Republicans reap the fruits of redistricting – The Maddow Blog

Republicans reap the fruits of redistricting – The Maddow Blog.

This is fantastic analysis showing the raw 2012 vote results for the House in key states vs. the vote outcome in terms of the number of seats that went to each party in that state.  The key takeaway is that even in states where Democratic House candidates received a majority of votes, Republicans actually won a majority of House seats due to redistricting that gerrymanders safe Republican districts.

For example, in Michigan, Democrats garnered 2,327,985 votes to Republicans 2,086,804, but thanks to gerrymandered districts, that resulted in Republicans winning 9 House seats while Democrats won only 5.

Michigan U.S. House results Votes won vs. Seats

Nationally, this dynamic translated to Democrats winning slightly more votes for the House than Republicans in 2012, but taking 32 more seats in the House (232 R vs. 200 D).  A very un-democratic outcome that also strikes at the heart of the erroneous argument on the part of many Republicans that the House Republicans who are holding government funding hostage to their policy demands are just doing the people’s bidding.

 

House seats versus presidential vote in States where Republicans ran redistricting

The result of these safe Republican districts is that, in those districts, the real competition will not be from the general election but in the Republican primary elections, where the extreme right of the party will determine who wins those House  seats.  This dynamic is unfortunately likely to prevail through the 2020 census when whatever party is in control of State legislatures will get to redistrict in their favor.  This means that the kind of intransigence and extremeism we’re seeing form the right-wing of the Republican party since 2010 is likely to prevail for the rest of this decade.  Bottoms up….

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About Cyrus

Cyrus Tashakkori is Vice President at Pioneer Green Energy, a wind and solar power developer based in Austin, TX. He has an MBA and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Texas in Austin and a Bachelor's in Science & Economics from the University of North Carolina, Asheville.
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