I refer here back to my first and so far only post on the sometimes abstruse subject of "Gerrymandering".
Which is much in the news lately because Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, plans to "Redistrict" its Congressional Districts, to give the Reps up to five more seats in the State. Which has led the oleaginous Gavin Newsom of California to threaten, and now to try, to match Texas, vote by vote, gerry by gerry, mander by mander. So it's all a big tussle, and consequential. Congressional majorities depend on it.
In a way, the future of America, depends on it.
So, below a summary of my recent understanding of the Redistricting issue, aka "Gerrymandering", when it's done to extreme and to favour one party over the other.
This is pretty dry. So dry you could print it out and use it to towel down after a swim. For nerds, iow.
The average number of people who make up one Congressional District in a State: 700,000.
Imagine a typical state with a population of 7 million. Therefore the number of Congressional Seats it will have is 10. That is, ten representatives will be sent to the House of Representatives at the Congress in Washington DC.
If we assume the popular vote Dem/Rep in that state is 50/50, then all things being equal, you'd expect each party to elect 5 out of the 10 seats. Equal.
This gives a "Seat to Vote ratio" (S/V Ratio) of 1. That is: Seats won 5/10 = 50%. Vote = 50%.
The RATIO of 50% Seats divided by 50% of the Vote = 1.
Anything above 1, means that one party has won more seats relative to the overall vote it had in the state.
Say the Dems win 7 out of the 10 Congressional seats in our "typical state". That's a Seat percentage of 70%. That gives a S/V ratio of: 70%/50% = 1.4. And a Reps S/V ratio of 30%/50% = 0.6.
There may be factors other than Gerrymandering that account for unbalanced S/V ratios. For example, the movement of the population in between the decadal national census, when any Redistricting is normally done, can lead to losses or gains, based on those movements and not on any shenanigans with Redistricting.
But manipulation of the Redistricting, aka Gerrymandering, is often a key reason for the S/V ratio benefiting one party or the other.
How does it work out for California and Texas?
The S/V ratios are: CA Dems: 1.42 and TX Reps: 0.86.
Thus California (1.42) has already Gerrymandered to a level that is second highest in the country (only after Massachusetts at 1.47, where not a single Republican has won a Congressional seat).
Whereas in Texas, the Republicans (0.8) are clearly UNDER-represented relative to their overall vote.
By the way, the "S/V ratio" is something I came up with. I asked Grok if it, or something similar was already used, and it said, no, and that my ratio "is novel and interesting". Huh! Weird.... I offer it to the commentarian, foc. It has the benefit of being instantly understood. Anything over 1 for any one party means that party is overrepresented. And anything under is underrepresented.
Go Texas!
