Happy new year, all! Predictions for 2016, anyone? Ideally with some logical support, but oh heck, it’s New Year’s Eve – let your freak flag fly. Aspirations?
Entries from December 31st, 2015
Attending oral arguments in Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
December 20th, 2015, 11:39pm by Sam Wang
Dec. 25th: Updated with five more FantasySCOTUS predictions. The median outcome still favors the Commission, by a narrow 5-4 majority. In my NYT piece proposing statistical standards to detect partisan gerrymandering, I focused on Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a current Supreme Court case [SCOTUSblog] [Blog for Arizona]. On December 8th I attended oral […]
Tags: Redistricting
The effect of gerrymandering in four states exceeds that of population clustering in all 50 states
December 8th, 2015, 7:00am by Sam Wang
My New York Times piece was specifically focused on the legal question of what a party-neutral standard should look like. It didn’t address the political question: where do such deviations come from? As it turns out, the answer is: post-2010, partisan redistricting accounts for more than half of the total asymmetry in the House. The […]
Tags: Redistricting
Can Math Help Save Democracy?
December 5th, 2015, 10:41am by Sam Wang
In the New York Times I have a piece in the Sunday Review, “Let Math Save Our Democracy.” It describes some simple statistical standards for partisan gerrymandering, and how they might resolve an upcoming Supreme Court case (Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission) quickly and definitively. It’s based on my law article, “A Three-Prong Standard for […]
Tags: Redistricting
Redistricting battles everywhere
December 4th, 2015, 10:27pm by Sam Wang
Bloomberg Politics has an excellent interactive on redistricting battles (ht/ to reader bks). While we’re on the topic, make sure to read the New York Times this weekend. I have a piece on gerrymandering standards in the Sunday Review section. Other entertainment: here’s a cool general-election demographic simulator by Aaron Bycoffe and David Wasserman.
Tags: 2016 Election · Redistricting