Purple America Has All but Disappeared

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/purple-america-has-all-but-disappeared/

by mrjaeger • 9 years ago

17 6 9 years ago

I can't help but wonder how much of this is just the evidence of rampant gerrymandering.

undersuit• 9 years ago

I don't understand. The author is insisting on Twitter that gerrymandering isn't involved, "the boundaries of America's counties didn't change since 1992."

So when did Electoral Districts become inconsequential?

pc2g4d• 9 years ago

They're not inconsequential, but the analysis they did seems to have been in terms of counties, not districts, which would insulate their results from being explained simply as gerrymandering.

jrnichols• 9 years ago

Everyone wants to blame gerrymandering, but how does that affect presidential votes?

I wouldn't think that it does. Your local district doesn't dictate who your presidential vote is for.

"President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was among the narrowest in history,"

goes to show image showing that a huge amount of counties voted for Trump by more than 20 points

Hmm.

tdb7893• 9 years ago

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic but the election victory was narrow. The population of the country isn't uniform.

Terr_• 9 years ago

Everyone wants to blame gerrymandering

For bizarre Congressional outcomes, yes. That's not new. The article does not mention gerrymandering at all. Districts just happen to be the most-granular level of voting-data most folks have to work with, and when they get redrawn you need to do something to help compare elections from before and after the redraw.

"President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was among the narrowest in history,"

Well, yeah. That's not new news either. [0]

image showing that a huge amount of counties

No, it shows a large land area of counties. It doesn't tally up the number of discrete counties, nor is it adjusted for their wildly varying populations.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

Purple America Has All but Disappeared

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