Extreme Redistricting Sets the Stage for a Huge Republican Stranglehold Victory in the House in 201 [View all]

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This is so depressing.


Election '18
Extreme Redistricting Sets the Stage for a Huge Republican Stranglehold Victory in the House in 2018


https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/study-finds-democrats-wont-take-back-house-2018-giant-wave
A virtual majority of House seats are already deemed to be highly safe for GOP.



By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
October 19, 2017, 5:19 PM GMT


Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock

FairVote, the national democracy reform group, has dismal news for Democrats seeking to regain a House majority in 2018. Unless there is a turnout wave of voters disgusted with Republicans unlike anything seen in decades, they can forget it.

“For 2018, FairVote’s model makes high-confidence projections of the winners in 374 of 435 U.S. House races,” its Monopoly Politics 2018 report said. “Of these 374 projections, 208 races are safe for Republicans and 166 are safe for Democrats.”

The House of Representatives has 435 seats, with 218 needed for a majority. If all the current Democrats are re-elected, they need 24 additional seats for a House majority. However, FairVote’s study did not find enough competitive races.

“Of the 61 seats our high-confidence model did not project, 22 favor Republicans and another 21 are toss-up seats, and Republicans need only win 10 of these to maintain their majority,” they continued. “We project that Republicans are likely to maintain control of the House, unless Democrats have more than 55% of the national party preference.”

FairVote’s biennial assessment is a gloomy report on the anti-democratic nature of House elections. It posited that neither funding nor candidate qualities will sufficiently matter in 2018 for Democrats because of other structural hurdles. These include the non-competitive partisan landscape of most House districts, who those districts backed for president in 2016, how Republicans segregated voters by party when remapping congressional districts in 2011, and how most Democrats live in cities, unlike Republicans, who are more spread out across the country.




The likely result will be a disaster for democracy and civic participation, they said, especially in the 374 races where they make “high-confidence projections.”

“In these districts, the challengers will be powerless to affect the outcome, regardless of their funding, their qualities as candidates, or their ability to motivate supporters,” FairVote said...................................................................



FairVote has a near-perfect record of predicting electoral outcomes in recent House elections. Their analysis finds there are not enough competitive House races in 2018 for the Democrats to stage a comeback—unless voter turnout and disgust with the GOP reach levels not seen in many decades (which they don’t expect).



“Of the 701 high-confidence projections we made for 2014 and 2016 House races, 700 (99.9%) were correct,” FairVote said. “This level of accuracy is a testament to just how uncompetitive U.S. House elections are. It is instructive not only that we can accurately project results so early, but also that we do not need to take into account anything other than prior congressional and presidential election results. FairVote’s model does not need to factor in opinion polling, campaign spending, scandals, challenger quality, or the incumbent’s voting record to achieve such high levels of accuracy.”

FairVote said its confidence comes from the country’s increasing partisan divides.

“At the core of our model is the concept of partisanship, a measure of the underlying partisan preference of a given district,” they explained. “Safe districts, in which we are highly confident of the outcome, include 208 Republican districts. This means Republicans need to win only ten of the remaining 61 seats to maintain control of the House. In a year where the national party preference is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, Republican candidates are projected to win 244 districts (56%)—53 more than Democrats.”

The notion that House Republicans could win a 50-plus-seat majority in 2018 is galling—after voting repeatedly to strip health insurance from tens of thousands of voters in scores of congressional districts. But that’s because extreme redistricting, in which GOP-majority state legislatures segregated voters by party when drawing lines, created congressional districts where the reliable Republican turnout averaged 56 percent, and where the average Democratic turnout—in fewer districts—was upwards of 69 or 70 percent. (Those figures were cited in a 2017 Supreme Court ruling over North Carolina’s unconstitutionally race-based gerrymander.) ................................