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4 votes
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A tiny screw shows why iPhones won’t be ‘assembled in USA’
15 votes -
Betsy DeVos Is Fabricating History to Sell a Bad Education Policy
14 votes -
Virtual subway train journey (Binaural audio. Wear headphones) ASMR
8 votes -
Google asks Supreme Court to overrule disastrous ruling on API copyrights
16 votes -
Fake news is more likely to be shared by older people — but we don't know why
19 votes -
For CDC, US shutdown is no joke
10 votes -
Freddie Robinson - Off the Cuff (1973)
3 votes -
US President Donald Trump ally Roger Stone arrested on seven charges in Robert Mueller inquiry
12 votes -
Weezer surprise release new covers record: The Teal Album
7 votes -
Stop trusting viral videos
16 votes -
The nominations for the 39th annual Razzie Awards have been announced
5 votes -
With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Americans finally have a politician who agrees with them about taxes
24 votes -
Australian Open exit for Serena Williams against Karolina Pliskova in quarter-finals
4 votes -
2019 Baseball Hall of Fame results announced, Mariano Rivera first ever unanimous selection, Mussina, Halladay, Martinez also elected
5 votes -
Still simmering: Freedom of navigation in the South China Sea
3 votes -
What would happen if the US House of Representatives decided to investigate sitting Senators?
The current US Senate majority continues to support the president. However, the current president may have been compromised by the Russian government. The connections that several senators have to...
The current US Senate majority continues to support the president. However, the current president may have been compromised by the Russian government.
The connections that several senators have to Russia (Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, to name two) raise the very real possibility that the current Republican majority in the Senate owes its existence to Russian help.
The FBI, a renewed Republican target, has suggested as much in briefings given to that same U.S. Congress.
What are the chances of the House investigating sitting menbers of Senate, and what twists and turns might occur should it happen?
9 votes -
President Donald Trump directed his attorney Michael Cohen to lie to US Congress about the Moscow Tower project
24 votes -
Cleaning New York's filthy harbor with one billion oysters
11 votes -
Damning court docs show just how far Sacklers went to push OxyContin
8 votes -
The Valedictorians Project
5 votes -
Disney's most important movie of 2019 isn't 'Avengers' or 'Star Wars'
11 votes -
GOP Rep. Tom Marino resigns from Congress
9 votes -
State official went roaming around Vermont to test cell coverage claims
4 votes -
These are all the federal HTTPS websites that’ll expire soon because of the US government shutdown
8 votes -
New York passes Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) and legislation banning “conversion therapy”
12 votes -
Jailed model who claimed she has dirt on Russian oligarch speaks out
3 votes -
Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’ | A look into a Puerto Rican rainforest
13 votes -
Transparency-seeking OPEN Government Data Act signed into law
7 votes -
Americans more likely to die from accidental opioid overdose than in a car accident
12 votes -
How cartographers for the US Military inadvertently created a house of horrors in South Africa
15 votes -
A year around the Sierra.
8 votes -
A basic analysis of the 2018 US midterm elections suggests it was less gerrymandered than other recent elections for the House of representatives
Now that the ballots for the 2018 House of representatives election have been counted, how badly was the vote gerrymandered? Gerrymandering is the creating of political districts to maximize the...
Now that the ballots for the 2018 House of representatives election have been counted, how badly was the vote gerrymandered?
Gerrymandering is the creating of political districts to maximize the number of representatives a political grouping gets per vote.
The degree of gerrymandering can be approximated by calculating the difference between the outcome of a proportional voting system and the actual districted representatives each party gains.
Here's a look at the last 5 elections to the House of representatives.
In this congress, the Democrats have 235 representatives, the Republicans have 199 and there's 1 other representative.
Voter turnout was 50,3%, the highest for a midterm election since 1914.
The Democrats got 53,5% of the popular vote and 54,0% of the seats. The Republicans got 44,8% of the vote and 46,0% of the seats. Others got 1,8% of the vote and a single seat.
Since the Republicans are no longer getting vastly outsized representation, is gerrymandering dead?
If the US would have had a proportional voting system, 7 of the 435 seats would have been distributed differently in 2018.
The Democrats would have had 3 fewer representatives, the Republicans would have had 4 fewer and others would have had those 7 seats.
Here are the similar figures for the last five elections.
Year Votes per seat ('000) Dem diff. Rep diff. Other diff. 2010 199 -3 +18 -15 2012 281 -11 +27 -16 2014 179 -10 +24 -14 2016 295 -15 +27 -12 2018 261 +3 +4 -7 The change from getting 27 seats "wrong" in 2016 to 7 seats "wrong" this year is large and changes the historic trend.
Turns out that higher turnout led to more accurate representation in 2018. Who would have guessed.
(There are many other additional possible explanations for why this has changed too)
If we just look at the two major parties, what does this mean in real terms?
Here's an overview of the average difference in the number of voters the Democrats have needed for each seat they actually got in the last five elections compared to the Republicans.
Year Additional Dem voters for a seat 2010 8,6% 2012 19,4% 2014 16,6% 2016 21,4% 2018 0,8% There are other ways of trying to engineer specific election results.
This basic overview only looks at people who actually vote. Therefore it obviously doesn't consider those who are prevented from voting in the election process, whether that's from voting requirements, accessibility of polling places, registration requirements, etc.
It will be interesting to see what happens in 2020.
Is this a trend that'll continue?
Is it just a blip because those gerrymandering haven't been able to predict what party voters vote for in today's political climate?
What about turnout?
15 votes -
The future of the minimum wage is alive in Seattle
7 votes -
This is what Black burnout feels like
7 votes -
Donald Trump Was Never Vetted
20 votes -
SpaceX to lay off over 10% of its workforce
15 votes -
The weight I carry - What it’s like to be too big in America
14 votes -
Noam Chomsky - The Right Turn (1986)
9 votes -
A 1950s TV show had a fear-mongering conman named Trump who wanted to build a wall.
7 votes -
Build the US wall? It could take at least ten years, even with 10,000 workers.
11 votes -
Phoenix police department obtain DNA samples from Hacienda HealthCare staff in the week after vegetative patient gives birth
7 votes -
In the 19th century, American theatres provided the stage for a war between high and low culture, the elite and ‘Know-Nothings’ – and Britain and the US. In 1849, events turned bloody.
6 votes -
The Supreme Court just declined to hear Exxon Mobil’s appeal in a climate change lawsuit
19 votes -
Ocasio-Cortez’s seventy percent top tax rate is a moderate, evidence-based policy
23 votes -
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez keeps firing back at her haters
19 votes -
'Sonic attack' or just crickets? New analysis shows recording of 'attack' on US embassy was Caribbean wildlife
7 votes -
Is capitalism worth saving?
9 votes -
A massive amount of iconic works will enter the public domain on New Year’s Eve
37 votes -
The infiltrator: A former Marine working for the private security firm TigerSwan infiltrated an array of anti-Dakota Access pipeline groups at Standing Rock and beyond
12 votes