What's wrong with this picture?
Cracking Janesville a second time.
Map: Wikipedia (rectangle added)
The UW Applied Population Lab defines 'cracking' as
drawing districts in such a way as to divide a concentration of specific types of voters across several districts such that they are a minority in each one, with practically no hope of achieving representation in any of the districts. This practice also helps make districts less competitive.
The UW Applied Population Lab defines 'packing' as
the practice of drawing particular districts in such a way as to ensure that another party's candidate wins that seat by a tremendous margin. Although the opposing party is all but guaranteed the seat, packing makes surrounding districts less competitive, and thus tips the balance of power in the legislative body overall toward the ruling party.
Scott Johnson (R-Jefferson) has represented the 31st district since January 2023.
Related reading:
The Atlantic, 4/8/2021
Many Republican legislators lost their job in the 2018 blue-wave midterm that swept Democrats into the majority in the U.S. House.
But not in Wisconsin. There, Republicans celebrated the fourth straight election in which they maintained close to a two-thirds majority in the state assembly, despite winning about 200,000 fewer votes and losing every statewide race. Those extra 200,000 votes won precisely one additional assembly seat for the Democrats. Since then, their control of the state legislature has remained unthreatened.
How is that possible? After Democrats got wiped out in the 2010 midterms, Republicans gerrymandered Wisconsin with scientific precision—ensuring that in a state more or less evenly divided politically, the GOP would maintain its grip on power regardless of how the voters felt about it. Democrats would have to win by a landslide—at least 12 points, according to one expert—just to get a bare majority of 50 seats in the assembly, whereas Republicans could do so by winning only 44 percent of the vote.
Other posts in the series:
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