| HappySqurriel said: Gerrymandering doesn't benefit one party more than another, it benefits the incumbents/establishment of both parties though ... Essentially, how it is used is they take two districts that are somewhat competitive and divide it up so that you have two very non-competitive districts to ensure re-election. As an example, you have a district that favours Republicans 55% to 45% that neighbours a district that favours Democrats 55% to 45% and you re-draw the district boundaries so that you have one district where the Republicans are favoured 65% to 35% and a district where the Democrats are favoured 65% to 35%; and being that neither party will ever lose that seat in an election, and the real campaign becomes the primaries, it will encourage both parties to appeal more and more to their base rather than the typical voter. Now, there are strategies one party could use to their advantage if they controlled the whole process (for example, if there was one district that favours the opposite party that was bordering several districts that favour your party you could re-draw it so that they had a massive advantage in that single district while you had a somewhat stronger advantage in the other three) but the influence of these activities is fairly limited being that there are only a few districts that could really be taken advantage of. |
Exactly, conservatives appeal to the extreme, they always show up at the polls. There is no significant extreme liberals to appeal to, Democrats go for the average voter, liberals, and republican moderates.
