
Purple America Has All but Disappeared - mrjaeger
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/purple-america-has-all-but-disappeared/
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jrnichols
Everyone wants to blame gerrymandering, but how does that affect presidential
votes?

I wouldn't think that it does. Your local district doesn't dictate who your
presidential vote is for.

"President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was among the narrowest in
history,"

 _goes to show image showing that a huge amount of counties voted for Trump by
more than 20 points_

Hmm.

~~~
Terr_
> Everyone wants to blame gerrymandering

For bizarre _Congressional_ outcomes, yes. That's not new. The article does
not mention gerrymandering at all. Districts just happen to be the most-
granular level of voting-data most folks have to work with, and when they get
redrawn you need to do something to help compare elections from before and
after the redraw.

> "President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was among the narrowest in
> history,"

Well, yeah. That's not new news either. [0]

> image showing that a huge amount of counties

No, it shows a large _land area_ of counties. It doesn't tally up the number
of discrete counties, nor is it adjusted for their wildly varying populations.

[0]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/swing-
state-margins/)

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undersuit
I don't understand. The author is insisting on Twitter that gerrymandering
isn't involved, "the boundaries of America's counties didn't change since
1992."

So when did Electoral Districts become inconsequential?

~~~
pc2g4d
They're not inconsequential, but the analysis they did seems to have been in
terms of counties, not districts, which would insulate their results from
being explained simply as gerrymandering.

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thinkmilitant
I can't help but wonder how much of this is just the evidence of rampant
gerrymandering.

