Is Barone right when he says Congressional redistricting not a big deal in 2012?

[Torie]

Michael Barone says that redistricting is about a wash this cycle, because the Pubs gained one seat net or something. No doubt that is true.

But examine the two spreadsheet screen shots below. The shot I took is of the seats around the magic 218 House control mark. Notice that the PVI for the 218th seat for the Dems moved from 1.66% PVI Pub to 2.18% PVI Pub, a change of 52 basis points in the Pub direction. And when you look at the 219 seat, giving the Dems control by two seats, for that the PVI moves from 1.66% PVI Pub to 2.80% PVI Pub, a change of 1.14%. The process isn't quite done yet, and I am not sure the new numbers are entirely accurate, because I lifted that data from elsewhere (and I don't have any tenths data, so we get the same PVI number for bunches of seats, where they will vary a bit). Moreover, using but one partisan baseline across the nation has some issues in and of itself. Having said that,  to me 1.14% is a big deal, and 52 basis points in this neighborhood is not chump change in any event. What do you think?

If anyone wants my data, and is willing to fly speck it for errors in particular, I would be happy to email it to them.  I consider these sorts of things to be collaborate efforts.

New PVI's


Old PVI's

[Smid]

I'd be interested in looking over your work, although I think I'd trust your calcs more than my own. I can PM you my email address if you don't have it already.

[jimrtex]

Michael Barone says that redistricting is about a wash this cycle, because the Pubs gained one seat net or something. No doubt that is true.

He is considering a seat as either a D or R seat, as opposed to looking at marginal seats and whether they are more marginal or not.

He also didn't understand what was done in Texas.  He thinks that the intent was to link heavily Hispanic areas with heavily Republican counties.  The intent of the Democrats is to link counties along the border that are 90% Hispanic with areas 100s of miles away so that the districts are still majority Hispanic.

[Sbane]

Basically what happened for the most part was the consolidation of Republican control. Take a look at TN. You were greedy in regards to this state, as was Barone perhaps, but with the current map Republicans are basically guaranteed to hold their seats even if they mess around with Medicare and Social Security. Trying to crack Nashville could have ended very badly for Republicans but now they are able to secure the gains they made in a very Republican year. Same thing happened in PA, OH and other states. Republicans won many marginal seats in 2010 and were able to secure them with redistricting making it look like a wash.

[Torie]

Basically what happened for the most part was the consolidation of Republican control. Take a look at TN. You were greedy in regards to this state, as was Barone perhaps, but with the current map Republicans are basically guaranteed to hold their seats even if they mess around with Medicare and Social Security. Trying to crack Nashville could have ended very badly for Republicans but now they are able to secure the gains they made in a very Republican year. Same thing happened in PA, OH and other states. Republicans won many marginal seats in 2010 and were able to secure them with redistricting making it look like a wash.

I would like to think my greed is more piggish than hoggish. Hey, I was always ambivalent about the Columbus, Ohio chop remember?  Ceding Columbus, just made it so much easier to nail down the butternut CD, and make Sutton's battle for re-election near Herculean, without having to engage in the extreme contortions that my map did, while putting both CD's at more risk even so.

[minionofmidas]

Your results do not surprise me.

Still, a wash in baseline figures (and by my count it is a perfect wash; a net change of 0) is a far cry from what resulted in 2000.

[Kevinstat]

The baseline in 2000 was far closer to the pivitol (218th) seat though.

[Devils30]

It helps the GOP at the margins but the dems Illinois plan should help mitigate some of these losses and nothing passed by the GOP is wave proof.

[muon2]

It helps the GOP at the margins but the dems Illinois plan should help mitigate some of these losses and nothing passed by the GOP is wave proof.

Though the IL PVI numbers are skewed to D due to the effect of home state Obama. Though favorable for the Dems, it may not be as strong as initially thought.