I was elated by the results of Virginia's 2017 election for the House of Delegates. The level of support for Democratic candidates was amazing. Surely, we'd be able to march into Richmond and make things right. Alas, my hopes were dashed when I realized that despite the overwhelming number of votes against them, the Republican Party still controls the House of Delegates. I set out to figure out why. I pulled data from a variety of sources (please be sure to check my source notes for details) and ran some analysis. It appears to me that gerrymandering will likely keep the House of Delegates in Republican hands for the foreseeable future due to an efficiency gap of nearly 16%. The way that the districts are apportioned means that a very large number of Democratic votes are wasted. The next re-apportionment happens after the 2020 census, but to be able to positively impact that, the Democrats need to control the House of Delegates or the U.S. Supreme Court needs to rule that this type of gerrymandering is unconstitutional.
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