316- Gerrymandering’s New Map War Across States

NYC’s mayoral odds point to a clear front-runner while policy reality narrows to what can actually pass, led by a likely rent freeze. We then widen to the redistricting fights shaping Congress, ballot measures that set the rules, and why census math outruns slogans.

• betting odds place Mandani far ahead
• rent freeze seen as most viable policy
• execution and board appointments as gatekeepers
• Cuomo gains after Adams exits while Sliwa splits votes
• gerrymandering strategies across Texas and California
• Midwest and Mountain states test map durability
• courts and supermajorities as key constraints
• national seat outlook tilting slightly Republican
• census-driven seat counts and population shifts
• ballot measures on maps, voter ID, taxes, school meals
• practical advice to research records over rhetoric
• upcoming tech and education episodes teased

My sources

https://kalshi.com/markets/kxmayornycparty

https://votehub.com/2025/08/15/2025-redistricting/

https://ballotpedia.org/2025_ballot_measures

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Chapters

• 0:00 NYC Mayor Odds And Front-Runner
• 2:10 Debates, Betting Markets, And Adams Exit
• 4:20 Policy Forecast: Rent Freeze Likely
• 6:20 Gerrymandering Fight Coast To Coast
• 9:15 Texas Vs California Seat Math
• 12:20 Midwest Maps: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas
• 15:10 East And Mountain States Rewrites
• 18:00 National Picture And Census Stakes
• 20:30 Ballot Measures: State By State
• 25:20 Voter ID, Turnout, And Timing
• 27:00 Candidate Records Over Rhetoric
• 29:00 Upcoming Episodes And Final CTAs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Welcome everyone to Politically High Tech with your host, Alias. This is a solo episode. This is gonna be episode 316. And I'm gonna be talking about three things. This is gonna be all political, and this is gonna be all state. So I am going to talk about so much states. Before we get into that, I'm gonna talk just briefly about the New York City Mayor race, where the odds are. According to Kelchie, the Kelchi market has a bold prediction. Well, not it's not really bold, it's sadly very predictable. Because if you haven't been paying attention, you know who's the front runner. Is a front runner coming from someone who is a relatively newcomer in the political in the political scene? We know Zorra Mandani, if you ever heard of him. I'm gonna talk about what's the odds of him winning. And I'm gonna share you my sources so you know that I am not just talking out of my butt. And I like to give you some stats and articles before I get deeper into it. So I'm gonna talk about just the odds of that. I didn't watch too much of the second NYC General Mayor debate because I at this point I don't I just don't see the point. There's gonna debate, hash out the ideas, attack each other. There's a clear front runner about that. And let me get the predictable part out of the way. Let me just show you what Kelsi has to say. And it's a good thing I I met and know someone who works in Kelchi. I am not going to say his name, but shout out to that person. You know who you are, okay? And I'm just gonna say this the the story is very telling, very, very telling. And as of right now, Zara Mandati is that blue line on top. His odds of winning are as of now, during the recording of the night of October 24th, his odds of winning is at 92%. Andrew Como's at 7%, and Curtis was at 2%. And if you wanna bet, bet responsibly, okay? Zoran Mandani will be your safe pick. It'll be a safe pick. And you already know about Eric Adams. He dropped out, he supports Cuomo. That bumps up Cuomo's points by a little bit. It only shrinks Zoran Mandani's lead by not not by much. Not by much. Remember one point he remember at one point that Zoran Mandani was ahead of Cuomo at 25 points. Then it went down to roughly 20. Now it's about 13 points. That Zoran Mandani is ahead of Andrew Cuomo. And Curtis Lewa, well, he had a bit of a bumpy. He's like, what, 15% to 19? And Cuomo, I think, had the biggest benefit from Eric Adams dropping out. Of course, Eric Adams support him. How predictable. But I am gonna say this. And let me close that. I want to say this. And I'm happy some articles are finally saying this. I've been saying this for months. The longer Eric Adams and Curtis was stays, the better it is for Mondani to win. Well, those two will drop out sooner. Well, Eric Adams dropped out a few weeks ago. Now we have Curtis, he refuses to drop. And that's good for Mondani. If Curtis would have dropped, I think Andrew Como's chances of victory would have increased. As long as Curtis War stays, well, Zoran Dani is going to win, and Kelshi is correct. Okay? That's that's all I'm gonna say about that. Look, I think the one of the few policies that's gonna go through if Zoran Mandani's mayor is the rent freezes. I could see that being a big possibility, but the free buses, the city run groceries, I'm just not so sure about that. If he's as charismatic as he is good at execution, then it's a possibility. But we'll see. And I'm just gonna say this the victor of this mayoral election, it's not gonna be by the majority. The majority of people are not fans of a lot of these candidates. This mayor is gonna have his challenges for the next year already laid and inherited. You know, the affordability crisis, I call it popularity crisis because no one he's gonna win by polarity, not by majority. So the moderate dems, I won't be surprised, they're gonna try to be slick, become an obstacle against Mandani. And we're gonna see, we're gonna see. Just because he becomes mayor, doesn't mean he's gonna be able to implement all his policies. It's just not gonna happen. Like I said, the rent freeze one is the most probable. And how much of those rent freeze is it won't be kicking in until next year, anyways. And he needs to put people that are gonna support his agenda. You know, just because the mayor points them, there's times that, you know, that one or two board members could defect, or majority of them could defect. You know, that's always a possibility. So if Zaron wants to get that rent freeze going, he he has to vet these people well. Okay. That's what I'm gonna say about that. I'm not gonna talk too much about the New York City Mayor race, because I normally focus on state and federal, okay? And I want to talk about the redistrict thing, the whole gerrymandering fight that's been going on between the states. This is blue states versus red states here. And I'm gonna start backwards. Let's start forward. I'll change my mind there. Okay. So California that's been leading the counterattack against the Texas gerrymandarin. Okay. You know, Texas starters when they propose their congressional districts redrawn, and hypothetically, Texan, especially the Republicans, should be able to pick up up to five seats. Hypothetically speaking, up to five seats. And Gavin Newsome here, I'm not gonna read all of this, but just to put this in short, he's countering this with a proposal that Democrats could hypothetically take four to five seats. So the hypothetical is that you know Texas is supposed to become more red, California is supposed to be supposed to become more blue. That's possible in some states, but not in all of them. And you know, and Florida's gonna try to create their own version of it as well, their own redicousing, and they should be able to gobble up five seats for the Democrats. JB Pritzker, when they do the little redicousing, they JB Pritzker proposes a redraw on that supposed to get one extra Democrat seat, but experts say, well, that's the best it's gonna get. They doubt that it could get an additional seat in Illinois. Illinois is already very blue at as it is, right? So I don't think they they could do much just to make it more Republican or Democrat. I mean, yeah, it's I don't think that's gonna happen. And where Indiana, it's a bit more interesting. There's infighting among Republicans on that one, so I don't know if it's gonna go through or not. But JD Vance is very put, you know, he really advocated for this. We'll see what's gonna happen. And we'll see if Indiana agrees to it. There's a little bit of disagreement there. Kansas, they want to do their gerrymandering as well, and they could bypass the Democratic governor Laura Kelly, and Republicans who got supermajority in both chambers. And I have told people this before, just because one is governor, one is president, it doesn't mean they have all the power. It just doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way. So they could bypass, you know, when a government when a governor or president vetoes, once you have the supermajority, override that veto, that's it. There's nothing they could do. But there's some modern Republicans from suburb districts that are not very, not very, they're not gonna support this gerrymand thing. And they tend to provoke judicial scrutiny. Uh, you don't want that. Louisiana, well, if they do it, if they do their version, right? And go and they gonna just pick up one more seat. Maryland is thinking about doing their own, just get rid of that one Republican as their Congress, Andy Harris. He's the only Republican um House representative there in Maryland. So the seat, so the states are gonna just gonna become more red and more blue and for Congress. And Missouri, they have rejected the Republican ridiculousing. Okay, but they're still fighting back with it. They still they pass it anyways after some back and forth. And let's just say that Missouri, they they just gonna eliminate probably that they're gonna probably eliminate one Democrat seat that's in Kansas City, Missouri. Interesting. Very, very interesting. Well, that well, what it's only gonna be one seat that's say for a Democrat. See Missouri District 5 right here. See the current is negative 12, that means it favors Democrats with their proposal, it'll become positive eight, which means it favors Republicans. Yeah, so Democrats got negative numbers, and Republicans got positive numbers. That's how it works. These maps, okay? Yep, and this is gonna determine they may scoop up a few seats in Long Island. Nassau, I could see them do that. I'm not too sure about Sussex County, but I can see them pull that off with um Nassau because Nassau is a moderate county. And then let's go to North Carolina. North Carolina has proposed their version of the redistricting. That's passed through the state senate now's in consideration for the House. Let's see what we're gonna do about that. And Ohio regularly goes through this. So they may be able to get rid of some Democrats if they pass it through a Republican-controlled Ohio government. They might take three more seats if it's successful. I already talked about Texas. I'm not gonna go into that. They could theoretically take five seats. Utah, it's a little interesting. Let's see if the courts are gonna upheld this. There was some opposition with this as well. But their prediction seems a little different. And the reason I'm gonna say that is because look at this here. Currently, it's pretty strong Republican, these four districts, right? And let me just actually share the screen. Let me share the screen. Look at these four districts. Utah, first district, 10 points favorite Republicans. And Utah the fourth district, 13 points favorite Republicans. Now his new proposal, I would say Utah districts two and three could become more competitive. Plus one, plus three favorite Republicans, that's competitive. Plus 14, plus 23, not really. And then finally, the state of Virginia, which I want to stop sharing, they may, with their redrawn districts, the Democrats may pick up two or three more seats. Actually, before I end this up, was which party is favoring more so far? I if you guessed Republicans, you'd be correct. Because with the proposed redistricting, it's gonna favor Republicans by a little bit overall. Not by much. As of now, 189 seats lean Democrat, 205 favor Republican, 41 are toss-up. And if to have majority, you need 218, so it looks like Republicans got a bit of a head start there. So this is why Jerry, this is why understanding gerrymandering is very important. This is political parties controlling, manipulating districts to favor their party. Okay, they split them or make someone bigger, wherever it gives them the advantage, right? But they cannot change the number of seating unless they get the results from the census. If, for example, like let me let me use my state, New York. They have lost a congressional seat because they have less population proportion to the general population of America. Okay, it's not that New York has um population has increased, it's just Texas in particular has the largest population. They got two congressional seats out of the 2020 census. So yeah, and that's gonna matter once you do the 2030 census. Make sure you fill them out because the bigger the delegation, the better it is for the state. So the larger states right now is in this order California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois in terms of population, in terms of congressional seats. Those are the six largest states. Okay? So that's why it's important to talk about the gerrymandering. I haven't got the time to do that because I only talked about it with one guest. I'm gonna give a shout out to this person, uh, the honorable Michael Butler, and he brought up this good point. I'm gonna reiterate it again because I just think it needs to be reiterated that just because they do these gerrymandering manipulations mean it's gonna always give them an advantage. Utah's one example that it kind of weakens the Republicans' leads on the second and third congressional districts. They became more competitive for Democrats to take. I think they're doing it just more out of fairness, unlike all the other ones. All the other ones were just clearly partisan. But at least for California, and I'm gonna get into this. This is a good segue for it, but proposition 50, they're letting the people vote on should the congressional districts be redrawn. If enough people say yes, and it looks like that's it's gonna, I think it's gonna pass with a decent margin. Maybe like 60% of people will support, maybe 60, 65. I'm gonna pick, have a moderate guess. Then this is the final thing I'm gonna share. Because there are propositions you're gonna vote for, and not all states have this, and some of them already um happen, but I'm gonna focus more on the ones that are coming on November 4th. Okay. And all right, so let's look at let's look at California again. Proposition 50. Allow the state to use a new legislation draw map, congressional mat for 2026 through 2030. So yeah, this is for next year. Colorado, you have two propositions, propositions LL and Proposition MM. Proposition LL says it allows the states to keep 212.4 million in access revenue and interest from the reduced state income tax deductions of the proposition FF that was passed on 2022 to provide money for healthy school meals for all programs. So it came by healthy meals. My kids get a government-funded meal. Well, that sounds like a Democratic proposal. I think that's gonna pass. And then proposition MM, I don't know why they do double letters like that. A reduced income tax for taxpayers earning 300K or more to generate additional revenue for healthy school meals for all programs once the program is funded with reserves for SNAP. Okay. They rejected all of them. May you have your propositions, your ballot initiatives. And we got question one and two. Require voters to present voter identification as well as making changes to absentee voting and use of ballot drop boxes. I will support that. And then for question two, establish a process, obtain extreme risk protection order. I will support these two. And then New York, my state, only have one state proposition. Authorize the state use up to 323 acres of forest to preserve the land at the Mount Van Hoovenburg Olympic Sports Complex. K-Barb Sports. Well, especially that especially is not gonna happen in the city. Well, there's your chance to have one, and then Texas have a ton of ballot initiatives. Some for homesteads with disabilities, and then provide exemptions for improvements for those that have been destroyed by fire, and then some of judiciary. So you got a lot of propositions to fill through Texas. This off-ballot year. Then Washington State has it allows long-term services to supports the trust fund to be invested in stocks. Interesting. They had a photo ID vote for. You know, I always support a ID, photo ID. I I always support that. And for those who are not legal, well, become a citizen. Become a citizen of the United States of America. That's all I want to say. Just become a citizen. And then they got Propositions 1 through 17. So, yes, 17 different propositions to vote for Texas. And I'm just gonna read just some of them. Oh, one of them is provide parents' rights to exercise care, custody control of the parents' kid, including right decisions concerning the child's upbringing. Okay, law, and then also they have proposition 16, which amends that Texas Constitution provides persons who are not citizens that cannot vote. Okay, so they're really enforcing that people who are not citizens cannot vote. Yeah, so this is um lavas regarding homestead laws, and then all property taxes prohibit state legislature enacted or imposing taxes on decident's property or transfer of the state. Interesting. So it's a whole bunch of stuff going on with that. This is an off-year, you know, numbers are off-year, so it's not that much propositions, I'm sure, during midterms and even presidential years, they'll they'll put propositions in there. And check your local governments, people. Check your local governments to see if they got their own ballot initiatives. I know New York City has theirs. They mainly relates to housing and even having voting align a New York City mayor with the president. I'm not sure it's gonna affect more voter turnout. I mean, the prop the proponents of it will say, well, it it reduces voter fatigue. While the criticism is, well, the New York City mayoral race may overshadow the presidential race, which it's already true. So, well, let's see if it passes through or not. I mean, I'm certainly might vote for it to see if it's gonna make a difference or not. I'm just curious. I'm very out of curiosity, me personally. Yeah, but I mean that that's all. This is gonna be a shorter episode than usual because my talk, I get more straight to the point. And these episodes are generally short, they're about 30 minutes long in general. And all I'm gonna say, people make sure you pay attention to your candidate, research their record, what they have done. Don't go by what they say, go by what they have done, okay? Because people could sound really good. Zarama Dani, great debater, decent orator compared to Andrew Como, Kurtis. What about his policies? Some are I don't know. And I mean, they did three city buses and it worked in Kansas. So some of them I doubt they're gonna work. I'm just gonna be honest, I just doubt they're gonna work. Andrew Como, who's been in politics for all his life, yeah, he seems like a safe, more predictable choice. But he's also backed by billionaires, so if you worry about that, well, don't vote for Cuomo. And Curtis Lewa, my personal favorite, he has no shot at winning this, let's just be real. I like Curtis Lewa. It pains me to say that, but he has no shot. I thought he had a better shot of the last mayoral election for 2021, and I did vote it for Curtis Lewa, because to me he was a better candidate than Eric Adams, but since it's a blue, it's a blue city, and they're gonna vote, they're gonna vote Eric Adams, even some people didn't like him. I said, well, a lot of you don't like him, but why do you vote for him? Because it's because he's a Democrat? Oh, so all Democrats are good and all Republicans are bad? No, and I would disagree if if it was flipped the other way around, that all Republicans are good and Democrats are bad. No. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. And yeah, I mean, what I'm gonna say is look forward to additional episodes. I'm gonna give you some teasers right now because they're gonna be coming out the pipeline. So I might as well talk about these episodes while we are at it. And no, I'm not gonna share or spoil anything. I'll tell you right now is that we're gonna have definitely another tech episode coming out tomorrow, and then we're gonna have the state of education with the Gorilla Scholar. That's gonna come out this Sunday. So the recording is October 24th. You'll get in a few days, and then we're gonna then I'm gonna have another episode that's gonna be released on November, November 7th with Nathan Smilinsky, and we talk about this, you know, how to engage and how can independence you know thrive during this Piper Parson times. Then after that, I'm gonna have my own tech episode. You know, they know it's said to be short. I'm gonna find out what's the interesting topic. I'm gonna look into tech. I don't I don't think I talked about healthcare enough. That, don't hold me to that. I might I might want to do that. I don't think I've touched enough on that. And then we're gonna have the undoctor for November 9th. Fred Moss. Fred Moss. That was an interesting conversation. He got me thinking a bit differently. I'm just gonna say that. I'm not gonna say too much about that. Well, those are your next upcoming six episodes. The tech one, a tomorrow's one, gonna leave that surprise. I like to throw some surprises at you. And if you think if you're some if you think it's something else, feel free to comment. That's your only common activity right there, okay? So that's my little tease to some of you. So episode 317 is gonna be a tech episode. Um, it's gonna be a male. The question is is it gonna be white male or minority male? Well, you'll find out on the next episode. And another thing, and then for Sunday, it's gonna be the state of education with the gorilla scholar. Okay, and then coming after that, it's gonna be my conversation with Nathan Smilensky about how and the what independence can do. Is it possible for independence to win? And how can you have a a dialogue with disagreement and civility? Yep. I'm gonna keep talking about this because I just think the temperature is still too damn hot right now. It really is. And we call the Republicans and Democrats acting with a gerrymander thing. The Republicans are a little more egregious on this one. I'll I'll agree with that much. Um, but some of the Democrats are clearly no better. Maybe except for California. I think California found a happy medium on that. They want to do it, but at least they leave it to the will of the people. Well, maybe they don't their people would have done that. Maybe if they didn't trust their people, maybe they would have done it through state. That's the answer. I'll never find out. Right, you know, I will never get that kind of answer. And again, and then it's gonna be me. I think I'm gonna talk about healthcare with AI. I haven't done a lot of AI, I'm happy I'm not doing that as much. AI is still such a big thing. But I think um I need to do an episode on AI, and it's gonna be an AI generated video. I'm just giving you a heads up. It's not gonna be like this. I don't know if you want authenticity or you want AI. Some of you prefer the AI videos, so I'm gonna experiment here. And then the last I'm gonna tease for now is with the the undoctor, Fran Moss. Interesting conversation. He has a very interesting perspective about the psychiatry and humanity in general. Okay. So righty then, that is it for me. Once you complete this vid this audio or visual journey, no, actually forget that. Scratch that. Three things. The new paper, free, short, articles that are great to read, straight to the point, has no political slant. That's gonna be the link in the bottom of this video. Oh, and the free website, guys. If you need a website for free to no to little cost, check these guys out. You'll be helping me out tremendously if you do that. And finally, join PodMatch. Just join PodMatch. It's such a great site, especially those of you who are thinking about making the podcast. There's even a community there if you're still on the fence about it. Podmatch people are pretty responsive, they're kind people overall, you know. And look, you could just have your message there, you can have your customizable, very easy setup, one pager, instead of going through a whole creating PowerPoint and a Word document, and then you PDF the thing, you send it, and if there's updates or you made a mistake, you gotta do it again through the through that software and send it again, and it gets lost to the emails. Come on, let's be smart. Let's try PodMatch. It's a great network, and it helps you become a better podcaster as well. Without podcasting. Match this podcast would have died. You want to know what year it would have died four and a half years ago. Not kidding. I'm not kidding at all. Four and a half years ago. And I gotta say, I say this. I thank Alex San Filippo and the Pod Match team for their great assistance. They are great. There's really no upsell. 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