Time to gerrymander in New England!

https://howiecarrshow.com ^ | Nov 7, 2025 | Howie Carr

[bitt]

Would you care to guess how many of those 21 Congressmen are Republicans, representing that 41 percent of the population that voted GOP for president in 2024?

Can we talk about gerrymandering?

A year ago, in the six New England states, 3,095,520 people voted for Donald J. Trump.

That works out to just under 41 percent of the overall electorate.

Next statistic: New England has 21 of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Would you care to guess how many of those 21 Congressmen are Republicans, representing that 41 percent of the population that voted GOP for president in 2024?

The number of Republicans is zero. Democrats, with 59 percent of the voters, control 100 percent of the 21 seats.

Republicans, who are 41 percent of the voters, get zero percent of the seats.

Don’t Democrats claim to believe in, among so many other wonderful things, diversity, equity and inclusion?

How is basically gerrymandering 41 percent of New Englanders into political oblivion a celebration of DEI?

I bring this up today after the decision by Maine Democrat Rep. Jared Golden not to seek reelection. Since 2018, he has represented the Second District of Maine, the northern part of the state, which is basically a Republican district.

How Republican is the electorate of the Second? They voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. In Maine’s system of allocating electoral votes by Congressional district, the Maine Second gave Trump his only electoral votes in New England in the last three elections.

Last year Trump carried the Second with 53.5 percent of the vote.

So why does the Second have a Democrat Congressman?

The answer can be summed up in three words:

Ranked-choice voting.

[Capn Hayek]

FWIW -

Hate on the sponsors of the site if you want, but there’s a pretty good tool where you can attempt to draw your own maps here: https://districtr.org/

It’s a bit wonky to use, but you can quickly see the problem...

Districts MUST be contiguous. Within a state apportionment, districts MUST be roughly equal in population.

MA is impossible. CT is nearly impossible. Maine? The lines are about as good they’re gonna get (and with Golden not running? The GOP should pick up a seat). NH? Unless you want to give up totally on one of the two seats, you can draw a really squiggly 3/4 donut to max your chances in one (and totally give up the other) but the current split makes both seats competitive.

Reality is reality.

[wintertime]

My formula:

Equal numbers of people included in districts composed of the smallest possible perimeters. This is a completely mathematical solution and likely to produce districts consisting of voters of similar cultural backgrounds and concerns.

[scrabblehack]

In general they need to follow census blocks, which in general are not quadrilateral.

You are on to something though.