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