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43 votes
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The marketplace of ideas — or how to fortify democracy
8 votes -
Mitch McConnell says Donald Trump plans to declare national emergency to build US border wall
25 votes -
How fake news was weaponized in Nigeria's elections
5 votes -
Spain: Will a snap election spell the end for Pedro Sanchez?
6 votes -
How a Slovakian neo-Nazi got elected. In 2013, Marian Kotleba won a shock victory in regional elections. Four years later, he was voted out in a landslide. But now he’s running for president.
6 votes -
Senators propose legislation to end Congressional pensions
7 votes -
Germany’s Social Democrats seek poll salvation in shift to left
9 votes -
Private Mossad for hire - Inside an effort to influence American elections, starting with one small-town race
7 votes -
Americans asking, 'What happened to my refund?'
29 votes -
John Galton wanted Libertarian paradise in ‘Anarchapulco.’ He got bullets instead.
9 votes -
The neo-nazi podcaster next door
7 votes -
The US founders created the Electoral College to prevent a foreign-influenced candidate from winning—it didn't stop Donald Trump, so let's scrap it
6 votes -
Virginia AG admits blackface photo as chaos deepens
8 votes -
Russian-style kleptocracy is infiltrating America
12 votes -
How did Arron Banks afford Brexit?
9 votes -
Brexit: Game theory suggests we may be headed for a no-deal Brexit. The parties are trying to play two different versions of the prisoner’s dilemma; to agree, they need to pick one.
10 votes -
The claim that democracy fares better in the West than in Africa is a fallacy
7 votes -
The alt-right playbook: The card says moops
18 votes -
The plot against George Soros - How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory
12 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 -
Macron and French centrists don’t have answers as “Yellow Vest” protests head for tenth week
8 votes -
How the UN migration pact got trolled
5 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 -
Ontario is under one-man rule. Who will stop Doug Ford?
13 votes -
A 1950s TV show had a fear-mongering conman named Trump who wanted to build a wall.
7 votes -
The noisy dispute over the meaning of populism is more than just an academic squabble – it’s a crucial argument about what we expect from democracy
12 votes -
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez keeps firing back at her haters
19 votes -
What America can learn from the fall of the Roman republic (Interview with historian Edward Watts about his book "Mortal Republic")
10 votes -
This Little-Known Libertarian Training School Is Making Federal Judges More Conservative
11 votes -
The question for France: Where do the Yellow Vests go from here?
8 votes -
Warning to Democrats: Most Americans against US getting more politically correct
13 votes -
Mark Blyth Global Trumpism
5 votes -
We know Michael Flynn lied to the FBI. But why?
7 votes -
A.G. Underwood Announces Stipulation Dissolving Trump Foundation Under Judicial Supervision, With AG Review Of Recipient Charities
11 votes -
Over a thousand absentee ballots possibly destroyed in controversial North Carolina House race
25 votes -
Stephen Mangan meets Emily Thornberry: ‘You're facilitating a big British act of self-harm'
6 votes -
Revealed: The hidden global network behind Tommy Robinson
9 votes -
Denmark's latest stand against 'undesirable' migrants: Ship them to an island
12 votes -
Macedonia's former ruling party organized a trolling apparatus for spreading hate speech, threats
8 votes -
A twenty-year-old is helping John McAfee's 2020 campaign team by teaching him how to shitpost about anime
25 votes -
He’s built an empire, with detained migrant children as the bricks
9 votes -
Is a do-over election incoming? North Carolina Republicans alleged to have committed major voter fraud.
15 votes -
Manipulation of the Day: 'Attaching politics to a topic they wish to squelch.'
Attaching politics to a topic they wish to squelch. That effectively “controversializes” the issue and divides public opinion so that no more than half of people will typically believe or pay...
Attaching politics to a topic they wish to squelch. That effectively “controversializes” the issue and divides public opinion so that no more than half of people will typically believe or pay attention to the offending information.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/405807-a-news-consumers-guide-to-astroturf-sources
9 votes -
Doug Ford ends independence for all officers of the Ontario legislature
10 votes -
One of the few places where a communist can still dream
7 votes -
The new populism • An investigation into the rise of a global phenomenon
5 votes -
The Brexit mess could lead to a break-up of a no longer United Kingdom
15 votes -
Decrying “tribalism” is a favorite pastime of American elites, but the real problem is the unity among them
8 votes -
'A cancer on democracy': The battle to end gerrymandering in America
6 votes