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Demographics and Elections Commentary tagged with Gerrymander

3/4/2024: [New York] NY Dems adopt new redistricting map with no threat of GOP lawsuit, ending 3-year saga [Lohud]


Photo credit: NY "Independent" Redistricting Commission

There's considerable talk about how the Democrats played nice this time by not screwing Republicans as hard as they were expected to (i.e. as hard as possible). Doddering old NYGOP chairman Ed Cox -- yes, THAT Ed Cox, Tricky Dick's son-in-law -- believes that his party was merely bent over to a small degree, therefore he has unilaterally declared that there will be no lawsuits filed against this Democrat gerrymander.

Even though Democrats never had any reason to fear a challenge to their latest attempt to seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives, they wanted to implement a plan which would be described by the always-cooperative media as "modest" yet still be highly effective. This modest Rat plan rigs the election outcomes against the four remaining vulnerable freshmen GOP incumbents in New York as much as necessary, while mostly leaving the other districts alone. Aside from the one formerly represented by George Santos and recently lost in a special election; the Democrats are taking no chances of that district flipping back to Republican control in November.

Here is an article which reveals Democrat gaslighting regarding their New York gerrymander, with a surprisingly fair (by far-left media standards) account of the situation in between all of the usual drivel supplied by the quotes of liberal Democrats:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/new-york-redistricting-maps-democrats-gerrymandering-house-majority.html

Their punch line is that this gerrymander is plenty good enough for Democrats -- which it is -- and if it had been rejected and replaced by a more aggressive Democrat gerrymander authored by the state legislature, even sleepy Ed Cox would have been inspired to take action. The resulting lawsuit would have possibly required that the current (2022) district lines be used in the meantime, and even worse (for Democrats) the suit may have succeeded and caused a fairer district map to be created. By reaching just enough, but not overreaching here, liberals have greatly increased their chances of House control in 2025 despite their crocodile tears.

The significantly endangered New York freshmen Republicans are Anthony D'Esposito (CD-4), Mike Lawler (CD-17), Marc Molinaro (CD-19) and especially Brandon Williams (CD-22). They were significantly endangered even before having to deal with newly-gerrymandered districts, as we have written several times. Each of these four are cowardly liberal backstabbers -- just ask George Santos -- but at least they're our cowardly liberal backstabbers; they have R's after their names and that's a lot better than having a D there.

Well, it's a little better anyway. Maybe.



As to the argument that squishes like these guys are the best we can do in marginal or left-leaning districts, sometimes it's better to keep your enemies as far away as possible rather than letting them pretend they're "team players". They may be team players, but they aren't necessarily playing for the team whose uniform they are wearing at the moment.

For example: there's a liberal Republican stooge in the House from Pennsylvania by the name of Brian Fitzpatrick. He represents a marginal district in the rapidly-deteriorating suburbs of Philadelphia, and Democrats are so satisfied with this RINO that they don't seriously oppose his re-election bids.

Fitzpatrick's late brother Michael once served in Congress from this same district. Michael was no conservative by any means, but at least he never forgot which party he belonged to. However in 2023 there was exactly one member of the House of Representatives who voted against his own party more often than he voted with his party. That turncoat was Brian Fitzpatrick, who, over 50% of the time, voted exactly the way the Democrats wanted him to vote.

Last week, Brian came in for some flattery from the liberal media when he stated that he and several like-minded traitors in the so-called "bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus" were preparing some shenanigans to do an end-run around Speaker Mike Johnson unless the reluctant Speaker permits a vote on a bill which would send even more American money to the corrupt Democrat money-laundering regime known as "Ukraine". This must happen, so say the RINO scum, without any linkage to legislation which would address real problems of actual concern to the good people of America -- like the unabated sewage flowing north from Mexico which will adversely affect our economy and the integrity (LOL) of our elections.

If the Democrat coup is successful in November, look for this traitor to collect his 30 pieces of silver and switch over to the new majority party in the House. BTW, the filing deadline in PA has passed and Fitzpatrick has no viable primary challenger (just one woefully underfunded opponent) and the same Democrat loser who ran halfheartedly in 2022 is running again, albeit with more money this time. So "prymarry hiz azz!!!" isn't going to work this time around; it rarely ever works at all.

Speaking of liberal credentials, guess which "Republican" supported President Alzheimer the most in 2022? Actually Fitzpatrick was only second on that list. Number 1 was the late (but not lamented) drooling Trump-hater Adam Kinzinger, who supported the Biden agenda fully 80% of the time with his votes in the House.

Here are the 2023 Party Unity scores for the Dirty Dozen who top the RINO charts:

  1. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1): 47%
  2. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR-5): 64%
  3. Mike Lawler (NY-17): 65%
  4. Tom Kean, Jr. (NY-7): 67%
  5. Mike Turner (OH-10): 70%
  6. Don Bacon (NE-2): 71%
  7. Anthony D'Esposito (NY-4): 72%
  8. Young Kim (CA-40): 72%
  9. Kevin Kiley (CA-3): 72%
  10. Andrew Garbarino (NY-2): 72%
  11. Marc Molinaro (NY-19): 73%
  12. David Valadao (CA-22): 73%

By way of contrast, Santos, whom many of his GOP colleagues abhorred and voted to expel back in December, voted with his party 92% of the time in 2023. He also voted the conservative position on 91% of key votes according to our calculations, so you can see why RINOs and other liberals wouldn't want him around. We'll post Santos' American Conservative Union score along with the scores of all other Congressmen and Senators if that organzation ever gets around to releasing its 2023 ratings of Congress.

Of the 25 representatives who deviated from their party most often last year, 24 of them were Republicans. This helps explain why even with a (miniscule and getting smaller) numerical majority in the House, Republicans do not truly have "control". The same phenomenon applies in many state legislatures, particularly out West, where the GOP appears to have tremendous numerical advantages. Those tremendous advantages are often caused by Democrats masquerading as Republicans in order to get elected -- and then, to their delight, these Democrats discover that as moderates/liberals they are comfortably in line with the ideological majority in their GOP caucuses.

There was only one House Democrat in 2023, Jared Golden of Maine (72%), who was disunited from the rest of his Democrat comrades at a similar level to those Republicans who are listed above. He represents a Republican-leaning district which voted twice for President Trump but has also voted 3 times for Golden. Between his ability to fool a sufficient number of constituents into thinking that he's a moderate, and having Rigged Choice Voting around to save him when necessary, Golden has managed to be continually re-elected.

Maybe that will change when he faces former NASCAR driver and current freshman Maine legislator Austin Theriault in November. Don't get your hopes up too high though; Golden currently has nearly 5 times the amount of money as his Republican challenger. As anyone who looks at candidate financial reports can easily discern, there's not a House district or Senate seat in the U.S. where Democrats can't outspend Republicans by incredible margins if they want to. We're probably going to see more evidence of that in 2024 than ever before.

Tags:

2024 U.S. House New York Democrat gerrymander Say goodbye to Speaker Johnson


12/19/2023: Democrats Stage a Congressional Map-Making Coup in New York [Wall Street Journal]

Another domino falls against the probability of the GOP continuing to maintain House control after 2024. Maybe a house of cards would have been a better image for the fragile and timid Republican majority in Congress.

On December 12 the Wall Street Journal published an article which noted that a cadre of liberal Democrat judges in New York has given their party a significant opportunity to seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November of 2024. They did this by green-lighting a hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymander -- a belated re-drawing of congressional district lines -- which is likely to result in the ouster of four Republicans (not to mention the already-departed George Santos) from the New York delegation.

With the GOP having only the most narrow margin to work with the House, not that it's often easy to tell that they actually have control at all, a swing of four seats from R to D is extremely important. And that's only a portion of what Democrats in black robes are doing to help their party's cause (see below).

The WSJ article notes that "The [previous] map resulted in Republicans winning 11 of 26 seats" in New York in 2022. That statement is completely wrong insofar as it implies a favorable "map" had anything whatsoever to do with Republicans overachieving and winning those 11 seats.

In 2020 Democrats won 19 out of 27 congressional districts in New York. The map which was used in 2022 was even better for them, favoring Democrats in 19 or 20 out of 26 seats. The GOP merely got lucky in 2022 and won nearly every close race in marginal D+ districts (CD-3, CD-4, CD-17, CD-19, CD-22).

Even with no new Democrat gerrymander, they were highly likely to lose most of those next year anyway. The bloodbath will commence next February with the special election in CD-3, where Santos was ousted by his liberal RINO colleagues such as his next-door "neighbor" in CD-4, Anthony D'Esposito, who is the most likely of all the remaining NY Republican freshmen to get his ass kicked next November. But the Rats ain't taking any chances of more fluke GOP wins and are going to rig the game to pick up numerous House seats in NY next year.



You may wonder why Republicans normally do not bother to seek redress from the courts when they are screwed by Democrats in redistricting. Here's an example of what happens when they try:

In November of 2020 Democrats vowed to get revenge on GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell in New Mexico because she had the audacity to defeat a Democrat in a House race that year, and they got their vengeance by redistricting her out of the House; Herrell narrowly lost in 2022 in a district which was substantially altered from the one in which she had prevailed in 2020. In late November of 2023, the 100% Democrat New Mexico Supreme Court unsurpisingly ruled that the partisan gerrymander which the Democrats in the NM legislature created was 100% legal despite the fact that the NM state Constitution explicitly forbids such spiteful partisan gerrymanders.

In cases like these, Democrat judges are all about upholding the party -- as opposed to upholding the law. When a law unfavorable to Democrats exists, they simply ignore it; when no law favorable to Democrats exists, they simply "legislate from the bench" and invent one out of thin air as was done in North Carolina in 2022.



Because the House landscape will probably be constantly undergoing changes between now and next November, we will periodically publish an updated scorecard to show how the GOP majority is being eroded by Democrat gerrymanders.

New districting maps mandated by racist Democrat judges will cost Republicans one U.S. House seat next year in each of Alabama and Louisiana, and they are also trying to gerrymander Georgia (+1 for the Rats), South Carolina (also +1), and Tennessee (ditto) along similar racist lines. They will try for +2 in Wisconsin by insisting that Republicans were not sufficiently screwed by the Democrat-drawn map which was used in 2022. And don't rule out Democrat shenanigans in Florida, similar to what occurred in that state during the previous decade.

In Alabama, judges have eliminated a White (Republican) district from the face of the earth and replaced it with one which must elect a black Democrat, or else. The GOP has recruited a good candidate who possesses the required melanin content (former University of Alabama and NFL defensive lineman Wallace Gilberry) but he is hardly likely to prevail in the new ghettofied version of CD-2 and he is just as unlikely to get much in the way of help from the national Republican party, which knows quite well how to "take the L" gracefully.

Republicans are clinging desperately to the hope that they will offset some of these disasters by going +3 or so under a new North Carolina map that might be installed to replace the one which was illegally mandated by Democrat judges on the NC Supreme Court in 2022. But don't count on that new NC map being used in 2024 just yet. All it takes is one partisan liberal judge somewhere to put a stop to it.



Liberals are swinging for the fences as well in Republican strongholds such as Kentucky, Arkansas and Utah, where they hope to locate some compliant black-robed tyrants who will put partisan election outcomes above the law. When it comes to redistricting, the Democrat motto is "sue everywhere!"; the GOP leadership grumbles a little but then bends over as they usually do.

In Utah, where an independent commission created the map which was used in 2022, Democrats are whining (and, of course, suing) because they claim that the Democrat mecca of Salt Lake City was purposely split up in order to dilute the concentration of leftists in any one congressional district. The extremely partisan League of Women Voters was offended by the map the independent commission created, and has taken up the Democrat cause as is customary for that "nonpartisan" (LOL) organization.

To see something quite similar you need only to look slightly to the west of Utah where, in Nevada, the Democrat legislature carved up the city of Las Vegas in order to dilute Republican strength in each of the three districts in which Las Vegas lies. We're patiently waiting for the League of Hysterical Harpies to discover this particular injustice and file suit accordingly on behalf of the GOP.

Tags:

U.S. House Redistricting New York Gerrymander New Mexico


4/28/2023: Massive Supreme Court Rulings in North Carolina May Have Just Saved Republicans in 2024 [Redstate]


Photo credit: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

The article states, quite accurately, that a "prior left-wing court invented out of whole cloth a constitutional provision that forced the legislature to create so-called fair districts."

Last November the voters in North Carolina delivered a 5-2 Republican majority to the state Supreme Court, and today that court came through by not merely overturning the illegal judicial interference with last year's redistricting, but also restoring a voter ID law which was duly passed by the voters in 2018 before being thrown out by partisan Democrat judges.

This is all great news, although the hyperventilating in the article about the GOP picking up 4 House seats in the Tarheel State in 2024 after the maps are redrawn is not terribly realistic, however a gain of 2 or even 3 might be. On the flip side of the coin, Democrats in New York are suing because they were not allowed to implement the most ridiculously partisan gerrymander (with all due respect to Illinois) in the entire nation. The lawsuit seeks to restore that gerrymander or something very close -- if not worse.

Many of the series of fluke U.S. House victories the GOP attained in New York in 2022 -- CD-3 (Santos), CD-4 (D'Esposito), CD-17 (Lawler), CD-19 (Molinaro) and CD-22 (Williams) -- were likely to be undone in 2024 even without a new gerrymander, plus CD-1 (LaLota) and CD-11 (Malliotakis) aren't exactly 100% safe either; Malliotakis may appear safe due to the margin she received in 2022, but that's only because the Democrats ran a complete stooge against her and they will not make that mistake again.

If the Democrats prevail in New York court, it will offset the presumed North Carolina gains, and more.

Adverse changes will also be coming to the district map in Ohio and possibly other states, with South Carolina as another example. If those changes in Ohio are not implemented for the 2024 election then they definitely will be by 2026. Republicans expected to pick up 2 House seats in 2022 in Ohio while maybe sacrificing one seat (that sacrifice was pretty much mandated by liberal court order when the court rejected the Republicans' original Ohio map); what actually happened was that the Republicans picked up nothing while losing one seat, as the much ballyhooed (and mis-named) "red wave" became not even a trickle, though at least they held the U.S. Senate seat with J.D. Vance.

Because the expected gains never materialized, even a less favorable district map might do little or no damage to the composition of the Ohio congressional delegation, in which the Republicans currently hold a 10-5 edge.

Tags:

North Carolina Redistricting Democrat gerrymander overturned New York Democrat gerrymander restored


1/6/2023: Judges order South Carolina to redraw congressional map [Roll Call]


Photo credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

And so it begins.

We warned you months ago regarding redistricting that "The battle (just like counting votes in a close election) often never ends until the Democrat wins, and several lawsuits are still pending which, if successful, would result in Democrat gains."

Now, a trio of ultra-liberal Democrat judges have mystically divined the "intent" of Republicans who drew the new district lines in South Carolina and, what a surprise, they have arbitrarily decided that those Republicans were "racist"! To these black-robed tyrants, this alleged racism means that the Republican-created district map is invalid and therefore must be redrawn in order to give the Democrats the best possible chance of flipping at least one South Carolina congressional district in 2024 and beyond.

Democrat racists will hardly be content to mandate a new Democrat gerrymander in just this state alone, and so you better get ready for similar actions in numerous other states -- pretty much any other state in which Republicans controlled the redistricting process. OTOH, you need not be concerned about Republican lawsuits (if any even exist) attempting to overturn hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymanders in places such as Illinois, California, Oregon, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, etc.

Any GOP lawsuits which might someday arise in places like those will be quickly dismissed for "lack of standing" -- with perhaps one exception. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed a few months ago to eventually hear arguments that Democrat judges had illegally seized the redistricting process in North Carolina from the rightful control of the GOP legislature (which is exactly what those judges did). This has Democrats slightly concerned that their similar illegal power plays might be jeopardized elsewhere, but there is no evidence of this yet and the Democrats' partisan gerrymander in North Carolina still exists for now.

Tags:

U.S. House South Carolina Judicial gerrymandering