# How serious is gerrymandering in the US if at all?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-serious-is-gerrymandering-in-the-us-if-at-all/782060>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [March 13, 2017, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-serious-is-gerrymandering-in-the-us-if-at-all/782060 "2017-03-13T03:56:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 7

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**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-serious-is-gerrymandering-in-the-us-if-at-all/782060/121 "2017-10-09T08:59:36Z")

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> [@doorhinge](#):
>
> (post shortened)
> 
> Interesting math, except for the fact that the Democrat Party wasn’t the person who was actually running for a seat. Individual candidates were running for those seats. The individuals lost in their respective districts. The party received more votes, not the individual, and it’s the vote totals of the individual districts which actually decides who the winner is. The statewide vote total wins nothing but your admiration.

Interestingly, [this exact argument was used in the supreme court case](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/10/sonia_sotomayor_s_simple_devastating_question_in_gill_v_whitford.html):

With all due respect, you know, I would certainly dispute the premise that the decks are stacked here. At the end of the day, what matters is how people vote in elections and that’s what’s going to determine the outcomes, as it has in Wisconsin where the Republicans have won majorities because they’ve actually won the majority of the vote in most of the elections over the past four years.

And it’s just as disingenuous:

While the words in this paragraph did have the benefit of cohering into intelligible English sentences, Murphy’s answer again made no sense. In 2014, Wisconsin Republicans received 52 percent of the vote and won 63 out of 99 seats in the State Assembly. In 2016, they won the same percentage of the statewide vote and captured 64 seats. Murphy’s rosy response was technically correct, but it elides the fact that Republicans won a bare majority of votes overall yet captured a near-supermajority of assembly seats. Moreover, she conveniently ignored the 2012 election from her response. Perhaps that’s because in 2012, Wisconsin Republicans won just 48.6 percent of the statewide vote—and captured 60 out of 99 seats. That’s what a stacked deck looks like.

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