# The Virginia House of Delegates is gerrymandered (still) **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 29, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-virginia-house-of-delegates-is-gerrymandered-still/844173 "2019-11-29T17:03:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 9
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2019, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-virginia-house-of-delegates-is-gerrymandered-still/844173/9 "2019-12-02T14:03:47Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Do you have stats for a large number of districtings? Are some of them believed to be “objective”, i.e. not influenced by partisan tinkering? It certainly seems likely that clumpings (e.g. the urban-rural divide **Saint Cad** mentions) will deter the median=mode equation you seek. In fact, to achieve the districtings you call “fair”, _you_ may be the one resorting to drawing salamander-shaped districts! Nonparametric skew suffices in this case because nonparametric skew is what we’re trying to avoid. It is fundamentally unfair for districts to be drawn in such a way that as a whole the people of state could vote for one party in their state legislature by 8.5 points or more and yet have that legislative chamber controlled by the minority party. Yet the is precisely what happens in states like Virginia and Wisconsin. Reducing nonparametric skew deals with this problem, and drawing salamander shaped districts to achieve this is not fundamentally unfair. The TLDR version of this is that the median seat controls the legislature so the median seat should reflect the state as whole for things to be fair. Proportional representation may indeed be the bee’s knees, but it would require an amendment to the state constitution in many states. It’s not a practical solution in most cases. Redrawing district lines both through legislative efforts and through the courts is achievable. It’s what allowed the majority to finally take the the Virginia House of Delegates in 2019, and it’s what that same House of Delegates should try to further now that they have control so that the minority party can’t take back control in an election they lose by 4 points in the future. Here’s a couple posts from an old thread about Wisconsin. The gist of them is that control of the Wisconsin legislature is extremely resistant to the will of the people. A statewide D + 8.5 win resulted in a legislature that is 36D to 63R. The median seat (and control of the legislature) won’t be in play unless an election is somewhere around D + 20. > [@Republicans aim for a lame-duck power grab in Wisconsin](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-aim-for-a-lame-duck-power-grab-in-wisconsin/825459/60): > > More on this. > > This gerrymander is extremely resistant to the will of the people. Similar to the plot in the link posted by **RTFirefly** a few posts ago I looked at the district by district results found [here](https://elections.wi.gov/sites/default/files/County%20by%20County%20Report-2018%20Election-Assembly.pdf). > > We can calculate the net difference in two party vote share for each district or even all the districts together with the formula (D - R)/(D + R). > > For example, statewide there were 1,308,454 D votes and 1,103,521 R votes in assembly races so the net difference on two party vote share is (1308454 - 1103521)/(1308454 + 1103521) = 0.08496… = D + 8.5. > > When I did this calculation for all districts the thing that struck me was the sparseness of districts that fell in the even to D + 20 range. There are two. > > What does that mean? In an election that went D + 8.5 assembly seats went 36 D to 63 R. Had the electorate flipped and this election went R + 8.5 assembly seats would have gone 34 D to 65 R. It is pretty unlikely that we’re going to see an election outside ± 8.5 point range anytime soon so the range of achievable assembly outcomes for the foreseeable future is something like 34 - 36 D versus 63 - 65 R. > > The make up of the assembly barely responds at all to massive swings in the electorate that realistically achievable. Also by my analysis, which is far from perfect and limited to exactly one election, Wisconsin voters would have to go about D +21 in assembly voting to put the median seat in play. A two party vote split of 60 - 40 would probably fall just for of Democratic Party control of the assembly. > > On the other hand, Democrats did once make people wait two weeks to fuck over teachers eight years ago. > [@Republicans aim for a lame-duck power grab in Wisconsin](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-aim-for-a-lame-duck-power-grab-in-wisconsin/825459/64): > > That is exactly the plot that **RTFirefly** linked to earlier that I was referring to, and you can really see the sparseness I mentioned by looking at it. > > The narrowest Dem victory was D + 0.4%. That’s the blue circle on the 50/50 line. > > The second narrowest Dem victory was D +12 in district 74 at about the 3/4 line if you divide the graph horizontally into quarters. > > All other Dem wins were by 20 points or more. > > Those two seats are essentially what is up for grabs in any assembly election in the realistically achievable range of ±8.5. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-virginia-house-of-delegates-is-gerrymandered-still/844173)._