A number of readers have written say, in so many words, ‘Hey, don’t tell me gerrymandering isn’t effective. These guys wouldn’t be spending all that time and money on it if it didn’t work.’
First, I think you’d be surprised how much money people blow on worthless things. But this isn’t what the authors of the study are saying. They are disputing the contention that gerrymadering has become more effective in recent decades. And if that’s true, then gerrymandering isn’t the culprit for the declining competitiveness of House races.
Late Update: Of course, the best real world test of the role of redistricting is the discrepancy between the results of House and Senate races. Senate races, of course, don’t get redistricted. It’s always the same geographical jurisdiction. One might speculate that the effect of population mobility and people choosing where they live by the culture of a given region is nullified at the state level because states usually have several different cultural affinity regions. So New York state has New York City, Long Island, Westchester. And that’s just in the greater New York metropolitan area. Most of the Republicans are upstate.
