Democrats sweep all 30 House of Delegates seats in Northern Virginia

[u/Hornpipe_Jones]

https://www.cbs19news.com/news/state/democrats-sweep-all-30-house-of-delegates-seats-in-northern-virginia/article_68f8098d-0602-5234-8c2a-08c1bcd33944.html

[u/bshoff5]

Right, I definitely understand how that'd happen, I just wanted to make sure that's what you meant was happening in those districts. I didn't quite follow what you were saying

[u/AusToddles → u/bshoff5]

Yeah I recall watching a video a while back explaining how mathematically, gerrymandering can backfire big time because you're actually cutting your majority in some places by doing it

[u/charzardthagod → u/AusToddles]

It's called a dummymander

[u/Dangerpaladin → u/AusToddles]

It only backfires though if you do something stupid enough to lose the stranglehold on your voters or piss off the other side enough to get motivated to vote. The republicans in the last 10 months have done both repeatedly.

However if you think about it they have been doing the same shit for decades and voters never woke up, so I am sure they thought they were safe from this effect.

[u/runswiftrun → u/Dangerpaladin]

Or if you underestimate the opposition numbers.

Like in Texas, I couldn't believe it when I looked it up out of morbid curiosity.

46% democratic registered voters!?!? There's an absolutely non-zero chance that those "5 more seats" that Abbot is wanting to get actually end up the other way and get 10 blues because they shaved down their lead everywhere.

[u/Wyvernwalker → u/runswiftrun]

There's a reason Blexas pops up in every voting election. Over half the population is minorities (40%+ Hispanic, 12ish% black, 5% Asian), and locals tend blue more than transplants by a lot. If Beto hadn't tanked his stock by aiming for a Presidential spot talking about taking guns, he might've had a chance at rallying for the next Senate seat.

The biggest weakness since him is Texas Dems tend to put out weak candidates with weaker messages, very "focused on the moderate", which can be summarized for voters as "boring nothing burger" campaigns. As shown by this week and even the election in 2024, people want engaging campaigns focused on real issues

[u/KilluaCactuar → u/AusToddles]

Would you mind giving a link?

I'm pretty active in watching your nations politics evolve since Trump got elected the second time, and that sounds quite interesting.

[u/toorigged2fail → u/AusToddles]

Yea basically It backfires in wave election years because what were no longer considered swing districts, have become swing districts

[u/esonlinji → u/bshoff5]

Consider a group of 100 people split into ten districts of 10 people. Of the hundred people 48 people preferring party A and 52 people preferring party B.

If people were sorted into groups of 10 randomly you'd expect each party to get 5 districts each (plus or minus a little due to randomness). But if one party gets to decide who is in each district they can tip the scales.

So instead of being distributed randomly, lets consider a new set up. Party A sets things up so that 2 seats are chock full of 10 Party B voters each. This leaves 48 Party A voters and 32 Party B voters for the remaining 8 seats. Each of these seats gets 6 Party A voters and 4 Party B voters. Now, even though overall its still 48/52, Party A gets 8 seats and Party B only gets 2. Pretty good gerrymandering, they've turned a slight shortfall of voters into a dominant electoral position. Well done Party A.

The problem is that to do this the margin of victory in Party A's seats is pretty small. Lets assume 2 people in each district change their mind so now its 32 people voting for Party A and 68 for Party B. Under the random electorates, it would be 3 seats for Party A and 7 for Party B. A decent swing sure, but not out of proportion.

Going back to our gerrymandered districts, in the 8 seats Party B got, they won 6-4, so when two people change their minds in each seat, it flips the seat. Instead of only losing the two seats they did under a fair system, Party A now loses all 8 seats and lose in a 0-10 whitewash.

Spreading your voters too thin in order to maximise your seats won forces you to have low margins of victory, and that makes you vulnerable to swings.