State Legislatures and Redistricting

[Landslide Lyndon]

Thanks nclib. It appears that the only states Democrats can really "milk" several seats out of are Illinois and California. I wonder if the Democrats here in CA are actually going to have the balls to be nasty when it comes to redistricting this time around. As for the GOP, I think their gains out of this are going to be minimized because many GOP states where the population is growing quickly have increasing numbers of minorities, and thus either the VRA will require them to make new Democratic (minority) seats, or the GOP legislators will do it themselves out of necessity to protect their current incumbents.

Two things: 1) the reason the Democrats don't gerrymander the hell out of California is because the GOP holds 1/3rd of the seats in both houses, and basically says that if the Dems try to do a partisan gerrymander, they'll just shut down the state government.  It's how they've managed to avoid it for the last 30 or so years, despite monolithic Democratic control.

What monolithic Democratic control are you talking about? In the last 30 years the Republicans have won 5 out of 7 gubernatorial elections.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I was referring more to the state legislature, where the Democrats have held on constantly since the 70s aside from two years after 1994.  The Democrats had complete control of the state government in 2000 IIRC, and instead opted to go for the bipartisan route, mostly because the Republicans basically told them that they'd shut down the government if the Dems tried a partisan Gerrymander.

My recollection is that the Republicans threatened to put an anti-gerrymandering referendum on the ballot if the Dems went that route, and also that the Dems did so well in 2000 that they thought it better to consolidate their gains than reach for the stars and risk losses.

Makes sense. Let's remember that back then California wasn't so overwhelmingly Democratic as now.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Does anyone knows what happened with New York Senate?

[Landslide Lyndon]

Also, hasn't Iowa too non-partisan redistricting?

[Landslide Lyndon]

Is there any chance that there will be an impasse at New York and the courts draw the map?

Plus, I think that even if Strickland won in Ohio the Republicans would still control the process. I seem to remember that there is a 5-seat panel that handles redistricting and even with Strickland they would have a 4-1 majority.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Is there any chance that there will be an impasse at New York and the courts draw the map?

Plus, I think that even if Strickland won in Ohio the Republicans would still control the process. I seem to remember that there is a 5-seat panel that handles redistricting and even with Strickland they would have a 4-1 majority.

I doubt it.  More likely than not, Republicans will draw an incumbent-protect Senate map, Democrats an incumbent-protect Assembly map, and both an incumbent-protect House map with some sort of compromise on which district(s) to abolish.  That seems to be what always happens.

But what's the Democrats incentive to compromise? It's not like that without an incumbent protection map they are in danger of losing the House, or any more congressional seats for that matter.
On the contrary, a court drawn map may throw the senate back to them in two years and then they can proceed to a mid-decade redistricting like Texas and Georgia Republicans did.