My guest today is Sean Trendy, senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics, and the co-host of the Stubborn Things podcast with Jay Cost.

Sean, welcome to the, well, welcome back to the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited.

All right. So Twitter, as ever, is a buzz this time with last night's referendum in Virginia,

which temporarily amended the state constitution to allow the legislature to pass what is, irrespective of one's political

opinions of it, one of the most egregious and consciously egregious gerrymanders that I have

ever seen. And this morning, the fight seems to be over whether or not this was done in self-defense or whether it was an escalation.

And what I want to do is back away for the moment from that transient fight and ask some foundational questions to put what's happening into context.

So let me start by asking you a 30,000 feed. What is a gerrymander?

Boy, I wish there were a 30,000 foot answer. You know, it drives me nuts because everyone on Twitter is like, well, we should just end gerrymandering.

And political scientists don't even agree on what a gerrymander is. At a 50,000 foot level, I think most people agree it's drawing congressional districts in such a way that they artificially enhance the power of one party

at another party's expense. There's debates over whether you have to intend to do it.

There's debates when we say artificially enhance the party's power with respect to what.

But I think at a high level to get a conversation started that'll work okay

it's cool gerrymandering after elbridge gerry and a district that was drawn by him or for him

that looked like a salamander that's right there was a so in massachusetts there was there was a, I always hate using my hands, but people

won't be able to see it. But in Massachusetts, this district was drawn to favor Elbridge Gary. It's

kind of like, we call it a GIF, even though it was originally a GIF. This is a gerrymander,

not a gerrymander. But there was a series of towns in Massachusetts

that were strung together in a serpentine fashion to be a district that he'd be likely to win.

And some enterprising political cartoonist drew wings on it and a salamanders head at the end with

a flicking tail and it became the gerrymander.

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