for example, here: you would not know that there has never once been a Hungarian election for which Orban's cheating has been causal. he has allowed the Hungarian diaspora to vote and gerrymandered, but the parliamentary majority has never not won the majority. bsky.app/profile/dhne...
It spends more time on the media controls and coercion which affect those vote totals in the first place than gerrymandering though?
hell of a thread, thank you for doing the math
Intimidation of voters at polling stations is the biggest concern. Target a few key areas with govt thugs checking for warrants, hassling minorities, having intrusive ICE checks, and I fear you can substantially depress turnout in the most D favorable demographics.
another way of saying this "what we consider our nightmare scenario, including an autocratic parliamentary supermajority which has rewritten the constitution once and regularly rewrites election law to its own advantage, provides an electoral advantage slightly less than what was overcome in WI."
i'm sorry. it turns out that it is "vastly less," not "slightly less." hungary's gerrymander provides a 3-4% advantage. wisconsin's provided an 8.2% advantage! those maps were overturned in 2023.
in 2012, the Democrats needed to win the House by approximately seven points in order to win the House. after the Texas gerrymander, they will need approximately a 2.5% win. this is also the approximate number if NY, CA, MO, IN, UT, and FL all gerrymander. bsky.app/profile/dhne...
utah's gerrymander just got struck down, so if that holds there'll probably be one D seat
notice that I included UT.
in other words: the Democratic majority in 2018 -- an unexceptionally large win -- would be sufficient to overturn the REDMAP gerrymander, and even a change in every seat being targeted would put the election at much closer to par than any election any of us have seen since 2000.
in other words, we are facing a nascent autocracy with many of the features of a collapsing autocracy. we can win. but we will need to win more than once to consolidate democracy in America. and we will need lockstep partisanship to do so.
What are the odds of lockstep partisanship from the Dems?
fair, i'd say
impossible
I suspect it depends how bad things get
I could get used to an optimistic theophite
I mean he’s never been particularly negative beyond saying the NY Democratic Party Sucks Shit
If they had another Trump in the pipeline, they'd have run that person. We still do have to do the winning, but they're going to have a lot of power struggles as each faction in the coalition tries to win out in a post-Trump world.
Again the big fear, a Dem unable to win RE-ELECTION not simply election.
Wisconsin state legislature maps were overturned because dems won statewide elections for governor and Supreme Court, not by overpowering the gerrymander.