Laboratories of democracy
The US states are often referred to as ‘laboratories of democracy’, suggesting that a typical American view of labs may be like this or this.
Back before the US election I posted a picture of the creatively-drawn electoral districts in Pennsylvania. Redistricting is very effective: the Republicans got less than 50% of the total vote for Pennsylvania’s Representatives, but 70% of the seats. The Democrats do the same things — they got 80% of Maryland’s seats with about 60% of the vote — but the Republicans controlled more states in the critical census year, and so managed to get a majority in the House of Representatives with a minority of the vote.
Here are graphs, from Mother Jones magazine. Remember that the moderate right-wing party in the US uses the same colour, blue, as here in NZ, and the red is for Republicans.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »