Gerrymandering

If you're looking for evidence that Democrats should get more serious about gerrymandering, you need look no further than Illinois. Check out these results. One Democrat ran unopposed. Four Democrats won with over 80 percent of the vote. Three more had over 70 percent of the vote. Phil Hare won with 57 percent. Melissa Bean won with just 51 percent. That's ten Democrats. Of the nine Republicans, all drew opponents, one secured just 51 percent of the vote and and five more won sixty percent of the vote or fewer.

You could transfer voters out of the Democrats 6-7 safest seats in a way that kept those seats safe but turned all six of the least-safe GOP districts into ones that were very friendly to Democratic challengers. It would require you to create some "funny looking" districts that start out in Chicago with super-Democratic precincts and then reach out into the suburbs rather than having very compact all-urban districts where Democrats get 70-90 percent of the vote, but lots of states work like that.