Why we like gerrymandering
..and how it contributes to hyper-partisanship
Most citizens are keenly aware of the perils of gerrymandering, and instinctively know why it is bad for democracy, since it renders a percentage of voters in each district perpetually at a disadvantage each election cycle. However, I will demonstrate that not only can it contribute to hyper-partisanship, but also that as citizens affected by this process, we are complicit, and actually are generally satisfied with the outcome that it provides.
Imagine three voting districts that are more or less divided equally between two political parties. We will refer to the two parties as the Purple party and the Gold party. Visualize the districts as being divided into quarters as shown below.
In a normal election cycle, the two parties vie for the tiny sliver of voters that fall within the margin of error, and don’t necessarily align themselves with either party, or are otherwise “undecided”. The two parties both resign themselves to the grind of normal campaigning after the primaries, trying desperately to reach the tiny minorities of voters who are still undecided. As such, their message is typically a middle-of-the road one, that is equally palatable to members of the Purple party as well as the Gold party.
Once the election is over, and the winners are announced, something interesting can be observed. Regardless of which party wins the election, about half of the total constituency is pleased with the outcome, and about half is displeased. It seems counter intuitive, but this is always the case. In the easy to demonstrate case, if either party wins all three districts, then 6/12 (i.e. 1/2) of the electorate has sided with the winning party, and 1/2 has consequently sided with the losing party. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t matter who wins each district, half of the electorate has sided with the winning party, and half with the losing party. I urge you to break out a pencil and try it out.
So eventually the politicians get tired of the grind of all this campaigning. Even the incumbents can’t rest on their laurels because the opposing side from the previous election is probably sore about losing, and could have a surge in turnout and ruin their reelection bid.
One day, a particularly astute politician of the Purple party (which happens to own two of the district seats at this particular time), has a proposition for the leader of the Gold party, who owns the other district seat. Their idea is to restructure the boundaries of the three districts so that each party maintains a comfortable majority in their own district, and then they won’t have to work as hard during the next election. Better still, if they all agree to the restructuring, or gerrymandering, then they are almost assured to never have to campaign very hard again, ever.
The representative from the Gold party has to put up a bit of a fight, at least in public since their party is essentially giving up any chance of winning the other two districts, but ultimately they acquiesce, since they are assured of winning their seat in perpetuity. Their collective gerrymandering results in a restructuring as represented in the following diagram.
The Gold party now has a 75% majority in two districts, and the Purple party has a 100% majority in District C. Now all three politicians barely have to lift a finger for each election, and their parties are assured of an easy win.
The big problems arise when the incumbents retire or have to give up their seat for some reason. Now the primaries are the crucial portion of each election, since the general election is all but assured. This means that each potential candidate has to appeal to the base of their party, which results in more and more deviation from campaigning to the undecided voters, and over time, more and more hyperpartisanship.
The voters typically are not clued in to the gerrymandering, they just keep on voting the way they always have, even though their candidates are more and more radical. In fact, for each election, the 6/12 of the total constituency that is made up of the Gold party is elated, since their candidate always seems to win. Likewise, the 4/12 of the constituency that is made up of the Purple party in District C is elated as well, since their candidate always seems to win. The only consistently unhappy voters are the 2/12 of the Purple party that happen to reside in Districts A and B, since their candidate always seems to lose.
Now here is the interesting part: with gerrymandering, a total of 6/12+4/12, or 10/12 of the total population is generally happy with the results of each election. That is approximately 83%. So when the elections were fair, but challenging, we had more centrist candidates, and about 50% of the total electorate were always satisfied with the outcome, and about 50% were always dissatisfied. With the unfair gerrymandering, the politicians became more partisan, yet 83% of the electorate was satisfied, and only 17% was dissatisfied.
