This is how efficiently Republicans have gerrymandered Texas congressional districts
Texas congressional districts have some peculiar designs. An analysis of them shows just how gerrymandered the state has become. (See an interactive map of the districts; read an analysis on the map here).
Silicon Valley Data Science quantified the shapes of U.S. districts to examine how redistricting affects the distribution of voters, and the advantage it can give to state’s ruling parties.
Data scientists used a formula to determine the compactness and "squiggliness" of every Texas district. They learned “the districts in gerrymandered states are less compact (more squiggly) than those in non-gerrymandered states.”
Some states let bipartisan committees take care of redistricting. But that’s not case in Texas, where the ruling Republican party last rewrote the map in 2012. The result? The Lone Star State has some of the craziest looking districts in the country. Those districts are efficient at creating an advantage for conservative politicians in the state. The study says that gerrymandering gives Texas Republicans an extra two seats in the House (and of course this effect adds up at the national level).
Each Texas district has an estimated population of 698,488 people. However through a strategy called “packing-and-cracking,” redistricting packs Democratic voters into a few districts and dilutes the rest, leaving the GOP with a comfortable majority in the remaining areas.
Buzzfeed and the Washington Post have dubbed Congressional District 35 – which packs together the liberal parts of San Antonio and Austin – one of the worst gerrymandered areas in the country, but this analysis sees a more egregious example in Texas. Congressional District 33 – which connects liberal parts of Fort Worth and Texas – is “squigglier” than 98.6 percent of districts in the United States.
See the gallery above for all 36 of Texas' congressional districts ranked from least to most squiggly.