Dave Weigel wrote a brief post on gerrymandering last Friday in response to my piece on the same topic. He used Michigan as an example of how Republicans were able to use redistricting to enhance their standing in the House, particularly by shoring up vulnerable members, thereby contributing to extremism.
Before responding, I think it’s important to note up front, as Weigel does, that this isn’t really a black-and-white issue, a fact that is easily glossed over. People run along a continuum of opinion regarding how much redistricting contributed to the GOP’s House majority and to polarization. We might place Tom Friedman at one pole, as he seemingly laid our increasingly divided nation at the feet of redistricting, Citizens United, and Fox News. At the other end are those political scientists who find little to no effect from redistricting. In the middle are people like Weigel, Charlie Cook, and myself, who think redistricting played a role, but who disagree -- sometimes strongly -- on the extent to which it mattered and how much other factors contributed.
From my point of view, redistricting helped Republicans gain between five and 10 seats that they wouldn’t have otherwise won, by shifting the median district rightward. But even this is more a function of polarization than a cause of it.
Weigel’s Michigan example is actually instructive in showing the limits of what redistricting contributes to polarization. At first blush, it looks like a classic case of a horrendously gerrymandered state. Barack Obama defeated John McCain by 16.4 percentage points there, more than twice his national average. Mitt Romney ran a much stronger race four years later, but the president still managed to win by a healthy 9.4 points. Yet under the Republican-drawn maps, the president ran better than his statewide 2008 showing in only five districts (of 14), and ran ahead of his national showing in just six. Romney carried nine of these districts outright.
As Weigel writes:
Via: Real Clear PoliticsIt’s not like gerrymandering created Justin Amash. It shored up Tim Walberg. Who's Tim Walberg? He was a Club for Growth-backed candidate who primaried a moderate Republican in 2006, lost in the 2008 Democratic wave, came back in 2010, and benefited when the new GOP legislature drew a map that packed Democrats in Detroit and Flint-centric districts, shoring him up to make no news but provide reliable "no" votes on anything that did not delay or defund Obamacare.
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