The Republican-controlled Texas house on Wednesday approved a redrawn congressional map requested by Donald Trump and fiercely opposed by Democrats, who led a weeks-long protest to stall the effort that kicked off a coast-to-coast redistricting arms race between red and blue states.
With the house’s approval, the measure next goes to the state senate, where it is expected to pass, possibly as soon as Thursday. It would then be sent to the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, for his promised signature before taking effect.
The whole reason they’re doing this new illegal heavily gerrymandered map is because they are blue and are trying to stay red.
It’s like a woosh went over their head.
No, they’re very much not.
Using the district map to prove me wrong just proves me right???
According to independentvoterproject.org of 17,485,702 total registered voters, 46.52% are registered Democrat and 37.75% are registered Republican.
Yes. And?
The last time Texas voted for a Dem president was 1976.
Pretty fuckin red, wouldn’t you say?
Do you know what gerrymandering is? Do you understand how our representative democracy functions in practice?
Do you know that gerrymandering has no impact on presidential elections?
We’re getting mixed up and off topic here, I never meant that Gerrymandering is directly affecting the presidential vote of Texas, not are the presidential election results even the topic of this conversation. Gerrymandering absolutely explains why Texas’s congressional map looks way redder than its voter registration numbers suggest, that’s how Republicans preserve power within the state. That’s why Texas can simultaneously be a majority-Democrat in registration, gerrymandered into a Republican-heavy congressional map, and still vote red for president due to completely separate issues such as turnout patterns and suppression tactics. But it’s not that Texas is ‘too stupid,’ it’s that the mechanics of turnout + maps + laws keep the GOP on top despite underlying demographics shifting consistently to the left.
The point that MisterOwl was making is that Texas hasn’t voted for a democrat president since 1976… if there were more democrats in Texas than republicans then the presidential election would show that since the presidential election is based on the majority. It was to this point that you mentioned gerrymandering, as if that has any impact on presidential elections.
I do agree that gerrymandering is a problem, and that Texas is bluer than its congressional makeup would suggest, but I do not think that Texas is even close to being able to turn blue any more than California is close to turning red.