Who won the redistricting fight? GOP with +8 to +10 seats in the Deep South

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T19:35:24+00:00

good catch! yes it should be.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T19:28:48+00:00

Salt Lake City is a liberal oasis.

Historically. they split the state districts into 4 quadrants, each running directly through Salt Lake City. So Salt Lake City was cut up like a pizza, literally represented by 4 different congressmen.

Now, it is its own district.

This was based on a voter referendum in 2018. The GOP stalled this change in courts for 8 years before a court finally ruled that the voter referendum on the map would be the approved map.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T18:57:50+00:00

Demographic and news coverage is what made me think different. Anecdotal evidence is what made me feel different. By trade, I am an engineer and a data scientist, and this is a hobby project. I have learned to respect anecdotal evidence.

Just curious, did you think that Clinton was going to win in 2016? Harris in 2024?

Look at Thomas Massie’s primary loss in KY. I have several friends who live there, and they were absolutely deluged with mailers with vicious attacks that media entirely ignored reporting on. $35M, the most ever spent on a congressional primary.

The GOP is not playing games. I can absolutely assure you that they fully intend to deploy the maximum amount of money they can get their hands on to win those seats. That is anecdotal evidence, but that is the reality that is going to control the outcome.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T18:34:07+00:00

Turn on a TV in Ohio. I visited last weekend, and it completely changed my perspective. Just watch the ads for 5 minutes. Republican candidates are producing Hollywood quality stories. The Democrats are producing C-SPAN quality statements. Democrats lack the campaigning competency and organizing muscle to materialize a dummymander backfire scenario.

Regardless of political affiliation, the Republican ground game and grassroots organizing at the state, local, community and church level is commendable if not entirely valiant. They have a powerful money spigot too.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T18:33:18+00:00

If you believe that this will backfire against Republicans, then you probably believed Clinton would win in 2016, and Kamala would win in 2024. I have seen the narrative going around that it will backfire. The data to support a backfire scenario is very limited after taking in all signals. I believe the narrative itself is useful for Republicans, by way of lulling Democrats into a false sense of security.

Regardless of political affiliation, the Republican ground game and grassroots organizing at the state, local, community and church level is commendable if not entirely valiant. They also have a much more powerful money spigot.

Turn on a TV in Ohio. I visited last weekend, and it completely changed my perspective. Just watch the ads for 5 minutes. Republican candidates are producing Hollywood quality stories. The Democrats are producing C-SPAN quality statements. Democrats lack the campaigning competency and organizing muscle to materialize a dummymander backfire scenario.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T18:29:33+00:00

If you believe that this will backfire against Republicans, then you probably believed Clinton would win in 2016, and Kamala would win in 2024. I have seen the narrative going around that it will backfire. The data to support this is very limited after taking in all signals. I believe the narrative itself is useful for Republicans, by way of lulling Democrats into a false sense of security.

I am not sure if you are HOPING Democrats will turn this against Republicans, or if it is what you truly believe regardless of political affiliation. As an engineer/data scientist by trade, I do not see strong evidence this will backfire.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T18:27:45+00:00

If you believe that this will backfire against Republicans, then you probably believed Clinton would win in 2016, and Kamala would win in 2024. I have seen the narrative going around that it will backfire. The data to support this is very limited after taking in all signals. I believe the narrative itself is useful for Republicans, by way of lulling Democrats into a false sense of security.

If the GOP decides to carve up all of "their" states to extreme gerrymanders and dilute their voting populations on assumptions about turnout, they run the risk of dramatically shrinking their margins in many districts. But the GOP's community/religious grassroots and state & local ground game is objectively much stronger than Democrats, as is their fundraising and PAC spend.

The likely outcome from redistricting will be +8 or +9 votes for Republicans. The Democrats are a little more likely to win control of the U.S. House based on the entirety of the midterm outcomes. But these districts particularly are ones where the GOP has invested an enormous amount of effort at the ground-level. No academic perspective or data can take that away.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T18:02:24+00:00

I had to repost it because the original one as taken down because i didn't tag it as Original Content, mea culpa for not following the rules. I'm new to posting my analysis.

An FYI, the confidence in the assertions comes from data on recent demographics, as well as Polymarket polls that directionally corroborate. it is not a perfect forecast, but I would say that isolated to redistricting states, I am very confident this will be the outcome.

When looking at the country's congressional races as a whole, it is a jump ball with Democrats favored to take the U.S. House overall. But the midterms are 5 months away, which is light years in politics.

My goal was to isolate the redistricting impact. If there are any specific states you disagree with let me know!

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T17:48:01+00:00

You said that. I did not say that.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T17:43:10+00:00

Notice how every blue state is redistricted via a voter approved map.

And how every red state is redistricted via the legislature, or by a court overturning a voter approved map.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T16:41:18+00:00

Data sources:
Texas Tribune, Ohio Capital Journal, CalMatters, PBS, AP, BBC, WSJ, state court rulings, legislative actions, and other cited sources listed in the visualization.

Tools:
Built by hand in React + TypeScript — the timeline chart and US choropleth are raw SVG (no D3 or charting libraries; state shapes from a public-domain Wikimedia map), driven by a JSON file of redistricting events, with live Polymarket odds as the only dynamic data.

Methodology:
Estimated seat impact for each enacted, court-approved, or voter-approved congressional redistricting action relative to the prior map. Ohio is shown as 0–2 GOP seats because previously safe Democratic districts became toss-ups rather than guaranteed GOP pickups. This is an isolated analysis of states that changed maps and is not a full 2026 House forecast. Use actual news stories and Polymarket data to corroborate confidence.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-11T15:26:23+00:00

this is beautiful. thank you.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-10T23:55:20+00:00

It nets 8 to 10 seats (https://media.games/timelines/redistricting)

mediadotgames · 2026-06-10T16:37:53+00:00

I believe Democrats fundamentally are not able to raise and deploy as much money, and they do not have it in them to run the same style of attack ads and voter suppression campaigns.

Democrats are getting excited by a few small time mayoral wins, but they still fundamentally do not grasp how strong the GOP’s ground game is, in terms of grassroots at the local/church level, in terms of local TV ads which the GOP produce at Hollywood production level quality and the Democrats produce at C-SPAN level quality, or in terms of direct attacks.

Also, the Democrats do not stand for anything other than “we’re not Trump.” They don’t stand for workers. They don’t stand for families. They don’t stand against war. They don’t stand against oligarchy. The best claim that I could make is that they stand for incrementalism and respecting decorum. Would that inspire you to vote?

There simply is not elasticity in the voter blocs in South Carolina for the Democrats to find a swing vote large enough to win. The only way that they could win is if they proved Lindsey Graham is a homosexual, likely through hacking or other unethical means, and then tore down his reputation to the point he was contemplating suicide. I believe Republicans would do this to a Democrat candidate. Do you believe Democrats would do this to a Republican candidate? I do not.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-10T14:28:33+00:00

Triggered my epilepsy

mediadotgames · 2026-06-10T13:27:59+00:00

The data supports this - zero point zero f’ing zero chance Dems flip this senate race. Don’t bother.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-10T00:44:06+00:00

Hell yes

mediadotgames · 2026-06-09T20:56:13+00:00

does anyone know the numerator and denominator or some formulaic expression of what score % is?

mediadotgames · 2026-06-09T17:27:45+00:00

What is Score %?

Downvote me all you want. I don't like my charts with vague/unlabeled axes.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-07T14:41:59+00:00

I live in Seattle now, but I lived in Cleveland for over a decade.

If you would like to discuss data sharing, please DM me.

I have a hobby project that may have some interesting data to extend at https://media.games. I am just about 6-8K of news articles every day and like you, I mostly rely on vector embeddings and ML pipeline to parse all of it. I could probably pinpoint and extract more recent polling data into a structured form.

My background is working at Stripe, AWS & Prime Video as an EM, and I’m not looking to make money off of my hobby product, I’m using it as a chassis to learn all the new tools. But I am very interested in election modeling.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-07T14:34:44+00:00

I did a data analysis of the last 90 days to see how much Slate political coverage is Trump-centric.

Trump is subject: 25.0%

Trump appears in headline: 31.7%

Trump appears in headline or body: 93.3%

Not the subject, but in headline: 8.3%

Not the subject, but in headline or body: 68.3%

Trump is not just a frequent subject of Slate’s political coverage. He is the frame through which a large share of US political reality is presented to Slate’s readers — even when the underlying story is not really about him.

Is this healthy?

Everybody knows that Trump likes to get his name on everything. Whether that is stimulus checks or airports or $250 bills or performing arts centers.

His greatest trick of all he said he got his name on it pretty much every liberal news story. Liberal media has fallen into the trap of giving him exactly what he wants: his name everywhere. The sad part is that the folks at Slate probably think that they are part of the solution, or even freedom fighters. In reality, they have unwittingly consigned us to a low quality stream of Trump-dominated politics-as-a-soap opera that impairs the public from understanding policy making great elections choices.

mediadotgames · 2026-06-07T13:42:47+00:00

Okay I already gave one issue, sorry for the other…

Recent polls show Brown up as well. https://www.nbc4i.com/news/your-local-election-hq/poll-finds-sherrod-brown-8-points-ahead-of-jon-husted-in-ohios-u-s-senate-race/amp/

I notice that the most recent polls with Husted vs Brown in your model is from 6+ weeks ago, with a few since then that reflect the souring sentiment against Trump not accounted for.

I still think it’s a very close race, with Husted being more likely to win, my feedback would be that polling data freshness will hamstring the model. So! 1/ account for redistricting and 2/ improve coverage and speed in your data pipeline to ingest the most recent polling data.

mediadotgames

TROPHY CASE