Baked-in gerrymandering

Sean Trende has done a series of articles analyzing Trump's win, culminating in this one, which focuses on the geographical distribution of deep-Blue support.  Because we still have a federal system and do not elect Presidents by popular vote, the very division of the country into states imposes a basic gerrymandering on the electoral map.  Add to that a rural-urban split that's been growing for 30 years, and you have an electoral map in which a candidate like Clinton is "wasting" votes by running up the score in states like California, where she already had a lock on the electors.  A winning strategy requires finding a message that also works outside the large cities, which are concentrated in a few states.  Bouncing the rubble in those states won't get you the White House.
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5 comments:

  1. Eric Blair12:44 PM

    Gee, by actually appealing to the entire country, rather than just particularly populous cities, you can win national elections!

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  2. Grim2:49 PM

    The question is whether one can still "appeal to the entire country." Even in the red states, there are blue islands where Republicans are noncompetitive.

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  3. Anonymous3:33 PM

    It is also a lot easier to cheat in heavily urban, one-party states.

    And so, in New York, when the practice of bussing paid voters from location to location is exposed, the only action is to get rid of the person who spoke about it.

    Similarly, most of California's imbalance of votes came from ONE urban county. State wide, unusually large numbers of voters were told they could only get provisional ballots, allegedly because they had been converted to mail-in only voting, and they should have received their ballots weeks ago.

    So far, I have read nothing to indicate that either state plans to examine its voting process.

    Valerie

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  4. E Hines6:14 PM

    Bouncing the rubble

    This phrase has a more literal meaning than might seem the case. The bombed-out landscapes left behind in inner cities subjected to Urban Renewal programs in the '60s and '70s led to the programs being colloquially relabeled Urban Removal.

    Eric Hines

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  5. douglas4:17 AM

    Of course, Grim, the counter is also true. California being a good example. Only Florida and Texas had more Trump votes.

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