Plan B Forum

I was watch "Up" with Steve Kornacki earlier this morning on MSNBC, (Steve is of course a leftie, but he is an affable and good natured leftie; not a vicious sneering leftie like Martin Bashir, or a chuckleheaded gasbag leftie like Crazy Eddie Shultz...Steve is also a political wonk, which is something I can identify with.)

Steve did an interesting segment showing the electoral breakdown in the 2012 election by county, and comparing it to the county electoral breakdown for the 1988 election. (Which George HW Bush won in a landslide over Michael Dukakis by 426-111 electoral votes.)

Here's the 2012 map:



Here's the 1988 map:



Just from eyeballing it, you can see there's nearly as much blue in the '88 Map as there is in the '12 map though one was a landslide Democratic defeat, and the other a health Democratic win...

In fact, Michael Dukakis carried significantly more counties then Obama did: 819 versus 690.

Kornacki's point about this (a point I agree with) is that because of the geographical distribution of the Republican and Democratic vote, and particularly the way the Dem vote is concentrated, even if you were to design congressional districts in the most objective ways imaginable you're still going to wind up with a significant number of heavily Republican districts and heavily Democratic districts. And again, because of the geography, overall this would tend to favor Republicans, creating more heavily GOP districts then heavily Dem districts....

So if you Democrats want to achieve a solid, stable majority in the House, I'm afraid you're going to have to spread out more...

Sidebar: in the 2012 map looking at the counties along the Southern Missisip look a great deal like the map Econo posted about the hangings.

The other view I was wondering about was the sickle shaped traverse from West to East in the South.

Is that Sherman's March?

It's a bit of a non sequitur to be looking at the presidential election maps to analyze performance in the House elections. The Dems won the House by 260-175 in 1988, but they also commanded the popular vote 53%-46%.

Plus electoral maps always look like they heavily favour the Republicans anyway, because their win huge stretches of the country with relatively few people.

Some of the most dense populations are Republican!

Plus, the 1988 map is bigger than the 2012 map; map deflation can be a serious problem. Beyond that, having a quality R, who was essentially an incumbent, going against a not very good D (in 1988), compared to having a quality D, who was an incumbent, going against a not very good R (in 2012) can tell you a lot.

On the other hand, I think the main point is correct. A lot of what is called gerrymandering is simply the result of where certain people live. But, the criticism of the current gerrymandering is that, even accepting that factor, and accepting that both parties have engaged in creative district line drawing in the past, the new data analysis ability has allowed incumbents to draw lines in such a way as to make almost no districts in play. This leaves the real action, as LJ has pointed out, in the primaries where moderates have a harder time winning than in any time in the past.

Since someone mentioned it. Sorry about the size of the graphic.


Not really similar to the presidential vote.


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