DNC Restructuring

[archibaldcrane]

Love too ignore polls that might be concerning.

You don't ignore them, you incorporate them into all the other data. I'm not saying "throw it out". The poll you are quoting is listed and incorporated into the link I posted.

[archibaldcrane]

Another R state seat flipped to Democrat in a special election, Margaret Good will take a state seat in Florida in a district Trump won by 5.

Word is that polls were pushed by high Democratic women turnout and an automated phone blast by Joe Biden.

This is the 17th special election since Trump won office that has resulted in a Republican-held seat being flipped.

17th special election of state House or Senate seats flipping R>D, plus 1 US Senate seat flipping, and there's also been 19 regular election R>D flips (15 in Virginia and 4 in New Jersey) since Trump's election. 4 seats have gone D>R in that time, for a net of 33 Dem pickups.

On average, they've outperformed Hillary in those districts by 10 points in 2017, and outperformed her by 23 points!!! in 2018 so far.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=546409300

[archibaldcrane]

Fundraising data for 2018 House races:

Latest House FEC data (sorry, took a while to compile): There are 179 Democratic candidates across 94 GOP-held seats with at least $100,000 in the bank.

By comparison, there are only 29 GOP candidates across 21 Dem-held seats with at least $100,000 in the bank.

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/statu...39554393460736

[archibaldcrane]

Elizabeth Warren talks about her native American heritage more expansively than she has in the past: https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/pol...itter#comments

[archibaldcrane]

In response to the GOP's inability to draw a district map that meets the state constitution, the state Supreme Court drew their own for the congressional elections this fall.

As opposed to the incredibly gerrymandered maps the GOP was consistently running out there, it is good.
Old map:

New map:


Note that nearly every district on the old map had crazy weird narrow offshoots to capture specific voter groups, and the new one being very compact and following county lines where possible. (following county lines is frankly kind of a strange guideline but much better than the alternative)

[Zealot]

That is a shocking difference, amazing, frankly, to see what a non-gerrymandered map looks like.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

[archibaldcrane]

They elected 13 Republicans to 5 Democrats in 2016, despite the state being split between Hillary and Trump by less than 1%. The new map should swing at least 3 seats to the Democrats.

[Zealot]

The Democratic hopes for taking the House are pretty much pinned on taking seats in the Northeast and California so that's good news for them.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

[Quicklet]

I half expect the PA Republicans to straight up ignore the new map.

[archibaldcrane]

I half expect the PA Republicans to straight up ignore the new map.

They'll be fighting it tooth and nail in the courts until election day for sure.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[archibaldcrane]

The other weird thing is that the map shifts around the district numbers to a...kinda extreme extent. Meaning incumbents in some seats will likely see their district shifting upwards of 25 points one way or another. Some incumbent Republicans who were in safe Trump+10-15 seats and cruising towards likely re-election this fall now find themselves in Hillary+5-10 districts and are in for the fight of their lives and may want to retire instead. The idea that the map will be fought, possibly successfully, in the courts could cause real havoc on their decision-making.

[Quicklet]

They'll be fighting it tooth and nail in the courts until election day for sure.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

I mean, some of them are calling to impeach the justices, so yeah.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/polit...ent/index.html

The other weird thing is that the map shifts around the district numbers to a...kinda extreme extent. Meaning incumbents in some seats will likely see their district shifting upwards of 25 points one way or another. Some incumbent Republicans who were in safe Trump+10-15 seats and cruising towards likely re-election this fall now find themselves in Hillary+5-10 districts and are in for the fight of their lives and may want to retire instead. The idea that the map will be fought, possibly successfully, in the courts could cause real havoc on their decision-making.

Are we sure that a congressman from the 8th district remains the congressman from the 8th district? Or will they simply be relabeled to the appropriate number under the new map? This map, from what I've seen, seems more than fair to Republicans.

[TsingTao]

What we need is to do away with this archaic, easily manipulated system and move to something modern that the kids can get excited about...like cage fighting. Your state gets 12 congressmen? Put everyone running in the Thunderdome, the 12 that walk out get elected. You'll drastically cut down on the number of out of touch, old white dudes that get elected for their 12th term too which is a big bonus.

[archibaldcrane]

I mean, some of them are calling to impeach the justices, so yeah.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/polit...ent/index.html



Are we sure that a congressman from the 8th district remains the congressman from the 8th district? Or will they simply be relabeled to the appropriate number under the new map? This map, from what I've seen, seems more than fair to Republicans.

They are the congressman of which ever district they choose to run for election in.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[tyven]

love that these dorks dont have to live in their districts

[archibaldcrane]

That new Pennsylvania map that everyone is celebrating still isn't that great for Democrats. Here's the 538 number crunching - in a neutral environment, the average number of Democratic seats is 7.4 out of 18. You need on average about the environment we currently have (D+6.5 on the generic ballot) for the state to be 9/9.



https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...cid=538twitter

That's even though the "efficiency gap" of the state is shifting from R+18 under the old map to only R+3 under the new one.

And of course, it will be redrawn after the 2020 census anyway.

[Quicklet]

A number of people will argue that Democrats have a natural geographic disadvantage, even if districts are drawn fairly. While not ideal and maybe not the ultimate solution to this problem, it's certainly a step in the right direction and at the very least should prevent the kinds of supermajorities that exist explicitly because of gerrymandering advantage in some states.

[Zealot]

If it's fair it's great. If there are more Republicans than Democrats in Pennsylvania so be it, but letting one party completely minimize the other is ludicrous. Districts should all be as unsafe as possible to make sure Congresspeople feel pressure to represent all of their constituents as much as possible, not just a manufactured majority of them.

[Zealot]

One of the reasons I'm in favor of ranked voting.

[mallister]

One of the reasons I'm in favor of ranked voting.

What is ranked voting?