Master Index of Archived Threads
Census/Congress
| Frayed Knot Dec 22 2010 09:22 AM |
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Reapportionment time as a result of the 2010 census. A total of 12 seats change hands.
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| John Cougar Lunchbucket Dec 22 2010 09:25 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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Gulp.
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| seawolf17 Dec 22 2010 09:35 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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Maybe we can get the Tea Party to go back to the founding of our country and just base Congress on the 1790 census.
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| sharpie Dec 22 2010 09:52 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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Would have been an 11 electoral vote swing to red in the last election.
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| Edgy DC Dec 22 2010 09:58 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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It remains to be seen whether the Republican-leaning states necessarily gained Republican-leaning people.
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| John Cougar Lunchbucket Dec 22 2010 10:01 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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Sure but still.
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| Benjamin Grimm Dec 22 2010 11:07 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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I was thinking the same thing. Some of those new Congressional seats may end up going Democratic, but it will likely be more electoral votes for the Republicans. Certainly in Texas. Maybe not in Nevada.
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| Edgy DC Dec 22 2010 11:11 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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I'm certainly only being empirical. I imagine those who have a business to know have a damn good picture whether these populations swings come from large broods in established families receiving their parents' political views, greater immigration in the sun belt states, or large flocks of migration among pipe-smoking New England college professors.
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| Valadius Dec 22 2010 11:21 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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If the Democrats follow an ACC Strategy going forward, they'll be fine - meaning a greater focus on the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, with South Carolina about 5-10 years away from being competitive. Keep moving in on the Mountain West and shore up the Midwest and all is well.
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| Gwreck Dec 22 2010 11:30 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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I don't think that's accurate. It should be a 5 vote swing towards Red. States Obama won with a change in EVs: Florida 27 (now 29) Illinois 21 (now 20) Massachusetts 12 (now 11) Michigan 17 (now 16) New Jersey 15 (now 14) New York 31 (now 29) Nevada 5 (now 6) Ohio 20 (now 18) Pennsylvania 21 (now 20) Washington 11 (now 12)
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| Frayed Knot Dec 22 2010 11:38 AM Re: Census/Congress |
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Yes, much of that growth in the southern and western states is either from northerners and easterners moving or from immigrants arriving from elsewhere; the biggest groups of immigrants being Hispanics who usually vote democratic. On the other hand maybe second & third generation Hispanics will tend to drift towards republicans so yaneverknow. About the only thing you can count on is change. I remember looking through a huge coffee-table book of NYTimes front pages throughout the 20th century and seeing that many of the presidential election result state-by-state breakdowns were almost the exact opposite of what you'd expect today.
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| Chad Ochoseis Dec 22 2010 12:10 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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Also, Iowa went for Obama and is losing one vote. That's a net loss of six for the 2008 blue states, implying a net gain of six for the 2008 red states, for a total net change of 12 in the spread. But, as Frayed and Edgy more or less said, the movements affect demographics as well as numbers, so whether this will actually translate to a GOP advantage remains to be seen.
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| Ceetar Dec 22 2010 12:14 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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It 'd only be fair if they now redraw the electorial lines to benefit the party in power right? Isn't that what they did in 2004?
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| Benjamin Grimm Dec 22 2010 12:21 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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That's only done at the state level, when the lines of the congressional districts are redrawn. The last time this would have been done was in time for the 2002 mid-terms.
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| metirish Dec 22 2010 12:22 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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Into the Blue
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| metsguyinmichigan Dec 22 2010 01:03 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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They'll have to stop sabotaging their own efforts first. Michigan is a pretty blue state, and the GOP completely swept through in November. Completely. The current group -- and that includes your boss and his statement comparing Republicans to terrorists -- seems to have damaged the Dem brand significantly. So add the census changes on top and the voter anger, especially here in the rust belt states, and I think its a long way from seeing "all is well." Just my 2 cents after reporting on the last elections.
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| Frayed Knot Dec 22 2010 01:21 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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I think all states have some kind of rules against gerrymandering (and when it's too blatant federal courts get involved) but often it's a question of how strict and how closely they're enforced, especially when you consider that the ones in power who are supposed to be enforcing such rules are also the ones in position to take advantage of them. I remember reading about how Iowa does it all via computer so that sitting incumbents have no direct input into how and where existing districts are re-drawn and, possibly as a result, they've traditionally had a higher turnover rate of reps. Be nice if all states did something along those lines where the voters pick their reps instead of the other way around - although in most places it probably wouldn't be as easy as Iowa which is fairly rectangular, has only 5 (soon to be 4) districts, and has a more-or-less even spread of population.
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| Benjamin Grimm Dec 22 2010 01:31 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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Maybe the way to do it is to require that all but at most one border of each Congressional district has to be either an actual political (town, city, or county) border or geographical (river, mountain) feature. And where a town or county has to be sliced (because of population counts) that the line has to be a straight line, either due east-west or due north-south. There would still be some strategy employed, I'm sure, but the party in power, but it would be much harder to come up with the crazy spidery looking districts that we've been getting.
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| Frayed Knot Dec 22 2010 01:47 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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The killer was the one that was tried in No Carolina a bunch of years ago where they tried to get past the requirement that all districts must be contiguous by making the district include all the people who lived on the highway connecting several far-flung cities/towns. Not the people living along the highway but the ones actually living on the blacktop itself. That one eventually got slam-dunked by the courts but it showed the lengths politicians will go to try.
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| Nymr83 Dec 22 2010 07:42 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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Florida's law is new (and vague), so nobody really knows how it will work yet.
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| Edgy DC Dec 22 2010 08:38 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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Seriously, just get a computer program to start drawing an area beginning with the Northeast corner of Maine and expanding Southwest until the area contains the correct amount of people. Bam! We have a district. Keep going district by district until you reach Hawaii, and we have a Congress.
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| Frayed Knot Dec 23 2010 02:18 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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btw, the re-apportionment for the 1920 census wasn't completed until mid-1929!! thanks mainly to an unholy coalition consisting of the "drys" (pro-prohibitionists largely from the south and rural mid-west) and anti-immigrant "nativist" groups (including the KKK) all of whom had a vested interest in keeping control of Congress from moving toward the big cities, cities that were by then not only crawling with "wets" but also bursting at the seams with increased population as a result of both internal movement from the rural states and new immigrants, especially those dirty Catholic and Jewish ones hailing from countries of "lower" (southern & eastern) European heritage.
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| Edgy DC Dec 23 2010 02:30 PM Re: Census/Congress |
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Yeah, but it guaranteed US prosperity well into the thirties.
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