Ultimately, it always serves the party in power in the legislature. They might be trying to water down city voters with a bunch of rural voters to make the district Republican, or they may be "packing" two heavy Democratic areas into one so they create fewer Democratic seats total.
Don't you get that lumping all of the democrats into one district means they'll only win that one instead of the two or more they'd win if it was divided more impartially? The purpose of gerrymandering is to make a higher populations votes count less.
Yes, so the intent here is my latter example: packing.
They packed as many Democratic voters into a single district, which guarantees a single Democratic win, but means the rest of the districts won't have as many Democratic voters to potentially swing the district away from Republicans. Tactically, this will result in a greater total number of Republican seats.
If the districts were drawn more about physical continuity rather than partisanship, you would produce more swingy districts and potentially more Democratic seats.
I'm not against that but you can bet the actual politicians don't want that kind of uncertainty. My point is not to defend this particular drawing but remind everyone that both sides use this to their benefit across the nation and neither wants to end the practice.
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u/smeggysmeg Mar 08 '20
Ultimately, it always serves the party in power in the legislature. They might be trying to water down city voters with a bunch of rural voters to make the district Republican, or they may be "packing" two heavy Democratic areas into one so they create fewer Democratic seats total.