Hacker News Reader

Comment by daft_pink | Hacker News Reader

My opinion is that it’s just partisan gerrymandering creating safe districts is pushing our politics towards the extremes as both parties run far left and far right candidates in their safe district primary. It gives us candidates out of touch with the overall electorate and unable to compromise.

View on HN

Why not both?

Create safe districts, moving the real election to the primary stage, and then give the electorate a doomscrolling-device as their primary information source.

So the primary voters become more radical and paranoid and we wind up with growing proportion of fringe candidates who would lose to a dog if only they weren't safe seats.

Partisan gerrymandering doesn’t affect senate or presidential elections (with the small exception of Nebraska and Maine’s electors) yet those elections have also become more partisan and polarized.

Moreover, the growing rural/urban partisan polarization means even non gerrymandered districts that are created by nonpartisan panels or algorithms are frequently left or right polarized. Creating competitive districts would require gerrymandering in many places in the USA.

You say that like US states didn't have boundaries cut or decisions on when states were admitted to affect elections. For example:

Missouri Compromise, Kansas Nebraska Act, Nevada, Utah, and the Dakotas' existence, Washington DC not having representation, Puerto Rico languishing

Coincidentally it seems like the rural United States has disproportionate representation and power. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the Republican party not winning popular votes in presidential elections for all but one election in over 30 years

State boundaries date to 70 years old or more. The original “gerrymandering” of those boundaries is incredibly out of date. DC was given electoral votes most recently in 1961 with the expectation that it would be a “swing state” evenly split between parties, for instance.

Many solid “red” rural states today frequently elected statewide democrats just a few decades ago.

Biden was the most centrist of the Democratic candidates, and is considered center right by many. It's hard to argue that presidential elections have become more partisan and polarized.

Biden is viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans (as is Trump). As recently as 2008 both major party presidential candidates had net favorable ratings from the country.[0]

That’s not even getting into that the claim of Biden as “center right” is based on Overton window shifting. Biden repudiated many of his earlier more centrist positions on DEI (e.g. his anti-school busing activism in the 70s), immigration, abortion, etc to win the nomination. Compare Biden’s platform and positions to the Obama 2008 campaign platform and can you really see it as a “rightward” shift?

[0] edit - see for instance https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/19/about-1-i...

Don't look at what he's said, look at what he's done. Lots of right-wing policies like anti-immigration, industrial support, tariffs, et cetera.

Partisan gerrymandering means you can push more heavily partisan messaging, pushing the overall constituency further out and making the more extreme candidate electable.

i really value this point, although the fact that biden is president and not elizabeth warren or bernie sanders shows that centrism is a lot more present in the presidency. thanks for your well reasoned comment.

You ever think the "safe" districts are safe because the constituents living in those districts swing further left and right than average?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com