I think you mean 2 not 3...as long as there's a line to draw, you can manipulate it. Western Montana would produce competitive elections, as well as Anchorage+Fairbanks only. You're right. Maybe we should use this opportunity to do what every other advanced democracy does, and give these states more seats. According to this cool calculator, Alaska would have 2 House seats (one of which would be an Anchorage seat and manipulable to redistricting, as would Montana. And all we'd need to do to is amend the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 to allow the total size of the House to grow by a formula shaped by the cubed root of the country's population. 3-400,000 Americans will be dead when Joe Biden takes office. The economy will be in free-fall. Trust in government will be at its lowest ever recorded. It's time to think big.
No, I meant 3. But upon further review, I was wrong. With 2 districts, you COULD gerrymander...you could draw one district to deliver 52% of the vote for one party while the other district delivers 70% for the other party.
And that doesn't say anything about state legislative lines, which the state legislatures themselves control. Montana is likely to get a 2nd seat either this go around or the next, as well. Anywhere we can get a line drawn, we need to win seats in the state legislature.
Sorry to monopolize this discussion, but this is oddly morbidly fascinating. If we take Wikipedia's (cribbed from the Census estimates) estimated July 1 2020 entry for estimated US population by state and plug it into the Michigan apportionment calculator I linked to earlier, and keep seats at 435, the margins for states just missing out on seats are: Florida: 23,009 Minnesota: 6,740 Texas: 51,007 California: 98,714 Rhode Island: 7,703 And for Montana to pick up a 2nd seat: a mere 2,856 citizens over surplus needed to get 2nd seat Those are margins heavily subject to manipulation by a lot of excess mortality that demographers were not modeling leading up to 2020.
According to the Census population clock, the cube-root would make 691 House members, which is an increase of of 58.9 percent. Even if it does increase, it won't increase by that much at once. Income taxes would increase to pay so many more representatives and their staffs. Looking at the statewide percent of House seats and House votes in 2018, here is how the states with at least ten House members voted with the party that got a higher percentage of seats than votes in parenthesis and F meaning Fair): CA: 46 D and 7 R (D) TX: 23 R and 13 D (R) FL: 14 R and 13 D (F) NY: 21 D and 6 R (D) IL: 13 D and 5 R (D) PA: 9 D and 9 R (R) OH: 12 R and 4 D (R) MI: 7 D and 7 R (R) GA: 9 R and 5 D (R) NC: 9 R and 3 D (R) NJ: 11 D and 1 R (D) VA: 7 D and 4 R (D) WA: 7 D and 3 R (D) NC had a disputed election that was redone by a special election that made 10 R and 3 D. Those are results after the election, so they do not include CA's special election that the Republicans gained, the three current vacancies, and Jeff Van Drew and Justin Amash's party switches. That's six in favor of each party and FL as fair, but that doesn't mean it would be fair if you added the 13 states as if they were one state. MI, PA, GA, VA, and WA were all one off from what the percent of the statewide vote would have given. The results can be misleading, and I think the Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) should be looked at also. For example, NJ is D+7, so it should have more D+ districts than R+ districts, but it doesn't. It has six D+ districts that are all D+9 or higher, and six R+ districts that are all R+8 or more even. In a great year for Democrats, they were able to win 11 of 12 seats, but the lines still favor Republicans. 1. Where can I find the apportionment calculator? I searched and didn't find it. I know the formula, but it's much easier to have a website do it than to do it myself in Excel. 2. I wonder how many of the recent deaths were by people who already answered the Census and if there are attempts to remove people who die shortly after answering. Given all the things Republicans try to do to win, and Trump's desire to include a citizenship question, I wouldn't be surprised if there ends up being a debate about if the Census should remove people who die. People answer and are visited by Census employees over the course of months, and I don't know if the Census is intended to be correct as of a specific date. https://www.census.gov/population/apportionment/files/Priority Values 2010.pdf says what states would have gotten 436 through 440 in 2010 if there were that many House seats: 436. NC 14th 437. MO 9th 438. NY 28th 439. NJ 13th 440. MT 2nd I'm not saying that those states are most likely to gain seats in 2020.
https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/polls/gideon-continues-to-lead-collins-by-4/ I've seen a few attempts to spin this modest lead number for Gideon as being a good sign for Collins, perhaps as PPP has a dem lean, but I would say its a very promising poll for Gideon. Collins has been in the Senate since 1997 and is only polling in the low 40s (actually the exact same as Trump) and doing so against a lower name recognition opponent. Same poll has Biden +11 statewide.
https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/census/tools/apportionment/ You gotta input the pop estimates manually (copy-paste from Wiki).
If there's a debate, it won't be about this party or that party. It will be state vs. state. I base this on the case in 1 census (I think it was 2000, but don't quote me) in which NC barely beat out Utah for the last extra seat. Utah sued, arguing that Mormon missionaries overseas either weren't counted or were undercounted (can't remember which.) They were right on the facts, that a proper count would have moved the last Representative to Utah. But they lost in court.
It is not just the Biden campaign, across the board Democrats are racking up big money and blowing up records. Gideon in Maine blew Collins out of the waters the first two quarters. Even long shots like Mc Grath or Jamie Harrison are getting huge fundraising numbers. The energy and enthusiasm is clearly on the D side. Some serious Q2 fundraising numbers reported by Senate Democratic candidates: Gideon in Maine reports $9 million, earlier today Cunningham in N.C. said he raised $7.4M and now Bullock reports $7.7 million in *Montana * .“Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham will report raising $7.4 million in the second quarter of 2020, a figure that appears to be a record for Senate candidates from North Carolina in any quarter,” the Raleigh News & Observer reports. In Q1 2020, Cunningham raised $4.4 million while Tillis raised $2.1 million. Between April 1 and June 30, Rita Hart, Democratic candidate in IA's 2nd district, raised more than $620,000 and has $1.35 million in cash-on-hand, according to the campaign. Hart’s Q2 fundraising total is the largest haul in the history of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District. Freshmen Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer in IA-01 raised $875,000 for her reelection campaign. She has $2.7 million cash on hand. Her campaign reports 4,600 first time/new donors to her campaign. The other Cunningham in that tough seat in SC is sitting on $3M (COH). That some crazy money for a congressional candidate. SC-1 Q2 fundraising numbers (April 1-June 30) for Democrat @JoeCunninghamSC in the high-stakes #SC01 race, per his campaign: Raised: $862,633 Cash on hand: $3,089,372 Contributions: 13,605 Total raised this cycle: $4,392,902
Election Twitter’s crowdfunded Alaska poll results will be released Thursday at 10am EDTIt will include AK-SEN, AK-AL, presidential race, Trump approval, Biden favorables, Dunleavy recall, Murkowski favs & moreALSO: there will be a second statewide poll released Monday @ 10am— Jack Vaughan (@JackVaughanTN) July 7, 2020 I'm excited. Fingers crossed for Gross
So a Kennedy will take on the former democrat that switched parties after voting against impeachment. https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/new-jersey/
Absolute treasure trove for Gross: Sullivan leads Al Gross 39-34.But 72% of voters aren't familiar with Gross. And among those who are, he leads Sullivan 56-36. Suggests that if he has the resources to become better known, he can really make it a race: https://t.co/OM1hcQhRku— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) July 9, 2020 He is going to be able to raise millions off of this, and given Sullivan's low name recognition, it's a rare opportunity to define an incumbent in the public eye.
Alaska can't be an expensive market, maybe a long reach, but the DNC should throw some money at this race.
The Lincoln Project had a zoom call this afternoon. Over 10,000 people joined it to capacity, an over 50,000 watched it on Youtube or the webpage. It was pretty interesting and informative. A couple of key takeaways : They will engage with direct voting program on the ground and not just ads. They will continue to targets individually the "enablers", particularly the senators and not just this coming election but also the next mid terms in 2022 and even in 2024. They also mentioned their own polling sow that there is a serious erosion of support for Trump within the Republican base to a point that even Rasmussen own poll had Trump at 75% with R voters. As they said. they are just starting though and will go all the way to defeat Trump, Trumpism and its enablers. Side note, and perhaps good news for Jamie Harrison. they mentioned they have their sights on Lindsey Graham and will go hard after him in SC.
As fall sports are looking increasingly unlikely, I would say that connecting Trump and Republicans Covid-19 response to the cancellation of college football might be a rare realistic path to reelection for Doug Jones.