WisGOP - choice of the mapmakers, not the people

This is a remarkable plot from UW PoliSci Professor Barry Burden.

In other Wisconsin news today, the state posted the official 2018 Assembly election results. It's a beautiful gerrymander. Dems got 190,000 more votes but Reps got 63/99 seats. Key is assuring many GOP districts get just over 50% of vote even in a bad year for the party. pic.twitter.com/WEOvpr4EUD

— Barry Burden (@bcburden) December 4, 2018

Look at all those red-outlined dots between 50 and 60%, and all of the Dem dots at 0%. That is exactly how gerrymandering is supposed to work - "packing" Wisconsinites into seats so blue it isn't worth it for Republicans to even contest the seat (hence, all the blue 0% numbers). But you then "crack" the Republican votes in a way that those voters are spread over a number of seats, meaning it will take a massive Dem wave to get those seats to fall out of GOP hands.

On a related note, Marquette Professor and pollster Charles Franklin notes that even though Tony Evers got nearly 30,000 more votes than Scott Walker in the November election, Evers only won 2 of the 63 Assembly districts that elected Republicans. And only 1 Republican Senator sits in an Evers-won seat.

Of Republican Wisconsin state senators elected this month, only Howard Marklein (SD17) represents a district that voted for Evers.

Of GOP Assembly winners, only Travis Tranel (AD49) and Todd Novak (AD51) are from Evers districts.

— Charles Franklin (@PollsAndVotes) December 4, 2018

And then let's go back to how those Assembly districts split during the 2016 presidential election, where Donald Trump won by less than 1% statewide.

The Trump vote by Assembly district. pic.twitter.com/hymSpcBlao

— Barry Burden (@bcburden) December 5, 2018

Which means the MVP for the Wisconsin GOP for the November 2018 elections is....GOP operative Joe Handrick and the lawyers at Michael Best and Friedrich that drew up the district maps! Great work guys!

So no Robbin' Vos, you don't get to say "the people of Wisconsin chose us." Your map makers were able to choose numerous areas where 50-55% of voters could choose Republicans. But that gives you NO authority to ignore the 45% of voters in those districts who didn't want you, and it especially doesn't give you any authority over the Silenced Majority of the state that voted for Dems.

The closeness of those 2018 Republican wins in the Assembly and Senate makes me wonder if these guys (and they're almost all guys) in the GOP Assembly and Senate caucuses realize that their margin for pissing off constituents is very small, no matter how tough Robbin' Vos and Scott Fitzgerald talk.

This is especially if the Trump Administration is in complete implosion mode by November 2020, because this last tweet tells you what the Assembly results could be if Dems win by double digits in 2020 - like how Tammy Baldwin did last month.

Evers won 36 assembly seats, Walker won 63.

> table(a$gov_dem>a$gov_rep)

FALSE TRUE
63 36

Baldwin won 55, Vukmir 44.
> table(a$sen_dem>a$sen_rep)

FALSE TRUE
44 55

— Charles Franklin (@PollsAndVotes) December 5, 2018