The Republican Gerrymander Bomb

In a few days, 2018 will be upon us, and before long we'll start seeing ads for the 2018 elections.  While a lot of liberals are excited about the Democrats' chance to take back control of Congress, other liberal insists that Democrats chances are doomed because of Republican gerrymandering.  The naysayers feel gerrymandering efforts by Republican-controlled state legislatures have created so many safe Republican congressional districts, that it will be nearly impossible for Democrats to take control of Congress.

Well, I'm here to tell you that those naysayers are wrong.  I believe that these Republican gerrymandering efforts will lead to a huge Democratic wave in 2018.

Why?  Well, let me start by reviewing what gerrymandering can or cannot do for a political party.

Gerrymandering CAN be used to make legislative districts more safe for a political party.

Gerrymandering CAN be used to help a political party win more legislative districts.

However, gerrymandering CANNOT be used to help a political party win more districts AND make districts more safe.  It's mathematically impossible to accomplish both these goals at the same time.

I'll illustrate this by going over a few theoretical examples.  For these examples, we'll assume that there are 10 districts, and 1,000,000 voters, and that the Republican party has the power to gerrymander these 10 districts any way they want.  Based on those parameters, let's look over a few scenarios.

Scenario 1 : Gerrymandering to make districts more safe.

Let's say that in an average year, the vote totals in these 10 districts are approximately the following:

District	GOP Votes	DEM Votes	GOP %	DEM %
1	52,500	47,500	52.5	47.5
2	52,500	47,500	52.5	47.5
3	52,500	47,500	52.5	47.5
4	52,500	47,500	52.5	47.5
5	52,500	47,500	52.5	47.5
6	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
7	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
8	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
9	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
10	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5

So, in a normal year, the GOP wins 5 districts by 5 points and loses 5 districts by 5 points, and the GOP wins 50% of the overall vote.  However, let's say the GOP becomes aware that upcoming election will be far from normal and that Democrats are expected win about 55% of the vote on average and thus win a normal even district by 10 points.  In that case we would expect that 550,000 total votes would be cast for Democrats and 450,000 total votes would be cast for Republicans.  If this happened, and the GOP did not try to gerrymander these districts, we would expect the vote to go this way ...

District	GOP Votes	DEM Votes	GOP %	DEM %
1	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
2	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
3	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
4	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
5	47,500	52,500	47.5	52.5
6	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
7	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
8	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
9	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
10	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5

... and the GOP would lose all 10 districts.

However, the GOP could prevent this loss of 5 districts by gerrymander the districts.  For example, the GOP could gerrymander these 10 districts in a such a way, that in a normal year ( when there are an equal number of GOP votes and DEM votes ), the election results would be as follows ...

District	GOP Votes	DEM Votes	GOP %	DEM %
1	57,500	42,500	57.5	42.5
2	57,500	42,500	57.5	42.5
3	57,500	42,500	57.5	42.5
4	57,500	42,500	57.5	42.5
5	57,500	42,500	57.5	42.5
6	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
7	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
8	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
9	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5
10	42,500	57,500	42.5	57.5

So, in this scenario, GOP gerrymandering has turned districts 1 - 5 into "safe" Republican districts in which a Republican would be expected to win by 15 points in an average year.  In a year in which Democrats were expected to have a 10 point advantage over Republicans, we would expect the election results to go this way in the gerrymandered districts ...

District	GOP Votes	DEM Votes	GOP %	DEM %
1	52,500	47,500	52.2	47.5
2	52,500	47,500	52.2	47.5
3	52,500	47,500	52.2	47.5
4	52,500	47,500	52.2	47.5
5	52,500	47,500	52.2	47.5
6	37,500	62,500	37.5	62.5
7	37,500	62,500	37.5	62.5
8	37,500	62,500	37.5	62.5
9	37,500	62,500	37.5	62.5
10	37,500	62,500	37.5	62.5

So, in this scenario, gerrymandering would help Republicans keep control of half of the districts, even though Democrats won 55% of the total vote.

The gerrymandering I've described here is what I like to call defensive gerrymandering.

Scenario 2 : Gerrymandering to win more districts.

Let's say that in the area covered by 10 districts, the Republicans win 54% of the vote in an average year.  The population is spread across these 10 districts in such a way that Republicans usually win 6 out of the 10 districts.

District	GOP Votes	DEM Votes	GOP %	DEM %
1	60,000	40,000	60	40
2	60,000	40,000	60	40
3	60,000	40,000	60	40
4	60,000	40,000	60	40
5	60,000	40,000	60	40
6	60,000	40,000	60	40
7	45,000	55,000	45	55
8	45,000	55,000	45	55
9	45,000	55,000	45	55
10	45,000	55,000	45	55

In this scenario, the GOP decides to gerrymander these 10 districts in such a way, that they will win each of these 10 districts by about 54% to 46% in an average year.

District	GOP Votes	DEM Votes	GOP %	DEM %
1	54,000	46,000	54	46
2	54,000	46,000	54	46
3	54,000	46,000	54	46
4	54,000	46,000	54	46
5	54,000	46,000	54	46
6	54,000	46,000	54	46
7	54,000	46,000	54	46
8	54,000	46,000	54	46
9	54,000	46,000	54	46
10	54,000	46,000	54	46

This is what I like to call offensive gerrymandering.  The Republican Party has been using offensive gerrymandering quite a bit over the last decade to help win extra seats in the House of Representatives.  However, as is illustrated in the two tables above, the GOP gerrymandering effort has turned 6 extremely safe districts into 10 fairly safe districts.  That's great for a GOP in a typical, year, but in an election cycle in which the Democrats are much more popular that Republicans, "fairly safe" districts are no longer safe at all.    In the gerrymandered scenario above, if the national electorate swings more than 8 points in the Democrats' direction, the Democrats could potentially win all 10 of the districts above.

If you look at the latest congressional generic ballot, you'll see that Democrats currently ( as of 12/29/17 ) have a 12.9% advantage over Republicans.

You can click here for the most recent generic ballot results.

Of course, these generic polls are no guarantee that the Democrats will have such a large advantage come Election Day 2018,  but I think there is a very good chance that the Democrats will be able to win a lot of those "fairly safe" Republican districts that were created by gerrymandering.  The Republicans may think their gerrymandering efforts will ensure that they'll keep control of the House of Representatives for years to come, but I think they are sitting on a gerrymander bomb that is about to go off in 2018.

Rich