If you are enthusiastic about US politics, knowing which congressional seats in the USA are the easiest to win can be very helpful.
Even though elections for the members of the House of Representatives are done through democratic processes, often times you will see some candidates winning their seats very easily. This has managed to happen for a very long period of time because of a phenomenon called Gerrymandering. The political party that is in power of a state can take administrative decisions about how to draw the boundaries of congressional districts of that state. In order to ensure their own political parties win a higher number of seats, often the lines of different districts are drawn to ensure that the maximum number of own voters fall in maximum number of districts. This sometimes creates districts with the weirdest shapes. For example, Governor Elbridge Gerry from Massachusetts first tried this idea and his redrawn map to secure party win was publicly compared to a salamander. And “Gerry” and “Salamander” got combined to create the new word “Gerrymander”. After that, gerrymandering became the moniker for intentional political favoritism.
Currently these districts tend to vote strongly according to the party line and so, if you belong to the right party and manage to win the primaries, you can win the seat almost with your eyes closed. This list of easiest seats contains multiple states and this means this practice of gerrymandering is common throughout the country. One district from Texas, New York, Ohio and Louisiana falls in the list, whereas we have got two from Florida and Maryland. North Carolina is in even poorer condition with three districts.
If you want to know more about these districts and look at their maps, check out Insider Monkey’s 11 Easiest Congressional Seats to Win in America and be amazed at what our politicians can do to win elections.
