As politics in the U.S. has polarized along geographic and racial lines, drawing political maps has become a partisan arms race. Even the smallest decisions about where to draw district boundaries can alter the power dynamic in Congress — without a single voter switching parties or moving. It’s easy for opponents of gerrymandering — the […]
In most states, district maps — which define where the constituency of one representative ends and that of another begins — are drawn by the state’s lawmakers. Having politicians define their own districts has not gone entirely smoothly — and two cases involving political gerrymandering, or the drawing of districts (especially oddly shaped districts) to […]
The government shutdown appears to be over. It will have lasted less than one full weekday. Congressional Republicans and President Trump probably “won,” in the sense that the Senate approved a government funding bill that did not include any kind of policy along the lines of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Democrats’ […]
Welcome to a special extra edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. hilary.krieger (Hilary Krieger, Washington editor): Welcome to a special FiveThirtyEight politics chat on the occasion of the government shutdown! We’re going to talk about what this means for Democrats, Trump and immigration because, with the government not […]
The U.S. government is partially shutdown. The Senate couldn’t cobble together the necessary 60 votes to keep the government open. And the blame game has already begun: Republicans in Congress and the White House are trying to make “Schumer Shutdown” stick (after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer), and Democrats are calling it the “Trump Shutdown.” […]