FiveThirtyEight’s New Gerrymandering Project
Few websites do data and visualizations of political data better than FiveThirtyEight.com. This post is about a blow-your-mind awesome project by FiveThirtyEight on gerrymandering.*
Everyone should hate gerrymandering. It’s bad for our country, artificially polarizes us, and leads to further dysfunction in government — a fire onto which we don’t need to throw any more logs! But fixing gerrymandering isn’t exactly easy — and the process can quickly become partisan. It’s important to be aware of the trade-offs that various solutions may require. It’s equally important to know that the current, hyper-political system most states have today is not serving us well at all. We can do better, mostly because we can’t do much worse.
OneVirginia2021 is a non-partisan group of people from all across the political spectrum who believe voting districts belong to Virginians— not to any politician or party. So naturally we nerd-out on this project from FiveThirtyEight, which uses real data and beautiful maps to illuminate this space dramatically.
The FiveThirtyEight project helps us shine a light on two important good-government criteria we push for in Virginia: compactness and respect for city, county and town boundary lines.
These can be controversial waters to wade into because it makes some on the left of our coalition nervous. Here’s the nutshell version of their concerns: Democrats cluster in cities and Republicans spread out in the suburbs and ruby red rural areas. This leads to an inefficient distribution of Democratic voters relative to Republicans such that following fair criteria like compactness and respecting municipal boundary lines will pack Democrats into a few urban districts.** The result is that Democrats will win a handful of districts with 80% of the vote and Republicans to win many more suburban districts with 55% of the vote, even if the statewide total is more 50/50. Such results are possible in states like Illinois and Georgia where one major city dominates the geography, but significantly less so in Virginia where voters are more evenly spread out around the Commonwealth.
The notion of “wasted” Democratic votes is often completely oversold. It can happen, but it’s usually a fraction of the impact that some suggest. Respecting local boundaries and a genuine adherence to the Voting Rights Act balance this issue out to a much smaller problem.***
What’s remarkable about FiveThirtyEight’s new Gerrymandering Project is some genuine data nerds crunched maps for all 50 states. They showed political results from multiple angles: for maps as they are today, as they would be if drawn for maximum Democratic advantage, and for maximum Republican advantage. But then they did something even more helpful to us: they drew maps respecting local municipal boundaries and compactness together.
So did the Democrats lose all of their political power under compact maps that respected local city, county and town lines? Not in Virginia.
In the Virginia Congressional map, the total number of Democratic seats goes up (!) to five seats (currently it’s at four). There is no Democratic wipe out if you respect local municipal boundaries and have compact districts. In fact, the result from the compact/local boundaries boundaries matches the overall vote total for the entire state.
The takeaway that, in Virginia, compact maps that respect local boundaries also reflect the will of the voting population as a whole is a significant rebuttal to The Big Sort.
So of the following two options, which is better?
#1 The map that respects local boundaries and is compact.
OR
#2 The map that seeks to make sure the statewide total of votes for each party is proportional to the number of seats won by each party.
Both maps embody noble priorities in good-government redistricting. But #1 goes a step further and keeps communities together to a greater degree. Simply look at the dot that shows Richmond and the one that shows Norfolk in the #2 map. They’re right on the edge because the map-makers did not need to respect the local municipal boundaries. Richmond and Norfolk would be carved up — and maybe that’s not necessary.
Why care about these old municipal lines between cities and counties? The original story of many of these lines do not hark back to the most noble moments in Virginia’s history. The impact of racist redlining and the more malign forms of annexation have now morphed into today’s de facto segregation. There’s no questioning that. But the residual effects become smaller and smaller as more minorities move into the suburbs and whites move back into the city. While our individual neighborhoods are still segregated****, the cities and counties are becoming less so (pdf).
Still, there is value to these municipal boundary lines nevertheless. Let me speak just for myself here because this is a subjective argument about how each of us defines our community. When my wife and I moved back to the Richmond area it was important for us to live in the city, not the county. We wanted to invest our time in Richmond and its public schools. We wanted to be active citizens in a city government. We pay Richmond taxes, vote for Richmond’s mayor and city council, and plan to send our son to the local RPS elementary school. We cherish our city.
That’s a lot of identification to an invisible line around acres of land around the falls of the James River that make up the boundaries for the City of Richmond, I know, but the numerous ties we have to our local government matter to my family a great deal. We are Richmonders. (I also have an RVA sticker on my truck, so I’m down with regionalism.) On the other hand, I do recognize value in communities of interest that might cross municipal boundary lines. The western part the greater Richmond area, which would include western Henrico County, is a community of interest. The same would be true for the eastern part of the Greater Richmond area.
There’s an additional value to adhering to local boundaries for good-government redistricting: it minimizes the drawing of new squiggly lines through our communities. Given that we should all be a little wary of redistricting map makers (transparency is a must), because of a potential conflict or political agenda behind any person willing to spend the amount of time and work it takes to do it. Having good guardrails up would give any nefarious map-maker less leeway with new lines and should be considered a plus.
All of these various criteria in moderation, of course, as the multiple criteria can appropriately balance each other out, as in a delicious recipe. Too much of any one ingredient can ruin the result.
What could make this recipe even better? Making partisan gerrymandering illegal. None of these criteria fully work as long as one side can manipulate it for their advantage — and there are creative gerrymanderers of both major parties who know how to minimally follow the rules while exploiting them for their partisan gain.
OneVirginia2021 has researched and carefully crafted language that’s in most of our reform bills and has been carried by senior leaders of both parties in the House and Senate. While we don’t believe anything can 100% guarantee ridding our republic of gerrymandering, this language would make it explicitly illegal:
No district shall be drawn for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring any political party, incumbent legislator or member of Congress, or potential candidate.
If you want the above to be in the Virginia Constitution, we could use your help. Take a moment to sign the petition for reform in Virginia here. We won’t spam you or ask you every day for $3. We’re a small staff and will keep you updated at reasonable intervals and let you know when your legislators are voting on something important.
The other way to enhance the good-government criteria is to take the map-drawing power away from the people who are too conflicted to draw it fairly: the legislators themselves. Other states are experimenting with redistricting commissions in all shapes and sizes. Some structures are better than others. Most forms of a commission are a significant improvement on the hyper-political system of gerrymandering we have today.
The formula for better redistricting is clear from a survey of other states’ approaches (both their successes and short comings):
Transparency
+
Good-government rules protecting communities instead of politicians
+
Getting the map-drawing out of the hands of the politicians
=
Better voting districts that reflect the will of the people instead of the political needs of incumbent politicians.
Virginia is in the middle of an important discussion on redistricting reform. Criteria such as compactness and respect for municipal boundary lines (and others, including the Voting Rights Act) are a critical part of the discussion, as is the structure of a commission, and public input into map-making. This issue is worthy of our close attention. Thanks to FiveThirtyEight’s Gerrymandering Project team for the great work that helps us pay this issue the attention it deserves.
The process to amend Virginia’s constitution begins January 2019. Given the nature of our state government, we have to amend the constitution to get meaningful, long-term redistricting reform. I hope you’ll join OneVirginia2021 by signing the petition for reform. I hope you’ll find us on Facebook and Twitter and sign up to volunteer in your community.
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*As a Virginian, I should also point out how great VPAP.org is for state politics.
**It’s an argument pulled from a best selling book, The Big Sort.
***I won’t get into the details of why in this post because it’s been covered so well by David Weigel in this post (with help from Dave Daley’s book Ratf**ked). Also, FiveThirtyEight does a good job debunking it here…
****An amazing organization that works on housing discrimination in Virginia is HOME. Please check them out.
