December 4, 2018

Chart of the Day: Wisconsin Gerrymandering Was Awesome

Check out the results of Wisconsin’s gorgeous, computer-generated Republican gerrymander:

Recall that the goal of a gerrymander is to stuff as many opposition votes as possible into the smallest number of districts. In this case, Republicans wanted to create as many districts as possible that were 100 percent Democratic, and boy howdy did they succeed. There are 30 (!) districts that are entirely Democratic compared to only eight that are entirely Republican.

What this means is that in 30 districts there are a ton of “wasted” Democratic votes. Every vote over 50 percent does nothing except give the Democrat in that district a bigger win. If the district lines were fairer, many thousands of those Democratic voters would instead be in competitive districts giving Republicans a run for their money.

The end result is that Republicans won 46 percent of the statewide vote but 64 percent of the seats in the state Assembly. Now that’s gerrymandering!

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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