Before the 2010 elections, I was amazed at the expensive propaganda on TV. The GOP was going all out; it seemed, to capture the legislatures and governorships in a key year (every 10) for determining voter district reapportionment. It worked. When the Scalia Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, the GOP was ready with new legislation that targeted black voters, with "surgical precision" according to one federal judge, making it harder for them to vote or get their votes to count if they did.
The gerrymander used 2 long-lasting tricks, “packing and cracking". Packing puts as many Dem voters as possible into a few districts. Cracking takes the rest and spreads them out as slight minorities in the remaining districts. One result is NC, with more Dem voters than GOP (2.7 vs 2 M), got only 3 Dem Congressmen out of 13 — the 1st, 4th, and 12th. For more on packing and cracking, see freethoughtblogs.com/...
This analysis* shows over twice as many "wasted votes" for Dems as GOP. The wasted vote proportion sheds new light on what was, until now, immeasurable, and, by normalizing to total number of votes, corrects for simply not getting enough votes. Here's a spreadsheet* to compute this for NC. Adapting it to other red states will likely show the same result, a vote "efficiency gap" between the 2 parties far beyond the 8-10% recommended allowable maximum. * bit.ly/...