone, you simply haven’t explained anything. You just keep repeating the standard litany of Republican sins. I never disputed Republicans’ attempt to give themselves an electoral advantage. I just disagree that this is consequential, much less decisive. As you yourself argued elsewhere in the thread, NC Republicans’ chicanery could mean a 2% swing in the House. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re telling me that by attributing 100% of R success to trickery, in a state that’s the worst of the worst in this regard and so yields the biggest effect size, you can create a counterfactual where Democrats have 2% more seats in just one half of Congress? Your smoking gun is a rounding error. So I’m asking again: how do these sorts of numbers lead you to believe what you apparently believe?

tangent128 8y ago

Gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to the Senate and the Presidency... in the sense that, if you lift the restriction for representative districts to have comparable populations, the resulting distortions of the popular will no longer count as mere "gerrymandering".