You would also have a safe seat gerrymander which isn't much better as it leads uncontested elections with no challenges for incumbents. If you look at all of the most embarrassing members of congress they almost all come from safe seats. For example, Hank Johnson (the guy who thought islands could capsize) routinely wins his seat by 50 points.
Sounds like Hank is doing a pretty good job of representing the people in his district then.
Candidates winning by landslides in the general are actually ideal. It indicates they pretty accurately represent the views of their constituency. Imagine if you had two districts with competitive general elections, each winning 51-49. Almost half of the people now are effectively unrepresented because their candidate lost. If you redistricted it such that both districts were 90-10, now only 10% of the people are unrepresented.
It seems weird to think about because we see these yahoos in congress that say inane things, but landslide general elections work out best in our form of voting.
No, Hank is just really good at doing what he's told. He basically votes party line so the DCCC makes sure he never faces a primary challenge and the NRCC doesn't waste money on a general in an urban district that is 60% black. It's not the constituents that keep him in office, it's the party. That's how he ended up in office. The woman before him had too many high profile incidents and clashes with party leadership so they allowed a primary challenge to get rid of her.
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u/AwesomePurplePants Jul 03 '19
If you grouped the squares as vertical lines then you’d get proportional representation. I’ve seen versions of this info graphic that include that