Sir Xsarus wrote:
What's your math for this? do you have a source with numbers, or are do you just intuitively know the numbers? I'd like to see them if you have a link.
You're kidding, right? California currently has 53 US congressional districts. It's one state, so it has two senators. That gives it a total of 55 electoral votes. If you divide it up into 6 roughly equal sized states, you'd end out with the same total number of districts, each of which would presumably vote the same for their representatives, so the House remains unchanged. However, after the split, because each state would have two senators, you'd increase the total number of EC votes by 10 (so "California" now has 65 EC votes). Assuming 9 districts in each state (with one having 10, which we'll generously give to the Dems), even if just two of those states go for the GOP, they pick up 22 EC votes (9 for each state's districts, plus 2 for each states senators). The Dems, on the other hand *lose* 18 EC votes right off the bat (for the two states worth of districts), but gain 6 votes (cause they've got 4 states worth of senators instead of just one).
Net loss for the Dems is 12 EC votes. Net gain for the GOP is 22 EC votes. The *only* way the Dems win is if they can take all 6 states in every election. Which is not just unlikely, but very close to impossible. And this assumes 4 states go Dem to 2 states GOP. If they split evenly, it's a bigger loss for the Dems. And heaven forbid the GOP is able to pick up 4 of those 6. The bigger point is that several of those states become competitive, while right now most GOP nominees don't even bother because the two big honking metro areas that are massively liberal. outweigh the rest of the state in terms of votes. This is why you can't just look at county outcomes in the past and assume they'd stay the same going forward.
The Senate picture isn't as clear cut. I assumed a 100% senate sweep in each state going one way or the other above, but there's no requirement for that. And there would be at least two states where the Senators could quite possibly split. Point being that, similarly to the EC situation, the Dems are currently getting 100% of the senate seats from California. Just in terms of weight, they're going to lose something in any sort of split. It's not a matter of whether it'll be bad for the Dems, but how bad. Just to maintain the same numerical advantage, they'd have to get 2 more senators out of the result than the GOP. That means that just to break even they have to get 7 of the 12 senators. While I suppose it's possible the Dems could gain out of this, the deck is stacked against them.
You were kidding though, right? I didn't actually have to explain this. Cause... Obvious? Right?