Redistricting Reality
In politics, the crayon is mightier than the ballot. A political mapmaker can do more to change the power structure than a herd of consultants with fat bank accounts behind them. And 2011 will be the Year of the Mapmakers.
They'll take the new census numbers — Texas is expected to have a population of more than 25 million — and use them to draw new congressional and legislative districts for the state. The last time this was done, in 2003, Republican mappers took control of the U.S. House by peeling away enough seats from the Democrats to give the ...
Comments (1)
jimrtex
In 2001, Republicans in the Texas House already represented a majority of Texans, though they did not have a majority of the membership. This is because districts were based on 11-year old census data. A member who represented 100,000 Texans in 2000 might still have one vote in the House, the same as another member who represented 200,000.
The redistricting of the House before the 2002 election simply reflected the reality of where the people resided in 2000, rather than in 1990. By the time the first election was held, it was based on 2-1/2 year old census data.
A similar phenomena can be seen in the Legislative Council maps based on the 2008 Census ACS. The 20 Republican-held congressional districts have 1,695,294 of the excess population based on a 35-district scenario, compared to 389,888 in the Democrat-held districts. That is, 81% of the population that would form the three new districts live in Republican districts. This is equivalent to 2.43 of the 3 new districts.
4 of the 7 districts which would have be expanded even if Texas gains 3 seats are held by Democrats. 8 of the 9 district that have an excess of over 100,000 are held by Republicans.