One thing about Democratic gains in the Sun Belt and Republican gains in the Rust Belt is that it's at least beginning to upend the 2010-era story about gerrymandering, redistricting, and the Democratic 'geographic' disadvantage in the House
From 2010-2014, the main story about the Democratic disadvantage in the House centered on purple/blue states where Democrats faced a two part problem: Republican gerrymandering and a Democratic 'geographic' inefficiency problem
The geograhpic problem was simple: in the blue/purple states, Obama's strength mainly depended on running up the score in areas that were already blue (thus yielding few new D districts), while Republicans won rural/exurban areas narrowly, netting more districts with fewer votes
The Trump elections somewhat complicated this story. Like Obama, Trump often ran up the score mainly in places that were already red. Yes, he did flip blue rural areas (IA/OH), but Clinton/Biden was also flipping a very similar number of red suburbs (GA6, etc)
The Democratic inefficiency story is still more-or-less true in the North, albeit to a lesser degree than '12: Despite Trump's rural gains, the GOP still doesn't win rural areas in MI/PA/WI/MN/NY by anything like the margin than Dems win DET/PHI/MIL/MIN/DET/NY, etc.
But the story in the red states and Sun Belt is different in a more fundamental way.
There, the GOP does win rural areas by an overwhelming margin--matching what Dems do in the urban north, and, importantly, more than Dems in southern cities. At same time, Ds flip the burbs
There, the GOP does win rural areas by an overwhelming margin--matching what Dems do in the urban north, and, importantly, more than Dems in southern cities. At same time, Ds flip the burbs
The Dems also have an added, albeit odd, advantage (with respect to the popular vote) thanks to low turnout among Latino voters. That allows Democrats to win districts with relatively few votes.
The result is that there are several red/Sun Belt states where the Democrats have a big geographic advantage. There, they win metro areas efficiently, 60/40 (and with great population-vote ratios in Latino areas), while the GOP wastes votes with huge rural margins
Texas is the most obvious case. If you drew a partisan-blind map with compact, county/city-based CDs, you'd have a very real chance of drawing a map where Biden won a majority of CDs, much as a similar technique often yields Trump favored maps in PA/WI/MI, etc
Don't get me wrong: Democrats are still at the overall disadvantage nationwide.
But I do think the growing regional split is interesting and does have some consequences for the gerrymandering debate
But I do think the growing regional split is interesting and does have some consequences for the gerrymandering debate
One of the odd consequence of state-based redistricting is that each state map is evaluated independently. Similarly, the gerrymandering tests are all applied by state: if you draw a map with 5Rs and 3Ds in WI or 22Ds and 16Rs in TX, you have a gerrmander
But if there's a big regional split in geographic bias, then evaluating the maps nationwide might yield a different perspective. Perhaps a map with a Dem majority in TX and an R majority in PA/MI/WI might be fair--or at least far more fair than it seemed from any single state
Of course, that's not the way maps are drawn or evaluated now. But it's interesting that, technically, I do think that congress could do a national redistricting commission-or state commissions subsidiary to a national evaluation of partisan balance
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