Gerrymandering

-By Ian Millhiser

December 21, 2012- The day after the election last month, ThinkProgress took a preliminary tally of the total number of votes cast for candidates for the House of Representatives. We found that, despite the fact that Republicans won a commanding majority of the seats, the American people cast more than half-a-million votes for Democrats. This number was based on early tallies, however, and it was especially likely to undercount many West Coast states that had less time to count ballots.

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-By Will Femia, The Maddow Blog

December 13, 2012- The graphics in last night's opening segment on gerrymandering were so clear and illustrative I wanted to give you a second look. What these show is the total number of votes for Democratic and Republican House candidates in each state. Or, as Rachel put it, more people in Michigan voted for a Democrat than voted for a Republican. But the point of gerrymandering is that more people voting for a Democratic representative does not mean more Democratic representatives were elected to represent those voters. In fact, the opposite. And in cases where more voters chose Republicans, the apportionment of representatives for those voters is disproportionate.

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-By Sabrina Eaton

November 11, 2012- Even though most Ohio voters backed Democrats in this year’s presidential and U.S. Senate elections, new congressional maps designed to protect GOP incumbents kept three quarters of the state’s U.S. House of Representatives seats in Republican hands.

When new congressional districts were drawn last year, Republicans who control Ohio’s state legislature did their best to ensure their party’s edge in Congress for the next decade by packing the most possible Democratic voters into the fewest possible districts.

That’s how a swing state with a fairly even political divide will end up being represented in Congress next year by 12 Republicans and four Democrats.

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-By Nick Baumann

November 8, 2012- In November 2010, I reported that GOP control of all elements of state government in key swing states—including but not limited to Wisconsin, Michigan,  Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania—could ensure a "Republican decade" in control of the House of Representatives. The Democrats' massive 2010 losses couldn't have come at a worse time for the party. Because the census was taken in 2010, GOP control of state legislatures and governors mansions around the country gave Republicans the power to draw congressional district lines largely as they chose. They seized that chance, aggressively gerrymandering so as to protect Republican incumbents and endanger any remaining Democrats. The Dems would have done the same thing, of course, had they won control of these crucial states in 2010. But they didn't.

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