Because most political districts are drawn by state legislators, politicians tend to receive the bulk of the blame for gerrymandering. In this video — the second in our trio of short explainers on gerrymandering — we take a close look at the role that the American electorate plays in the ways our districts are shaped. […]
Gerrymandering is about as old as the United States, and in the past few years, the manipulation of political district lines has been the subject of debate. What makes solving the problem of gerrymandering so tough is, well, not everyone agrees on the problem. One of the main goals behind FiveThirtyEight’s Gerrymandering Project is to […]
Gerrymandering was once only the concern of map drawers and politics nerds. Most people didn’t know who their congressional representatives were, let alone the contours of their districts. But gerrymandering is having a moment. People don’t like it, and they want it fixed. It’s easy to understand why. As we’ve mentioned before, gerrymandering takes the […]
In America, critics say, voters don’t pick their politicians: Politicians pick their voters. It’s a cynical way of describing the American process of drawing political boundaries. In most states, politicians carve up districts and can sort voters in ways that benefit themselves electorally. As awareness about gerrymandering has grown, reformers have increasingly called for that […]
The disappearance of competitive congressional elections is one of the starkest political trends of the last half century. According to an analysis by the Cook Political Report, during the last 20 years alone, the number of competitive House districts has declined by more than 50 percent. In the 2016 election, just 17 percent of districts […]