Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Republicans used redistricting to build a wall around the House. Trump just tore it down.

Republicans used redistricting to build a wall around the House. Trump just tore it down.
Excerpt: For years, some Democrats said gerrymandering was an insurmountable roadblock to the House majority that couldn’t be cleared until after the 2020 census. Then along came President Donald Trump. House Democrats steamrolled Republicans in an array of districts last week, from those drawn by independent commissions or courts, to seats crafted specifically by Republicans with the intention of keeping them in the GOP column. The overriding factor: a Republican president who political mapmakers could not have foreseen at the beginning of the decade. Trump altered the two parties’ coalitions in ways that specifically undermined conventional wisdom about the House map, bringing more rural voters into the GOP tent while driving away college-educated voters. The trade worked in some states. But it was a Republican disaster in the House, where well-off suburbs, once the backbone of many GOP districts, rebelled against Trump in 2016 and then threw out House members in 2018..

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