The big refrain when Republicans claim that the California Redistricting Commission gave them too few seats is: “They’re doing badly because they have an unpopular extreme philosophy that’s out of step with Californians.”
Nice sound bite. Except it’s not true.
In the average statewide race in 2006 and 2010 the GOP got 44.7% of the vote. That’s not good, but it’s hardly the GOP’s worst state in the country. And it’s not “an unpopular extreme philosophy.” In almost every election the GOP got above 40%, but the lowest total was 37% in the 2006 senate race.
On a congressional level you have some seats which were unopposed. I filled in an approximate number of votes based on other elections. The GOP got 42% of the congressional vote in 2006, 39% in 2008, and 44% in 2010.
So the worst Republicans have one in the last three elections is 37%. That’s likely the absolute floor. Yet right now Republicans have 35% of the assembly seats, 38% of the senate seats, and 36% of the congressional seats. Based on statewide vote totals this should be the worst Republicans can do.
Yet the GOP is expected to lose seats in all three contingents in less gerrymandered maps. And it’s not due to that extreme philosophy. To better understand this, we need to look at county by county vote totals for the typical race, the 2010 gubernatorial contest between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman.
In San Diego and Imperial Counties Whitman got 52.6% of the vote. The GOP is expected to win 3 of 5 congressional seats, 60%. Someone has to win at least 3, so that’s about right. Let’s add the next three counties north of it, Riverside, Orange, and San Bernardino. These counties are a little better for Republicans. In the 5 counties the Whitman got 55.1% of the vote. Republicans are favored in 9 of the 16 contests in the 5 counties, 56.2%. So that’s about right.
It all falls apart when you add Los Angeles County. Republicans don’t do as well here and managed to get only 33.7% of the vote. As a result they only have 1 of 13 Los Angeles County seats, 7.7%.
When Los Angeles County is added to the total the Republican vote share drops to 45.2%. Yet there are only 27.6% Republican leaning congressional districts in the 6 counties.
It gets even worse if we add the Bay area. Whitman’s 29.5% showing is poor but it results in Republicans winning 0 of the 11 congressional districts. With those added in, the GOP drops to 40.7% of the vote. That’s low, but would still be 16.3 of the 40 congressional seats if they were assigned proportionally. Instead they only have 8, 20%.
Statewide Meg Whitman got 43.2% of the vote. Yet she won only 15 districts, 28%.
The problem that Republicans have is the size of the districts. Big districts hurt badly. Statewide they were shut out despite 43% of the vote in 2010.
So what’s the solution? Well, we aren’t going to a parliamentary system any time soon. So the GOP can’t get the seats awarded proportionally. The smaller the district, the more likely we’ll zone in on a Republican leaning area. The assembly has 80 seats, 20 of which are in L.A. County. Whitman won 3 of these. Of course 15% of the seats of the seats is still too low, but it doubles the 7.7% Republicans have in congressional districts.
So the answer is to increase the number of districts to a point where they’re small enough that Republicans take a greater proportion of seats. There’s a good reason to do that. In Texas the average legislator represents 168,456 people and the average senator represents 815,110. In Florida the numbers are 157,506 and 472,519. Finally, in New York it’s 129,474 and 313,243.
In California, it’s 466,775 and 933,550. That’s too many people. If California did it like the other three states, there would be 221-288 members of the legislature and 46-119 members of the senate, with Florida in the middle at 79. So increasing to 160 assembly seats and 80 senate seats would be a reasonable proposal. I’d go to 250 in the legislature, but that might be too big an increase to do all once. Californians do hate the lawmakers in Sacramento and would go for anything that’d dilute the power. Who knows, maybe some ordinary people would get elected.
The more seats and smaller districts will result in more seats Meg Whitman won. And that’s a referendum Californians could get behind.
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