Red State Blue State Part I

Democrats have come up with the idea that the people are moving from blue states to red states must be Democrats. So they’re going to turn red states, well, a little less red. What you see is what you get. These people are already voting and how they vote can be seen in congressional and Presidential elections. We’re seeing the results. Nevada and Colorado look like they have flipped, but the only other state that looks like it’s moving Democratic is Montana.

Increasing the number of districts in a state just divides the Republican and Democratic votes in the state a little bit differently. With Republicans controlling the redistricting in some of these they’ll just divide them up a little bit differently. The more districts you have, the easier it is to gerrymander.

The chart below shows where each state was in 2004, before the switches, 2008, at the Democratic height, and where I expect them to be in 2012. The top group are the states gaining seats, while the bottom group has the states losing seats.

My projections have the Democrats gaining 8 seats and losing 6. The Republicans gain 4 seats and lose 6. “Aha!” The liberal says, “I see! The Democrats will gain with redistricting!” Yes, they will and part of it is the blue state people moving to red states. More of it has to do with the bloated number of seats the Republicans hold. Even without redistricting they would be bound to lose seats. They simply hold to many marginal districts.

If the Democrats net 2 seats out of the states that are redistricting, that would mean they’d have a 240-195 deficit. I think the GOP can live with that. They’ll have to rely on the states that are retaining their seats. That’ll be difficult. The only states where Republicans currently have seats and the Democrats control redistricting are Arkansas, West Virginia, and Maryland. Arkansas and West Virginia actually gave John McCain a higher share than they gave George Bush. So these states are moving heavily in the other direction. Maryland is already heavily gerrymandered. It’s conceivable the Democrats could find a way to go from a 6-2 advantage to a 7-1 edge, but that’d only net them 1 seat.

There aren’t a lot of opportunities out there beyond that. They could gain in Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia, Tennessee, New Hampshire, or the Dakotas but I wouldn’t expect much. They’ll need a favorable redistricting from the California commission, which again can’t be counted on.

It’s easy to see that the Democrats should pick up 5-10 seats in 2012, but they’d need people to hate Republicans as much as they did in 2006 and 2008. With George Bush in Texas that won’t happen.