We show that in many urbanized states, Democrats are highly clustered in dense central city areas, while Republicans are scattered more evenly through the suburban, exurban, and rural periphery… As a result, when districting plans are completed, Democrats tend to be inefficiently packed in homogeneous districts…This is obvious if you think about other jurisdictions, which also experience this sort of problem. Canada, where I live, has an independent electoral commission that is widely acknowledged as fair and well-managed. But we still have had any number of elections where the "winner" didn't receive the most total votes. And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head, I can find many more examples if you insist.
The simulation results provide a useful benchmark against which to contrast observed districting plans. We show that in general, pro-Republican partisan bias is quite persistent in the absence of intentional gerrymandering.
The map of Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District , as redrawn by Democrats in Annapolis after the most recent U.S. Census, is nothing if not cartoonish. Comically gerrymandered, it slices and dices counties, communities and neighborhoods. Splattered east, west, north and south of Baltimore, it also takes pains to hack the city itself into pieces. As a case study in majority-party abuse, Maryland’s 3rd District has few peers nationally.The redistricting plan was put on the recent ballot and was overwhelmingly approved.
In fact, Maryland itself now counts as the most — read: worst — gerrymandered state in America. In a (not yet published) definitive study of congressional districts conducted by a nonpartisan geospatial analysis firm called Azavea, the average compactness of Maryland’s eight congressional districts ranks dead last among the 50 states, as computed by an average of four measures of compactness.
TOP TEN
Year Name %PopVote Margin
1964 Johnson 61.05 22.58
1936 Roosevelt 60.80 24.26
1972 Nixon 60.67 23.15
1920 Harding 60.32 26.17
1984 Reagan 58.77 18.21
1928 Hoover 58.21 17.41
1932 Roosevelt 57.41 17.76
1956 Eisenhower 57.37 15.40
1952 Eisenhower 55.18 10.85
1940 Roosevelt 54.74 09.96
BOT TEN
Year Name %PopVote Margin
1912 Wilson 41.84 14.44
1992 Clinton 43.01 05.56
1968 Nixon 43.42 00.70
2000 Asterisk 47.87 −00.51
1916 Wilson 49.24 03.12
1948 Truman 49.55 04.48
1960 Kennedy 49.72 00.17
1996 Clinton 49.23 08.51
1976 Carter 50.08 02.06
2012 Obama 50.60 02.8*
Overall, Democrats cannot win a majority of House seats without winning dozens of seats in Republican-leaning districts. Republicans, meanwhile, can win a healthy majority of House seats without winning any seats in Democratic-leaning districts. This disparity is tied to the Democrats' inefficient distribution of their votes--primarily resulting from the Democratic vote being naturally more concentrated, and in some cases (such as in North Carolina, where Democrats won four of 13 seats while winning the statewide popular vote in House races) due to gerrymandered maps.They end up concluding that Democrats would have needed another 3 points to carry the House -- so the overall win percentage Democrats need to come out ahead (by their approach to guessing actual support) is 55% / 45%.
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51% to 48% is not a mandate. Absolutely is not. That was a squeaked-out win that looks crushing only when viewed through the lens of the Electoral College, with its winner-take-all approach. It means Obama was just a little bit ahead in a lot of places, not that he was a long way ahead.
Now, 60% of the popular vote? That would be a mandate. 66% would be an absolute mandate.
51%, on the other hand, is about as low as you can go and have the Electoral College result still look legitimate.
posted by Malor at 6:45 AM on November 14, 2012 [16 favorites]