Tennessee GOP robe-bustly celebrates cracking of Democratic strongholds Memphis/Shelby County and Nashville/Davidson County

 

Map and screengrab closeups:  Tennessee Secretary of State

New York Times, 5/7/2026

Apparently, Emily Cochrane is not familiar with the term 'cracking': 

The new map, passed over angry, loud protests that sought to at least slow the vote, splits Memphis and Shelby County into three separate districts, blasting apart the seat of Representative Steve Cohen, Tennessee’s last House Democrat. It also aims to shore up the seat of Representative Andy Ogles, a Republican who was facing a well-funded Democratic challenger, by shifting the boundaries around the liberal city of Nashville.

 

Related reading:

Wisconsin Applied Population Lab, 6/18/2018

Malia Jones explains:

Two core concepts of gerrymandering were central to the arguments presented to the high court: cracking and packing. A third process, known as stacking, also crops up in gerrymandered political maps, but was not the focus of Gill v. Whitford.

Cracking and packing both refer to specific ways of drawing legislative boundaries with the outcomes of elections in mind. These two processes operate in tension with one another, but both can be implemented by a party in power seeking to maximize its electoral chances through gerrymandering. 

Packing refers to 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. 

Cracking involves 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. [emphasis added]

Heather Cox Richardson knows:

By cracking the city of Memphis into three pieces and joining them to white suburbs, the legislature turned all the state’s districts into Republican seats.  [emphasis added]