Quote:
Originally Posted by SanteeFats
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Pack most of a single demographic, in this case black voters, in a couple districts and their votes can't change the outcomes in any of the other districts where your white conservative base holds a slim majority.
added:
All that is needed to carry a district is 50% of the vote plus 1. In fact, any votes received above that number are unnecessary for a deciding outcome. If black voters who lived on the borders with other districts had been incorporated into those other districts instead of packed into the original black districts, the impact in the loss of their votes in those original black districts would be of no consequence to the way the districts have historically voted. But if those same traditional black votes were added to the rolls among bordering districts, their votes might change the historical trends in those district's election outcomes, in this case, district's with a conservative white majority.
Gerrymandering is a way to severely limit the impact of opposition voters by concentrating them into a few districts where they can never achieve an outright majority of seats in a governing body or hold a block large enough to swing a vote one way or another in any other district, and at least achieve some political bargaining power in those other districts.