The dark side of whiter voting districts

In 2012, GOP-led statehouses overall gerrymandered districts to make their own safer, largely by shunting minorities and more liberal populations into Democratic districts, and making sure their own districts were more likely to vote Republican.  Thus, even though most of the population growth in the US since 2002 was among minority populations, the Republicans managed to end up with whiter, more conservative districts.

'According to the non-partisan Cook Political Report, House Republicans today represent 6.6 million fewer minorities than in 2002 — the last time the lines were redrawn. The average GOP district is now 75% white, up 2 percentage points after the 2012 reconfiguration, while the average Democratic district is 51% white, down one percentage point since 2002.

[…] Republican districts have less ideological diversity as well. Fifteen years ago, Cook rated 148 congressional seats safe for Republicans, while today there are 186 safe Republican seats, meaning 80% of Republicans face all but no threat of a general election challenge. The districts Republicans control have also become more conservative, heightening pressure to appeal to more ideological constituents. Over the past two decades, the median Republican congressional district went from being seven points more Republican than the national average to 12 points more Republican than the national average.'

The main problem (well, a problem) with all that?  Those districts tend to present more-conservative-than-thou primary challenges. Yes, even though their districts are safe for Republican candidates, they are unsafe for Moderate Republican candidates. Or Compromising Republican candidates.  

So the nature of those challenges and those constituencies is such as to give sitting GOP Representatives very little interest in reaching out to anyone other than their hand-picked conservative white base, who are uninterested in (or downright hostile toward) things like immigration control … which, ironically, the GOP leadership considers a priority item in order to garner more Hispanic support for future presidential elections.  

(h/t +George Wiman)

Reshared post from +Robert Miletich