Maybe the very low population states that only have one House seat? But even Wyoming was caught gerrymandering so that the plebs who live in Jackson and serve the wealthy, mostly non-resident enclave there won’t have a say in state government, even.
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Indiana (#2 on the list above) is one of the states that does both types of gerrymandering. If you look on a map, it seems relatively benign. No serpentine monsters. Cool, right?
Except, if you know what you’re looking at, each of the smaller danger zones is self-contained due to “packing” – Gary (Black and colleges/universities), Bloomington (colleges/universities), South Bend (colleges/universities) – and then there’s the biggest danger of all: if you look closely at Indianapolis, the lines are drawn so that each quadrant of the actual city is approximately 25% of the entire voting district (radiating out to the suburbs and rural areas), which is the “cracking” part. Funny how that works.
Basically, there’s both “cracking” and “packing” involved.
Executive summary of the findings:
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Is two enough? The texas electorate, just based on votes, is purple. That doesn’t count the millions of votes suppressed. But our government is very deeply red at the state and national level. As @chgoliz said, Indiana is much the same. Cracked and packed.
Austin US rep districts. See how the city is split so each district stretches into the rural areas around the city?
Houston US rep districts
Compare to a traditional conservative city in a conservative area. Tyler is in a single district (edit: yes, the population of Tyler is much smaller than any blue city, which accounts for only some of why it wasn’t divided)
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there are some anecdotal accounts of people leaving [Texas] over its abortion ban and its anti-LGBTQ+ laws
Hi, I’m an anecdote. That is exactly why we left Texas for Washington last year.
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here’s one:
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Not politics-but Maine is one of the worst states I have ever lived in.
NO Infrastructure each home HAS to have a whole house generator and we pay the second highest electricity rates in the US to a company whose HQ is in SPAIN
NO medical care - just try getting a Vet, MD, or even a FNP. And I am a RN. Its ridiculous.
Second highest food prices behind MA–for nothing. Vegetables are like a bad word here.
We are moving in Spring back to the Midwest. I am done with Maine forever.
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It’s the classic warning colour of danger
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It might be no.11 by 1% or something. That’s an issue with the simple methodology of rankings.
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oregon’s the blue state i recognize on that list:
- Partisan Fairness F - Significant Democratic advantage. Advantages incumbents
- Competitiveness- F - Very uncompetitive relative to other maps that could have been drawn
- Geographic Features - C - Compact districts, typical number of county splits
there’s none of the wild zigzagging of somewhere like texas. and that’s what – for me at least – i think about when i hear gerrymandering ( but maybe i would feel differently if the divide was reversed? )
i dunno. maybe explicitly balancing the parties is a good goal? but what happens when only a small percentage is affiliated with the other party?
at any rate, it would be nice to have some clear guidelines to draw maps. ( mainly so that the purpleish states aren’t getting so totally worked over. )
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It’s not.
It’s number 2 on the “best places to live” list I posted above.
@serge brings up another example of why infrastructure reliability should be part of the rankings. But they seem to be misinformed about where we (Maine) ranks in terms of electricity prices. We’re definitely up there, but nowhere near 2nd most expensive, according to this.
In any case, I’m sorry they’ve had such a negative experience of living here. Just goes to show how different our lived experiences can be.
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It also misses the context of how this map was chosen. The majority party invited the minority party to be involved in redistricting, but the minority party refused to participate unless the districts were gerrymandered to their benefit rather than balanced. So the majority party picked a compromise map instead of stacking and cracking to completely eliminate minority party representation in the House.
As a result, the minority party was the sole beneficiary of OR’s new House seat, while the majority party kept the same number of seats as before. How did the minority party respond to this gift? By having state senators leave the state in protest to prevent a quorum and block all legislation. 
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The author of that article has no clue what “Minnesota nice” really means.
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I was looking for the same scale, but looking at this…I mean any person in the Chicago area will tell you that the gerrymandering of the districts is legendarily bad. We have one of the worst districts around, as I recall. That said, Chicago and the collar counties are overwhelmingly Democratic, as well as the same around every college town. One major exception being a NW burb that Jordan used to live in, which is VERY wealthy and leans hard Republican. I wonder why.
I don’t understand why re-election = gerrymandering and there isn’t supporting info to explain it. I do know from personal experience (had a family member run for office) that it is really hard to run against an incumbent. They will throw absolutely everything at you. They dropped out after the second lawsuit, because they simply couldn’t afford the time/money anymore. The lawsuits were simply keeping them busy, including multiple trips from Chicago to Springfield for mandatory in-person hearings, only to be dropped when facts came out. And, for the record, that was on the Dem side too, so you know that Repubs don’t have an exclusivity on jerkiness.
What is interesting is almost all the F ratings are on large states. It’s almost like it’s hard to be even on a giant geographical/population basis and trying to use simple stats to define isn’t the best idea. I mean, for Illinois, 2/3rds of the population lives in or within 1 hour of Chicago. Why should the southern part of the state get more than 1/3rd of the vote? They already get ~255% of the tax money!
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I know, right? Why is that the one aspect of late stage capitalism that isn’t in effect?
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I’ve had to translate Minnesota Nice for West Coast peeps.
“That went rather well. He wasn’t as angry as I expected.”
“Oh, that was Minnesota Nice. Translated to standard American vernacular, he told you to piss up a rope and do something anatomically impossible with a muskellunge.”
Also one of the frustrations with the Greater Idaho movement. WTF do they mean “we aren’t being represented!?!” Burns school district gets $150,000 per student in state funding while Portland gets about $5000.
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Nailed it!
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I’ve lived in Maine for the last 8 or 10 years (previously living in NH, MA, NV, IL, and FL), and my experience has been exactly the opposite. I love it here, other than the public transit issues endemic to New England in general. Are you on the Southern coast, or out in the great foresaken trumplands?
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Live outside of Bangor–Versant Power. Need I say more? But CMP is worse.
As I mentioned? The infrastructure of this area is sorely lacking, medical care is a joke, and cost of living is far too expensive for what we get/do not get.
Wanna buy a house?
Yeah, Maine’s red v blue map really is a microcosm of the country as a whole. Bangor’s up there in the borderlands- Things are much better down here on the southern coast. My ex’s family was from Winterport, and it’s a world of difference from say, Saco.
Cost of living is high, but overall, it’s more affordable than NH was, and I’ve had excellent experiences with SMHC from basic GP and diabetes care to a major hospitalization. The Pine Tree Power initiative did not go well, but it’s that same problem of convincing the rural red voters to go along with literally anything that improves everyone’s quality of life.
I can’t really argue on the Midwest, though- I spent a lot of years outside Chicago and still feel pretty comfortable out there. Cost of living is definitely better, but there’s just something about New England that vibes better with me.
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