Evenly Spreading Partisan Votes May Be the Key to Winning

[DaveColorado]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/07/AR2006050700916.html

Evenly Spreading Partisan Votes May Be the Key to Winning

By Thomas B. Edsall and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Monday, May 8, 2006; Page A03

With Democrats locked out of the White House and in the minority in Congress, it might seem that there just aren't enough Democratic voters to win elections. But political scientist Gary Jacobson says the problem is actually more complicated: The distribution of Republican voters is more politically effective across the nation.

Jacobson's research shows a little more than half of all the nation's 435 congressional districts over recent decades consistently favored Republican presidential candidates. A little less than 40 percent went for Democrats. (The remainder had a mixed pattern.) Jacobson, at the University of California at San Diego, said this is due to an "inefficient" distribution of Democratic voters, with many concentrations of 60 percent or more in urban areas and places with large numbers of minorities. Republicans, he found, are distributed more evenly, yielding more districts in which GOP voters have a slimmer but sturdy majority.

[w4rma]

1. Republicans have more gerrymandered districts. (nt)

[bluestateguy]

2. Makes sense

There are a lot of districts where Republicans have a 20 point advantage, and then there are a smaller number of urban districts where Democrats have a 60 point advantage.

VRA also hurts Democrats by forcing the creation of majority-minority districts, thus making surrounding districts more white and more Republican.

On the other hand, Republican gerrymandering has worked wonders in states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida.

[vssmith]

3. Not to mention Texas