August 21, 2025 • 39 mins
As Texas embarks on a rare round of mid-decade redistricting and California threatens to answer with its own, Nate and Maria analyze the history, politics, and game theory of gerrymandering.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Today, Nate, a topic that's been in the news quite
a bit, something that's really important for the United States,
for democracy, for game theory, and that topic is gerrymandering
or redistricting in salamanderish ways as well else we'll talk about, Sue.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
This is a jerrymandering episode, Maria, all jerrymandering, everything about
jerry mattering. We're going to explain a little bit of
a history of this. But this is a problem that
suits the show's interest really well. It's a high stakes
problem in one where as you mentioned game theory in particular,
very literal, real life application of the prisoner's dilemma, as
you'll hear us talk about throughout the show.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So before we get into what's happening right now, I
think it's really interesting to kind of position this a
little bit historically and give our listeners who may not remember,
you know, their US history one oh one, a little
bit of a background of what jerrymandering is and where
it actually came from. So the original term jerrymander, it
(01:40):
was first used in eighteen twelve in the Boston Gazette
and it refers to figure Governor Elbridge Jerry. He was basically, yes,
good old Elbridge. I still it's so funny. So I
obviously did a little refresh before this segment, but I
remember that name so well from my history class because
(02:01):
I was like, Elbridge Jerry, Like, how do you ever
forget the name Elbridge? Anyway, So he was a a
Democratic Republican and for people once again who need a
US history one oh one refresher, the Democratic Republican Party
would go on to become the Democratic Party right under
(02:25):
Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
So you have these leftists saying that Democrats are really Republicans.
It's kind of it's kind of true.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah. So basically, yeah, the party told him, you know,
we need to kind of do this redistricting in Massachusetts
right during the state Senate elections. And Jerry actually got
a bad rep on this because he disagreed with the
proposal and he said he found it quote highly disagreeable
(02:53):
end quote. But he was the one who signed the
bill in eighteen twelve. So his name is the one
associated with this distinction and the reason it's called Jerry
Mandering comes from obviously his last name, but also that
the map looked like a salamander basically, So it was
such a weirdly drawn map in order to try to
(03:15):
get the.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Boats, I mean, Massachusets a little bit of weird looking
stay right, you got that fucking cape Ki. Look, you
got like a lot of and it's very square on
the left end. I think it used to cover more territory.
I didn't, mass just used to have some of Vermont
and stuff like that. But like, you know, you're gonna
get some weird looking shapes if you have a fractal coastline,
(03:36):
like the beautiful coastline you have outside of Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It is it is so you are going to get
some weird shapes. But this one was weird enough that it,
you know, prompted an entire term. No one actually knows
who coined the term to begin with. But yeah, so
that's the that's the origin of the term. And I
think that if we if we actually then look at
the history, we see that in the past, you know,
(04:05):
the Democrats knew how to fight dirty, right, Like if
we look at the Democratic Party of the eighteen hundreds,
like with the political bosses, they like, they really fought
tooth and nail to get those votes, and they did
everything they could to make sure that their districts had
the votes they needed. So even though today, you know
(04:26):
this is happening in Texas and you know, Democrats, especially
since the nineteen seventies, have really kind of tried to
step back and tried to say, you know, you can't
do this. You cannot manipulate districts to try to get
votes for one specific party. That's not the way democracy works. They,
you know, have tried to kind of put that party
boss history behind them. But I think that it's very
(04:52):
interesting just to keep in the back of your mind
that this was not always the case, right, that this
is the party that originated the practice, and that it
used to be everyone brought their boxing gloves to the
ring in the past, and then it changed. Right, So
now we're in a very different situation. But if we
go back to the eighteen hundreds, the parties were quite
(05:14):
different and there have been I think people would say
there's been progress, right, But now, Nate, if you want
to bring us to the present day.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The Constitution requires that after every census every decade that
states are responsible the apportion members based on the census
to the House of Representatives, and that states are responsible
for setting their own boundaries without a lot of limits,
at least based on how recent courts have decided this right.
(05:45):
There are some limits based on the Voting Rights Act,
where you want to have enough seats that are representative
of black and Hispanic voters and sometimes Asian Americans, they
meet certain thresholds. Apart from that, though, the Roberts Court
has said that, hey, this is a legislative decision. They
are elections to Congress. The Constitution doesn't say a lot
about them. And so therefore, if Congress wants to implement
(06:07):
more procedures are redistricting, they're in charge of elections. They
have to do that. Except nothing has really happened right now.
Throughout history, there have been periodic periods. I'm redundant there right.
There have been feints and spells where there was more
or less mid decade redistricting, meaning that like, there's nothine
(06:28):
new census, but we're going to reset boundaries in advance
of the next election. Anyway, this sometimes happens because of
court decisions where a court rules at a map is illegal.
They can also happen strategically in two thousand and two
or two thousand and three. Rather, Texas used to be
kind of a democratic state. I was going to say
a blue state, but not really in the classical way
(06:50):
that like we think of a blue state. It's just
you had like conservative Southern Democrats. For example, LBJ was
from Texas, of course, beginning in the mid two thousands.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
LBJ of course was the administration that passed the Voting
Rights Act in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Of course, with a very liberal the War in court
right in two thousand and three year beginning of the
mid early twands late nineteen nineties, the South, the conservative
Democrats in the South began to be replaced by Republicans. Right,
So two thousand and three Texas thought that its map
wasn't republican enough, and they redistricted in the middle of
the decade. Now courts have rule that this is probably
(07:27):
fine too. If Congress wants to print that, they can
also pass along. I mean, it's kind of like a
frequent technique of the Supreme Court, which I don't think
is like inherently terrible, right, But when you have kind
of a dysfunctional Congress, it's a very partisan and very
you know, especially in the gp CA. So I think
this is not totally of both sides things, but very much,
very much like enthrall is that the right word, very
(07:48):
much at the command of Trump. You're not gonna have
a lot of buy trust. Yeah, I'm not gonna have
a lot of bipartisan legislation passed. Right, So it's kind
of a free for all, and Trump, being a maximizer
as far as strategic gain is saying, has told Republicans
in Texas who are initially reluctant, Hey, we can probably
(08:09):
squeeze five more seats out of this map, based in
the fact that Trump had a really good year in
Texas in twenty twenty four, and in particular, Hispanics in
like the Rio Grande Valley have shifted very republican. The
suburbs have not had this democratic shift that they thought,
so they can squeeze more seats out of the map
than they currently have. Right. My colleague Eli McCown dawson
(08:33):
did an analysis of this at Silver Bulletin. It probably
will not be the five seats they claim. That's kind
of the high end right call it like one to five,
depending on whether Democrats rebound among hispanic expected value of
maybe three seats, right, which, you know, three seats might
not seem a huge deal of four hundred and thirty
five members of the House of Representatives, However, because so
many other seats are jerry mattered, because voters are so polarized,
(08:56):
there might only be a couple dozen competitive races, and
so three seats in Texas matter a fair bit.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Governor Gavin Newsom of California has proposed to have an
even more aggressive districting plan in California. It's currently done
by a non partisan commission. You're welcome, by the way,
to roll your eyes a little bit, just a little
bit at non partisan commissions. It's kind of you know, look, Maria,
(09:24):
sometimes when groups of experts get together, they tend to
favor in current times Democrats, right, and so like, so
I would say it's but still California now could go
and be like, we're just going to go back and
restore the power to the state lunch later. And because
they have super majorities, we can jurymander as aggressively as
we want, as unapologetically really as we want, subject only
(09:46):
to the Voting Rights Amendment or Voting Rights Act, it's
not amendment. Excuse me, because, of course, a lot of
minority groups in California, appolling by a Newsome affiliated group today,
claim this measure has a big lead in California if
it were to make it in the ballot on the
ballot in next year's midterms, so that could reciprocate. Right,
(10:08):
But yeah, the the theme here is that Democrats are
are always a half step behind. Right. One important thing
that happened is that, you know, in the twenty ten
so Republicans had a really really good mid term in
twenty ten because Barack Obama started out very very popular,
tried to do healthcare, quickly became quite unpopular, backlash against
(10:29):
the liberal, backlash against the first African American president, et cetera,
et cetera. Right, however, twenty ten is a really important
election because that dictates congression and resting for the rest
of the decade pretty much. Right, So in twenty ten,
Democrats were disadvantaged. The next time around, in twenty twenty,
Democrats had had a comparatively better year. They had a
(10:51):
good year in twenty eighteen, which carries over into the
for four year cycles into state legislatures, and so forth.
So basically since twenty twenty, since twenty twenty two, I
should say, the maps that went into place after the
twenty twenty census, the GP advantage to the twenty tens
is gone, in part because the Roulette wheel landed on
a bitter number for Democrats in terms of the timing
(11:12):
of all this, but also because Democrats have gotten more
aggressive in states like New York all not of course
it was they could be right. Democrats are often more
risk averse. Incumbents are terrified of having to fight other
incumbents are losing any you know, of having a ninety
seven percent chance of winning instead of ninety nine percent.
Even in Texas, Republicans were initially reluctant. But that's kind
(11:33):
of a brief I guess it was more than thirty seconds.
That was like a brief five minute history of this.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, no, I think that. I think that the last
point you made, let's just highlight the reason that Texas
was reluctant not because they were opposed to gerrymandering. It
was because they didn't know if they could redraw the
districts in a favorable way, because they were afraid that
there would be too many Democratic voters basically in other
districts if you split it. But now they're like, oh, no,
(12:00):
I think we can do it. I think we're fine.
So it wasn't like a principled opposition. It was a wait,
can we get away with this and get the vote? Which,
by the way, like that's not to say like, ooh
bad Republicans. Like jerrymandering has always been an incredibly political
thing with the sole purpose of trying to get power
(12:21):
for your group. So that should be your number one concern, Right,
can I get by by forcing these like dubious practices?
Can I get the votes I need? And if the
answer is maybe not, then maybe you don't want to
expend political capital on doing that. Now. What I think
the kind of another big issue here though, which we're
starting to see, is like anything that you do to me,
(12:44):
I can do back to you. Right, So if Texas
starts this game and republic and kind of Republicans try
to do what they're what they're trying to do in
Texas with the redistricting, then you know, as Gavin Newsom,
as Kathy Hochel has also said in New York, like fine,
you know you want to do it, We'll do it,
(13:06):
and we're going to redistrict our straits too, and there's
nothing stopping then people from basically getting in the ring
and getting starting to fight dirty. And I don't know,
I mean, personally, I don't think that that's the way
we should be going. And I think that your idea
of a constitutional amendment against this is not a bad one,
because the Voting Rights Act has been like in the
(13:28):
last five years, the course have definitely chipped away at
the power of the Voting Rights Act. And according to
the Voting Rights Act, you can't redistrict in a way
that dilutes the votes of minority voters. And it's being
completely tossed on its head these days, right with Texas
saying well, you can't have too many minority voters of
(13:51):
different minorities in one district so that then they become
a majority, right like such like absolutely backwards logic that
has actually a very little legal basis. And so we're
in a very interesting situation where the Act that has
kind of been holding the line against gerrymandering or multiple
decades is fraying.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, would I would push back. I mean, it's a
I mean, first of all, until fairlure recently, you didn't
have a lot of opportunity to create majority non white districts, right,
But yeah, I mean, you know, if you have hopes
of using the Voting Rights Act now, the Civil Rights Act,
the Voting Rights Act as a kind of crutch to
rely on for gerrymandering, A, it's probably gonna be weekend.
(14:33):
And B I'm not sure what's helping democrats that much
in the first place. Again, maybe get for other reasons,
but but you know, it's more that the Roberts Court
said that this is not our job to regulate what
states do. Congress has the power to regulate elections. That's
pretty clearly enumerated in the Constitution. And also, like it
is kind of hard to have constitutional standards, right. So
(14:57):
one thing that has been upheld is contiguity, right where
it means that like I can't take the East Village
and then Merchantry District with Buffalo right, and then everything else, No,
I can't. Some people argue for compactness, which means the
maps have to have logical shapes. How you define that?
(15:20):
Does it look like a salamander? What's a little bit objective? There?
Various subjective right? There are algorithms that you can use,
but like, it's not a national requirement. Only contiguity has upheld,
so there is some flexibility. But yeah, Democrats have been
a half step behind in this game. I do want
to say if we look at kind of like the
(15:40):
very long term equilibrium, right, I mean, first of all,
this is a somewhat predictable move. When people say, oh,
this is unprecedented, it's not unprecedented, right, It's pretty predictable.
It's pretty well protected by current constitutional law that will
remain in place so long as we have a conservative
Supreme Court almost for certain right, it has happened at times,
(16:03):
it's been threatened at other times, and so like, this
is a fairly predictable escalation. And I don't think it's
in the category of like authoritarianism per se. It's more
like maximizing what's pretty clearly within the rules constitutionally, you know.
With that said, I do feel remister for like talking
(16:25):
about some of the problems of gerrymandering. First of all,
it means that in a large majority of districts, perhaps
ninety percent for Congress, doesn't matter, it's going to be
democratic Republican combined with all the polarization that we have today. Secondly,
you have a bunch of fucking wackos in Congress, right,
maybe more on the right and the left. Maybe some
readers disagree and can point to left wing, the squad
or whatever they want. And I don't mean to equivocate those
(16:46):
exactly right, but you know, when you have members that
have no chance of losing a general election, they even
further to the right or the left because they're afraid
of losing a primary. They come more parliamentarian where they
do the bidding of Trump or or Biden for that matter. Right,
you can count and there are a handful of dissident,
(17:06):
contrarian whatever you want to call them, right, independent minded
representatives and Sanders, but there are a few. You can
kind of count them on one hand, more and more
and more, and I'd argue that's not good for the country. Right,
we have not seen, you know, I think compared to Congress,
the courts have done a relatively good job of restraining Trump. Right,
(17:28):
Congress has not Congress. And again we're going to piss
off certain readers, but like listeners, but like you know,
Congress did not pushed back against RFK Junior or Telsea
Gabbard or Pete eggs At being appointed to their respective
cabinet positions. Personally, I think that is these are some
of the worst parts of Trump administration so far. Congress,
which is supposed to have authority over tariffs and Trump
(17:49):
is interpreting the precedents very liberally, right, has not really
pushed back very much on that. Right, we saw how
few members of Congress hoted to impeach Trump even after
January sixth, and the handful who did, very few of
them remain in office today, right, So this is a
big problem. They kind of create self perpetuating polarization.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
And we'll be back right after this when you know,
after last week, I was thinking about kind of you
(18:31):
saying that this should be a constitutional amendment, and I
think that, you know, you've just made a lot of
points for why that should be the case, in the
sense that also if we kind of go back to
one of the core elements of the show, like how
we how we model this right from a game theory perspective,
the outcome as of now like doesn't doesn't look great, right, Like,
(18:55):
we we know how this game is going to play
out if we continue playing it this way, and it's
it's not a very it's not a great game game
tree that we're on right now, right, Like, it's it's
bad options, Like what are if you're the Democrats, right
and you're looking at what's happening in Texas, you have
the option to say, no, you know, they go low,
(19:16):
we go high. Yeah, that hasn't worked well and that's
probably not going to work.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
We're going to go it's tit for tat strategy.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Right, they go, Now, now it's definitely tit for tat.
It's not tit for two tots. Well, maybe it's been
tip for two tats. Right, They've they've been more than
one step behind, and they've let kind of they've let
it devolve a little bit. They're like, well, let's wait,
maybe maybe that tat wasn't really a tat, so maybe
they did start playing that. But now they've realized that, no,
that the tats are going to keep coming, and so
(19:45):
you can you can no longer, you can no longer
sit back, and you do have to start retaliating, in
which case, as we've talked about before, you get that
downward spiral where the payoffs are just worse for everyone.
And as you say, Nate, this isn't good for the
country on numerous levels. Like let's just let's forget you know,
voting rights, civil rights, all of those. Let's just say
(20:07):
that a democracy is good if people are afraid that
voters might not elect them, right, if they feel like
they are accountable to the people that they represent, if
that accountability is lost. Right, if you know that no
matter what I do, I am going to get re
elected with ninety nine percent certainty. Sure ninety nine isn't
(20:30):
one hundred, But as long as you do that, you
are no longer representing your district. You're no longer representing
what the people of your district necessarily want. And sure
there might come a tipping point, but this isn't healthy
and you end up getting policies that you know, as
you said, enthrall to Trump right now, they're Trump dictated
(20:50):
whatever whoever's in power. It's not the premise of the democracy, right,
is that we elect leaders who are going to be
representing our interests in the best way possible. And that
premise gets broken.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, and to send a threshold for this, right, I mean,
you said ninety nine percent percent is like in Alabama
in twenty eighteen, I think it was or twenty nineteen.
There's a special election. Roy Moore, Judge Roy Moore lost
at special election to a Democrat just barely in Alabama
because he had been credibly accused. He denied the allegations
of repeated acts of sexual misconduct with women under the
(21:28):
age of eighteen. And that was enough for the people
of Alabama. Fifty one percent of us say that's too much,
but hey, that was in a pretty good environment for Democrats.
That was also in a time you know, it's five
years ago now, six years ago, seven years ago, a
little bit less polarized than now. So like, yeah, in Alabama,
by the way, is very red, right, but some of
these districts are like more read than Alabama. So you
(21:50):
might have we've done the modeling, right. You may have
a point one percent chance of losing your primary if
you put it into a logistic regression model, or not
your primary, your general election, right if you put it
into a logistic regression model. And so you know, polarization
is not the fault of the Constitution per se. But
like our constitution was probably not designed to deal with
(22:13):
the degree of partisanship. It's not a parliamentary system. Right,
we can have no confidence vote not inclined to deal
with a degree of partisan polarization that we have right now.
And this is a predictable escalation. I mean, you know,
the one Democrat has seems to get this. I saw
a betto betel or work speech. He's, of course down
(22:34):
in Texas trying to encourage Texas Democrats to flee the
state to avoiding a quorum. You can only do that
for so long before you have to see your family
and so forth. He's like, yeah, I don't care if
Rockms do it. We should preemptively do this. I think
it's actually smart, right, good for you, Beto right, which
is that like you can see where this where the
puck is going. Also, these things take time in California. Yes,
(22:58):
you have about initiative deadline. I don't know exactly when
it is, right, but it's going to be litigated in courts.
That's why it's all happening. You know. You might think
that like, okay, if Trump were really cunning about it,
that he would wait and kind of do a sneak attack.
If you do that, it's gonna get struck down by
courts or people might get skittish or techniques like you know,
all the Democrats go to Oklahoma that could actually work
in the short run. So I guess it's smart by
(23:20):
Trump to kick this off now. But given that they've
flagged it, and given that if it doesn't happen this
year in one state, it'll happen in other states, you know,
the cat is out of the bag. And Democrats are
I think being smart by understanding this, right, I mean,
I think they're trying to like they're trying to like
weave it into a narrative of like Republicans are terrible
(23:41):
for democracy, and we're reluctantly reciprocating. I mean, I don't know.
That's a little bit kind of too cute by half, right,
I mean it's a little bit like people say, Okay, well, Natee,
you support higher taxes on the rich. I'm not sure
I do or not when you live in a state
like New York. But let's ignore that for now, right,
maybe higher taxes on the rich in Alabama or something.
(24:04):
But like, but why don't you just give the government
more money yourself? It's like no, because I want, like
their to apply reciprocally to everybody, not just to me, right.
Maybe in the long term, if people get very dissatisfied,
they feel like the member of Congress is a wacko,
they feel like their vote doesn't matter, maybe you can
get a momentum for worse and type of of you know,
legislation or constitutional amendment, the former being much more likely. Right,
(24:27):
It's very hard.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah. Constitutional amendments, by the way, are incredibly tough to pass.
So let's just throw that out there. It's really hard
to get those majorities.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
The other thing is that, like you know, look, if
you have once a decade redistricting, then what's called a
dummy mander. A dummy mander is when you cut it
too close and you wind up actually costing yourselves seats.
Right over the course of ten years, there are five
congressional elections after each census, right by six eight, ten
(25:00):
years out, things can change a lot. In the state
like Texas, there's a lot of migration shifts of voting patterns.
So then you can get some dummy manders, right, that
kind of restrain the risk. Wow. The president of the
norm is that you can redistrict whenever you want, right,
and so therefore you can be more aggressive because if
you fucked up then. And by the way, you can
also also gerrymander very importantly state boundary lines that you
(25:23):
are more likely to retain control of the state legislature.
Wisconsin had a cycle for many years where the representative
or the legislator was vastly misrepresentative of a very divided
purple state. Right, and it's self perpetuating until Democrats finally
won control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and force the
drawing of new maps. Right. The one thing that GOP
(25:46):
ought to be careful about is that, like it used
to be, Democrats had benefit from higher turnout. They would
do comparatively better in presidential years and then lose ground
in midterm election years, lose ground in special elections. And
now that's reversed. Right now, Democrats are the college ucated
people who have in this house, we believe signs they're
(26:06):
voting for a municipal dog catcher, their voting in every election. Right.
And since half the elections our congression or are non
presidential elections, actually more than half you account special elections, right,
you could have a thing where now Democrats actually gain
ground at the mid terms in congressional years and use
that to kind of hold the Fort down in presidential
(26:29):
years by gerry mattering aggressively. Right, So I'm not actually
sure that if you get to the equilibrium where every
party when they have every ability to and then some
states requires regular majorities, some states supermajorities based in the
state rules and constitutions. Some states do have requirements that
are stricter than the US Constitution. Right, in the very
long run, everybody's actually aggressive. I'm not sure this actually
(26:51):
helps Republicans at all. Right, there are other debates about well,
Democrats are concentrated in cities, and therefore if you go
for things that are compact, nice listing districts, maybe that
helps Republicans because Democrats are sinc of votes. I'm not
sure that's just true either. For one reason, you have
seen cities actually become comparatively less blue, very blue. New
(27:12):
York is very very blue, but less blue Salzoran in
the primary, right, but less blue than it was in
presidential voting than it was ten or twenty years ago. Right.
And meanwhile, the rural areas are very very very trumpy, right,
I mean, you always you always got the little, you
always got the Ashville, North Carolina's where we are right,
you got the little colleges, you got the gays or
(27:33):
gays everywhere. Right, there are minority groups everywhere, right, they
are always smatterings of Democratic voters, but like less and less,
especially just like rural Hispanic voters, rural black voters, right,
you know, have become more and more Republican. Then you
have very very red areas. And so I don't know
there's any intrinsic disadvantage Democrats in the long run. By
(27:54):
the way, the current maps as of twenty twenty four,
if anything, had a very slight half a point democratic bias, right,
because Democrats kind of had a good year in twenty eighteen,
and you know, California, even though it could Jerrymander even more,
you know, it's a pretty aggressive map and so forth.
And so it's not so much that this, I know,
(28:16):
the equilibrium is one where in theory you'd say, well,
if either party really benefits in the long term, then
why not avoid this mutually assured destruction and you know,
and have a gentleman's gentle woman's agreement to avoid we
us too aggressively. I mean that we know from game
(28:37):
theory for the prisoner's element, et cetera, especially when the
parties increasingly see politics as a zero sum game. It's
very hard for that agreement to hold. And by the way, yeah,
they're selfish too.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
In districting, what happens is that you are usually protecting
incumbents by having fewer competitive seats, right, And obviously some
incumbents become lose a game of lucky chairs, a bit
like a poker tournament. They're kind of eliminated one at
a time, right to protect the other incumbents, But like
for the most part, selfishly. You know, if anything, it
(29:10):
might lead to equilibrium where they're not as aggressive as
they might be because they want the ninety nine percent
chance of not ninety five percent. Right, So they're knits, Maria,
They're nits. Their nits. They're terrified of taking any risk.
They're selfish. I don't know why. I know. I've become
a member of Congress, I you know, I know that.
Does that mean you gotta be weird? I mean maybe
(29:32):
the house? The House seems fun. Fucking governor. I want
to hang out with the governor and have a beer
with a governor. Right, Fucking Senators are like wax figures.
They're weird as fuck. It's one of the most objectively
weird things to be as a United States senator. Why
would you want to do that?
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I have no idea. I don't know why anyone would
want to be a politician. But one of the things
that apart from the weirdness of us senator is one
of the points that you've made in not so many words,
is that one of the things to remember about redistricting
in general is it takes time, and it's a thing
that you're doing for the future, and the future is
(30:08):
inherently uncertain, right and we're we're not quite sure how
trends are going to play out, how different things are
going to play out, how populations are going to move,
and there are certain things that you can't predict, right
Like no one predicted Sure, people said pandemic coming at
some point, no one could predict you know, what happened
during COVID and where kind of people started moving, what
that would do to maps, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
(30:30):
Those events will happen. We're talking about a long timeline,
you know, five years, ten years, all of these things,
and then once you actually do the redistricting, it could
be you know, challenged in court that could take a while.
So all of these things, like this is massive time horizons.
And so when you say, like you're not sure how
(30:52):
much it hurts you know, Democrats, that's you know, it
is other than like everyone loses mutually assured destruction. That's
very true because like we we don't know. And when
you're drawing these lines, you're drawing them with the present
in mind, not with a future mind. Even if you
think you're taking the future into account, right, you might
(31:12):
be making gross mistakes because you have kind of this
present bias. And I don't know how many experts you're consulting,
and what kinds of experts you're consulting, Who the experts
would be that you would consult even to say, okay,
well in five years or in this crucial election, we
predict X and y. This is it's a really really
difficult science, right, It's a complicated process, and just humans,
(31:37):
humans are bad at that kind of uncertainty. And this
is just something that people aren't really talking about. They're like, oh, well,
let's you know, let's see what we can do with
the districts now to try to kind of capitalize on
our votes and those ninety five percent, ninety nine percent,
all of those things that's going to matter, that might change.
A few percentage points might shift here and there. And
as we talk about over and over and Nate, as
(31:59):
poker players, we know a few percentage point shifts actually
make big differences and can make have big waves overall.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
There's one other important aspect here, which is like it
mattered most at the margin when you have close control overall.
For the US Congress. Right now, let's say that the
economy goes into a big recession before next year. Let's
say the terrorists really hurt and let's say it might
be next week's episode. I don't know. Right, Let's say
there's an AI driven recession, that this is kind of
(32:30):
happening in markets, right, that people feel as though GPT
five and related things have hit a plateau. Half the
capital still massive put in these AI companies disappears. Meanwhile,
it removes some mundane jobs. Right. Let's say we're in
a pretty bad recession next year. I mean, Democrats might
have a really good year, right, And in that case,
(32:52):
maybe the Texas market's a pretty clever plan. Maybe then
some districts that ELI and I didn't even look at
come into play and it winds up netting Republican zero
seats or negative one seat or something. In that case,
it kind of doesn't really matter because you only let
people to Congress or two years at a time anyway
to the House, right, and in that case there are
kinds of a huge majority anyway, right, So what matters
(33:15):
is how robust is the map in a relatively neutral
national environment where you were swing districts in your state
who determine overall control of Congress. But I think you know,
members of Congress are selfish, I guess rationally so, right,
and so they are sometimes I'm going to pushtingus as
far as they might if you were, if I were
playing fantasy politics and trying to maximize seats for my party. Right.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
But but yeah, yeah, all true, all true. And by
the way, I do want to point out, since we
kind of were talking about the weakening of the Voting
Rights Act, et cetera, that these were distinctoring, these redistricting maps,
and these voting maps are for all sorts of elections,
because you said, you know, you were you were talking
(33:59):
about the fact that you know, presidential election is just
one and one of many, many, but because this week
there actually was an important federal decision in Mississippi where
Mississippi was ordered to redraw Supreme Court electoral map because
it was found to violate the Voting Rights Act by
diluting the power of black voters. So this is a
(34:20):
decision that just happened this week, the week that we're taping,
and it's been litigated by the way it's the lawsuit
was first filed in April twenty twenty two, so that's
how long it took for this decision to be made.
So this just highlights several of the points that we've
been talking about. It is something that's kind of also
in the news that didn't make as many headlines because
(34:40):
it's not as big a story on some level as Texas, California,
all of that, But it does illustrate a lot of
these points that we've been talking about, including the fact
that the Voting Rights Act is actually still being used.
We'll see what happens. Right this is a federal court,
but you can see this being appealed even further.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
And we'll be right back after this break. What do
you do if you're a citizen, a voter, you know
you might want some type of bipartisan grassroots effort. Right.
(35:30):
I mean we've seen like democratic groups that formulated, or
progressive groups or just anti anti gerrymandering groups have conceded
they've understood the prisoner's aleever, right, they're like, it is
fucking terrible if the other side does this and we don't,
and so like, you know, maybe you need a bipartisan
grassroots movement, and you know, we have ignored like there
(35:52):
might be some benefit to this kind of half stance
Democrats are taking where they're like this is bab or
gonna do it anyway, right, I mean a principle, if
you shift the overall electric because you persuade people that
Republicans are trying to steal elections or steal majorities in Congress, right,
that could have a backlash. I mean, I think it
doesn't help Democrats that they have no always made aggressive
(36:14):
districting their priority. Necessarily no constitutional or congressional led actions
to prevent this, and so like I know right now,
I wouldn't worry about that messae fiwre it. I'd be like,
we know where the puck is going, right, we know
where the puck is going, and maybe voters will see
the implications of this where they have some fucking whacko
(36:35):
representing them in Congress. Their vote doesn't matter. Right, They're
already a state where the vote probably doesn't matter. They
used to be a liv bit for Congress where it did, right,
And people get fed up and there's some push against
this now where if you're a state legislature and you
draw a mid district in mid decade map or really
aggressive map or we can the VRA or whatever else,
people know your name and they vote you out of office.
(36:56):
One come in general that political types have is to
focus too much on federal elections and not enough on
state and local elections. Right, so you know, making this
an issue where Okay, this guy is a ring leader
and we want to go him out of office, you
know what I mean. You can even pick a Republican
who is just as conservative on an abortion or whatnot, right,
but like but not trying to you know, steal quote
(37:19):
unquote democratic rhetoric. And we haven't really seen that much
focus there. I mean, you don't have focus. Then what
happens is the default equilibrium. That's what prevails. And the
equilibrium here is that you're gonna have it's unlimited by courts,
it's unlimited by political incentives. It's unlimited certainly by any
trust the parties have in one another. And I'm not
being totally both sides think the GOP kind of mostly
started it right, but Democrats have responded in kind. I mean,
(37:42):
there are lots of various of jerrymanders. Illinois, for example,
is one state that, like you know, not that blue
down in south southern Illinois, but like you these crazy
looking districts, right, and so we know where the puck
is going. And Democrats are fooling themselves if they think
they don't have to play the game. And if they
do play the game, they might not lose the game, right,
they will have plenty of control of their own and
blue states. There are plenty of people and seats in
(38:04):
blue states, and so and so I don't know betto
had it right.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, So let's see how it Let's see how it
plays out in California, and maybe we'll see a roadmap
for getting this to play out on a broader scale.
In any case, a really really interesting, I think topic
with lots of different things to consider and lots of
applications for how we think about US politics and what
the future of politics is going to look like. I
(38:27):
don't have a prediction. I don't want to be optimistic
or pessimistic. Let's just wait and see. You know how,
when how this plays up?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
When in Nvidia and open Ai and Tesla, you know,
they control the majority of seats in Congress anyway in
twenty fifty, I think, and like the four remaining people's
seats from New York, who really cares, right, they can't
really do very much. That's probably where we're atting.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I think we're Yeah, that does that does seem likely
night And on that very promising note, you and I
can both resume our non US adventures and let's see
what's happening in the news and in the breaking news
side next time we talk. Let us know what you
(39:17):
think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky
Business at Pushkin dot fm. And by the way, if
you're a Pushtin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content
for you that's coming up right after the credits.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. What a nice price
you get access to all that premium content and ad
for listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya Gerwit. Sally
Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Today, Nate, a topic that's been in the news quite
a bit, something that's really important for the United States,
for democracy, for game theory, and that topic is gerrymandering
or redistricting in salamanderish ways as well else we'll talk about, Sue.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
This is a jerrymandering episode, Maria, all jerrymandering, everything about
jerry mattering. We're going to explain a little bit of
a history of this. But this is a problem that
suits the show's interest really well. It's a high stakes
problem in one where as you mentioned game theory in particular,
very literal, real life application of the prisoner's dilemma, as
you'll hear us talk about throughout the show.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So before we get into what's happening right now, I
think it's really interesting to kind of position this a
little bit historically and give our listeners who may not remember,
you know, their US history one oh one, a little
bit of a background of what jerrymandering is and where
it actually came from. So the original term jerrymander, it
(01:40):
was first used in eighteen twelve in the Boston Gazette
and it refers to figure Governor Elbridge Jerry. He was basically, yes,
good old Elbridge. I still it's so funny. So I
obviously did a little refresh before this segment, but I
remember that name so well from my history class because
(02:01):
I was like, Elbridge Jerry, Like, how do you ever
forget the name Elbridge? Anyway, So he was a a
Democratic Republican and for people once again who need a
US history one oh one refresher, the Democratic Republican Party
would go on to become the Democratic Party right under
(02:25):
Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
So you have these leftists saying that Democrats are really Republicans.
It's kind of it's kind of true.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah. So basically, yeah, the party told him, you know,
we need to kind of do this redistricting in Massachusetts
right during the state Senate elections. And Jerry actually got
a bad rep on this because he disagreed with the
proposal and he said he found it quote highly disagreeable
(02:53):
end quote. But he was the one who signed the
bill in eighteen twelve. So his name is the one
associated with this distinction and the reason it's called Jerry
Mandering comes from obviously his last name, but also that
the map looked like a salamander basically, So it was
such a weirdly drawn map in order to try to
(03:15):
get the.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Boats, I mean, Massachusets a little bit of weird looking
stay right, you got that fucking cape Ki. Look, you
got like a lot of and it's very square on
the left end. I think it used to cover more territory.
I didn't, mass just used to have some of Vermont
and stuff like that. But like, you know, you're gonna
get some weird looking shapes if you have a fractal coastline,
(03:36):
like the beautiful coastline you have outside of Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It is it is so you are going to get
some weird shapes. But this one was weird enough that it,
you know, prompted an entire term. No one actually knows
who coined the term to begin with. But yeah, so
that's the that's the origin of the term. And I
think that if we if we actually then look at
the history, we see that in the past, you know,
(04:05):
the Democrats knew how to fight dirty, right, Like if
we look at the Democratic Party of the eighteen hundreds,
like with the political bosses, they like, they really fought
tooth and nail to get those votes, and they did
everything they could to make sure that their districts had
the votes they needed. So even though today, you know
(04:26):
this is happening in Texas and you know, Democrats, especially
since the nineteen seventies, have really kind of tried to
step back and tried to say, you know, you can't
do this. You cannot manipulate districts to try to get
votes for one specific party. That's not the way democracy works. They,
you know, have tried to kind of put that party
boss history behind them. But I think that it's very
(04:52):
interesting just to keep in the back of your mind
that this was not always the case, right, that this
is the party that originated the practice, and that it
used to be everyone brought their boxing gloves to the
ring in the past, and then it changed. Right, So
now we're in a very different situation. But if we
go back to the eighteen hundreds, the parties were quite
(05:14):
different and there have been I think people would say
there's been progress, right, But now, Nate, if you want
to bring us to the present day.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The Constitution requires that after every census every decade that
states are responsible the apportion members based on the census
to the House of Representatives, and that states are responsible
for setting their own boundaries without a lot of limits,
at least based on how recent courts have decided this right.
(05:45):
There are some limits based on the Voting Rights Act,
where you want to have enough seats that are representative
of black and Hispanic voters and sometimes Asian Americans, they
meet certain thresholds. Apart from that, though, the Roberts Court
has said that, hey, this is a legislative decision. They
are elections to Congress. The Constitution doesn't say a lot
about them. And so therefore, if Congress wants to implement
(06:07):
more procedures are redistricting, they're in charge of elections. They
have to do that. Except nothing has really happened right now.
Throughout history, there have been periodic periods. I'm redundant there right.
There have been feints and spells where there was more
or less mid decade redistricting, meaning that like, there's nothine
(06:28):
new census, but we're going to reset boundaries in advance
of the next election. Anyway, this sometimes happens because of
court decisions where a court rules at a map is illegal.
They can also happen strategically in two thousand and two
or two thousand and three. Rather, Texas used to be
kind of a democratic state. I was going to say
a blue state, but not really in the classical way
(06:50):
that like we think of a blue state. It's just
you had like conservative Southern Democrats. For example, LBJ was
from Texas, of course, beginning in the mid two thousands.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
LBJ of course was the administration that passed the Voting
Rights Act in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Of course, with a very liberal the War in court
right in two thousand and three year beginning of the
mid early twands late nineteen nineties, the South, the conservative
Democrats in the South began to be replaced by Republicans. Right,
So two thousand and three Texas thought that its map
wasn't republican enough, and they redistricted in the middle of
the decade. Now courts have rule that this is probably
(07:27):
fine too. If Congress wants to print that, they can
also pass along. I mean, it's kind of like a
frequent technique of the Supreme Court, which I don't think
is like inherently terrible, right, But when you have kind
of a dysfunctional Congress, it's a very partisan and very
you know, especially in the gp CA. So I think
this is not totally of both sides things, but very much,
very much like enthrall is that the right word, very
(07:48):
much at the command of Trump. You're not gonna have
a lot of buy trust. Yeah, I'm not gonna have
a lot of bipartisan legislation passed. Right, So it's kind
of a free for all, and Trump, being a maximizer
as far as strategic gain is saying, has told Republicans
in Texas who are initially reluctant, Hey, we can probably
(08:09):
squeeze five more seats out of this map, based in
the fact that Trump had a really good year in
Texas in twenty twenty four, and in particular, Hispanics in
like the Rio Grande Valley have shifted very republican. The
suburbs have not had this democratic shift that they thought,
so they can squeeze more seats out of the map
than they currently have. Right. My colleague Eli McCown dawson
(08:33):
did an analysis of this at Silver Bulletin. It probably
will not be the five seats they claim. That's kind
of the high end right call it like one to five,
depending on whether Democrats rebound among hispanic expected value of
maybe three seats, right, which, you know, three seats might
not seem a huge deal of four hundred and thirty
five members of the House of Representatives, However, because so
many other seats are jerry mattered, because voters are so polarized,
(08:56):
there might only be a couple dozen competitive races, and
so three seats in Texas matter a fair bit.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Governor Gavin Newsom of California has proposed to have an
even more aggressive districting plan in California. It's currently done
by a non partisan commission. You're welcome, by the way,
to roll your eyes a little bit, just a little
bit at non partisan commissions. It's kind of you know, look, Maria,
(09:24):
sometimes when groups of experts get together, they tend to
favor in current times Democrats, right, and so like, so
I would say it's but still California now could go
and be like, we're just going to go back and
restore the power to the state lunch later. And because
they have super majorities, we can jurymander as aggressively as
we want, as unapologetically really as we want, subject only
(09:46):
to the Voting Rights Amendment or Voting Rights Act, it's
not amendment. Excuse me, because, of course, a lot of
minority groups in California, appolling by a Newsome affiliated group today,
claim this measure has a big lead in California if
it were to make it in the ballot on the
ballot in next year's midterms, so that could reciprocate. Right,
(10:08):
But yeah, the the theme here is that Democrats are
are always a half step behind. Right. One important thing
that happened is that, you know, in the twenty ten
so Republicans had a really really good mid term in
twenty ten because Barack Obama started out very very popular,
tried to do healthcare, quickly became quite unpopular, backlash against
(10:29):
the liberal, backlash against the first African American president, et cetera,
et cetera. Right, however, twenty ten is a really important
election because that dictates congression and resting for the rest
of the decade pretty much. Right, So in twenty ten,
Democrats were disadvantaged. The next time around, in twenty twenty,
Democrats had had a comparatively better year. They had a
(10:51):
good year in twenty eighteen, which carries over into the
for four year cycles into state legislatures, and so forth.
So basically since twenty twenty, since twenty twenty two, I
should say, the maps that went into place after the
twenty twenty census, the GP advantage to the twenty tens
is gone, in part because the Roulette wheel landed on
a bitter number for Democrats in terms of the timing
(11:12):
of all this, but also because Democrats have gotten more
aggressive in states like New York all not of course
it was they could be right. Democrats are often more
risk averse. Incumbents are terrified of having to fight other
incumbents are losing any you know, of having a ninety
seven percent chance of winning instead of ninety nine percent.
Even in Texas, Republicans were initially reluctant. But that's kind
(11:33):
of a brief I guess it was more than thirty seconds.
That was like a brief five minute history of this.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, no, I think that. I think that the last
point you made, let's just highlight the reason that Texas
was reluctant not because they were opposed to gerrymandering. It
was because they didn't know if they could redraw the
districts in a favorable way, because they were afraid that
there would be too many Democratic voters basically in other
districts if you split it. But now they're like, oh, no,
(12:00):
I think we can do it. I think we're fine.
So it wasn't like a principled opposition. It was a wait,
can we get away with this and get the vote? Which,
by the way, like that's not to say like, ooh
bad Republicans. Like jerrymandering has always been an incredibly political
thing with the sole purpose of trying to get power
(12:21):
for your group. So that should be your number one concern, Right,
can I get by by forcing these like dubious practices?
Can I get the votes I need? And if the
answer is maybe not, then maybe you don't want to
expend political capital on doing that. Now. What I think
the kind of another big issue here though, which we're
starting to see, is like anything that you do to me,
(12:44):
I can do back to you. Right, So if Texas
starts this game and republic and kind of Republicans try
to do what they're what they're trying to do in
Texas with the redistricting, then you know, as Gavin Newsom,
as Kathy Hochel has also said in New York, like fine,
you know you want to do it, We'll do it,
(13:06):
and we're going to redistrict our straits too, and there's
nothing stopping then people from basically getting in the ring
and getting starting to fight dirty. And I don't know,
I mean, personally, I don't think that that's the way
we should be going. And I think that your idea
of a constitutional amendment against this is not a bad one,
because the Voting Rights Act has been like in the
(13:28):
last five years, the course have definitely chipped away at
the power of the Voting Rights Act. And according to
the Voting Rights Act, you can't redistrict in a way
that dilutes the votes of minority voters. And it's being
completely tossed on its head these days, right with Texas
saying well, you can't have too many minority voters of
(13:51):
different minorities in one district so that then they become
a majority, right like such like absolutely backwards logic that
has actually a very little legal basis. And so we're
in a very interesting situation where the Act that has
kind of been holding the line against gerrymandering or multiple
decades is fraying.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, would I would push back. I mean, it's a
I mean, first of all, until fairlure recently, you didn't
have a lot of opportunity to create majority non white districts, right,
But yeah, I mean, you know, if you have hopes
of using the Voting Rights Act now, the Civil Rights Act,
the Voting Rights Act as a kind of crutch to
rely on for gerrymandering, A, it's probably gonna be weekend.
(14:33):
And B I'm not sure what's helping democrats that much
in the first place. Again, maybe get for other reasons,
but but you know, it's more that the Roberts Court
said that this is not our job to regulate what
states do. Congress has the power to regulate elections. That's
pretty clearly enumerated in the Constitution. And also, like it
is kind of hard to have constitutional standards, right. So
(14:57):
one thing that has been upheld is contiguity, right where
it means that like I can't take the East Village
and then Merchantry District with Buffalo right, and then everything else, No,
I can't. Some people argue for compactness, which means the
maps have to have logical shapes. How you define that?
(15:20):
Does it look like a salamander? What's a little bit objective? There?
Various subjective right? There are algorithms that you can use,
but like, it's not a national requirement. Only contiguity has upheld,
so there is some flexibility. But yeah, Democrats have been
a half step behind in this game. I do want
to say if we look at kind of like the
(15:40):
very long term equilibrium, right, I mean, first of all,
this is a somewhat predictable move. When people say, oh,
this is unprecedented, it's not unprecedented, right, It's pretty predictable.
It's pretty well protected by current constitutional law that will
remain in place so long as we have a conservative
Supreme Court almost for certain right, it has happened at times,
(16:03):
it's been threatened at other times, and so like, this
is a fairly predictable escalation. And I don't think it's
in the category of like authoritarianism per se. It's more
like maximizing what's pretty clearly within the rules constitutionally, you know.
With that said, I do feel remister for like talking
(16:25):
about some of the problems of gerrymandering. First of all,
it means that in a large majority of districts, perhaps
ninety percent for Congress, doesn't matter, it's going to be
democratic Republican combined with all the polarization that we have today. Secondly,
you have a bunch of fucking wackos in Congress, right,
maybe more on the right and the left. Maybe some
readers disagree and can point to left wing, the squad
or whatever they want. And I don't mean to equivocate those
(16:46):
exactly right, but you know, when you have members that
have no chance of losing a general election, they even
further to the right or the left because they're afraid
of losing a primary. They come more parliamentarian where they
do the bidding of Trump or or Biden for that matter. Right,
you can count and there are a handful of dissident,
(17:06):
contrarian whatever you want to call them, right, independent minded
representatives and Sanders, but there are a few. You can
kind of count them on one hand, more and more
and more, and I'd argue that's not good for the country. Right,
we have not seen, you know, I think compared to Congress,
the courts have done a relatively good job of restraining Trump. Right,
(17:28):
Congress has not Congress. And again we're going to piss
off certain readers, but like listeners, but like you know,
Congress did not pushed back against RFK Junior or Telsea
Gabbard or Pete eggs At being appointed to their respective
cabinet positions. Personally, I think that is these are some
of the worst parts of Trump administration so far. Congress,
which is supposed to have authority over tariffs and Trump
(17:49):
is interpreting the precedents very liberally, right, has not really
pushed back very much on that. Right, we saw how
few members of Congress hoted to impeach Trump even after
January sixth, and the handful who did, very few of
them remain in office today, right, So this is a
big problem. They kind of create self perpetuating polarization.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
And we'll be back right after this when you know,
after last week, I was thinking about kind of you
(18:31):
saying that this should be a constitutional amendment, and I
think that, you know, you've just made a lot of
points for why that should be the case, in the
sense that also if we kind of go back to
one of the core elements of the show, like how
we how we model this right from a game theory perspective,
the outcome as of now like doesn't doesn't look great, right, Like,
(18:55):
we we know how this game is going to play
out if we continue playing it this way, and it's
it's not a very it's not a great game game
tree that we're on right now, right, Like, it's it's
bad options, Like what are if you're the Democrats, right
and you're looking at what's happening in Texas, you have
the option to say, no, you know, they go low,
(19:16):
we go high. Yeah, that hasn't worked well and that's
probably not going to work.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
We're going to go it's tit for tat strategy.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Right, they go, Now, now it's definitely tit for tat.
It's not tit for two tots. Well, maybe it's been
tip for two tats. Right, They've they've been more than
one step behind, and they've let kind of they've let
it devolve a little bit. They're like, well, let's wait,
maybe maybe that tat wasn't really a tat, so maybe
they did start playing that. But now they've realized that, no,
that the tats are going to keep coming, and so
(19:45):
you can you can no longer, you can no longer
sit back, and you do have to start retaliating, in
which case, as we've talked about before, you get that
downward spiral where the payoffs are just worse for everyone.
And as you say, Nate, this isn't good for the
country on numerous levels. Like let's just let's forget you know,
voting rights, civil rights, all of those. Let's just say
(20:07):
that a democracy is good if people are afraid that
voters might not elect them, right, if they feel like
they are accountable to the people that they represent, if
that accountability is lost. Right, if you know that no
matter what I do, I am going to get re
elected with ninety nine percent certainty. Sure ninety nine isn't
(20:30):
one hundred, But as long as you do that, you
are no longer representing your district. You're no longer representing
what the people of your district necessarily want. And sure
there might come a tipping point, but this isn't healthy
and you end up getting policies that you know, as
you said, enthrall to Trump right now, they're Trump dictated
(20:50):
whatever whoever's in power. It's not the premise of the democracy, right,
is that we elect leaders who are going to be
representing our interests in the best way possible. And that
premise gets broken.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, and to send a threshold for this, right, I mean,
you said ninety nine percent percent is like in Alabama
in twenty eighteen, I think it was or twenty nineteen.
There's a special election. Roy Moore, Judge Roy Moore lost
at special election to a Democrat just barely in Alabama
because he had been credibly accused. He denied the allegations
of repeated acts of sexual misconduct with women under the
(21:28):
age of eighteen. And that was enough for the people
of Alabama. Fifty one percent of us say that's too much,
but hey, that was in a pretty good environment for Democrats.
That was also in a time you know, it's five
years ago now, six years ago, seven years ago, a
little bit less polarized than now. So like, yeah, in Alabama,
by the way, is very red, right, but some of
these districts are like more read than Alabama. So you
(21:50):
might have we've done the modeling, right. You may have
a point one percent chance of losing your primary if
you put it into a logistic regression model, or not
your primary, your general election, right if you put it
into a logistic regression model. And so you know, polarization
is not the fault of the Constitution per se. But
like our constitution was probably not designed to deal with
(22:13):
the degree of partisanship. It's not a parliamentary system. Right,
we can have no confidence vote not inclined to deal
with a degree of partisan polarization that we have right now.
And this is a predictable escalation. I mean, you know,
the one Democrat has seems to get this. I saw
a betto betel or work speech. He's, of course down
(22:34):
in Texas trying to encourage Texas Democrats to flee the
state to avoiding a quorum. You can only do that
for so long before you have to see your family
and so forth. He's like, yeah, I don't care if
Rockms do it. We should preemptively do this. I think
it's actually smart, right, good for you, Beto right, which
is that like you can see where this where the
puck is going. Also, these things take time in California. Yes,
(22:58):
you have about initiative deadline. I don't know exactly when
it is, right, but it's going to be litigated in courts.
That's why it's all happening. You know. You might think
that like, okay, if Trump were really cunning about it,
that he would wait and kind of do a sneak attack.
If you do that, it's gonna get struck down by
courts or people might get skittish or techniques like you know,
all the Democrats go to Oklahoma that could actually work
in the short run. So I guess it's smart by
(23:20):
Trump to kick this off now. But given that they've
flagged it, and given that if it doesn't happen this
year in one state, it'll happen in other states, you know,
the cat is out of the bag. And Democrats are
I think being smart by understanding this, right, I mean,
I think they're trying to like they're trying to like
weave it into a narrative of like Republicans are terrible
(23:41):
for democracy, and we're reluctantly reciprocating. I mean, I don't know.
That's a little bit kind of too cute by half, right,
I mean it's a little bit like people say, Okay, well, Natee,
you support higher taxes on the rich. I'm not sure
I do or not when you live in a state
like New York. But let's ignore that for now, right,
maybe higher taxes on the rich in Alabama or something.
(24:04):
But like, but why don't you just give the government
more money yourself? It's like no, because I want, like
their to apply reciprocally to everybody, not just to me, right.
Maybe in the long term, if people get very dissatisfied,
they feel like the member of Congress is a wacko,
they feel like their vote doesn't matter, maybe you can
get a momentum for worse and type of of you know,
legislation or constitutional amendment, the former being much more likely. Right,
(24:27):
It's very hard.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah. Constitutional amendments, by the way, are incredibly tough to pass.
So let's just throw that out there. It's really hard
to get those majorities.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
The other thing is that, like you know, look, if
you have once a decade redistricting, then what's called a
dummy mander. A dummy mander is when you cut it
too close and you wind up actually costing yourselves seats.
Right over the course of ten years, there are five
congressional elections after each census, right by six eight, ten
(25:00):
years out, things can change a lot. In the state
like Texas, there's a lot of migration shifts of voting patterns.
So then you can get some dummy manders, right, that
kind of restrain the risk. Wow. The president of the
norm is that you can redistrict whenever you want, right,
and so therefore you can be more aggressive because if
you fucked up then. And by the way, you can
also also gerrymander very importantly state boundary lines that you
(25:23):
are more likely to retain control of the state legislature.
Wisconsin had a cycle for many years where the representative
or the legislator was vastly misrepresentative of a very divided
purple state. Right, and it's self perpetuating until Democrats finally
won control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and force the
drawing of new maps. Right. The one thing that GOP
(25:46):
ought to be careful about is that, like it used
to be, Democrats had benefit from higher turnout. They would
do comparatively better in presidential years and then lose ground
in midterm election years, lose ground in special elections. And
now that's reversed. Right now, Democrats are the college ucated
people who have in this house, we believe signs they're
(26:06):
voting for a municipal dog catcher, their voting in every election. Right.
And since half the elections our congression or are non
presidential elections, actually more than half you account special elections, right,
you could have a thing where now Democrats actually gain
ground at the mid terms in congressional years and use
that to kind of hold the Fort down in presidential
(26:29):
years by gerry mattering aggressively. Right, So I'm not actually
sure that if you get to the equilibrium where every
party when they have every ability to and then some
states requires regular majorities, some states supermajorities based in the
state rules and constitutions. Some states do have requirements that
are stricter than the US Constitution. Right, in the very
long run, everybody's actually aggressive. I'm not sure this actually
(26:51):
helps Republicans at all. Right, there are other debates about well,
Democrats are concentrated in cities, and therefore if you go
for things that are compact, nice listing districts, maybe that
helps Republicans because Democrats are sinc of votes. I'm not
sure that's just true either. For one reason, you have
seen cities actually become comparatively less blue, very blue. New
(27:12):
York is very very blue, but less blue Salzoran in
the primary, right, but less blue than it was in
presidential voting than it was ten or twenty years ago. Right.
And meanwhile, the rural areas are very very very trumpy, right,
I mean, you always you always got the little, you
always got the Ashville, North Carolina's where we are right,
you got the little colleges, you got the gays or
(27:33):
gays everywhere. Right, there are minority groups everywhere, right, they
are always smatterings of Democratic voters, but like less and less,
especially just like rural Hispanic voters, rural black voters, right,
you know, have become more and more Republican. Then you
have very very red areas. And so I don't know
there's any intrinsic disadvantage Democrats in the long run. By
(27:54):
the way, the current maps as of twenty twenty four,
if anything, had a very slight half a point democratic bias, right,
because Democrats kind of had a good year in twenty eighteen,
and you know, California, even though it could Jerrymander even more,
you know, it's a pretty aggressive map and so forth.
And so it's not so much that this, I know,
(28:16):
the equilibrium is one where in theory you'd say, well,
if either party really benefits in the long term, then
why not avoid this mutually assured destruction and you know,
and have a gentleman's gentle woman's agreement to avoid we
us too aggressively. I mean that we know from game
(28:37):
theory for the prisoner's element, et cetera, especially when the
parties increasingly see politics as a zero sum game. It's
very hard for that agreement to hold. And by the way, yeah,
they're selfish too.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
In districting, what happens is that you are usually protecting
incumbents by having fewer competitive seats, right, And obviously some
incumbents become lose a game of lucky chairs, a bit
like a poker tournament. They're kind of eliminated one at
a time, right to protect the other incumbents, But like
for the most part, selfishly. You know, if anything, it
(29:10):
might lead to equilibrium where they're not as aggressive as
they might be because they want the ninety nine percent
chance of not ninety five percent. Right, So they're knits, Maria,
They're nits. Their nits. They're terrified of taking any risk.
They're selfish. I don't know why. I know. I've become
a member of Congress, I you know, I know that.
Does that mean you gotta be weird? I mean maybe
(29:32):
the house? The House seems fun. Fucking governor. I want
to hang out with the governor and have a beer
with a governor. Right, Fucking Senators are like wax figures.
They're weird as fuck. It's one of the most objectively
weird things to be as a United States senator. Why
would you want to do that?
Speaker 1 (29:46):
I have no idea. I don't know why anyone would
want to be a politician. But one of the things
that apart from the weirdness of us senator is one
of the points that you've made in not so many words,
is that one of the things to remember about redistricting
in general is it takes time, and it's a thing
that you're doing for the future, and the future is
(30:08):
inherently uncertain, right and we're we're not quite sure how
trends are going to play out, how different things are
going to play out, how populations are going to move,
and there are certain things that you can't predict, right
Like no one predicted Sure, people said pandemic coming at
some point, no one could predict you know, what happened
during COVID and where kind of people started moving, what
that would do to maps, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
(30:30):
Those events will happen. We're talking about a long timeline,
you know, five years, ten years, all of these things,
and then once you actually do the redistricting, it could
be you know, challenged in court that could take a while.
So all of these things, like this is massive time horizons.
And so when you say, like you're not sure how
(30:52):
much it hurts you know, Democrats, that's you know, it
is other than like everyone loses mutually assured destruction. That's
very true because like we we don't know. And when
you're drawing these lines, you're drawing them with the present
in mind, not with a future mind. Even if you
think you're taking the future into account, right, you might
(31:12):
be making gross mistakes because you have kind of this
present bias. And I don't know how many experts you're consulting,
and what kinds of experts you're consulting, Who the experts
would be that you would consult even to say, okay,
well in five years or in this crucial election, we
predict X and y. This is it's a really really
difficult science, right, It's a complicated process, and just humans,
(31:37):
humans are bad at that kind of uncertainty. And this
is just something that people aren't really talking about. They're like, oh, well,
let's you know, let's see what we can do with
the districts now to try to kind of capitalize on
our votes and those ninety five percent, ninety nine percent,
all of those things that's going to matter, that might change.
A few percentage points might shift here and there. And
as we talk about over and over and Nate, as
(31:59):
poker players, we know a few percentage point shifts actually
make big differences and can make have big waves overall.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
There's one other important aspect here, which is like it
mattered most at the margin when you have close control overall.
For the US Congress. Right now, let's say that the
economy goes into a big recession before next year. Let's
say the terrorists really hurt and let's say it might
be next week's episode. I don't know. Right, Let's say
there's an AI driven recession, that this is kind of
(32:30):
happening in markets, right, that people feel as though GPT
five and related things have hit a plateau. Half the
capital still massive put in these AI companies disappears. Meanwhile,
it removes some mundane jobs. Right. Let's say we're in
a pretty bad recession next year. I mean, Democrats might
have a really good year, right, And in that case,
(32:52):
maybe the Texas market's a pretty clever plan. Maybe then
some districts that ELI and I didn't even look at
come into play and it winds up netting Republican zero
seats or negative one seat or something. In that case,
it kind of doesn't really matter because you only let
people to Congress or two years at a time anyway
to the House, right, and in that case there are
kinds of a huge majority anyway, right, So what matters
(33:15):
is how robust is the map in a relatively neutral
national environment where you were swing districts in your state
who determine overall control of Congress. But I think you know,
members of Congress are selfish, I guess rationally so, right,
and so they are sometimes I'm going to pushtingus as
far as they might if you were, if I were
playing fantasy politics and trying to maximize seats for my party. Right.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
But but yeah, yeah, all true, all true. And by
the way, I do want to point out, since we
kind of were talking about the weakening of the Voting
Rights Act, et cetera, that these were distinctoring, these redistricting maps,
and these voting maps are for all sorts of elections,
because you said, you know, you were you were talking
(33:59):
about the fact that you know, presidential election is just
one and one of many, many, but because this week
there actually was an important federal decision in Mississippi where
Mississippi was ordered to redraw Supreme Court electoral map because
it was found to violate the Voting Rights Act by
diluting the power of black voters. So this is a
(34:20):
decision that just happened this week, the week that we're taping,
and it's been litigated by the way it's the lawsuit
was first filed in April twenty twenty two, so that's
how long it took for this decision to be made.
So this just highlights several of the points that we've
been talking about. It is something that's kind of also
in the news that didn't make as many headlines because
(34:40):
it's not as big a story on some level as Texas, California,
all of that, But it does illustrate a lot of
these points that we've been talking about, including the fact
that the Voting Rights Act is actually still being used.
We'll see what happens. Right this is a federal court,
but you can see this being appealed even further.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
And we'll be right back after this break. What do
you do if you're a citizen, a voter, you know
you might want some type of bipartisan grassroots effort. Right.
(35:30):
I mean we've seen like democratic groups that formulated, or
progressive groups or just anti anti gerrymandering groups have conceded
they've understood the prisoner's aleever, right, they're like, it is
fucking terrible if the other side does this and we don't,
and so like, you know, maybe you need a bipartisan
grassroots movement, and you know, we have ignored like there
(35:52):
might be some benefit to this kind of half stance
Democrats are taking where they're like this is bab or
gonna do it anyway, right, I mean a principle, if
you shift the overall electric because you persuade people that
Republicans are trying to steal elections or steal majorities in Congress, right,
that could have a backlash. I mean, I think it
doesn't help Democrats that they have no always made aggressive
(36:14):
districting their priority. Necessarily no constitutional or congressional led actions
to prevent this, and so like I know right now,
I wouldn't worry about that messae fiwre it. I'd be like,
we know where the puck is going, right, we know
where the puck is going, and maybe voters will see
the implications of this where they have some fucking whacko
(36:35):
representing them in Congress. Their vote doesn't matter. Right, They're
already a state where the vote probably doesn't matter. They
used to be a liv bit for Congress where it did, right,
And people get fed up and there's some push against
this now where if you're a state legislature and you
draw a mid district in mid decade map or really
aggressive map or we can the VRA or whatever else,
people know your name and they vote you out of office.
(36:56):
One come in general that political types have is to
focus too much on federal elections and not enough on
state and local elections. Right, so you know, making this
an issue where Okay, this guy is a ring leader
and we want to go him out of office, you
know what I mean. You can even pick a Republican
who is just as conservative on an abortion or whatnot, right,
but like but not trying to you know, steal quote
(37:19):
unquote democratic rhetoric. And we haven't really seen that much
focus there. I mean, you don't have focus. Then what
happens is the default equilibrium. That's what prevails. And the
equilibrium here is that you're gonna have it's unlimited by courts,
it's unlimited by political incentives. It's unlimited certainly by any
trust the parties have in one another. And I'm not
being totally both sides think the GOP kind of mostly
started it right, but Democrats have responded in kind. I mean,
(37:42):
there are lots of various of jerrymanders. Illinois, for example,
is one state that, like you know, not that blue
down in south southern Illinois, but like you these crazy
looking districts, right, and so we know where the puck
is going. And Democrats are fooling themselves if they think
they don't have to play the game. And if they
do play the game, they might not lose the game, right,
they will have plenty of control of their own and
blue states. There are plenty of people and seats in
(38:04):
blue states, and so and so I don't know betto
had it right.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, So let's see how it Let's see how it
plays out in California, and maybe we'll see a roadmap
for getting this to play out on a broader scale.
In any case, a really really interesting, I think topic
with lots of different things to consider and lots of
applications for how we think about US politics and what
the future of politics is going to look like. I
(38:27):
don't have a prediction. I don't want to be optimistic
or pessimistic. Let's just wait and see. You know how,
when how this plays up?
Speaker 2 (38:36):
When in Nvidia and open Ai and Tesla, you know,
they control the majority of seats in Congress anyway in
twenty fifty, I think, and like the four remaining people's
seats from New York, who really cares, right, they can't
really do very much. That's probably where we're atting.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I think we're Yeah, that does that does seem likely
night And on that very promising note, you and I
can both resume our non US adventures and let's see
what's happening in the news and in the breaking news
side next time we talk. Let us know what you
(39:17):
think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky
Business at Pushkin dot fm. And by the way, if
you're a Pushtin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content
for you that's coming up right after the credits.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. What a nice price
you get access to all that premium content and ad
for listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya Gerwit. Sally
Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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