# Trump's effect on upcoming Senate and House races **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [May 7, 2016, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199 "2016-05-07T18:28:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/61 "2016-08-08T13:12:21Z")
If you listed the issues in order, it’d go like this: 1. Concentration of Democrats into small urban spaces 2. Racial gerrymandering 3. Political gerrymandering ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/62 "2016-08-08T14:36:01Z")
Like I said, I’ve actually made this argument so many times I question why I’d keep making it. Liberals like the narrative that the GOP stole the house via gerrymandering because it appeals to their sense of outrage and “conservative rigging of the electoral system.” I’ll just repeat the same argument I’ve made before: > [@Republicans Move to Gerrymander Presidential Elections](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-move-to-gerrymander-presidential-elections/647360/154): > > Gerrymandering giving the GOP control of the House is almost entirely a [myth](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/17/redistricting-didnt-win-republicans-the-house/), and the basis for it is weak. Even the article I just linked to misses the mark in a key area (which I’ll touch on this later.) > > But to start with, the assumption all the liberal pundits have made is that if the Democrats won a majority of the “aggregate popular vote” in House elections, then the default assumption is they should have won a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives. Additionally, the assumption is that if they didn’t, the reason must be the 2010 gerrymander. > > The many liberal articles that address this claim simply show lots and lots of statistics about the “perverse result” but few actually dig into the details of the actual districts and how they are drawn. This means that all they’re really showing is that there is a deviation from the expected result, and then saying “it must be gerrymandering” without ever bothering to actually demonstrate whether gerrymandering is happening or not. As I said, the article I linked to has a problem–and that is it. It correctly shows that if you factor in issues like incumbency, if you run the results with previous district maps, if you look back to the 1990s–the statistical “proof” that the 2010 redistricting is why the Republicans control the House vanishes. That in fact if you followed norms of geographical compactness, it will always hurt the Democrats. > > This is an old thread, but earlier in it I mentioned that because Democrats are a more “naturally” compact electorate it means that districts that follow geographic compactness norms will harm the Democrats and help Republicans. That means the only “fair” districting (rather, districting that would produce the result Democrats demand) would basically be districts designed specifically to benefit the Democratic party. That’s gerrymandering at its essence. In a single member district, first past the post electoral system your party is simply disadvantaged by being disproportionately and homogeneously geographically concentrated. > > You can propose alternative election schemes (and that was done earlier in this thread), but that doesn’t mean you can just blame it all on gerrymandering. > > As the Washington Post article I linked to shows, even if you accept the gerrymandering argument on its face, it accounted for a 7 seat swing in the Republican favor in 2012–far short of the total margin of control of the House. > > I can’t tell you how many articles I’ve seen titled “most gerrymandered States” and then it just lists the % of the popular vote won by Democrats and Republicans and the number of seats won. Where the Republicans win more seats than their vote share would suggest, the articles just conclude those districts have been gerrymandered. > > In truth, if you filter out the **mandatory gerrymandering** , that is, gerrymandering required primarily in the South to create “majority-minority districts” gerrymandering isn’t nearly as common as you would suspect. > > Actually do the exercise, do you know how many statehouses the GOP actually controlled in 2010? The answer is 25, that is 25 where they controlled both houses of the legislature in a given state. > > Now, some of these I’m going to toss right away because you can’t gerrymander these states at all: > > Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming. > > Why? Because those states all have 2 or fewer districts, period. Idaho and New Hampshire have two each and the rest have only one–and you can’t conceive of gerrymandering a single district State. You can make an argument about 2 district states but would still have to concede you’re very limited in how you can gerrymander those. So that leaves 18 States the GOP controlled where gerrymandering could happen. Of those the ones I’d say have some level of gerrymandering problems: > > Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida. > > Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina have been fairly open in that their Republican leadership has tried to draw districts to benefit the party. In Texas they’ve succeeded in several districts. Same for Ohio and Pennsylvania, although much of both of those States actually fairly closely follows geographic compactness norms. North Carolina has some bad intent, but it also has some districts drawn to appease the “majority-minority” concept, which is something liberals are also majorly in favor of and in essence force gerrymandering. > > Florida actually passed an anti-gerrymandering law in 2010. It has some districts that make sense and some don’t. But the most nonsensical district in Florida is District 5 (covering an area similar to that which District 3 used to cover.) This district was drawn to get a black congress person elected, and by and large that’s what has happened there. > > So in the grand scheme of things you’re talking about a few districts in five states where crass political motives have drawn the districts. And in some cases the districts in those states would not be that different anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/63 "2016-08-08T15:56:48Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Again, since apparently it was difficult to understand, the GOP won _control of the House_ “fair and square” with a nearly 6% popular vote margin of victory. I understood that perfectly, and agree. I was trying to expand the discussion beyond that simple point. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/64 "2016-08-08T16:01:21Z")
… ---
**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:** [August 8, 2016, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/65 "2016-08-08T17:12:28Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The other oddly shaped districts? Didn’t matter what shapes they were they still all went red and would have if you had cut them into squares instead. Look at the the 6th, 7th, and 16th. The 6th and 7th were very carefully drawn in a way that has resulted in two Republican congressmen, and even there they had to shoehorn Reading into the more conservative 16th to make that happen. If you took the area represented by those three districts and chopped it more naturally into three equal population areas east, northwest, and southwest, east would go democratic. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/66 "2016-08-08T21:48:40Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > Look at the the 6th, 7th, and 16th. The 6th and 7th were very carefully drawn in a way that has resulted in two Republican congressmen, and even there they had to shoehorn Reading into the more conservative 16th to make that happen. > > If you took the area represented by those three districts and chopped it more naturally into three equal population areas east, northwest, and southwest, east would go democratic. In total those three districts went 62% GOP. If I am understanding your claim you are saying that most of the 38% of that larger area live in the eastern section mostly contained in the 6th (which also then has a section that heads west in its north bit, like FL panhandle, but avoiding Reading) and without the gerrymandering that panhandle sans Reading onto the 6th, the 6th would be Democratic with the other two even more very solidly red. Is that correct? And I can that is likely true. So one House seat in PA in 2014 went Red as a consequence of gerrymandering. And that seems to be it. One out of 18? A real factor but not the main structural advantage. And the way those districts voted is not written in stone. ---
**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:** [August 8, 2016, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/67 "2016-08-08T23:10:37Z")
In the post I was responding to you claimed, “Didn’t matter what shapes they were they still all went red and would have if you had cut them into squares instead.” Now you seem to be agreeing that this is not the case. Or at least that it looks likely that this is not the case. I’m not claiming that gerrymandering is the only reason that the Republicans control the house. I’m refuting claims that it doesn’t have any effect at all. A single counterexample is insufficient to prove the first point, but is enough to show the second. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/68 "2016-08-08T23:16:06Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > I’m not claiming that gerrymandering is the only reason that the Republicans control the house. I’m refuting claims that it doesn’t have any effect at all. Who claimed that? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/69 "2016-08-08T23:35:49Z")
[Darrell Issa could be going down!](http://www.politicususa.com/2016/06/21/rep-darrell-issa-spent-7-years-lying-obama-lose-job.html) Please, Calidopers, we \*need \*this. ---
**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:** [August 9, 2016, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/70 "2016-08-09T00:22:04Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Who claimed that? I quoted the exact words of the claim I’m refuting. Perhaps the paraphrase you quoted isn’t up to your standards. I feel like it captured the essence of what he was getting at. There are two main gerrymandering techniques. Packing and cracking. Packing is trying to put as many of your opponents as densely into as few as districts as possible. Some packing may be unavoidable due to Democrats tendency to live in higher population density areas. Cracking is splitting up areas where your opponents are concentrated into multiple districts. The way the lines are drawn for the 6th, 7th, and 16th districts in PA are a pretty clear example of cracking. Areas near west Philly and Reading were carefully split into three separate districts. This is just one example. Gerrymandering does not account for enough of a difference to flip the house today, but it may make all the difference come November. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/71 "2016-08-09T00:43:40Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > [Darrell Issa could be going down!](http://www.politicususa.com/2016/06/21/rep-darrell-issa-spent-7-years-lying-obama-lose-job.html) > > Please, Calidopers, we \*need \*this. That would be so sweet! I loathe that smarmy bastard. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/72 "2016-08-09T03:29:51Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > In the post I was responding to you claimed, “Didn’t matter what shapes they were they still all went red and would have if you had cut them into squares instead.” Now you seem to be agreeing that this is not the case. Or at least that it looks likely that this is not the case. > > I’m not claiming that gerrymandering is the only reason that the Republicans control the house. I’m refuting claims that it doesn’t have any effect at all. A single counterexample is insufficient to prove the first point, but is enough to show the second. > [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > I quoted the exact words of the claim I’m refuting. Perhaps the paraphrase you quoted isn’t up to your standards. I feel like it captured the essence of what he was getting at. … No, you really completely missed the essence of what I was getting at. I had indeed stated that in those particular districts it wouldn’t have mattered if they were cut into squares and did indeed concede that perhaps a cut creating an eastern third and dividing the western two thirds into a northern and southern portions could, if your claim that the eastern third, and Reading, are where all the relatively few Democrats of those three House districts are concentrated, would have possibly created an additional Democratic district. That was not the major point (or essence) of what I was getting at, but I did concede that it was possible that I was incorrect in my statement. And I was mistaken to have done so. See [here,](http://www.politicspa.com/maps-2014-elections-breakdown/73388/), particularly [this map of results by individual precinct in 2014](http://www.politicspa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2014-Map-3.png). That eastern section? Also a sea of red leaning. A few flecks of blue maybe but no, an eastern rectangle would also have elected a GOP representative. In the case of PA’s 2014 election it appears that my initial position, “the essence of what I was getting at”, that gerrymandering had a nonzero, nontrivial, but not major impact in comparison to other structural factors was understated: it had _no_ impact on the outcome for PA House seats in 2014. I stand by the position that it did have some nontrivial impact nationally however. The linked map illustrates the more major structural factor: Democrats are huge overwhelming majorities in the few heavily populated metropolitan centers and moderate minorities in the rest of the state. Winning the cities by even larger margins and higher turnouts while rural districts have fairly low turnout and narrowed GOP margins is a reasonable path to winning the state for the presidency and maybe for Senate … it will get a majority of state voters voting a Democratic House representatives … but it is not the path to getting any more Democratic House representatives. In PA at least you need to be able to sell more rural voters on the Democratic House challenger running in their rural districts to win a majority of PA’s House seats. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/73 "2016-08-09T05:14:29Z")
More on exactly how big of a lift winning the House could be from [Cook’s ratings](http://cookpolitical.com/house/charts/race-ratings) as of July 22, before conventions and the current Trump crater. Start out with safe seats: 202 Rep, 177 Dem. 218 is majority. 26 are toss-ups. 17 are lean, currently more towards R, but are considered competitive. Even if their districts are shaped odd. So out of 43 competitive races the Democrats would need to win 41 or more to take the majority. A heckuva big lift but an overall shift in polls, especially if it comes with a low turnout of some usually reliable traditional GOP voters, _can_ shift the whole bunch the few points over to acheive it. With that hypothetical you’d expect to win the D leaners (6) and the toss-ups en masse (26) which gets to 32 of the 41. It needs to be a serious wave to pull out 9 of 11 currently leaning GOP. But far from impossible if the particular districts divide the GOP. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/74 "2016-08-11T13:05:34Z")
FWIW Wang’s Meta-margin is now D +2.1% for a 50-50 Senate (which goes D for control with a Clinton-Kaine win) and is relatively persistently in the range of “likely Democratic control” for the House. Again, FWIW. No 538 tracker yet. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/75 "2016-08-11T14:03:07Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > More on exactly how big of a lift winning the House could be from [Cook’s ratings](http://cookpolitical.com/house/charts/race-ratings) as of July 22, before conventions and the current Trump crater. > > Start out with safe seats: 202 Rep, 177 Dem. 218 is majority. > > 26 are toss-ups. > > 17 are lean, currently more towards R, but are considered competitive. Even if their districts are shaped odd. > > So out of 43 competitive races the Democrats would need to win 41 or more to take the majority. > > A heckuva big lift but an overall shift in polls, especially if it comes with a low turnout of some usually reliable traditional GOP voters, _can_ shift the whole bunch the few points over to acheive it. With that hypothetical you’d expect to win the D leaners (6) and the toss-ups en masse (26) which gets to 32 of the 41. It needs to be a serious wave to pull out 9 of 11 currently leaning GOP. But far from impossible if the particular districts divide the GOP. The thing is, in a real wave election some of those safe seats will surprise and be lost. So it’s a bit more complex an equation than it seems at first blush. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/76 "2016-08-11T16:40:32Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > The thing is, in a real wave election some of those safe seats will surprise and be lost. So it’s a bit more complex an equation than it seems at first blush. Well maybe for certain tautological values of “a real wave” … but not sure how realistic it is. There are sizable structural advantages, only some little bit that is based on GOP gerrymandering, that make that very difficult. Again, [the precinct map of PA in 2014’s House election](http://www.politicspa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2014-Map-3.png) … and the [results by district](http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/house/pennsylvania/#.V6ynh5MrKi5). You have a few urban centers being won by huge Democratic margins and lots of rural areas. The Trump effect will further accentuate what is already there: bigger D margins in urban centers as urban Whites either move more D or stay home, and the same or slightly better in rural ones as non-college educate especially rural Whites go Trump. The question I have is how many districts across the country, generally thought of as safe Red, are mostly suburban? If many then we can really see a wave. Do you know? ---
**Author:** ![Anny\_Middon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@Anny\_Middon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anny_Middon)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/77 "2016-08-11T16:53:18Z")
According to [this article](http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/291071-rnc-chair-warned-trump-to-change-campaign-or-party-would) Priebus told Trump last week that if he didn’t change his campaign, the Party would shift its attention to down-ticket races. I particularly like this: > [@](#): > > The RNC chairman reportedly told Trump that he would have been better off staying at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida since the Republican National Convention last month. Trump, I’m sure you will not be shocked to hear, claims that the conversation never took place. ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/78 "2016-08-11T18:16:00Z")
> [@Anny\_Middon](#): > > According to [this article](http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/291071-rnc-chair-warned-trump-to-change-campaign-or-party-would) Priebus told Trump last week that if he didn’t change his campaign, the Party would shift its attention to down-ticket races. > > I particularly like this: > Trump, I’m sure you will not be shocked to hear, claims that the conversation never took place. I wonder if Priebus will listen to [this letter](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/republicans-urge-rnc-cut-funds-trump-226918) then: > [@](#): > > More than 70 Republicans have signed an open letter to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus urging him to stop spending any money to help Donald Trump win in November and shift those contributions to Senate and House races. I wonder how many of those Republicans are among the 50 that spoke out earlier this week, and how many are new faces. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/79 "2016-08-12T12:24:23Z")
[Wang’s written more](http://election.princeton.edu/2016/08/12/what-would-it-take-for-the-house-to-flip/) on the subject today and his updated graph is interesting. He no longer asserts a clear correlation but instead discusses how > [@](#): > > This relationship follows a broad relationship that is steeper than proportional. It contains many factors that you may have read about: incumbency and the relative packing of Democrats into cities, to name two. Those combined effects influence the location of the gray polygon, which circumscribes all elections from 1946 to 2010. > > However, note that the most recent two elections in 2012 and 2014 fall outside the polygon. In these elections, which were unusually favorable to Republicans, something new happened: an organized wave of partisan gerrymandering. As I have analyzed in detail, the added advantage from post-2010 partisan redistricting amounts to about a dozen more Republican seats than what would occur under neutral districting principles. He also notes that district by district analysis is far superior to that broad association method but is slow to update. So per Wang, and I believe him on this, the impact of gerrymandering per se is maybe a dozen or more seats and the association of the popular vote for the House and the results is loose and looser as a result of that gerrymandering. Note that in 2012 and 2014 a dozen seats or so would _not_ have made the difference in which party had control. The margin of the popular vote result that would lead to a change in control is a best guess: he uses 4.5% to offset the whole group of structural advantages but notes others estimate up 10% as well. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199/80 "2016-08-12T17:37:55Z")
Sorry for the multiple posts but [this article](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-gops-control-of-congress-is-only-getting-stronger/431775/) also informs about the structural advantages well beyond gerrymandering. > [@](#): > > … Using census data, the analysis found that Republicans have consolidated a commanding advantage in districts where whites exceed their share of the national population—especially in those places where fewer whites than the national average hold at least a four-year college degree. > > House Democrats, meanwhile, remain competitive in districts with larger than average numbers of college-educated whites and still control most districts where minorities exceed their share of the national population. … > > … Republicans now control the vast majority of House districts filled with the same white voters—particularly blue-collar and older whites—that underpin their presidential-level coalition. Democrats, in turn, depend on districts that revolve around the same diverse, younger, and better-educated voters that drive their modern presidential coalition. … The challenge for House Democrats is that their while their voter coalition has proved large enough to carry the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections, it remains intensely concentrated, mostly in urban areas. That concentration provides a systematic advantage to Republicans in the struggle for the House—even before considering the GOP’s edge in control of redistricting after the 2010 census. > > The new analysis shows that whites exceed their share of the national population in 263 House districts—fully three-fifths of the total number of seats. And Republicans now hold a crushing 199 of those 263 white-leaning seats, putting them on the brink of a House majority before they even begin competing for more diverse seats. The Republican lead is nearly as great in the 245 districts where fewer than average whites hold a college degree. > > “Republicans are going to have a structural advantage because their votes are distributed more efficiently across more districts than Democratic voters are, even without gerrymandering,” says political scientist Gary C. Jacobson, an expert on congressional politics at the University of California (San Diego). “For a long time, Democrats have been overrepresented in big cities, where there are minorities and liberals and college-educated people and gays, and underrepresented everywhere else. That’s not going to change.” > > These trends have profound implications not only for the parties’ electoral prospects, but also for how they interact in office. The numbers underscore the extent to which the two parties now represent two Americas: While 81 percent of the House Republicans in the new Congress hold districts that are more white than the national average, 66 percent of House Democrats represent districts in which minorities exceed their national presence. And while 63 percent of House Democrats hold districts in which the share of college-educated whites exceeds the national average, 71 percent of House Republicans hold districts with a fewer than average proportion of such people. … More detail from the article most pertinent is that there are 88 districts with low diversity but high education. Currently the GOP controls 49 of them. These are mostly if not exclusively the suburban districts that the Trump effect will have the biggest impact in. The effect will be less in (mostly rural) districts low both in diversity and white education levels and ramping up the margins in high diversity (mostly urban) districts won’t change the House numbers at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-effect-on-upcoming-senate-and-house-races/754199.md?page=5)