Friday Fun: ReDistricting Game

Fair Districts Florida has all sorts of important information about the re-districting issue. It's an important issue to be sure. I say, however, why bother reading about it when you can play an online video game in which you become the tawdry re-districting official yourself!

Play the ReDistricting Game. Have a nice weekend everyone.

Gelman: How the rich and poor voted

FiveThirtyEight posts on the voting patterns of the rich and poor in the 2008 election. He has more about his methodology (and he's open about the troubles in his model) at the link, but the takeaway for us here in Florida is that both rich- and middle-income groups voted for McCain. In fact, the middle-class voting pattern was similar to rich voting patterns in all but five states.

This, for me, is something to think about as we gear up for a redistricting fight.

Thoughts on Redistricting

via Brendan Nyhan
Being proactive about redistricting sounds like a good idea to me. Having said that, I worry about wasting valuable resources in an effort that we believe may work, but are unsure in which ways. To that end, I wanted to highlight the following work (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal):

Both pundits and scholars have blamed increasing levels of partisan conflict and polarization in Congress on the effects of partisan gerrymandering. We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link.

Now, partisanship isn't my worry in regards to gerrymandering. My worry is an inaccurate representation of the electorate (which is to say, a blue state with more red legislators). To that end, something like the Fair Districts Florida petition drive seems to be a step in the right direction as long as we understand what will (and won't) be the consequences of success.