Gerrymandering & the 51% minority

obscene really is the right word. (0.00 / 0)

thanks for posting this, scott.

oh, and i can't see where that gap is coming from. i tried to edit it out but i just don't see why it's there in the HTML.


TODAY is day one. It always is.

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by: phillip anderson @ Tue Dec 19, 2006 at 20:36:20 PM CST

we're gonna try and fix that gap (0.00 / 0)

and then i'll put this on the front page.

it's good stuff.

TODAY is day one. It always is.

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by: phillip anderson @ Tue Dec 19, 2006 at 20:59:38 PM CST

Your css for tables (0.00 / 0)

doesn't look funky at first glance:

table
{
  font-family: Trebuchet,arial;
  font-size: 14px;
}

.objectTable
{
  border: 0px solid #006;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
  position: relative;
  left: -12px;
  width: 200px;
  margin-right: -24px;
}

But then I'm no css expert.

----- RochesterTurning.com - turning the tide upstate

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by: bythepeople @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 13:50:46 PM CST

[ Parent ]

autoformatting (4.00 / 2)

For some reason, the auto-formatter was adding like 20
tags. When you use a table, turn off the autoformatter and make sure to use otherwise proper html.

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by: wycats @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 15:48:16 PM CST

my hero! (0.00 / 0)

we tried turning off the auto format last night and it didn't work.

thanks!

TODAY is day one. It always is.

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by: phillip anderson @ Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 15:51:55 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Good chart, but (4.00 / 1)

it doesn't depict some important data. How does the vote break down district-by-district?

As I understand one complaint, GOP districts are smaller. Is the size difference crucial in the overall outcome of races?

It's often been said that urban (mostly minority) prisoners held in rural prisons are counted as residents for districting purposes. How would reallocating those incarcerated affect the population distribution among/between districts?

One possible explanation of the chart would be that GOP majority district produce more marginal GOP majorities. That's  one reason why, it seems to me, looking at the gross, statewide numbers may mask other ways of looking at the situation.

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by: Daniel Millstone @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 06:03:54 AM CST

Good post, excellent questions (0.00 / 0)

I'll go at it backwards.

Your last remark hit the nail on the head.  Democrats regularly draw between 30% and 50% of the vote in almost all of the GOP districts in the state (except, of course, the uncontested districts).  In only three districts won by Democrats (34, 35, 49) did the Republican win over 30% of the vote.  Most Democratic districts (about 21.5 of 28) are in New York City, where Republicans don't stand a chance in hell of getting to 30%, let alone winning.

I cannot intelligently answer the question of what effect reallocating prisoners might have on the map.

As for the size difference, it amounts to one state Senate seat in upstate New York.  In the last Census, upstate lost 1 seat worth of population and Metro NYC gained 1 seat worth of population.  Instead of shifting one seat from upstate to downstate, the map-drawers simply added one seat in NYC.  This, of course, did not balance population per upstate district versus population per downstate district, it only brought the difference down to a somewhat more tolerable level.  The map-drawers could have more completely balanced populations by either drawing another district in the city or eliminating one upstate district.

Looking at gross statewide totals is one way of evaluating the effectiveness of a gerrymandered map.  As for district-level breakdown, you got it right with the last paragraph.  GOP districts in general give smaller majorities, while Democratic districts give nearly unanimous ones.

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by: Scott in NJ @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 09:01:43 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Same analysis, but for Assembly (0.00 / 0)

I would be interested in seeing the same analysis applied to the Assembly.

You make the implicit conclusion that, since 51.1% of voters in NYS Senate races voted Democratic, therefore a majority of the seats in the NYS Senate should belong to Democrats.  Interesting, that in a state with a roughly 5-3 advantage in Democrats to Republicans, you would think that perentage would be more like 62.5%.

With the incoming Legislature in January, I believe that 42 of the 150 members of the Assembly will be Republican.  Although I don't have any data at hand, I would bet that more than 28% of voters that cast a ballot for a member of the Assembly did so for a Republican.

I would also recommend reading the majority opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267.  While you will pull out points more salient to your implicit argument than I will, the main one I see is this:  "...the Constitution provides no right to proportional representation."  Yes, the 14th Amendment has been interpreted to mean, "one person, one vote."  However, subsequent case law and the U.S. Department of Justice (under both Republican and Democratic administrations) has held that you can vary +/- 5% from the 'average' population when creating districts.  The reasons why you do so (simple geography or partisan advantage) are not relevant.

I would say that while percentages are an important analytical tool, they do leave out a lot of context in this specific case study.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I am a former Albany staff member to a majority Senator.  However, I make no apologies for the institution - both the Senate and Assembly - itself; I was very disillusioned after working there for about 6 years.)

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by: SaratogaX @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 11:18:34 AM CST

Hi SaratogaX (0.00 / 0)

"I am a former Albany staff member to a majority Senator". . .
Could you do a diary of some of the process that happens there? What are all the funding buckets and how do they get filled? The press is really focused on the member items, but we know there is much more out there than that. The fact we never hear about GLOP anymore... etc. Any light you can shed on this would be so helpful!

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by: am @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 14:10:16 PM CST

[ Parent ]

re: (4.00 / 2)

You don't have to make blind assumptions like "I would bet that more than 28% of voters that cast a ballot for a member of the Assembly did so for a Republican". Go crunch the numbers. You can find them here. I don't think you'll see the same sort of results as you do on the Senate side.

In any event, it is naive to assume that the function between % of votes and % of seats in any district/constituenecy-based system is or should be constant. Let me make a baseball analogy here in honor of the Tri-City ValleyCats and their wonderful stadium: The 1899 Cleveland Spiders, the worst team in Major League history, were oustcored by their opponents 529-1252, which means they scored 29.7% of the runs in their games. However, their overall record was 20-134, or a .130 winning percentage. Likewise, winning 28% of the total popular vote across a number district-based legislative contests usually wins you fewer than 28% of the seats.

I do not make any argument, implicit or explicit, that the map violates either Federal or State Constitution or statute, so please leave the caselaw book on the shelf for now. A lot of the what happens in government isn't illegal, but that doesn't mean it's right or just. Since you actually worked in Albany, you could probably give better examples than I could to support that point. As for this remark: "Interesting, that in a state with a roughly 5-3 advantage in Democrats to Republicans, you would think that perentage would be more like 62.5%." The 62.5% shrinks to something under 60% when you consider Indpendents, Conservatives, and blanks. The advantage of incumbency takes care of the rest.

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by: Scott in NJ @ Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 15:10:22 PM CST

[ Parent ]

First-past-the-post distortions (4.00 / 1)

In the heading to your original post, you talk about the "51.1% minority."  From that, I deduce that your overall argument is that a majority of votes necessarily should mean a majority of seats.  Distortions are always, always, always going to happen with a first-past-the-post voting system.

As an example, take a look at a multi-party system such as Canadian or UK federal elections.  In Canada, parties can routinely win a majority of the seats in the House of Commons by winning only around 39% to 40% of the popular vote.  If they get 42% or 43%, that gives them a very strong majority.  However, no one (well, at least in the U.S.) says that Canada or the UK are somehow not democracies.

Turning back to NYS, if you ask the question, is the electoral process in NYS subverted to partisan advantage?  Absolutely.  It's an incredible incumbency protection program, from member items to the arcane and impenetrable Election Law to the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment.

Let's start with the oft-quoted statistic that we are a state with a 5-3 advantage to registered Democrats v. registered Republicans.  (I will make the defensible assumption that people not enrolled in a party - so-called 'blanks' - also break down roughly along that 5-3 line.  As for minor parties, we can assume that Conservatives vote for Republicans, Working Families vote for Democrats, and the rest are such a small percentage that they don't really matter for the sake of this analysis.)

Extrapolating to the 212 seats in the Legislature, one would assume that 79.5 (round it up to 80 for convenience's sake) seats would belong to Republicans, and
132 seats to Democrats.

Interestingly enough, this almost holds:  the incoming Legislature is 108 Assembly Democrats and 28 Senate Democrats; 42 Assembly Republicans and 34 Senate Republicans.  So it's 136-76, slightly more than 5-3.  So, looking at the whole Legislature, Democrats are very slightly overrepresented.

Obviously, your rebuttal will be that this should breakdown in EACH house of the Legislature, not the entire institution, and this is a fair argument, assuming that if the Democrats eventually capture the Senate (which will inevitably happen), they then would allow for a 'fair' redistricting process and distribution of seats in each house.  (Roughly 94-56 in the Assembly; 39-23 in the Senate.)

This, of course, could lead to a wonderful discussion of why a bicameral legislature at the state level is quite unnecessary, but that's a discussion for another day.

"A lot of the what happens in government isn't illegal, but that doesn't mean it's right or just."

This statement is difficult to argue with, assuming that everyone had the same idea of what is right and just.  To some people, something can be egregious; to others, it's inconsequential.  From having been inside, I would say the way that the Speaker treats his caucus members is a lot less fair than the way that Senator Bruno treats his.

Also, my position in my former office had very little to do with money.  My job was legislation - technical stuff, drafting, negotiating with other offices, finding Assembly Democrats to sponsor legislation in that house, shepherding it through the committee and floor votes...that kind of stuff.  I knew about money and funding and member items, but was never intimately involved in sums and amounts and picking recipients.  Also, at the same time, I specifically asked to be uninvolved in issues regarding fundraising.  I enjoyed the technical stuff - legislation - and found the whole concept of constituency work - slightly uninteresting.

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by: SaratogaX @ Fri Dec 22, 2006 at 09:28:53 AM CST

[ Parent ]