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19 Feb, 4 tweets, 4 min read
.@DKElections presents the 2020 presidential results by congressional district! As shown on these maps, Biden won 224 districts to Trump's 211. The median seat was #IL14, which Biden won by 50-48, meaning Trump could've lost the popular vote by 2% & still won a majority of seats
The 2016 presidential results for the congressional districts in use in 2020 saw Trump win the median seat by 2% despite losing overall by 2%, meaning the GOP had a 4% advantage over the popular vote. That advantage fell in half in 2020, but GOP gerrymandering remains a threat
Republicans are poised to draw 2-3 times as many congressional districts as Dems after 2020, & SCOTUS could make GOP gerrymandering worse within states. GOP gerrymandering will remain a major problem in the 2020s & beyond if congressional Dems don't ban it dailykos.com/story/2020/11/…
I'm also working on a project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for hypothetical nonpartisan congressional districts I've drawn to analyze gerrymandering, & it's getting closer to completion. Biden would've won roughly 12 more House seats under these maps than in reality

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More from @PoliticsWolf

Stephen Wolf Profile picture
18 Feb
In state after state, Republicans are moving to restrict ballot initiatives after they’ve been used to enact progressive policies & pro-democracy reforms. This is part of the same broader effort to restrict voting access so that only Republicans are able to govern
Arizona voting advocates had tried to use a ballot initiative in 2020 to adopt automatic & same-day voter registration, expanded public financing, & more. The pandemic & AZ's GOP-packed Supreme Court stopped them from getting enough signatures, but they could try again this cycle
Arizona is hardly the only state where the GOP has restricted ballot initiatives or is trying to after voters passed democracy reforms/progressive initiatives. The same thing happened in AR, FL, ID, ME, MI, MO, ND, SD, & UT in just the last several years dailykos.com/stories/2019/7…
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
12 Feb
This will wreak havoc with redistricting timelines. Many states have constitutionally mandated deadlines for drawing new districts before then & are likely to face litigation over them. Some could even see legislatures lose control over the process to courts & backup commissions
⬇️ The delay means we’re more likely to see redistricting blitzkriegs where partisan mapmakers wait until the last minute to release proposed maps before passing them, giving the public little time to mobilize against flawed or outright bad maps
More news related to the delayed release of the census' reapportionment and redistricting data
Read 9 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
27 Jan
This could mean that the release of population data at the census block level, which is what is used in redistricting itself, may not be released until after April 30. That could cause serious problems for states whose constitutions mandate redistricting deadlines weeks afterward
It appears highly likely that New Jersey will use its current legislative maps for 2021 & won't redistrict their legislature until 2023. Virginia may end up doing the same for November. Several other states with early summer deadlines for redistricting could be thrown into chaos
The census delaying the release of redistricting data this year is a good reason why states should change their redistricting deadlines to make them more flexible in similar future situations, but amending state constitutions is a lengthy process, & it's too late to do so by 2022
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
22 Jan
5 of 14 New Hampshire GOP state senators have introduced a bill that would gerrymander the state's Electoral College votes by assigning them by gerrymandered congressional district. GOP legislators proposed this same scheme this month in MI & WI too gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/bi…
In a 4th state, the GOP is proposing *ending* the allocation of electoral votes congressional district: Nebraska, where Biden won the 2nd District & its one electoral vote.

GOP could pass these power grabs in NE & NH now, but MI & WI depend on GOP winning 2022 governors' races
An important point: These GOP Electoral College manipulation schemes aren't even guaranteed to help the GOP, & so much of it is just a knee-jerk reaction to the specific manner of Biden's 2020 win. But eventually, the GOP may get smarter about these power grabs & actually do it
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
20 Jan
Today, we restored majority rule by inaugurating a Democratic president & Senate majority that won with millions more votes than the GOP. It's been 4 straight years of GOP minority rule in the White House combined with 6 straight years of GOP minority rule in the Senate
But don't ignore how close we came to total GOP minority rule.

Had Trump won just 42,921 more votes, the Senate GOP won just 1,018 more votes, & GOP not lost anti-gerrymandering lawsuits last decade, they'd have held the White House, Senate, & House despite millions fewer votes
American democracy survived the Trump era, but not because it's resilient. We barely scraped by, & the threat of far-right authoritarianism is far from over when GOP leaders of all stripes tell the Big Lie with impunity that the 2020 election was stolen.

We have much work to do
Read 6 tweets
Stephen Wolf Profile picture
19 Jan
Senate Dems just introduced the most important democracy reform bill since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, joining House Dems. I detailed the major components here, including sweeping voting access expansions, banning House gerrymandering, & public financing: dailykos.com/stories/2021/1…
Note that this bill doesn't include a restoration of the Voting Rights Act, which is planned as separate legislation, but this bill does include a reaffirmed commitment to restore the VRA. You can read the section-by-section Senate bill summary here: democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
Here's the full list of major provisions in the sweeping democracy-reform bill that House & now Senate Dems have introduced as the first bill of the new session. These would be the biggest expansion of voting access & fair elections since the 1965 VRA dailykos.com/stories/2021/1…
Read 6 tweets

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