It's math and realpolitik. The US is set to have a majority of minorities relatively soon after a long period of time on the horizon. Minorities are poorer, and don't vote for Republicans when they do vote, which isn't that frequently. Thus, they need to be prevented from voting if they seem as though they are inclined to vote, because they will not vote for right wing candidates in the way that poor whites will. The Hispanic population inclined to vote Republican due to religion does defy the paradigm I outlined, but they're an outlier. This is why we see all sorts of "Voter ID" initiatives coming out of red states. Getting an ID that costs $25 is easy for whites, who are more likely to have the money to do so, and more likely to vote Republican as well.
You say gerrymandering doesn't help the GOP, then link an article which describes how gerrymandering has allowed for the complete and uncontested domination of half of the legislature by the GOP for over a decade. There's only two houses in Congress, and three presidential elections and numerous mid-terms is a long time for half of congress to be safely locked down. Then there's the fact that the lockdown of the House has occurred during a very protracted time of endless GOP fumblings, failings, catastrophes, and unprecedented low approval ratings. Without gerrymandering, the House GOP would have been ghosts in 2008, then again in 2012, then again in 2014...
As far as Massachusetts goes, we have a history of picking centrists when the left's candidate is weak. This happened in recent memory with Baker, Romney, and also Scott Brown. That being said, MA is also strongly left/European, so you wouldn't even see the start of anti-voter campaigns against either side here.
> You say gerrymandering doesn't help the GOP, then link an article which describes how gerrymandering has allowed for the complete and uncontested domination of half of the legislature by the GOP for over a decade.
Single member districts and the concentration of liberals in urban enclaves helps the GOP, but very few sane districting systems (using single member districts) would fail to produce the same outcome -- you'd have to actively gerrymander in a way that breaks up communities with similar demographics to get a near-proportional representation out of the existing population distribution.
While gerrymandering may help the GOP in some cases, the big thing that helps the GOP isn't gerrymandering so much as the basic structure of the electoral system (which also makes gerrymandering a high-stakes game.)
Which is why Lessig proposed ranked-choice voting in multimember districts. Multimember districts with proportional representation within districts eliminates the high-stakes districting decisions that make gerrymandering possible (there are still district lines that need drawn, except in small states, but the details of where they are drawn has much smaller impact on outcomes), and also eliminates the natural advantage that a group whose support is a small majority over a wide area has over one that is supermajority in a concentrated area, tending to produce results in the legislature that are overall more proportional to those in the electorate.
You say gerrymandering doesn't help the GOP, then link an article which describes how gerrymandering has allowed for the complete and uncontested domination of half of the legislature by the GOP for over a decade.
That's not what the article says. At one point it suggests gerrymandering is good for maybe 6-8 GOP seats (and it's not clear that counts any offsetting gerrymandering in Democratically controlled states).
Much of the rest of the GOP "lock" on the House is described thusly:
Even so, “by far the most important factor contributing to the Republican advantage,” Mr. Chen says, “is the natural geographic factor of Democrats’ being overwhelmingly concentrated in these urban districts, especially in states like Michigan and Florida.”
> The Hispanic population inclined to vote Republican due to religion does defy the paradigm I outlined, but they're an outlier.
You have this backward. The Hispanic population tends to be naturally left leaning (immigration reform, worker's rights, protection from the police, etc.), but can be convinced to go somewhat to the right with enough bashing from the Pope/pulpit.
Marijuana legalization in California was a good example the last time it popped up.
Texas went minority-majority in 2011 yet voted resoundingly Republican in the 2012 presidential and 2014 gubernatorial elections—Davis lost by 20 points in November.
Any woman in Texas is starting from an in-built 10 point disadvantage. Ann Richards was damn near legendary genius levels of campaign competent, and she still needed the opposing side to basically self-destruct to barely squeak by to win the governorship.
So, if you combine the fact that Wendy Davis was female and was facing a very competent political opponent, 20 points isn't really surprising. Her distribution was exactly what you would expect (check the county results map on the right hand side):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_gubernatorial_election,_...
You say gerrymandering doesn't help the GOP, then link an article which describes how gerrymandering has allowed for the complete and uncontested domination of half of the legislature by the GOP for over a decade. There's only two houses in Congress, and three presidential elections and numerous mid-terms is a long time for half of congress to be safely locked down. Then there's the fact that the lockdown of the House has occurred during a very protracted time of endless GOP fumblings, failings, catastrophes, and unprecedented low approval ratings. Without gerrymandering, the House GOP would have been ghosts in 2008, then again in 2012, then again in 2014...
As far as Massachusetts goes, we have a history of picking centrists when the left's candidate is weak. This happened in recent memory with Baker, Romney, and also Scott Brown. That being said, MA is also strongly left/European, so you wouldn't even see the start of anti-voter campaigns against either side here.