The goal of partisan gerrymandering is to amplify a political party's power beyond what it deserves based on their vote share alone. This process is accomplished by two complementary methods: packing and cracking. Luckily, packing and cracking creates a distinctive pattern of wins for both the perpetrator and the victim parties, wherein the victim party wins its few seats by overwhelming margins and the perpetrating party wins its many seats by considerably lower margins.
This pattern, and thus partisan gerrymanders, can be detected with the help of a little math. The two-sample t-test, perhaps the most widely used statistical test of all time , tests how similar two groups of numbers are. In the case of gerrymandering, the t-test can determine how similar the winning vote shares are for the districts won by Democrats to those for districts won by Republicans. In a perfectly fair world, it could be assumed that these two groups of vote shares would be very similar.
Each party might expect to see wins in a mix of strongly partisan districts, moderately reliable districts, and tossups—but each party should expect to have a roughly similar mix. In a gerrymandered state, by contrast, the victim party mostly has strong wins in their packed districts and the perpetrating party mostly has small but safe wins. The word "gerrymander" comes from a famous case of redistricting in Massachusetts in The governor at the time, Elbridge Gerry, signed a map into law that included a district shaped like a salamander.
Critics dubbed the new oddly-shaped district the "gerrymander". A partisan gerrymander is quite possibly one of the oldest tricks in the book, and it is a surprisingly common one. Have a suggestion for our redistricting glossary? Email Haya Panjwani at hpanjwani kera. Follow Haya on Twitter hayapanjw. KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members.
If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you. Search Query Show Search. Show Search Search Query. Play Live Radio. Next Up:. For instance, Fair Districts PA , a nonprofit advocating against gerrymandering in Pennsylvania, has pointed out that although Montgomery County, PA has a large enough population to constitute its own congressional district, it is instead distributed across 5 districts, as seen in the map below.
The chances that that each of those representatives will advocate for county priorities are severely limited the more split each representatives district is across interest groups. There are two other variations on gerrymandering that are used.
The first is called sweetheart gerrymandering, where representatives of both parties design the districts to favor the incumbent representatives.
This also called the bipartisan handshake and favors the status quo, regardless of voter opinion. The voters in districts with a large prison population have more influence over who is elected than they would otherwise without the inclusion of the prison in that district.
So how do we quantify and work to solve the issue of gerrymandering? We will explore some of the solutions to gerrymandering in the next post. Salamander Shaped District in Gerrymandering is not new, and indeed the name was derived from a portmanteau of the name of Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and a district he approved in that was so misshapen as to remind people of a salamander, hence Gerrymander.
Other Gerrymandering Techniques There are two other variations on gerrymandering that are used.
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