8
votes
A funny thing happened on the way to the gerrymander - Democrats may actually gain 2-3 seats on net rather than losing
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- Title
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gerrymander
- Authors
- Josh Marshall
- Published
- Feb 7 2022
- Word count
- 129 words
I particularly liked his closing argument, which boiled down to, the future is always more unknown than we believe, and stuff (better and worse) happens all the time, that no one saw coming.
My take on that is, the worse things are now, the more opportunity there is for unexpectedly good things to fall our way.
That thought gives me hope in an uncertain and ugly global period of humanity.
I had suspected this might be the case. I didn't anticipate the purple districts make it harder bit, but I did feel like the double-edged sword of cracking and packing is that you end up making your coalition much more brittle since a net 2% shift in opinion can sweep many districts if you were even slightly off in the mix of blue districts in your red or vice versa. It seems they also saw this and opted for protecting incumbents over pressing their advantage.
Seats being less competitive is a problem beyond just not being rigged for one party or another. Reps who don't have to compete much pander to primary audiences rather than the general electorate, which both makes them more extreme and also creates incentives for corruption and internal party gamesmanship.
I wonder if it might be partially due to COVID-19 raging during the redistricting process. Spreading their own voters thin hoping to win many narrow victories is a risky strategy when they know their own voters are dying at a much higher rate than their opponents voters.