On supposed gerrymandering in New England

This gem is making the rounds again.  

So let's go over it state by state.  

For starters, the OP's figures on voter percentage are utter nonsense.  I fact-checked the percentages with the secretaries of state offices for the various states to come up with the real numbers.  Some Trumpublicans claim the numbers are based on the vote share for Trump in the 2024 election, but those numbers are wrong too, and in any event they don't matter when it comes to congressional districts.  

Since the OP didn't bother to list the number of districts in each of these states, I did.  

MA. 9 districts. According to the MA Secretary of State, MA voters are only 8% Republican. Massachusetts is so dominated by Democrats that they would have to gerrymander in order to give Republicans a seat.  Plus, MA has an election system that would make gerrymandering extremely difficult to impossible.  MA has a "semi-closed" primary system with election day affiliation, and over 60% of MA voters are unaffiliated with any political party.  

CT. 5 districts. 21% Republican. The state has been losing population and trending Democratic for decades.  With only a little over 1/5 of the electorate registered Republican, they would have to do some heroic gerrymandering to give them 1 district.  

ME. 2 districts. 29.8% Republican. Maine only has 2 congressional districts, so not a lot of opportunity for gerrymandering.  Keep in mind, this is the state that elected Paul LePage, a Republican, as governor twice, each time with a little over a third of the total vote, because more left leaning candidates split the left, and gave him a plurality.  The end result of this was ME enacting a version of ranked choice voting.  Which Republicans keep challenging in court, because they know they can't get a majority with the candidates they currently choose.  

NM. 3 districts. 31.4% Republican. Not much gerrymandering possible.  Republicans are sufficiently spread out in NM that it would take a heroic feat of gerrymandering to give them even one seat.  

NH. 2 districts. 31.9% Republican. Not much gerrymandering possible.  Giving the Republican Party a seat would require gerrymandering one district with a +20 advantage while keeping the populations equal.  Good luck with that.  

RI. 2 districts. 14.3% Republican. Come on, man.  

HI. 2 districts. 38.5% Republican. There is not much gerrymandering possible with only 2 districts.  Further, HI elects both their Representatives at-large, so no gerrymandering is possible.  Though I'm sure some people will claim that the at-large system is a form of gerrymandering in itself.  

DE. 25.3% Republican. Delaware has only 1 congressional district. Come on, man.  

Infrastructure costs in context

When considering the costs of infrastructure people often balk at the number of zeros between the left side of the decimal and the significant digits.  Older people, particularly, tend to think in "Boomer Bucks", which had more value than today's money.  For this reason, it is better to think about the cost of infrastructure compared to Gross Domestic Product.  

Much ink has been splattered over New York City's East Side Access project costing $11 Billion.  But the GDP of the New York Metropolitan area is $2.299 Trillion.  In that context, the East Side Access project is 0.48% of the areas GDP.  If you want to consider it only in the context of New York City, then the GDP is $1.286 Trillion, which makes it 0.855% of The City's GDP.  

Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA GDP is $243.47 Billion as of 2023.  

Hillsborough County GDP is $152 Billion.  

The cost of the proposed light rail and bus expansion for Hillsborough County is around $2.5 Billion.  

Pinellas County GDP is $78.13 Billion.  

We can afford light rail, or at the very least a proper BRT system.  We simply lack the political will to make it happen.  

Remember that this election season.