{"id":8506,"date":"2022-08-02T11:55:08","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T11:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8506"},"modified":"2022-08-02T11:55:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T11:55:08","slug":"what-we-lose-when-we-lose-competitive-congressional-districts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=8506","title":{"rendered":"What We Lose When We Lose Competitive Congressional Districts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;Competitive congressional districts have been&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/as-swing-districts-dwindle-can-a-divided-house-stand\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">steadily disappearing for decades<\/a>. In the current redistricting cycle, six highly competitive districts in the House of Representatives were&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/projects.fivethirtyeight.com\/redistricting-2022-maps\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">drawn out of existence<\/a>. The Cook Political Report estimates that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cookpolitical.com\/ratings\/house-race-ratings\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">less than 8 percent<\/a>&nbsp;of congressional districts will be competitive come November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a problem. It\u2019s not because competitive districts are a powerfully moderating force on our democracy \u2014 instead, the decline of competitive districts is a problem that reflects deeper causes of partisan polarization and leaves the overwhelming majority of Americans in places where their votes don\u2019t matter, and where parties and candidates don\u2019t need to work for anybody\u2019s votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Governing in America requires compromise. But when over 90 percent of congressional districts lean toward one of the two major parties, that means most representatives have little incentive to compromise. In fact, representatives increasingly&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/washingtonmonthly.com\/2016\/01\/10\/the-freedom-caucus-is-sort-of-right\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">face strong pressures to be very partisan<\/a>, which has made governing very difficult.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/what-we-lose-when-we-lose-competitive-congressional-districts\/\">https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/what-we-lose-when-we-lose-competitive-congressional-districts\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Competitive congressional districts have been steadily disappearing for decades. In the current redistricting cycle, six highly competitive districts in the House of Representatives were drawn out of existence. The Cook Political Report estimates that less than 8 percent of congressional districts will be competitive come November.<\/p>\n<p>This is a problem. It\u2019s not because competitive districts are a powerfully moderating force on our democracy \u2014 instead, the decline of competitive districts is a problem that reflects deeper causes of partisan polarization and leaves the overwhelming majority of Americans in places where their votes don\u2019t matter, and where parties and candidates don\u2019t need to work for anybody\u2019s votes.<\/p>\n<p>Governing in America requires compromise. But when over 90 percent of congressional districts lean toward one of the two major parties, that means most representatives have little incentive to compromise. In fact, representatives increasingly face strong pressures to be very partisan, which has made governing very difficult.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[773,542,1018,431,198],"class_list":["post-8506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-compromise","tag-congress","tag-congressional-districts","tag-democracy","tag-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8507,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8506\/revisions\/8507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}