New York’s Gerrymander Might Change Which Party Picks Up Seats In The Midterms | FiveThirtyEight 

I mean ill take bipartisan over 1 party, At least thats moving in the right direction.

@@jeremyjackson7429 yes, im not saying it's ideal, im saying it's better than the status quo of 1 party rule in a state's redistricting. Safe seats are already designed, they just it come with a big bias towards whichever party drawing the maps. A bipartisan committi would at least have a seat distribution closer to the states actual support for each party as both side have to agree not just 1, even if the seats are still safe.

@@jeremyjackson7429 ya, i do agree things would be better if we could decrease both gerrymandering and uncompentative districs. The amplifying nature of hyper red/blue distrrics is a problem and effects the kind of candidates they send to congress, usually being more extreme versions

While each party would like to control redistricting by themselves, a Bipartisan committee is the next best thing for politicians. Individual Dem and Republican politicians would rather work together to draw safe seats for one another than risk having competitive districts drawn by a nonpartisan commission. Of course, noncompetitve districts means that the only people really voting for leadership are the freaks and losers at primaries but that is a problem that hurts American voters, not politicians

Find me people to do this job who are actually non-partisan. I'll wait.

Apparently, it's just a court-appointed expert who'll redraw the district lines.

It will be interesting to see if the Florida republican state supreme court will do same thing the new York supreme court did and throw out the Florida map or will they let the map stand and let disantos go in with no Vaseline.i wouldn't hold my breath on republican judges doing the right thing like the democrat judges did in new York

@@alphonsos7307 depends if Florida has similar laws

@@NihilistSolitude they passed a constitutional amendments to make the map far in 2010 but it's in the eyes of the beholder.i would say the 18 to 10 map the republican legislature came up with was a ok map not perfect but disantos veto the republican legislature draw map.he came up with his own map that I call the no Vaseline map.the republican legislatureade clear it's the governor map not theirs even though they went along with it out of fear of the governor retaliation and threats against them.even the Texas map is not as bad as the Florida map Texas map is bad enough.thats hard to believe.i would say Illinois and Florida is the worst map.tje Democrats should have voted with the republicans for the 18 to 10 map.they could have overide the governor vetoe.they should know how fearful the republican legislature is of disantos.the republican legislature is truly afraid of this man

@@alphonsos7307 worse map imho is NJ where you have a district that goes from PA boarder all away to the NY boarder to put in a heavily democrat city on the opposite side of the state I agree with your other points

It creates a situation like the prisoner's dilemma: if either party stopped favoring maps to themselves, then the other party might gain an advantage

The Democrats had a bill that would've banned this practice. GOP said no. Hence if the NY GOP wants to complain, they can complain to their fellow party members.

@@atomicgiraffe250 It isn't really about what parties anymore, it's all about power, politics and controlling a majority to gain power in politics. Hence why both parties can't really seem to stop gerrymander to their benefit.

No such thing as a :non-partisan committee." Every committee is filled with nothing but academic hacks and professional classers. Whichever way they lean (the left) is how they'll gerrymander. At least with state legislatures, the people making the maps are held accountable from the voter base.

@@The_Loathsome yes that is why give the power to people whose completely partisan, that way we don’t need to question whether they are bias or not

I was about to comment this, but I see it was already done in an eloquent manner. Fully agree.

It would be one-way ticket to national irrelevance if gerrymandering was unwound in either Texas or New York but not both.

A proportional system and ranked choice voting would be an amazing step forward I believe. I do have some issues for proportional representation since I fear the party will just put their most loyal lapdogs in place, I'd need to do some more research on how it is decided who gets selected to be a representative.

@@brandonproductions8401 He didn't say that at all. He argued if one party gerrymanders, then the other should and a national solution should be sought after. Republicans gained a massive advantage with their gerrymandering in 2010, which was much more aggressive than democrats at the time. But it appears 2020 dems learned from the previous decade and are evening out the score

@@brandonproductions8401 uh, you're just making stuff up. Projection much?

Difference is Tennessee new map will only lead to Republicans gaining one seat. The NY maps will cut 4 solid GOP seats and a few tossup seats all in favour of Dems. The NY map is clearly illegal under state constitution, hopefully the court strikes it down.

@@horvatlovren7198 the current NY electoral map was Gerrymandered to give Repubs more seats than they should have.

@Dementia Joe we don’t have proportional representation. The districts were drawn by Republicans last time and drawn in a way that favored republicans

@@paulakopasz1639 So currently, NY has 19 Democrat seats and 8 Republican seats and you say the Republicans favored themselves? That is 70% democrat and 30% Republican. Nope. The current districts don't favor the Republicans based on the last presidential vote in 2020. The new districts unfairly favor the democrats. At least New York gets one less seat in the House because Florida picked up that seat. You ever wonder why people flee NY as fast as they can?

@@horvatlovren7198 Nah, this shit'll stay, and good on it. You only have to look at Texas to see why Dems need these maps. The GOP will never ever quit gerrymandering.

I am 100% for statewide proportional representation... But you can draw lines that are so least blind to party bias- like the 'shortest split-line' method.

i was not expecting someone else to know about the shortest splitline method. It’s the best design of bad practice I suppose :P

@@thehillshaveaviators oh hello, ideological twin.

I like this idea as well. The only quirk is that the whole VRA would need to be overhauled since without black-majority districts, there needs to be some other way to ensure they get fair representation in Congress.

@@dannymansfield8743 theoretically, state wide proportional distributions should elect proportional amounts of different races with at least decent correlation. The whole point of such a system though is to avoid narrow focus districts.

The cube rule has nothing to do with how much representation a party gets…it has to do with the observed sizes of Lower Houses with respect to population (ie size of the HoR ~ cbrt(population)). And even that “rule” does a pretty mediocre job of estimating that size in most countries.

The US House of Represenatatives would have 693 members according to the cube rule!

I think Laurence meant this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_rule, might have got them two confused.

@@thefifthhour45 ahh. That makes much more sense for the comment. Still though, it’s just another “rule” that has very sketchy empirical evidence and is bad at approximating what it intends to. Both cube-rules are truly horrible once you look into the data (for example, look at the r^2 values).

See, I was confused because the Cube Rule I know divides starch based foods into 6 categories based on the location of the starch.

Tennessee only has 9 districts and through redistricting, only netted one seat for republicans in comparison to last cycle. Nothing compared to NY

why, democrat judge were in power

I would have to agree. Though all gerrymandering is bad, I completely understand New York doing this to counteract the gerrymandering in Republican controlled states. However, I think there should be a federal law passed that ensures congressional maps are drawn by nonpartisan entities so incumbency bias can be reduced

@@georgebernard5783 So you want congress to do the right thing? Good luck with that.

What gerrymandering from republicans? They had a 100 seat advantage in redistricting and have somehow lost seats in the process. Dems have been the only ones gerrymandering this cycle. Show me a red state that’s gerrymandered worse than NY or Illinois. If republicans are gerrymandering this cycle they’re doing a really bad job.

@@noogai17 New York's planned map (26 seats) would give 77% to Democrats - but only 61% of the state's voters went for Biden in 2020. +4 seats for Democrats Illinois' planned map (17 seats) would give 76% to Democrats - but only 58% of the state's voters went for Biden in 2020. +3 seats for Democrats So your question is - are there any states where Republicans control redistricting whose planned maps will have a larger gap than 18%, or whose advantage will be unfairly increased by a similar number of seats? I'm going to leave out states that have fewer than 5 seats, because sometimes it's just not possible to arrange so few seats in a way that would be fair - for example if a state has 2 seats and 25% of the population voted Democrat, that seat can't really be fairly allocated because 25% of people are going to be losing out no matter what. Oklahoma's map (5 seats) is 100% Republican, despite the fact that only 65% of the state's population voted for Trump in 2020. That's a 35% gap. +2 seats for Republicans South Carolina's map (7 seats) is 86% Republican, but only 55% voted that way in 2020. That's a 31% gap. +2 seats for Republicans Tennessee's map (9 seats) is 89% Republican, but only 61% voted that way in 2020. That's a 28% gap. +2 seats for Republicans Louisiana's map (6 seats - currently uncertain whether this will pass) is 83% Republican, but only 58% voted that way in 2020. That's a 25% gap. +1 seat for Republicans Alabama's map (7 seats) is 86% Republican, but only 62% voted that way in 2020. That's a 24% gap. +2 seats for Republicans Indiana's map (9 seats) is 78% Republican, but only 57% voted that way in 2020. That's a 21% gap. +2 seats for Republicans Kentucky's map (6 seats) is 83% Republican, but only 62% voted that way in 2020. That's a 21% gap. +1 seat for Republicans Ohio's map (15 seats) is 73% Republican, but only 53% voted that way in 2020. That's a 20% gap. +3 seats for Republicans Missouri's map (8 seats) is 75% Republican, but only 56% voted that way in 2020. That's a 19% gap. +1 seat for Republicans (Dis)honorable mentions: Texas' map (38 seats) is 63% Republican, but only 52% voted that way in 2020. 11% gap. +4 seats for Republicans California's map (52 seats) is 83% Democratic, but only 63% voted that way in 2020. 20% gap, and +10 seats for Democrats! Massachusetts (9 seats) is 100% Democratic, but only 65% voted that way in 2020. Just like Oklahoma but reversed, and with the higher population it makes +3 for Democrats. Although with both of those it's hard to say whether that's a gerrymander - it's possible that the Democrats in OK and Republicans in MA are just spread out in such a way that it's impossible to draw a district that contains very many of them. So definitely there are red states gerrymandered worse than NY and IL in terms of the percent of the state's voters that have been effectively disenfranchised. In terms of unfairly adding seats to control Congress, California is the worst offender - no other state comes close (but as we can see from the percentages, it's not for lack of trying). Both parties are guilty of this, it's really ridiculous. A few states have done a great job with nonpartisan committees but they seem to be in the minority.

@@joshconeby I think you missed my point. What I was saying is that republicans due to their majorities in state houses had a 100 seat advantage over democrats in the process and democrats have managed to somehow gain seats and republicans have lost seats. They’re sitting at +11 and -6 right now. That shows that in this cycle, a cycle where republicans could have simply drawn themselves the majority, democrats have aggressively gerrymandered whereas republicans haven’t

On George Washington bridge

Yeah... I dont think we should listen a white guy with an squared country T - Shirt about what is fair or not. In politics what matters is winning and the point is you cant actually make good things for people if you dont win... that contradiction describes the entire Biden presidency until now. A narrow senate majority cannot deliver bold change as promised that is why Biden is mainly popular, inflation is not the very important issue. Dems are loosing young and black support mainly that contribute to their national downfall.

Republicans have gerrymandered 16 states. Democrats have now gerrymandered 3.

Illinois actually

@@brandonproductions8401 that too, though I think it's more "also" than "actually"

It’s all states that are doing this. Republicans and democrats are putting there noses where they don’t belong!

@@brandonproductions8401 no. Illinois is simply responding to racist Republican gerrymandering. So is New York.

@@f-86zoomer37 What? “Racist Republican” 1. An oxymoron and 2. How?

Looked at a district map of Texas lately, around Austin it looks like a can of worms.

Nobody’s saying the map is acceptable? They’re all bullshit

Colorado is unfair for Democrats! In a very good year Republicans would have a 5-5 seat which cannot Reflect the leaning of the state that is Democratic +14

California too.

@@Kunsoo1024 Democrats should Gerrymander California again

@@dyrenpaguyo7553 they could. Too bad idiot democrats in that state voted to disarm CA Dem legislators from being allowed to gerrymander while racist republicans were doing it everywhere. We should be allowed to eliminate all racist traitor republicans from californias map.

@@Kunsoo1024 yeah, many states have a non partisan commision but we need all states to do that.

No, they'll just complain that Democrats are hypocrites for doing what they've been doing in nearly every GOP led state.

Who's going to appoint the independent commissions? How are you going to be sure they're truly independent? If fairness of a map is based on the difference between the state popular vote and the seat percentage why not skip the extra step and have a proportionalish system.

@@mateyp3365 It's impossible to know what is in the hearts and minds of the people on the commission. However, the work stands for itself. It is an extremely easy calculation to see how well a newly proposed map matches the latest presidential election breakdown by party. This is exactly how people are arguing that certain states' maps are gerrymandered. Also, all independent commission means is that there's equal representation of both parties (and political independents) on the commission, it's by their own admission of what party they belong to.

California's Efficiency gap is still D + 5,3. In perspective that is the same as Kansas's Efficiency gap.

@@johnnyli4702 The equal representation of both parties isn't going to function very smoothly, just look at NJ or even the example in the video, NY. Even if they produce a 'fair' proportional map, they have a shared interest in making as few competitive seats as possible. Really the house as it is now is decided by ~50 seats, the rest of the voters don't matter that much.

I don't see how NY's courts could be appointed by anyone but democratic governers considering NYC will always go blue and they outnumber the rest of the state, and once you factor in the other cities and rural democrats it would be incredible suspicious or atleast unusual for a republican to become mayor, at best you could have a centrist.

He has videos covering GOP gerrymandering of course. This is new news because it may change which house picks up seats.

@@schroederscurrentevents3844 "Also you don't seem bothered by the gerrymander in the same way that you are when Republicans do it, and therefore a neutral observer might believe you are biased." This sentence implies that he doesn't seem bothered by the democratic gerrymander, but did seem bothered by the republican one.

It's worth noting that the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have lifetime appointments, whereas the judges on the New York Court of Appeals (New York's highest court) have 14-year appointments. This means that the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are free to defy the politics of the party that appointed them in because they cannot be removed from their position, whereas the judges on the New York Court of Appeals need to be reappointed and reconfirmed if they want to keep their position when their term ends and are therefore more likely to rule on political cases along party lines.

He seemed pretty bothered about it ngl. Maybe he was more so in the Republican videos tho? Haven’t watched them ngl

You can't gerrymander a governor out of a seat. The concept only applies to a legislature or other body with multiple representatives geographically composed.

@@Kunsoo1024 The governor used to be in the house until she got gerrymandered out.

@@Kunsoo1024 Hochul had a seat in the house at the time.

She’s unelected

@@Kunsoo1024 She was a congresswoman before she became governor.

But like, he's probably right? As an observer from the UK the American system of having the judiciary appointed by governors and presidents seems very weird. I'm much more familiar with the Supreme Court than I am with any state or local court, just because we hear so much more about them in this country, and in that case why should anyone have faith that the supreme court will come to an unbiased ruling? I think it's more honest to tell people that the institutions which they need to be strong for their protection are broken, in order to wake them up to calling for reforms which might address some of their problems, than it is to reassure everyone that the judges will all think really long and hard about it before voting pretty much down partisan lines. One criticism I would have of this video is that they don't outright say that the impartiality of the courts is a problem or that there are ways it could be addressed, but I guess they didn't want to go down that tangent in a video about redistricting.

I don't disagree that the claim erodes public trust in the judiciary, but then again, I don't disagree with the claim's assertion that a judiciary in a two-party, hyper-partisan system will be biased.

He's likely not wrong though. That seems to be how most judges are nowadays where their rulings benefit the party that appointed them and disadvantage the party that didn't. Even if some of them vote against the maps, they'd need 4 of them to agree to overturn a map favoring Democrats in a unanimously Democratic court. Just from redistricting, look at North Carolina for example, four or their seven state supreme court justices voted to overturn the state's congressional map. Coincidentally the four who voted to overturn them were Democrats and the three that voted against were Republicans. Or in Alabama where sure two of the judges who attempted to overturn their map were appointed by Trump, but the Supreme Court turned around and voted 5-4 to keep the map. All five Republicans (Three appointed by Trump) voting to keep and three Democrats and one Republican voting to overturn which is John Roberts who may be the closest to impartial one on that court.

I love it. I thing Dems should be doing this in every map. No regrets, no compassion

@@juani0210 They should have drawn our kevin mccarthy in CA and gotten rid of 3 GOP seats

@@juani0210 Oregon got a new district this time (6 up from 5), and it looks to be (5-1) split at least in normal years, if 2022 turns out to be a sh**show for the democrats it might not be 5-1, but in normal elections, probably. But when your state has 4.5 million and 2.5 million live in the greater Portland area,.. that helps. lol... Eastern Oregon Idaho part 2 (besides Bend) though. And I have only been here a month and figured that out lol

People should elect representatives on a national proportional basis in a national election. It should not be on a state basis at all. But getting rid of first-past-the-post and replacing it with proportional representation would be a big improvement, even at a state level.

@@rogerwilco2 I don't think I totally agree with doing away with states. I think there's something to be said for locality, and representatives and senators are from specific states, but yeah. I also think electors should be awarded proportionally(or hybrid like ME and NE) on a state basis.

Shouldn't it just be multi-member districts?

@@IkeOkerekeNews yes. A single district. The State.

@@ShuWii Just for the Senate though? Since this doesn't make any sense for the House of Reps.

Point one is a pretty common excuse...

You can say that after seeing the ny 10 district.?

@@malikite75 Yes, because it doesn't debunk either of his points. This is an aggressive gerrymander because republicans have been aggressively gerrymandering to steal seats from democrats since 2010. The ball is in the court of republicans to get rid of it, but they choose not to because they have too much to gain, and everything to lose by not gerrymandering.

@@darienmiller1032 and Democrats have not been?

You need a constitutional amendment for that and not a federal law, which means that will never happen.

All that would do is have undercover party operatives register as "independents" so that they can control the map. California does this. Their "nonpartisan" commission has put out a Democrat gerrymander every time and they specifically target any incumbent Republican district to be broken up.

50 million more people voted for Democrat senators than Republican senators, just to get to a 50/50 senate.

It's not technically gerrymandered, all the counties voted for the blue, the old map is also the same, You gonna need to gerrymandered it (making weird boundaries) to actually making sure republican get their fair share of the house because the republican population is so spread out.

@@fos1451 so who represent the interest of those 1/3 population in MA? Just silence or ignore them?

@@FunnyandInterestingVideos That’s why drawing map to determine house seat is bad in and of itself, proportionate representation is a lot better and fairer

@@FunnyandInterestingVideos as of right now, you can’t, as long as you still draw maps to determine house seat, those republican are doomed forever. Unless they all move together to a single district then maybe they got a chance

@@fos1451 Right. A good system should balance both the majority and minority. Meanwhile, it should always restrict those in office and cannot let them there for decades. US elections still need to improve, both in red and blue states.

You should stop complaining about democrats when republicans literally hate your race and call for trump terrorist racist supporters to kill people like you and call you a virus. Democrats are the only party that will accept you and protect you from violent white nationalist Nazis. Maybe you’ll understand when a whyte nazi calls you racial slurs and pushes you onto a busy street and beats you up in public.

Your only solution is for the 40% to be dominating the other 60%

I think it’s more dangerous to willingly play fair when the GOP isn’t. Unilateral disarmament is a one-way ticket to a significant rollback in democracy

I understand that, but I think ideological purity is overrated. Democrats are doing this to create a level playing field, not to give themselves an advantage. I would bet that political historians looking back on this in 50 years will consider it understandable. And in the short term, I don't think voters pay much attention to redistricting, and I highly doubt any Democratic voters are going to change their support or stay home because of this. Practically speaking, there's no real downside that I can think of.

California legislature already gave up their redistributing powers to a non partisan committee. A bad move on their part. Meanwhile Florida, Texas, Ohio Georgia refuse to.

That sounds a little hypocritical bud

@@ewp1 That's a good thing all states should do it and democrats and republicans gerrymander

@@jordanquimby854 Ain't hypocritical, Republicans have clearly demonstrated they're unwilling to act against gerrymandering, considering how much it's benefitted them. Democrats have pushed for and introduced legislation that would've ended partisan gerrymandering, and Republicans didn't support it- should Democrats lay down and "play fair" while the other side doesn't?

@@ewp1 Yeah, if California gerrymandered Democrats would gain at least 6 more seats, prolly more

lmao what? California is already gerrymandered heavily in favor of dems. Republicans hold 10 out of 53 seats currently, which is only 18% in a state which is roughly 35% republican. Were it not gerrymandered you would expect nearly double the number of republicans from the state

@@mr.whitechristmas280 All those republicans live in cities as political minorities.

I feel you. Every state should just be independent commission so gerrymandering could be abolished

I don’t think the point of this video is to call out any state for gerrymandering. This map just swung things in a way that most did not see coming

Theyve done so many videos on republican states

They did an entire podcast series called The Gerrymandering Project a few years ago talking all about it.

In their podcasts, they've spent quite a lot of time talking about gerrymandering in other states. D and R. New York is just a more obvious example to dissect than other large states

Democrats are doing most of the gerrymandering this time around. According to 538 they pick up 11 seats in gerrymandering alone. States like California, Illinois, and Maryland are also very gerrymandered. Not saying that republicans don’t gerrymander, but it’s clear who is doing it the most this time around.

This is a very underrated comment

Yeah, that actually was a really good map, just like Michigan's.

Unfortunately states like Illinois and Maryland do the opposite, but I respect Colorado from being fair

All independent say the same thing

That is the most brain dead take I’ve seen, “Gerrymandering is only good when it benefits my party” is such inane nonsense.

@@brandonproductions8401 Republicans have gerrymandered 16 states. Democrats in 2010 only gerrymandered 1. It cost them the House. This time around, they aren't going to unilaterally disarm, so they're gerrymandering where they can. It's still 16 states to 3.

Oregon, Illinois, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. That is a lot more than three, learn to count. They literally gerrymandering in every state they could (except Massachusetts, but you don’t need to in that state for 8D seats). Meanwhile some republican states like KY, Nebraska, Mississippi, and Indiana did not gerrymander.

@@Kunsoo1024 And? This just proves my point that blind support for partisan gerrymandering is not only ridiculous but also counterintuitive.

@@curtissechler8238 Nevada was a dummy mander and RI didn’t even certify a map yet but the rest still apply, especially Illinois

To make it fair

Because Rochester votes democrat

@@nycatlady2314 i know captain obvious

If Florida counteracts New Yorks map then that's fair play as far as I can see.

@@joespice785 Depend just how much FL decides to "counter" NY

@@orleans7878 Like 2 more lean Republican and a few tilt Dem or Rep. We'll see what happens though.

New York and Florida will be the worst gerrymandering states in this redistricting

@@underground9260 i disagree, the worst gerrymandered state is still Maryland. That state is a bunch of snakes on a nap. However, one could make a similar argument for Texas. Either way, its certain Gerrymandering is here to stay.

Or states with large cities.

Democrats actually bring this case to supreme court, but they tossed it out because it's hard to determine which map is gerrymandered and which one is not

The broken US voting systems are at the core of its issues indeed.

😂😂😂 that I'd factually fakse. Most New Yorkers are Democrat's. Even shown by number and percentage..

Not gonna happen.

He wasn't

They do, just not in the same video.

I think most everyone watching this knows about the Republican gerrymandering going on. The last big story about the Dems redistricting was Dems in Mass NOT gerrymandering as hard as they could have. I kind of hope this map gets struck down and those NYC area districts get redrawn to be more compact... Which will make basically 0 difference to the balance. Ugh... We could do redistricting by computer algorithm which doesn't even know about party or race, but too many vested interests