It's Never Good to Split in Your Own Face

Sometimes it’s nice when you go far out on a limb with a guess and dangle there – and no matter how many excellent, well-researched reasons you gave to support your guess, it’s still just a guess, so you hold on by your fingertips -- to find out nine months later that experts actually agree.

Back last July, when Texas pushed its mid-census gerrymander that (reasonably) freaked out so much of Democratic leadership, I wrote an article here about how I thought there was a solid chance it would backfire, which is called “dummymandering.”  (Yes, that’s a real term!)

So, it was very nice to see his headline morning in RawStory, from an article in a Florida newspaper.

Mind you, I still don't know if I'm right, nor does this article know if it is.  But when you're dangling from the limb, it's nice to have company.  Especially when it's from experts who have nine months of evidence to have built support.

To be clear, the article is only about debate in Florida on whether to move forward with gerrymandering, but the concept holds the exact same all over.  The reason that legislatures in several Red states have not voted to gerrymander is that the process requires splitting voters away from Safe Red districts and moving them into toss-up districts.  This, of course, makes those original Safe Red districts only "Leans Red," but in normal times, that's good enough to win.  But -- these are not normal times.  Democrats have been picking up 16 points on average in every Special Election since Trump took office. 

Worse for MAGOPs, a Florida statehouse seat in Trump's own district flipped and went Blue, as Democrats gained 22 points!  And just this week, in the deepest Red district in Georgia, so deep Red that Trump won it by 37 points, though the Democrat lost...the party picked up 25 points.

With numbers like that, if you're a MAGOP politicians in a safe district, there's a really good chance that you are not going to be anxious to have Red voters split off from you and stop your seat from being Safe, and turn it into just "Leans Red."  Which not only may not be leaning in your direction if Democrats are picking up 16 points -- let alone 22 points or 25 -- but after all the splitting off of voters, even your "Safe" seat might not be comfortably safe if you find that you need a margin of at least 26 points just to be safe.

​And what are the arguments that Democrats in the legislature are pointing out to the fellow MAGOPs across the aisle?

State Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, a Democrat from Ocoee, said that if MAGOPs do go ahead with Gov. DeSantis’s plan, it’s up to the public to “make their plan backfire,” referencing the recent upset legislative victories in red districts.

“I think everybody right now who thinks that they’re in a plus-10 district should be shaking in their boots right now, because Democrats and Republicans aren’t buying what they’re selling,” Davis said.  “Because the only way that those two seats that have been flipped would flip is because NPAs [no party affiliated voters] said, ‘We’re not leaning on this side anymore.’ [Leaning] Democrats voted Democrat and [leaning] Republicans voted Democrat’” among Independents.

Bingo.  Independent support for Trump has fallen off the cliff to just 20%.  Though I think she’s slightly underplaying the problem for MAGOPs.  Trump’s support among non-MAGA Republicans has plummeted to just 59%.  So, 41% of the party itself is not voting for the party.  That doesn’t mean they’re voting Democratic (some might be, if they’re moderate – and they do exist in the party.  Not much among elected officials, though as voters), but there’s a good chance they just won’t vote at all.

Rep. Davis addressed this very point.

“There are Republicans who are saying -- 'Republicans have had the supermajority, Republicans have the governor’s mansion, Republicans have the speaker of the House and the chair of every single committee and that has gotten us nowhere. So you know what? I’m going to try something new.'  That’s how those two seats were won.”

And it's not just "those two seats."  So far, since Trump took office, 32 Special Elections have flipped Red to Democrats.  On the other hand, during that same period, the number of Special Elections that have flipped from Democratic to Red is...