Proportional representation what-ifs, the Mothership vortex, my op-ed on Apple's threat to polling, why Dems hate their party, polling young voters is hard, working class media habits, GPT-5
"A quick reminder here: when it comes to redistricting, there is no principle. There is only power. And that’s true of both sides."
Frankly, this just comes across as a self-justifying statement for the Texas GOP's nakedly partisan bid for mid-decade gerrymandering, and disappointing from a political voice who normally pushes back against demagogic populism and engineering on both sides.
Politicians shouldn't be allowed to draw their own districts. Congress should pass a law mandating bipartisan citizens' redistricting commissions nationwide.
It must be nice to be in professional politics and consider principles to be huge negatives. It’s why you’re the equivalent of drug dealers and pornographers
Even with TX Gerrymander TX will be 3.7% less Partisan than CA Redistricting Commission using Objective Standards. That says something about the Retaliative Partisanship & Partisan Distribution across the 2 states. In CA's 58 Counties the top 12 are Dem majority & they include all the large land area ones. The largest Rep majority county is Kern & It's majority is only 22K out of 446K registered. CA has 22.9M registered voters.
There are some flaws in your analysis (besides the partisan comment of the gerrymander being overdue). First, you are looking at 2024 Presidential results. Correct me if I'm wrong, but those did not exist back in 2021 or 2022 when they were drawing the lines. You have written extensively on the demographic shifts seen in the 2024 election results. Guessing a bunch of those shifts have made Republican suburban districts more competitive (and potentially changed all the border districts too).
Second, you ignore the Supreme Court decisions on racial gerrymandering. While they made partisan gerrymandering essentially legal in 2019, the decisions on racial gerrymandering have been more mixed. The SC decision in 2024 hinted that the court was going to allow fewer minority or minority influenced seats. So the environment now seems more permissible for Republican abuse. Now the 2022 map was already borderline illegal on racial gerrymandering and is still being litigated. It had 22 majority white districts and 7 majority Latino districts when the Latino population is actually slightly greater than the white population. Now the new map increases those to 24 and 8 - but again remember that the white population is smaller than the Latino population.
There is a strong chance the new map is an illegal racial gerrymander and Texas Republicans are just counting on the Supreme Court to allow it (or allow it while it takes years to litigate).
In other words much more complicated and a far cry from "overdue".
This should be must-reading for all those in the media hyperventilating over the GOP's redistricting gambit in Texas. It's not a good look that it comes mid-decade, outside the norm of reapportionment that usually follows a decennial census, but people ignore the fact that the Biden Justice Department won decrees for Texas to change its maps (oops). Thanks for the deep dive into how the new maps are actually more politically representative of the state than the ones adopted just four years ago. Great post.
I don't think that's really the best way to be looking at the mid decade redistricting in Texas. Its certainly not more representative from a proportional representation perspective. I think the point was more that these were the maps Texas would have drawn under the system we do have, if they hadn't been playing it safe and had instead aimed to maximize power. That's not the same as being representative and it's not necessarily what's best for the people they're supposed to represent.
If only Democrats had taken the same mature approach you suggest when they began their scorched-earth redistricting in the 70s and 80s. I agree it would be great to take a more public-spirited approach to redistricting, but you can't blame Republicans for doing to Democrats what's been done to them for several decades. A cursory look at maps in California, Illinois, and other states confirms my point.
I think you might be misunderstanding my point. I largely agree with the original claim that the redistricting is about power rather than representation. The Republicans in Texas missed the mark in 2020 and played it safe. Now they're trying to leverage their power to secure more. It's not really about making Texas more representative, it's about maintaining power by any means necessary. And based on California's response, it appears there's a degree of brinkmanship as well.
I don't think Texas is right or wrong to do it, that's just the incentive of the broken system we've got. But if they're going to do a mid cycle redistricting then it won't be surprising if other states follow suit. That's more or less why I generally support independent redistricting and election reform away from first past the post systems. Gerrymandering is a serious problem whether it's Republican's or Democrat's doing it
Illinois is gerrymandered; California isn’t. Its vote-to-seat share is in line with what you’d expect under FPTP (a bad system), and no less than 14 districts in this past election were won by Harris or Trump by single digits.
The new map that Newsom is proposing as a response to the Texas GOP’s aggression, however, will be.
"A quick reminder here: when it comes to redistricting, there is no principle. There is only power. And that’s true of both sides."
Frankly, this just comes across as a self-justifying statement for the Texas GOP's nakedly partisan bid for mid-decade gerrymandering, and disappointing from a political voice who normally pushes back against demagogic populism and engineering on both sides.
Politicians shouldn't be allowed to draw their own districts. Congress should pass a law mandating bipartisan citizens' redistricting commissions nationwide.
It must be nice to be in professional politics and consider principles to be huge negatives. It’s why you’re the equivalent of drug dealers and pornographers
Even with TX Gerrymander TX will be 3.7% less Partisan than CA Redistricting Commission using Objective Standards. That says something about the Retaliative Partisanship & Partisan Distribution across the 2 states. In CA's 58 Counties the top 12 are Dem majority & they include all the large land area ones. The largest Rep majority county is Kern & It's majority is only 22K out of 446K registered. CA has 22.9M registered voters.
There are some flaws in your analysis (besides the partisan comment of the gerrymander being overdue). First, you are looking at 2024 Presidential results. Correct me if I'm wrong, but those did not exist back in 2021 or 2022 when they were drawing the lines. You have written extensively on the demographic shifts seen in the 2024 election results. Guessing a bunch of those shifts have made Republican suburban districts more competitive (and potentially changed all the border districts too).
Second, you ignore the Supreme Court decisions on racial gerrymandering. While they made partisan gerrymandering essentially legal in 2019, the decisions on racial gerrymandering have been more mixed. The SC decision in 2024 hinted that the court was going to allow fewer minority or minority influenced seats. So the environment now seems more permissible for Republican abuse. Now the 2022 map was already borderline illegal on racial gerrymandering and is still being litigated. It had 22 majority white districts and 7 majority Latino districts when the Latino population is actually slightly greater than the white population. Now the new map increases those to 24 and 8 - but again remember that the white population is smaller than the Latino population.
There is a strong chance the new map is an illegal racial gerrymander and Texas Republicans are just counting on the Supreme Court to allow it (or allow it while it takes years to litigate).
In other words much more complicated and a far cry from "overdue".
Awesome and interesting research
This should be must-reading for all those in the media hyperventilating over the GOP's redistricting gambit in Texas. It's not a good look that it comes mid-decade, outside the norm of reapportionment that usually follows a decennial census, but people ignore the fact that the Biden Justice Department won decrees for Texas to change its maps (oops). Thanks for the deep dive into how the new maps are actually more politically representative of the state than the ones adopted just four years ago. Great post.
I don't think that's really the best way to be looking at the mid decade redistricting in Texas. Its certainly not more representative from a proportional representation perspective. I think the point was more that these were the maps Texas would have drawn under the system we do have, if they hadn't been playing it safe and had instead aimed to maximize power. That's not the same as being representative and it's not necessarily what's best for the people they're supposed to represent.
If only Democrats had taken the same mature approach you suggest when they began their scorched-earth redistricting in the 70s and 80s. I agree it would be great to take a more public-spirited approach to redistricting, but you can't blame Republicans for doing to Democrats what's been done to them for several decades. A cursory look at maps in California, Illinois, and other states confirms my point.
I think you might be misunderstanding my point. I largely agree with the original claim that the redistricting is about power rather than representation. The Republicans in Texas missed the mark in 2020 and played it safe. Now they're trying to leverage their power to secure more. It's not really about making Texas more representative, it's about maintaining power by any means necessary. And based on California's response, it appears there's a degree of brinkmanship as well.
I don't think Texas is right or wrong to do it, that's just the incentive of the broken system we've got. But if they're going to do a mid cycle redistricting then it won't be surprising if other states follow suit. That's more or less why I generally support independent redistricting and election reform away from first past the post systems. Gerrymandering is a serious problem whether it's Republican's or Democrat's doing it
Illinois is gerrymandered; California isn’t. Its vote-to-seat share is in line with what you’d expect under FPTP (a bad system), and no less than 14 districts in this past election were won by Harris or Trump by single digits.
The new map that Newsom is proposing as a response to the Texas GOP’s aggression, however, will be.