Eli5 gerrymandering and how it works so successfully?
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If you were given a map and asked to draw voting districts on it, you might do something like draw a bunch of squares like a tic tac toe game or something similar. More or less equal in size, kind of “intuitive” something that makes geometric sense. Then the next step would be to change them a bit so they have equal populations. So you might relook at the map and mostly combine existing squares or perhaps divide a few in half. In the city they will be geographically smaller, in the suburbs a bit larger, and in the countryside and rural areas quite large. But it would still be intuitive to a degree for them to be shaped in a rather simple way.
Or, if you would prefer, use municipal boundaries – cities, maybe counties, maybe zip codes, maybe school boundaries or something similar. A way that would seem to make sense for the community.
In any given set of boundaries you will have people of various political persuasions. In the US we are talking mostly about democratic and republican or maybe right or left leaning or something similar.
What the politicians devised is a way to draw the boundaries so that they kinda match the political leanings of the people who live there. What this does is make the geographic shape real goofy, they don’t seem to make much intuitive “sense.” They don’t look like anything else, they don’t look pleasing shapes, they don’t follow much of existing boundaries. They swirl this way and that to grab that neighborhood because they lean that way, and to avoid some other neighborhood which leans another way. They look like barbells and barbie dolls and roller coasters and inkblots or maybe a constellation in the night sky, or the outline of a bird in flight or a pancake where the batter splattered on the pan. You get the idea.
So this housing development along the riverfront is expensive and high income, put that in (or out) of your boundary; the area of apartments near the warehouses in the rundown part of town, make sure to get that out of (or inside) your boundary; the area which used to be a nice part of town but then they built a freeway which drove down real estate prices and it’s not so nice and the population is changing, you want (or don’t want) that in your district. There’s that one part of town which has that catholic school so many people who live around there are catholic, if you want it, make sure you get it, if you don’t, draw that boundary around it.
The purpose of doing this is so that YOUR political party (if you’re in power and are drawing the maps) can “ensure” a win in that district. If you draw it so that it is 90% democrat and 10% republican, it’s almost a no brainer. That’s an extreme example, but it’s the idea.
The name comes from a political with the last name Gerry who did this, and made a district while some said looked like a lizard, or maybe a salamander. So they called it a gerrymander. It was a cartoon in a newspaper a couple of centuries ago.
There are a few strategies of gerrymandering, the goal is to keep your party in power. So you make districts where your party is a majority, and you identify the areas where people lean the opposite way, and you either combine those into one district, so hey, if they win one, it’s only one; or you can split up all the areas which lean the other way and then maybe they don’t win any district at all. If you can make districts with like 52% for you and 48% for the other side, then that’s something of a win. It is so effective because the politicians in power draw the maps, ensuring that their party remains in power. So if they get concerned about changing political tides they can change the map again.
Different areas have different rules and laws about this – who makes the map, who approves them, how often, etc.
In trying to lump together people of one political persuasion, there are other factors that may guide or get lumped in there too – education level, income level, home ownership status, age, religion, and race just to name a few. So if a group of people perceive that they are being treated unfairly and their favored candidates have no chance of winning, they may attribute the motive to sidelining/marginalizing/disenfranchising, etc one of those previously mentioned categories.
That is all, have a good day.
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