{"id":3057,"date":"2013-02-04T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=3057"},"modified":"2013-02-04T09:00:17","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T14:00:17","slug":"gerrymandering-is-not-whats-wrong-with-american-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2013\/02\/gerrymandering-is-not-whats-wrong-with-american-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerrymandering is not what\u2019s wrong with American politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/10\/democracy-in-suspense-why-arizonas-native-voters-are-in-peril\/vote_12345\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2787\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-2787\" alt=\"Vote_12345\" src=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Vote_12345.jpg\" width=\"210\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Vote_12345.jpg 300w, http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Vote_12345-150x148.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a recent interview in The New Republic, President Obama said this about the politics surrounding gun control:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>That does not mean that you don\u2019t have some real big differences. The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they\u2019re really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Obama expressed a common view: that gerrymandering has created a bunch of safe seats for each party, making representatives responsive only to their partisan base and unwilling to forge bipartisan compromises.<\/p>\n<p>It would be nice if this view were true, because it would suggest a clear solution to our polarized politics: draw more competitive districts.\u00a0 But unfortunately it is not true.\u00a0 The most important influence on how members of Congress vote is not their constituents, but their party.\u00a0 This makes them out-of-step not only with the average American \u2014 the \u201cbroad-based public opinion\u201d that Obama mentioned \u2014 but also, and ironically, with even their base.\u00a0 Members are more partisan than even voters in their party.<\/p>\n<p>The easiest way to see how little constituency matters is to compare how representatives vote to the partisanship of their constituents.\u00a0 Here is what the 113th House looks like so far, based on calculations (pdf) by Stanford political scientist Simon Jackman<\/p>\n<p><strong>MORE:\u00a0<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/02\/03\/gerrymandering-is-not-whats-wrong-with-american-politics\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gerrymandering is not what\u2019s wrong with American politics<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent interview in The New Republic, President Obama said this about the politics surrounding gun control: That does not mean that you don\u2019t have some real big differences. The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1608,1628,5,22],"tags":[1614,1632,1633],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3058,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057\/revisions\/3058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}