What Is The Racial Makeup Of Wisconsin's Legislative Houses
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In the aftermath of the November. 6 elections, words similar "fickle" and "schizophrenic" are being bandied virtually to describe the Wisconsin electorate.
How else tin can anyone explain a group of voters who simultaneously picked Democrats Barack Obama for president and Tammy Baldwin for U.Southward. Senate while preserving a 5-3 Republican edge in its congressional delegation and giving the GOP a commanding majority in both houses of the state Legislature?
But the vote tallies in Wisconsin'southward congressional and state legislative races were not nearly every bit lopsided as the parties' resulting share of seats, according to a Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism analysis. The breakup between Republican and Democratic votes was shut fifty-fifty in the races for Congress and country Legislature, where the GOP scored substantial wins.
Some election observers say these results, which ensure that Republican Gov. Scott Walker will have strong GOP majorities heading into the next legislative session, owe largely to redistricting — the redrawing of voting district boundaries based on the U.S. Census.
"The issue of this year'south U.S. House also as state Senate and state Associates elections testify to the power of redistricting," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan make clean-government advancement grouping.
For instance, Republicans received 49 percentage of the 2.nine million votes cast in Wisconsin's congressional races, but won five out of eight, or 62.v percent, of the seats, according to the Center's analysis. The Middle analyzed unofficial 2012 results reported by the Milwaukee Journal Picket and official 2010 results from the country Government Accountability Board.
The vote breakup in the land's congressional races was comparable to that for president and U.Southward. Senate, where the Autonomous standard-bearers won 53 percent and 51 percent, respectively.
Wisconsin's experience is not unique.
Geoffrey Rock, a law professor at the University of Chicago, recently wrote in a Huffington Postal service web log that Republicans won 55 percent of all House seats nationally while capturing less than one-half of the total vote. Stone said the GOP "won command of a substantial majority of land governments" in 2010, so "used that power to redraw congressional district lines in such a mode as to maximize the Republican outcome in the 2012 House ballot."
In Wisconsin, redistricting based on the 2010 Census was done largely in secret past the Republicans who controlled the state Legislature. Democrats accused the GOP of using this opportunity to cement its balloter advantage, which in itself is non illegal.
In March, a panel of three federal judges upheld most of the state'due south redistricting process, including the congressional component. The panel did strike down the redrawing of two Associates districts, saying information technology diluted the power of Hispanic voters.
"There is no question — none — that the contempo redistricting endeavour distorted the vote," said Ken Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Nobody takes seriously the notion that the legislative programme for congressional districts wasn't politically motivated."
McCabe said the lines were "drawn in a fashion that squeezes most Autonomous voters into a few districts and widely disperses their voting ability across the rest of the districts." That left GOP candidates "with a pronounced balloter advantage in congressional and legislative races."
Simply Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, the Assembly speaker-elect, didn't agree that redistricting played a significant role in his party'south fortunes. He said there have ever been districts that due to high turnout and other factors lean to i side and that the GOP just did a better job of getting out the vote.
"Every district is on its own," Vos said. "There are competitive seats in every part of the land. And I think that at the end of the 24-hour interval, voters fabricated a option to pick the best individual candidate."
In the 2010 contested Assembly races, the GOP got a slightly larger proportion of seats than votes. In 2012, that design was even more pronounced.
This year, Republicans won 56 of the 76 contested Assembly seats in the Nov. 6 election. That's 74 percent of the seats — which they won with just 52 pct of the ii.two one thousand thousand votes.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin furnished the Heart with data showing that if uncontested races were included in the analysis, Democrats really received 200,000 more than Assembly votes than Republicans. Most uncontested races were in Autonomous districts.
The GOP's new sixty-39 majority in the Assembly is nearly the same every bit it was heading into the election: 59-39, with one independent.
In the state Senate, Republicans won six of eleven contested races, including ii seats that had been held by Democrats. The Republicans now accept a 17-xv advantage in the state Senate, which will probable increase to 18-15 later a December special election in an overwhelmingly Republican district.
Just the Democrats really outpolled the GOP in these contested state Senate elections, winning 50.5 percent of the 941,000 votes bandage.
Cal Potter, a former Autonomous land lawmaker who now serves on the board of Common Cause in Wisconsin, a nonpartisan watchdog group, noted that the redistricting after the 1990 and 2000 Census was washed by the courts, because the Legislature and governor were split and could not agree on a plan. This time around, he said, the GOP ran the bear witness and was able to maximize its balloter advantages.
The nonprofit Wisconsin Middle for Investigative Journalism (world wide web.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Eye practise non necessarily reverberate the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
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Source: https://wisconsinwatch.org/2012/11/2012-election-analysis/
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