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  • We're going to look at how elections can be won and lost

  • based on the decisions of some of the most important people

  • in politics - the map-makers that draw the electoral

  • boundaries.

  • We'll explore some examples from America's past

  • and its present to understand more

  • about the power of these election maps.

  • Let's start by looking at just some of the basic principles

  • involved.

  • We've got these Tiddlywinks here to help us see what

  • some of those problems are.

  • So when we're talking about election maps,

  • people don't normally think of it in terms of points.

  • But that's what we're actually visualising,

  • isn't it, is information about individuals and how they voted.

  • Exactly.

  • And one of the big challenges of not just election maps but maps

  • in general is how we take information

  • from individuals who voted, in this case,

  • and convert that into information about areas.

  • Now, that's something that geographers

  • call the modifiable aerial unit problem.

  • If we modify our aerial unit, which is essentially

  • the areas that we're going to group people into

  • - in this case it's these chips here

  • that we're going to pool together

  • - if we group them together in different ways,

  • we're going to get a different answer to the question

  • that we're asking.

  • And actually, fundamentally, there

  • isn't a perfect answer to this.

  • So we're going to keep moving stuff around all the time.

  • So we're going to have a look now at these imaginary voters

  • that we have here who have all voted

  • for different political parties.

  • And the first thing about this problem

  • is that there is a problem of scale.

  • So as you change the size of the area, you know,

  • the colour with the most counters changes

  • as you're sizing the area.

  • You can see that on the summary results here,

  • we're changing who's the overall winner simply by varying

  • the size of the area.

  • And this actually is also a function

  • a bit of the density of the points as well.

  • So it may be that in a rural area

  • you could get away with a very big area for our constituency

  • or district, but not many people live in it.

  • If you did the same thing in an urban area,

  • you're going to be exacerbating potential issues in a way

  • that you wouldn't be in the rural because, you know,

  • people are much more tightly packed.

  • There's much more variety and diversity in the way

  • that people are voting.

  • As these areas get bigger, we can see quite clearly -

  • from yellow to red to blue - it's easy to see how the area

  • size can completely change your view of whether an area is

  • affiliated to one particular political organisation

  • or another.

  • So what we're going to do now is take all of these counters

  • back off the screen and just go focus down

  • to four imaginary voters.

  • So if we take this fictitious voting area here - so

  • we've got an imaginary area that we're

  • going to populate with four voters

  • - just four voters to keep this nice and simple.

  • And we want to divide this area just into two summary areas.

  • Where we draw the line makes a big difference.

  • If we draw the line width ways across the screen,

  • we've got a perfect balance of two in each area.

  • Because people aren't dispersed evenly,

  • if we just change the orientation of this line

  • and divide it the other way, we end up with 1 and 3.

  • So we've changed the number of voters

  • in each area just based on where the line's being drawn.

  • That's okay when everybody's voting yellow.

  • The issue starts when we take two of these yellows

  • away and say, well, actually, they're voting red.

  • And now what happens is that the line makes a big difference

  • to the outcome of our imaginary election,

  • even just with four voters.

  • With the line oriented this way, this side

  • is 100 per cent yellow, and over here it's two thirds red,

  • one third yellow.

  • What's going to happen when we change our line?

  • We've actually completely reversed the scenario.

  • This zone out on the left-hand side is now 100 per cent red,

  • and this zone over here is now two-thirds yellow and one-third

  • red.

  • So this is an example of the zoning problem.

  • And the reason why this is so significant when

  • we're thinking about social characteristics

  • like how people vote - people with similar characteristics

  • tend to live closer together.

  • But what we're actually dealing with here

  • in the kind of real world examples

  • is how people with similar views tend to cluster together.

  • You hear this all the time about target seats

  • and so on in elections.

  • That's important, because then it

  • makes it much more significant where these lines get drawn.

  • That's something that the Electoral Reform

  • Society looked at recently.

  • They produced a really interesting animation of this.

  • Just by rotating the zones, you can change completely

  • the outcome of the winner in each of the zones.

  • And this is starting to look more like a real world

  • example now here.

  • As you say, people tend to live closer to other groups.

  • So we can see patterns - kind of spatial patterns

  • - in the layout of the voters, but they may not always

  • be reflected in the eventual outcome.

  • No, exactly.

  • So far, we have been more or less randomly

  • rotating the geometry.

  • Where this gets really interesting

  • is when someone actually has control

  • of where to put our voting boundaries, our election

  • boundaries.

  • And that's something that's particularly

  • associated with the US because of the way

  • that the districting system works in the US.

  • So in the US, this isn't a new thing.

  • This is Elbridge Gerry.

  • He was a founding father but also initiated

  • a whole new genre of political manipulation

  • with what he did with voting boundaries.

  • He was organising the Massachusetts voting

  • boundaries, and he did something fairly unusual

  • which produced a map that the local newspaper satirised.

  • Can you explain what's going on here, James?

  • I suppose it's brilliant in the context of ensuring the result

  • would go his way - was to realise that if he created

  • a district that consolidated the power of his particular party

  • by ensuring that everyone who votes for him are in the same

  • district and then those in districts where maybe there are

  • a greater variety of voting intentions -

  • some people may go one way or the other -

  • if he puts all the people that support him in the same area,

  • he will secure victory.

  • And the strange effect of doing this, of course,

  • is that you end up with very oddly shaped areas

  • as he tries to contort the map to fit his means.

  • And in this case, the cartoonist said

  • it looked like a fictional mythical creature -

  • a salamander.

  • And that's why we end up with the phrase, gerrymander

  • - as in gerrymandering, which is the word

  • we use to refer to when people are manipulating election

  • districts in this way.

  • So I guess people might be surprised

  • when they see that that was 200 years ago

  • that that might have been something

  • that was nipped in the bud.

  • But we can see examples of this still all

  • over the US electoral map here.

  • We've got a map of the US here where

  • we're going to pick up on maybe five of the very evocative

  • names for some of these areas.

  • One of my favourites here is The Duck,

  • which is Ohio's 4th congressional district -

  • which obviously just looks like a duck.

  • It's a really peculiar shape.

  • Even more odd, in some ways, is this Snake by the Lake,

  • as it's known, because that stretches from Toledo

  • all the way over to Cleveland.

  • It's actually much narrower than this, because most of this area

  • is actually Lake Erie, and there really

  • is just a very thin sliver of land going

  • all this way across Ohio here.

  • If we pan out over towards the East Coast,

  • we've got a couple of really interesting ones.

  • This one is Goofy kicking Donald Duck, which is in Pennsylvania.

  • And you can see these areas are barely touching each other.

  • It looks like two completely different areas.

  • Exactly.

  • And the strategy here is - just imagine on the map

  • - go back to the counters we had on the screen

  • at the beginning of this.

  • They're just trying to draw a line without breaking it around

  • the counters of the colour that represent their particular

  • party.

  • Okay.

  • And then just south of this fantastic one is probably

  • my favourite name of the lot, I think,

  • the Broken Winged Pterodactyl of Baltimore,

  • which is Maryland's 3rd congressional district,

  • I believe.

  • The thing that's really odd about all of these examples

  • is they have such a long perimeter given

  • the overall area.

  • They're so windy, just like with Gerry's original example.

  • From a geographer's perspective, what we really love

  • is very compact areas.

  • So squares or circles would be the ideal,

  • but, of course, the world is much more complicated

  • than that, and so you get oddly-shaped areas.

  • But these are just incredibly hard to justify.

  • They just look completely unnatural

  • from a social perspective.

  • And really the only justification is they're trying

  • to maximise their voter share in this particular district.

  • The people responsible for delineating these boundaries

  • is the governing state legislature.

  • So if, for example, a Republican state has got a responsibility

  • to redraw the boundaries, it's much more likely

  • that you're going to see boundaries

  • that reflect a better potential outcome

  • for the incumbent party.

  • This is where, actually, politics kind of overlaps

  • with the independence of statistical authority

  • and things like that.

  • In the US, they've got a census coming up.

  • Knowing where people are is actually an important basis

  • for where you can draw these boundaries

  • and how many boundaries you get.

  • And you end up with this kind of tit-for-tat thing going

  • on where if they manage to beat this and change party

  • representing the area, the boundaries would

  • be redrawn again.

  • There is one word of caution with this, though, isn't there,

  • because we've already seen that regular shapes might not

  • be the best way of making sure that we're

  • capturing appropriate community characteristics.

  • And actually, if we zoom back out again

  • and go over to Illinois, there's a very famous example

  • in Chicago called The Earmuffs, which is, again,

  • on the face of it, this looks like another one

  • of those really oddly-shaped gerrymandered districts.

  • This one's a bit different, though, because this one

  • was the result of a federal instruction to give Hispanics

  • greater voting representation.

  • And so these two areas here on The Earmuffs

  • are both majority Hispanic areas, which, in isolation,

  • if these were split apart, probably

  • would suffer from the symptoms of our counters earlier.

  • I mean, one of the interesting differences between the US

  • and, say, the UK, is that the US, because of the way

  • the population spread across the US,

  • it was starting from scratch in many ways

  • drawing these boundaries and planning cities and so on.

  • In a country like the UK, we've had 1,000-plus years

  • of community groupings through things like parishes and things

  • like that.

  • So the UK system has grown a bit more organically in the sense

  • that you might have had a parish, which

  • is a relatively small group of people, that perhaps reflects

  • people with similar interests in a very local area.

  • Those parishes maybe get merged together

  • to then create these larger electoral wards

  • and constituencies and so on.

  • So that's the difference between a bottom-up approach, which

  • is just something that's emerged over time, and in the US's case

  • they've kind of allowed themselves

  • to have this kind of top-down approach, which

  • is to allow whoever's in charge to redraw the boundaries as

  • much as they can.

  • This still, I think, remains fairly untypical,

  • because most of the examples are the ones where the governing

  • legislature has made some decisions that, perhaps,

  • swing it more in its favour than not.

  • Probably an area that's come up most recently in that space

  • has been North Carolina, which has come up

  • with some new boundaries for the 2020 House of Representatives

  • election.

  • The really interesting thing with North Carolina

  • - if you really want to see the impact of gerrymandering

  • and what it does to election results,

  • North Carolina is a great example.

  • Because if we look at the results of the popular vote

  • - so that's the total number of votes

  • for either party in the 2018 House of Representatives

  • election, this is a really tight race.

  • There's less than 2 percentage - there's

  • 2 percentage points in it, a very small majority

  • for the Republicans.

  • So if we had a fair electoral map,

  • we would expect to see something very similar to this in terms

  • of seat representation.

  • But when we look at what the seat representation is

  • based on that popular vote, this is an amazing picture,

  • isn't it?

  • So this is largely a result of gerrymandered boundaries.

  • What does this look like on the map?

  • Let's take the House seats and see.

  • So this is Carolina's congressional district map,

  • with each congressional district coloured in according

  • to a seat.

  • And so there's 10 seats for the Republicans,

  • three for the Democrats.

  • But there's some geographical patterns here.

  • One thing you can't help but notice

  • is that the blue areas - the three blue areas, this one's

  • an exception - these two here are quite small.

  • This one looks like it's really been gerrymandered, right?

  • It has this very odd shape to it.

  • And this has been an issue for some time in North Carolina,

  • because there's the city of Asheville over here in North

  • Carolina, if we just fade the map away a little bit

  • to see it, you can see this boundary runs right

  • through the middle, splitting it in two,

  • which seems like a very odd thing to do.

  • Well, urban areas tend to be where more liberal voters live,

  • and rural areas tend to be more conservative.

  • So a good sign of whether you're trying to split a liberal vote

  • is if you're trying to split an urban area,

  • and if you're trying to split the conservative vote,

  • then you look for splits in more rural.

  • One of my favourite stories that came out of Asheville was that

  • some of the Democrat voters were so frustrated,

  • effectively having their votes lost by this arrangement,

  • that they organised their own gerrymander 5K run where they

  • ran the route of the district boundary as it winds its way

  • through the city.

  • Legal pressures have forced the governing legislature

  • to redraw these boundaries because they wanted

  • to have a new set of boundaries that's more

  • representative and less biased.

  • So those boundaries have been proposed.

  • These are the ones that were approved by the state court.

  • We can see some big changes on here.

  • So Asheville is no longer split.

  • It's part of a bigger congressional district

  • now over on the western side.

  • It's not surprising that a map made by Republicans still tends

  • to favour Republicans.

  • So if we project what the 2020 results might

  • look like on these new boundaries,

  • we'll see that there are some changes, but not

  • a huge number of changes.

  • We go from 10 and three to eight and five.

  • So we've got five Democrat areas now on here.

  • But this still isn't particularly

  • representative of our original Tiddlywinks - of the people

  • who are actually voting in this area.

  • If you listen to US election pundits and things,

  • particularly those on the Democrat side,

  • they often say it's a state with a tough map.

  • It's a hard thing to break.

  • It's like running uphill.

  • They've got to not only get a majority,

  • but they've got to get a really big majority to overcome some

  • of these entrenched issues.

  • So that would be a majority in terms of the popular vote

  • - they've got to push through.

  • 51 per cent won't cut it, they've

  • got to really push through.

  • There's also a scale issue at play here, isn't there,

  • because this is just 13 congressional districts

  • in quite a wide area.

  • We can get a sense of how some of the characteristics

  • of our voters are being lost.

  • If we drill down in level to these smaller areas called

  • counties and look at how the counties voted in the 2016

  • presidential election, and you can

  • see we've got a slightly different map here,

  • because suddenly what was previously entirely red,

  • you can actually see we've got a significant Democrat

  • enclave here.

  • We can finally see the Democrat voters of Asheville over here.

  • And again, even this is a victim of the scale problem,

  • because if we were to drill down within individual counties,

  • you'd still see different coloured Tiddlywinks.

  • And I think that scale thing is what

  • tends to get forgotten sometimes when we're talking

  • about elections is that, actually, we are always

  • showing the majority view on these maps.

  • And so if you keep zooming in right back

  • to the individual level, you are going to see variety,

  • even within a family, you might vote different ways.

  • It's always a case that these maps show the winners,

  • potentially, but they are a crucial basis for kind

  • of maximising your chances.

  • So if I were a Democrat strategist coming into power,

  • I would look at this map and I would redraw the boundaries

  • again to capture this one and this one

  • and maybe, as it happened here, split up

  • some of these red areas that don't

  • have the same number of Republican voters

  • as the blue areas to ensure that Republicans still win

  • through any future election.

  • We've just coloured these areas red or blue.

  • But in reality, they'd all be varying shades

  • of purple, just kind of a mixture

  • of voters that might lean largely one way or another,

  • or to varying degrees.

  • Does that mean that gerrymandering

  • is kind of particularly suited to the first past the post

  • system?

  • I think so, just because you're essentially

  • creating one representative for one area.

  • And it can be a relatively small area.

  • So thinking about the scaling issue and the zooming out,

  • if you imagine you had, hypothetically,

  • say this is the whole area here we see.

  • We say, well, actually, you're entitled

  • to five representatives for the whole map.

  • We're not too worried about where the boundaries are.

  • We're just going to say for that state or whatever,

  • you get five representatives.

  • Those representatives can be based

  • on the proportion of votes won.

  • I think the argument against larger areas

  • with proportional representation in it

  • is often back to this thing about, well,

  • am I representing my local population's needs and values?

  • So if it's a big area that's quite heterogeneous

  • - so there's a lot of extra people in it, lots of variety

  • - is one of your five representatives

  • going to be as invested in that as a representative

  • that is for a smaller, more local population?

  • Absolutely.

  • And then talking about that local problem

  • about knowing where to draw some of those local boundaries.

  • That brings us back to this point about who's

  • drawing the boundaries.

  • So you might argue...

  • because in the UK, there's a completely different system.

  • There's an independent commission...

  • there's four organisations, actually,

  • that cover the whole of the UK.

  • They are independent of the governing political party.

  • Yeah.

  • And so they essentially have a series

  • of rules that they need to follow

  • - so a certain number of people per parliamentary constituency,

  • in this case.

  • Certain areas there are exceptions to that

  • - so some of the Scottish islands

  • wouldn't make sense to kind of tag onto the mainland,

  • so the number of people in their particular electorate

  • is smaller than some of the mainland places.

  • There is a maximum size in terms of geographic area

  • that the places can be.

  • But you can imagine how hard a job

  • it is, because as soon as you start redrawing these things

  • and shifting, you shift one thing one way,

  • then it does mean another one has to shift as well.

  • I mean, I wouldn't want the job, because no one's got to...

  • it's not something that anyone will be completely happy with,

  • and there'll always be claims and counterclaims

  • about advantage and disadvantage one way or the other.

  • But in the US, it's quite clear that gerrymandering is still

  • very much rife, and part of that is

  • because there is this lack of an independent body.

  • Yes.

  • Exactly.

  • That's governing the standards.

  • And if I were in control of it, it's

  • a good way of ensuring you keep your job, isn't it?

  • So it's not in anyone's interest to change the boundaries

  • if it's going to affect their election results.

  • It's going to be interesting to see this,

  • because I think they've been several attempts

  • to bring a bill before the House of Representatives

  • to actually introduce such a commission as part

  • of electoral reform.

  • But it's never been voted on before.

  • There don't seem to be that many signs of it happening soon

  • either.

  • Yeah, and I suspect even if they get further with it,

  • you are still going to get back to these fundamental questions

  • of what is representation?

  • And is an area best represented one way or another

  • by a small population with someone who's very committed

  • to them or a larger one?

  • And there'll always be exceptions,

  • and those exceptions then get used

  • to maybe change some other areas that people might

  • have been a bit happier with.

  • So no one's going to end up saying,

  • thank you for such a wonderful, neutral map?

  • No, I don't think that'll ever happen.

  • Thank you very much, James.

  • No problem.

We're going to look at how elections can be won and lost

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マップメーカーが2020年のアメリカ選挙に勝つ方法|Maptastic ep 2 (How map makers will win the 2020 US election | Maptastic ep 2)

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    林宜悉 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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