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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18856 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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A point I haven't seen at all in this forum is the impact of gerrymandering.

Let X = (Republican votes) / (Republican votes + Democrat votes)

Let Y = % of House seats for Republicans

After an essentially tied election in 2000, Y averaged* 0.6pp higher than X during the 2000s.

After a historic Republican victory in 2010, Y averaged 3.8pp higher than X during the 2010s.

After a medium Democratic victory in 2020, Y is (based on this election so far) 1.5pp lower than X.

During the 2000s and 2010s, X was only lower than Y once: during the historic 2008 Democratic victory, which, iirc, overwhelmed gerrymandering defenses such that it made them counterproductive. As a result, Democrats were advantaged a whopping 3.5pp during that election.

tl;dr - it looks like Republicans successfully gerrymandered the 2010s and gained about 17 seats each election in the House as a result. Based on this election, it looks like gerrymandering has shifted this advantage to Democrats and will give them about 8 seats each election during the 2020s.

[ /u/zeke5123 you may be interested in this regarding republican under/over-performance relative to the popular vote ]

*I'm using the median here

It is an interesting dynamic and not really discussed.

Part of it may also reflect an incorrect census (the census screw up cost southern states some additional districts) and post census migration by red to red states like Florida.

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