The Influence of Redistricting on the U.S.

House of Representatives

Claims and Facts on Partisan Advantage, Polarization, and Competition

Lieuwe M. Verhage
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in American Studies and the Radboud University Nijmegen.

Thesis supervisor: dr. Thomas W. Gijswijt August 15, 2011

Abstract

Abstract
Redistricting is claimed to effect the composition and polarization of the U.S. House of Representatives. However, not all academic research supports these claims. Research which does suggest redistricting has an influence, either shows this is extremely limited, has severe flaws, or overlooks better explanations outside of the redistricting realm. Redistricting commissions, often suggested as the silver bullet for the current partisan gridlock in Congress, is not only an undemocratic solution to a nonexistent problem, but also leads to worse results when it comes to competition and polarization. If representation of voters is something that needs to be solved, noncompetitive, homogeneous districts are shown to provide more faithful representatives, leading to higher voter satisfaction levels of incumbents and Congress as a whole. This thesis analyzes the most prominent research on the issue, and uses several datasets to provide compelling evidence refuting the common assumptions on redistricting.

Acknowledgments

ii

Acknowledgments
For most normal people, redistricting is the most boring word in the English language. But for members of Congress and state legislators, its cause for full-out panic. This is musical chairs with switchblades. Dan Schnur1

After having done everything in order to postpone writing this thesis for over two years, I am glad the once blank pages have filled themselves with words, tables and figures, to create what is the finishing touch to my American Studies degree. While there are many different reasons for why it took me almost two years after my return from my semester abroad at the University of California, Berkeley, to sit down and start this project, the best explanation is that there were too many other things I liked doing other than writing a thesis. From traveling to Florida; attending lectures and events by some of my personal heroes; working at the Roosevelt Study Center; and setting up a national organization and conference for American Studies students, all were things I made sure would keep me away from this last item that needed to be checked before I could graduate. However, with the deadline of expiring grades fast approaching, my fascination for electoral issuespartly awakened by the classes on politics and campaigning of Dan Schnur at Berkeleyfocused on the redistricting due to a book with old Congressional Districts I found while working at the RSC. My own opinion on the issue was based of what journalists, pundits and historians had explained was the deteriorating impact of gerrymandering on American politics. Quickly, however, I found research contradicting the assumptions I learned. Particularly this search to uncover the truth about the influence redistricting kept writing this thesis interesting, and the evidence which eventually made me change my mind on the issue, forms the basis of this thesis. The fact that this has been such a long process makes me ever more indebted to the people who have assisted me along the way. First and foremost I like to thank my thesis supervisor dr. Thomas W. Gijswijt for the debates which forced me to make my thesis even more focused and hopefully convincing. Furthermore, I would not have been able to write a political science oriented American Studies Master thesis if prof. dr. Hans Bak and dr. Jac Geurts had not enabled me to transfer from Groningen to Nijmegen and, together with the rest of the
1

Seema Metha, Redrawing of District Boundaries Will Shake Up California Politics, Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2011, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-maps-20110610,0,3926097.story (accessed June 25, 2011).

Acknowledgments

iii

American Studies faculty at the Radboud University Nijmegen, welcomed me with open arms. Next to their interesting classes, I had the pleasure to assist them in the organization of the successful 16th NASA Amerikanistendag, which is where the idea for creating the StudentNASA originated. While I am grateful for the possibilities the various boards of the Netherlands American Studies Associations (NASA) have given me to pursue this idea, my thanks goes out to the study associations, students and speakers who were willing to make the conference we organized a great success. I hope there are ways to continue this cooperation after my graduation. Closely linked to the NASA is another organization which greatly influenced my academic career, namely the Roosevelt Study Center. After working there as an intern in the summer of 2007, this unique research center on American history has not only supported me in every possible way, but brought me into contact with interesting students, researchers and Fulbright Scholars who, by telling about their own research, have contributed to my own ideas, concepts and dreams. Prof. dr. Kees van Minnen, dr. Hans Krabbendam, prof. dr. Giles ScottSmith, and Leontien Joosse, I thank you for your continued belief in me, and I look forward to raising a glass with you this September to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the RSC. The change of American Studies programs I made at the beginning of my Bachelor meant more for me than just finding the right academic focus. It also placed me in a group of likeminded, enthusiastic, and downright awesome people. Together we organized movie nights, planed trips to the U.S. Consulate, stalked Twan Huys, experienced Boston, and had long serious talks about our the future. Boston 10, Chicago 3, San Fran 5, Berkeley 2, Key West 6, Miami 5, Samson 2, Eindhoven 3, I cannot imagine how my life would have looked without you all in it, but I am sure it would have been really boring. Your presence and support helped me to become who I am today, and I doubt I will ever find another group of people who will be similarly exited over the same country that is just a six to nine hour flight away. Someone who has been a stable force, motivator, critical reader, but foremost friend for almost half my life is Anna de Bruyckere. I am unable to reimburse her for all the help and support she has given me over the years, but at least can acknowledge her crucial assistance in the final stages of this project, as well as her contributions along the way. My parents and sister continue to encourage all my plans, are there when I need them, or when I just feel like going home. I am blessed to have such a supportive family. This thesis is dedicated to them.

Nijmegen, August 2011

Contents

iv

Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgments

ii

Contents

iv

Introduction

Chapter 1: Gerrymandering as the Cause of the Broken System

Chapter 2: Effect of Partisan Redistricting on Elections in Congressional Districts

15

Chapter 3: Partisan Redistricting and Polarization in U.S. House of Representatives

29

Chapter 4: Unwanted Ramifications of Redistricting Commissions

50

Chapter 5: Better Representation through Noncompetitive Homogeneous Districts

65

Conclusion

77

Tables and Figures

80

Bibliography

83

Datasets

91

Introduction

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective number, counting whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.1

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, 2.

Introduction Introduction

In 2000, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama suffered his first, and up till now only election loss for a seat in public office. In the four way Democratic primary election for Illinois 1st Congressional District he received a little over 30 percent of the vote, while the incumbent, Bobby Rush, won with more than 60 percent. Representative Rush enjoyed great popularity in the poorest, heavily African-American parts of Chicagos South Side, which constituted the majority of his district. However, the Obamas family apartment lay in Hyde Park, a mostly white neighborhood at the tip of Rushs district, and an area where Obama defeated the incumbent with a large margin. Barack Obama saw that when [they] were doing fund-raisers in the Rush campaign his appeal to young white professionals was dramatic. 2 This growing awareness of his ability to connect to affluent white donors, while retaining a supportive (African-American) base, would prove to be invaluable in later years, but had not resulted in a victory over Bobby Rush. However, putting a 30 percent dent into the reelection of a long time incumbent was and is remarkable, and provided grounds for rumors of another attempt to win the district at a Congressional election down the line. However, in 2001, Illinois congressional districts were redrawn following the release of the Census results. While in 1991, the Republicans held most seats in the state legislature, the Democratic majority in 2001 took this opportunity to create districts that would be beneficial to them. Figure 1 shows parts of the results of this redistricting process. The blue overlay represents the old district lines, in place for the 2000 Congressional Elections, while the red overlay represents the new district lines for Illinois 1st district after the redistricting process. Obamas apartment, first part of the district, due to a curious series of irregular turns, missed the new district lines by as little as two blocks.3 Figure 1: Illinois 1st Congressional District and Obamas Apartment

Ryan Lizza, How Chicago Shaped Obama. New Yorker, July 21, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza. 3 Ibid.

Introduction

This is, however, where the facts stop, and two diverging narratives take over. Some argue that Obama, together with the political consultant in charge of the redistricting process of all Congressional Districts in Chicago, sat down in front of a computer to draw Obama a new district composed of more of those wealthier, whiter, more Jewish, less blue-collar, and better educated voters which had provided him the (financial) support to win 30 percent of the vote during the campaign against Rush.4 Others argue it was incumbent Bobby Rush who wished to make it difficult for his opponents to challenge him in future elections.5 The fact that, next to Obama, also the other two primary contestants were drawn out of Rushs district provides further evidence for this explanation. Whichever story is true, partisan redistricting in Illinois may have been the most important event in Obamas early political life.6 While he eventually did decide against another campaign to become a member of the House of Representatives, the understanding he gained on his ability to persuade two very different groups of voters for supportboth financially and with community actionwas of the essence in both his 2004 Senate bid as well as his 2008 Presidential campaign. However, not every redistricting story involves a future president, and wile there are differences in the explanations on why Obamas apartment was drawn out of the Congressional District he had hoped to represent, both point towards politicians influencing district lines for their own political benefit. Currently, redistricting has gained renewed prominence in the public sphere, mainly because most of the 435 Congressional Districts are redrawn following the 2010 Census results. Additionally, redistricting is also claimed to be the reason for the growing polarization of both parties in Congress, which, as the recent debtceiling crisis has showed, has the possibility to create legislative gridlock in Washington, D.C. Recent Supreme Court cases have contributed to the steady stream of editorial columns in national newspapers claiming the harmful effects of districts being drawn by politicians, while voters in some states have initiated or approved legislation that will the right of redistricting away from the politicians and in the hands of special commissions. Although the narrative on redistricting is controlled by those who compare the practice to that of totalitarian regimes, a quick glance on academic research on the topic gives a more balanced perspective on the matter. This thesis, which is rooted in the positive political theory approach of Political Economy, will therefore question what the influence of redistricting is on the U.S House of Representatives. Specifically, it describes and analyzes the most
Ibid. Michael P. McDonald, In Support of Redistricting Reform (Paper, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, May 8, 2009), 1. 6 Lizza, How Chicago Shaped Obama.
5 4

Introduction

influential research on this topic to figure out if the claims made in the debate surrounding redistrictingwhich have a certain logical appealare accurate, or if they are unsupported by facts. This also includes assumptions made on the benefits of redistricting commissions over regular legislative redistricting, as well as on the idea that competitive elections are what leads to better voter representation in the House. In Chapter 1, this thesis will first delve into the discussion on redistricting by looking at the opinion pages in newspapers, the attitudes of voters and politicians, and describing recent progress on this issue in several Supreme Court cases. Subsequently, Chapters 2 and 3 will rebuke claims of partisan advantages and influence of redistricting on polarization, and will provide compelling different explanations for findings by some researchers present as the effect of redistricting. This is followed by an exposition on the undemocratic consequences of redistricting commissions, as well as an analysis of the results on competition and polarization in commission drawn districts in Chapter 4. The closing chapter adds another dimension to the discussion, pointing out that more competitionsomething which, according supporters of redistricting reform, districts currently lack due to gerrymanderingleads to worse

representation of voters. The question of the influence of redistricting will be revisited in the conclusion, which points out that the claims made on the issue, perpetuate by politicians, pundits, voters and some academics, are largely exaggerated or false. If lack of adequate representation of voters is something that needs to be solved, the public should be informed about the benefits of uncompetitive homogenous districts, rather than trying to artificially create competitive districts through unnecessary and undemocratic redistricting commissions.

Chapter 1: Gerrymandering as the Cause of the Broken System

Im the majority leader, and I want more seats Tom DeLay1

Adam Cohen, For Partisan Gain, Republicans Decide Rules Were Meant to Be Broken, New York Times, May 27, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/opinion/editorial-observer-for-partisan-gain-republicansdecide-rules-were-meant-be.html (accessed July 7, 2011).

Chapter 1 Chapter 1: Gerrymandering as the Cause of the Broken System in Washington, D.C.

In a widely discussed article published in August 2010, Vanity Fairs national editor Todd Purdum described the current political situation in the nations capitol as follows: The evidence that Washington cannot functionthat its broken, as Vice President Joe Biden has saidis all around. For two years after Wall Street brought the country close to economic collapse, regulatory reform languished in partisan gridlock. A bipartisan commission to take on the federal deficit was scuttled by Republican fears in Congress that it could lead to higher taxes, and by Democratic worries about cuts to social programs. Obama was forced to create a mere advisory panel instead. Four years after Congress nearly passed a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws, the two parties in Washington are farther apart than ever, and hotheaded state legislatures have stepped into the breach.2 Purdums article is one of many recent articles, academic books, newspaper editorials and other publications that have blamed the partisan gridlock in D.C. as preventing actual solutions to real problems in the nation. Although the Presidents functions as the most visible target in some of these denunciations, it is Congressthe legislative branch in Americas trias politicathat has become what Thomas E. Mann and his colleagues at the Brookings Institute have called the Broken Branch, noting the demise of deliberation and the rise of a destructive form of extreme partisanship in the legislature at the center of todays problems.3 The general public is not satisfied with the continued bickering in the Capitol, recently resulting in approval ratings of below 20 percent, the lowest ratings since Gallup began its polling on Congress in 1974.4 The system is broken, and the people are dissatisfied with those in charge. With a situation as described above, one would expect Congressional elections especially in the House of Representatives with all 435 members only serve two year terms to lead to electoral losses for both Republicans and Democrats. And while these antiestablishment sentiments were expressed by Tea Party candidates during the 2010 Congressional election cycle, only a small number of seatsroughly 40 in 2010during each election are close enough to be considered competitive, and incumbent reelection rates are
Todd Purdum, Washington, We Have a Problem Vanity Fair, September 2010, http://www.vanityfair.com/ politics/feautures/2010/09/broken-washington-201009 (accessed August 17, 2010). 3 Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Orstein, The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Sarah A. Binder, Thomas E. Mann, and Molly Reynolds, Mending the Broken Branch: One Year Later: In Congress Still the Broken Branch (Washington, D.C.: Governance Studies at Brookings, 2008), 7. 4 Jeffery M. Jones, Congressional Approval Back Below 20%, Gallup, March 11, 2011. http://www.gallup.com/poll/146567/congressional-approval-back-below.aspx (accessed March 12, 2011).
2

Chapter 1

well above 90 percent. Seats are considered to be designated for one political party, and once elected, politicians in the House of Representatives are almost certain of their reelection. The dissatisfaction of the voters with the way Congress is doing its job and the election results are at odds; bringing these two back in line is seen by some political pundits as the solution for solving a host of other problems in Congress: extreme partisanship, polarization and the legislative gridlock.

Editorials Many newspaper columns have been devoted to what is perceived to be the root cause of these problemsgerrymanderingand the silver bullet: redistricting reform. The claim made is that redistricting is extremely partisan and the reason why more ideologically extreme politician get elected to represent districts in the House. The redrawing of (congressional) districts usually happens after the decennial Census, and in most states is in the hands of state governments. This process lead to districts being identified as gerrymandered. The term gerrymanderingderiving from Massachusetts Governor Gerry, who in 1812 approved a redistricting plan which created a salamander shaped district to benefit his own political partyshows that this is an old political practice. However, several changes have occurred in the past few decades that are believed to have made the practice both more pronounced and successful. Therefore, while the 2010 Republican takeover of the House made the most headlines, some political analysts believe the GOPs victory in many state legislature and gubernatorial races could provide a more lasting impact. As one analyst states, the Republicans have gained control over congressional redistrictingby way of holding the governorship and the full legislaturein 10 more states, giving them power over 18 states containing 202 districts. Democrats are fully in charge of the process in only six states with a total of 47 House seats. 5 For years, editorials in national newspapers and weeklies have argued that [b]oth parties have succeeded in drawing district lines in ways that cement their power by eliminating contested elections.6 As a result of limited interparty competition, the created [s]afe districts tend to drive candidates to the extremes, since their biggest worries come from primary challengers, not the general elections.7 The turnout in primaries is tiny [] and tends to be disproportionately composed of activists who are politically slanted to the left or the right extremes leading to politicians getting the nomination who have more

5 6

Bob Beneson, In Remapping, No Guarantees, CQ Weekly, March 7, 2011, 518. Elections With No Meaning, New York Times, February 21, 2004, sec. A. 7 Gridlock in the Forecast, Washington Post, August 18, 2008, sec. A.

Chapter 1

extreme political views as well.8 [A] fact that has lead to greater polarization in the conduct of the House. 9 Although the term and practice of gerrymandering is not new, [p]arty operatives now use powerful computers to draw lines that guarantee their party as many seats as possible. 10 Until the 1990s, legislators had to draw districts using coloured pens on acetate sheets spread out on big maps on the floor, but now [n]ew geographic information systems for mapping and analyzing demographic data cost only a few thousand dollars, work on ordinary Windows operating systems, and can draw up partisan maps automatically.11 Not only are political parties better able to draw districts to create as many additional seats as possible, incumbents districts are also reshaped to decrease competition in their districts, leading to incumbents who worry more about their extreme flanks than about the center, while redistricting at the same time erodes political accountability for the extreme policies approved by the incumbent to cater to the party fringe. 12 Not only does this lead to bad representation, but disgruntled voters also have to pay the bill in the form of higher taxes, because by reducing the fear of being defeated at the polls, gerrymandering increases the likelihood that members will vote for more and more spendingand eventually, theyll have to vote for the higher and higher taxes to pay for that spending.13 When the turnover in the United States House of Representatives is lower than it was in the Soviet Politburo, 14 according to these editorials and newspaper articles, Congressional elections can better be compared to the Iraqi election in 2002, when Saddam Hussein claimed 100 percent of the vote for his re-election than those of a true democracy.15

Supreme Court Cases These grave analyses of the current state of the American political system were partly fuelled by two recent highly publicized cases of apparent gerrymandering; one in Pennsylvania in and one in Texas. In Pennsylvania, Republicans controlled both chambers of the state legislature, as well as the governors mansion, at the moment the results of the 2000

Time to Bury Governor Gerry, Economist, September 10, 2010, http://www.economist.com/node/17202149/ (accessed March 29, 2011). 9 Dan Balz, Partisan Polarization Intensified in 2004 Election; Only 59 of the Nations 435 Congressional Districts Split Their Vote for President and House, Washington Post, March 29, 2005, sec. A. 10 Ending the Gerrymander Wars, New York Times, May 30, 3005, sec. A. 11 How to Rig an Election, Economist, April 27, 2002, 29. 12 A Model of Reform, Washington Post, January 19, 2005, sec. A. 13 Bill Pascoe, Reinventing Conservatism: Eradicate the Gerrymander, Washington Times, January 6, 2010, sec. A. 14 Adam Nagourney, States See Growing Campaign for New Redistricting Laws, New York Times, February 7, 2005, sec. A. 15 Elections With No Meaning, New York Times.

Chapter 1

Census were reported. While a majority of the states voters are registered Democrats the map the Republican state government drew produced a Congressional delegation of 12 Republicans and 7 Democrats.16 When the Census results became available for Texas, the state had a divided state government, with both the Republicans and Democrats controlling one legislative chamber, preventing either party of adopting a partisan redistricting plan. In 2003, however, the Republicans gained control over the Texas State House, and while middecade redistricting is uncommon, adopted a plan that redistricted districts so that Republican controlled nearly two-thirds of the states Congressional delegation.17 As both maps were to the disadvantage of the Democratic Party, it sued its way up to the Supreme Court, which in previous cases had dealt with redistricting issues. Until the groundbreaking 1962 one person, one vote ruling, the Supreme Court viewed redistricting questions to be in the political thicket. In Baker v. Carr the Justices decided that (congressional) districts had to be redistricted following the decennial Census in order to compensate for demographical changes within the districts. All districts within a state had to be redrawn in order to have an almost equal number of inhabitants, which some states had neglected to do for decades. Prior to this ruling, rural voters were overrepresented and urban voters underrepresented in the House because of years of strong urbanization. After one person, one vote, districts had to adhere to strict rules with only a small deviation in the number of inhabitants, as counted by the Census, allowed. In the first few decades following Baker redistricting cases mostly dealt with minority representation and state obligations under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. During the late 1980s also disputes concerning partisan redistricting were also reviewed by the Court. In the 1986 case Davis v. Bandemer, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering claims ought to be considered justiciablemeaning that they were outside of the political question doctrine and that they therefore could be brought to the attention on the Court.18 In nearly two decades following this decision, however, there were virtually no successful claims in the lower courts, in part because the standard announced by a plurality of Justices in Bandemer was apparently impossible to meet.19 In 2003 Vieth v. Jubelirer, a case dealing with the 2001 Pennsylvania redistricting plan, was the first high profile case on gerrymandering to reach the Court after Bandemer. The subsequent 2004 ruling, however, did not provide a clear answer to the
16 17

Democracy Takes a Hit, New York Times, April 29, 2004, sec. A A Loss for Competitive Elections, New York Times, June 29, 2006, sec. A. 18 Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109 (1986). 19 Richard L. Hasen, Looking for Standards (in All the Wrong Places): Partisan Gerrymandering Claims after Vieth, Election Law Journal: Rules Politics, and Policy 3, no.4 (2004): 626, doi:10.1089/elj.2004.3.626.

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problems at hand. Of the nine Justices, four retracted the decision made in Davis v. Bandemer in their plurality opinion, and argued that partisan gerrymandering should not be considered justiciable, because there was no workable test for judging partisan gerrymandering.20 In the years since their 1986 ruling no workable test had been created by the lower courts, and these four judges therefore questioned if a test distinguishing between normal redistricting and partisan gerrymandering could ever be created. They concluded that it was not for the courts to say when a violation has occurred, and to design a remedy for partisan gerrymandering.21 The three dissenting opinionswritten or joined by four judgesto this ruling proved the plurality right, because each adopted a different standard to test whether a gerrymander had occurred. This four-four split in the Court created a pivotal position for the Justice Kennedy to decide this case. His concurrent opinion joined the plurality opinion in their statement that up to this point no standard had been provided that would create a manageable and justifiable way of ruling on partisan gerrymanders. By arguing that[by] the timeline of the law 18 years [since Bandemer] is rather a short period, he disagreed with the other four on the point that since such a test hand not been found yet, it would never be found.22 However, since no workable standard had been provided by the plaintiffs, he joined the plurality in dismissing this case concerning the Pennsylvania redistricting. The opportunity to present a new manageable standard to the court came in 2006 with LULAC v. Perry, which concerned the Texas mid-decade redistricting. Again, no agreed upon standard could be adopted by the Court. It furthermore rejected the idea that a mid-decade reredistricting is inherently unconstitutional and that redistricting done for no motive other than partisan gain is inherently unconstitutional.23 The dismissal in both cases of a partisan gerrymander on the basis of the absence of a test, generated critique on the Courts actions. One editorial published after the LULAC ruling notes that in previous cases [t]he court has proved itself capable of thinking up elaborate tests when it wants toit has made up standards virtually out of whole cloth but is not a resourceful when in comes to protecting voters rights.24 While the lack of an agreed upon standard might lead to the conclusion that the Supreme Court is unwilling to act in these cases, the fact that those Justices in favor of judicial action could not agree on a single
Ibid., 629. Ibid., 630. 22 Ibid., 632. 23 Bernard Grofman and Gary King, The Future of Partisan Symmetry as a Judicial Test for Partisan Gerrymandering after LULAC v. Perry, Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 6, no. 1 (2007): 3, doi:10.1089/elj.2006.6002. 24 A Loss for Competititve Elections, New York Times.
21 20

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gerrymandering test is also significant. While the redistricting practices in Texas and Pennsylvania seemed to be clear-cut partisan efforts, no test could distinguish between these types of redistricting and normal deviations within a redistricting process in a winner-takes-all system. 25 The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee proportional representation, and even without the possible influence of partisan gerrymandering, the current system leads to variations between the popular vote within a state, and the eventual distribution of House seats. The fact that there is no single tests that can clearly distinguish between a partisan gerrymander and normal redistricting, suggest that the difference itself is not as big as the narrative on gerrymandering portrays it to be. Either way, under the current conditions the Supreme Court will not likely strike down any plan on the basis of alleged partisan gerrymandering.

Politicians However, the Court, in its Vieth plurality verdict, notes another and perhaps more apt approach to curbing the perceived disturbing effect of partisan redistricting by noting that [i]t is significant that the Framers provided a remedy for such practices in the Constitution. Article I, 4, while leaving in state legislatures the initial power to draw districts for federal elections, permitted Congress to make or alter those districts if it wished. 26 Just as the newspaper editorials, politicians are also convinced of the deteriorating effect of redistricting in the hands of state governments. Then Senator Barack Obama claimed that political gerrymandering has led to a generation of politicians who come from safe districts where they don't have to consider the other side of the debate, which has made compromiseand therefore legislative progressmore difficult.
27

Former House Speaker and current

presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stated that Democrats get to rip off the public in the states where they control and protect their incumbents, and we [Republicans] get to rip off the public in states we control and protect our incumbents, so the public gets ripped off in both circumstances. 28 And while, as Justice Scalia notes in the plurality opinion of Vieth v. Jubelirer, [t]he power bestowed on Congress to regulate elections, and in particular to

See Grofman and King, The Future of Partisan Symetry, for the various tests which failed to succeed in both SCOTUS cases. 26 Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U. S. 267 (2004), 275. 27 Joe Klein, The Fresh Face, Time, October 15, 2006, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,1546362,00.html (accessed May 24, 2011). 28 Juliet Eilperin, The Gerrymander That Ate America, Slate Magazine, April 17, 2006, http://www.slate.com/id/2140054/ (accessed April 14, 2011).

25

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restrain the practice of political gerrymandering, has not lain dormant29referring to several acts approved by Congress at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century to curtail gerrymandering practicesin recent decades Congress has hardly even considered legislation to set national standards for redistricting. 30 Currently the only congressional regulation with regards to redistricting put in place is based on a 1967 act which prevents states from disregarding districts all together by letting members be elected through statewide elections. 31 This is not to say that no one in Congress is drafting legislation to alter the current redistricting process; in the past forty years bills ranging from the prohibition of more than a once a decade redrawing of district lines (H.R. 14998 in 1976), to those that would require states to redistrict through independent commissions (H.R. 590 in 2011) have been drafted. However, none of those bills got any further in the legislative process than being introduced on the House or Senate floor. This is understandable, because those who think they benefit most from the current partisan system will not approve a bill that could well be damaging to their political future. This has prevented national redistricting standards to be adopted, leaving concerned voters to take matters into their own hands, demanding changes to the redistricting process through statewide ballot measures.

Voters Demand Reforms These voter initiatives usually demand the creation of some form of nonpartisan redistricting committees, which they belief would lead to better representation by enhancing competition and decreasing incumbent reelection. For example, Californias Proposition 20, which turned the redistricting process of Congressional Districts over to a Citizens Redistricting Committee, was approved by the voters in 2010, just in time for the new round of redistricting following the 2010 Census. Arizona, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, New Jersey and Washington also have commissions composed of voters, (former) justices or equal partisan representatives in place which redraw the district lines. However, it took California voters several unsuccessful attempts before getting such a commission approved. Given the cost of ballot measures, especially when they are not backed by either political party, similar initiatives in other states might take years before they get approved. Supporters justify this effort by the claiming the representational improvements following redistricting commissions.
29 30

Vieth v. Jubelirer, 276 Redistricting Legislation in the U.S. Congress, (Maryland: FairVote, January 2004) http://archive.fairvote.org/redistricting/congress.htm. 31 Congressional Research Service, Congressional Redistricting: Is At-Large Representation Permitted in the House of Representatives? (Washington, DC: CRS, 2003), 2.

Chapter 1 Conclusion

13

While the media, politicians and voters see redistricting done by politicians as the source of why Washington is broken, the fact that the Supreme Court is unable to settle on a single test that would distinguish partisan gerrymandering from regular redistricting, begs the question if the current situation does undermine the democratic election process, and if nonpartisan redistricting commissions would necessarily be a fairer way to redraw district lines. Although in the case of Pennsylvania district boundaries appeared to give Republicans an unjustified advantage, under the same district lines, Republicans went from a 12-7 edge after the 2002 elections to a 12-7 deficit after the 2008 elections.32 In addition, the fact that the Texas redistricting plan was approved by a special commission composed of three judges, shows that voters demands for nonpartisan commissions do not necessarily lead to different results than the current system. Both cases received a lot of attention because they appeared to show the most brazen cases of partisan gerrymandering, resulting in the conclusion that redistricting in the other 48 states did not lead to situations that appeared to be as grave as in these two states. Furthermore, the redistricting of the Massachusetts map which led to the coinage of the term gerrymandering, eventually failed in creating political benefits for Governor Gerry.33 These facts contradict the claims made on the influence of redistricting. Therefore, the following chapters will address if dominant description of redistrictingand the lack of competition it is claimed to causeas a root cause of the problems in Washington, D.C., is supported by academic research. Chapter 1 will address the benefits parties in control of the redistricting process are alleged to have.

Beneson, In Remapping, No Guarantees, 520. Mark E. Rush, Gerrymandering: Out of the Political Thicket and Into the Quagmire,PS: Political Science and Politics 27, no. 4 (1994): 682, http://www.jstor.org/stable/420367.
33

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Chapter 2: Effect of Partisan Redistricting on Elections in Congressional Districts

If competitive elections matterand to much of the world they are what America stands forthen redistricting also matters. Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Jim Leach1

Earl Blumenauer and Jim Leach, Redistricting, a Bipartisan Sport, New York Times, July 8, 2003, sec. A.

Chapter 2 Chapter 2: Effect of Partisan Redistricting on Elections in Congressional Districts

15

Some of the common assumptions underlying the public debate on redistricting may, in fact, be wrong. Proponents of the partisan redistricting narrative, as shown in the previous chapter, believe that both the creation of additional partisan districts, as well as incumbency protection are beneficial factors of controlling the redistrict process. On the one hand parties can redraw district boundaries with representatives from the opposing party, creating additional districts where their own candidate can win. On the other hand they can also strengthen the position of their own incumbents by adding party voters to his or her district, creating what is known as a safe seat. As the redistricting process usually only takes place once every decade, partisan benefits created for districts are thought to have long lasting effect on outcome of elections. However, creating additional districts and incumbent safety are two conflicting gains, as shown in Figure 1. Increasing the safety of districts for a partywhen a party is sure to get at least 80 percent of the votemeans placing more of party voters in into a select number or districts, point A in Figure 1. This means that the total number of districts where this party has the majority of votes decreases. However, increasing the number of additional districts where a party will win the election (perhaps with just 51 percent of the vote) results in spreading the limited number of party supporters amongst several districts, point B, reducing the safety of these districts. Due to the limited number of party supporters, it is impossible to increase the safety of districts while at the same time also winning additional districts. Furthermore, these two assumed benefits from controlling the redistricting process also reveal conflicting interests between the party leadership and its incumbents. Whereas a political party wants to increase the total amount of seats, incumbents like to increase their chance of getting reelected. Thus it is possible that the party leadership, in order to gain a higher seat advantage through redistricting, wants to turn safe seats into competitive districts. The risk, however, of spreading supporters too thin as to be beneficial to the opposing party, as well as incumbent demands, will often prevent this from happening.2 A partisan redistricting plan therefore often reflects a tradeoff between these two demands.

J. David Gopoian and Darrell M. West,Trading Security for Seats: Strategic Considerations in the Redistricting Process. Journal of Politics 46 (1984): 1080, doi:10.2307/2131243.

Chapter 2 Figure 1: Tradeoff Between Additional Seats and Safety of Seats

16

This tradeoff works differently in the case of bipartisan redistricting plans, which have become more common due to the increase in divided state governments. In most states, control of both state legislative chambers as well as the governors mansion is needed in order to approve a partisan redistricting plan. While it is not uncommon for one party to control all three at the same time, the occurrence or divided or split state governments has increased since the 1960s up to the situation from the mid 1980s onwards where the majority of states has a divided state government in place. 3 In this situation, a partisan redistricting plan favoring one political party will undoubtedly be either not approved by at least one of the state legislative chambers, or vetoed by the opposing partys governor. In this situation, according to those supporting the idea that redistricting is a destructive force, both parties agree to only increase the safety of the states incumbents, regardless of their political affiliation, and not try to draw districts lines unfavorably to each other. Figure 2: Partisan State Governments
Total number of states

Partisan State Governments

40 30 20 10 0
60 70 80 90 19 19 19 19 20 00
Democratic State Government Republican State Government Divided State Government

Year

Morris P. Fiorina, An Era of Divided Government, Political Science Quarterly 107, no.3 (1992): 388. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2152437.

Chapter 2 Measuring effects

17

Having established that there are two possible benefits to controlling the redistricting processadding additional seats and creating safe seatsshowing the impact of redrawing CDs becomes essential. While the idea that controlling the redistricting process will influence elections sounds convincing, conclusively showing the existence of an effect proves to be more difficult. Not only can the use of different datasets distort the final results, researchers have also devised different methods of interpreting their data. Whereas some research focuses on the seats-to-votes ratio as an indication of partisan redistricting, others look at the number of competitive seats or incumbency displacement. Comparing their results is additionally challenging due to the two conflicting objectives of a possible gerrymander, which are often incompatible to evaluate at the same time. This section will therefore analyze several ways in which researcher have tried to measure the influence of partisan redistricting.

Additional districts While there are several ways to measure the effect of partisan redistricting on the creation of additional seats, one method that sticks out in both its effectiveness and straightforwardness, is Abramowitz 1983 method of measuring the before and after redistricting swing ratio in Democratic, Republican and dividedly controlled states. 4 The swing ratio, or seat-to-vote ratio, measured between a pre-redistricted and post-redistricted election, reflects whether a party was successful in creating districts where a small increase in the percentage of votes resulted in a much larger increase in the percentage of seats. It assumes that parties with full control over the redistricting process will use this control to establish this situation. In its most basic form the swing ratio is the change in the percentage of seats held by one party in two successive elections divided by the change in the percentage of votes over the same period or, in equation form, (%seatst2%seatst1) / (%votest2 %votest1).5 A swing ratio of 1 indicates that a party gained the same percentage of additional seats as the higher percentage of the vote it received on election day. A higher swing ratio, for instance 5.0, means a party was able to get a larger increase in the share of seats, in this example 10 percent, than justified on the basis of a smaller increase in votes, here 2 percent. Abramowitz compared the 1980 and 1982 election results for the Democrats, and found that while the national swing ratio in 1982 was 6.0 / 4.0 or 1.33 the swing ratio was much
Alan I. Abramowitz, Partisan Redistricting and the 1982 Congressional Elections, Journal of Politics 45 (1983): 767. doi:10.2307/2130716. 5 Richard G. Niemi, and Patrick Fett, The Swing Ratio: An Explanation and an Assessment, Legislative Studies Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1986): 77, http://www.jstor.org/stable/439910.
4

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larger [] in the seventeen states in which the Democratic Party had complete control of redistricting. 6 Table 1 shows that for every percentage Democrats gained in Democratic controlled states, they received an additional 3.2 percent of seats. In states with Republican or divided control, Abramowitz found swing ratios close to 1, meaning that an increase in the Democratic vote there was reflected by a similar increase in Democratic seats.
Table 1: Party Control of State Government and the Results of the 1982 Congressional Elections
Republican control 1,9 2,0 1,1 5 52 50 Divided control 4,7 5,2 1,1 22 215 213 Democratic control 2,2 7,1 3,2 17 161 166

Change in avg.% Dem. vote Change in % Dem. seats Swing ratio Number of states Number of seats in these states in 1980 Number of seats in these states in 1982

The methods simplicity, directness and concreteness led other researchers to duplicate Abramowitz method to measure the 1970-1972 Congressional redistricting effect, while at the same time adapting the process slightly. 7 Whereas Abramowitz had used state level aggregated election results to determine the increase in percentage of Democratic voters, Niemi and Winsky used district level results to better account for statistical anomalies such as uncontested seats.8 Although Democrats lost votes and seats during the 1972 congressional elections, the swing ratios in between these two elections still clearly reflect a partisan advantage in controlling the state government. In Republican controlled states, Democrats lost 1.7 percent in votes, but almost 5 percent in seats, resulting in a swing ratio of 2.9. While Democrats did far worse in states controlled by Democrats, loosing 5.5 percent of the vote, partisan redistricting prevented substantial losses and resulted in a 0.3 swing ratio.
Table 2: Party Control of State Government and the Results of the 1972 Congressional Elections
Republican control -1,7 -4,9 2,9 7 92 91 Divided control -1,8 -2,8 1,6 21 192 193 Democratic control -5,5 -1,9 0,3 16 144 145

Change in avg.% Dem. vote Change in % Dem. seats Swing ratio Number of states Number of seats in these states in 1970 Number of seats in these states in 1972

Abramowitz, Partisan Redistricting, 769-70. Richard G. Niemi and Laura R. Winsky, The Persistence of Partisan Redistricting Effects in Congressional Elections in the 1970s and 1980s. Journal of Politics 54, no. 2 (1992): 565-572. doi:10.2307/2132040, 565. 8 See footnote 3, 567 in Niemi and Winksy (1992) for full explanation.
7

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While both the results for the 1970s and 1980s redistricting provided support for the idea that controlling the redistricting process resulted in beneficial results in the following elections, Niemi and Abramowitz had less success in proving the same after the 1990s redistricting. While they had expected that mapmakers [had become] more skilled at partisan line-drawing and therefore that their previous results would be confirmed or even surpassed, the results from the 1990s indicate that, on average, partisan control of state government did little or nothing to enhance partisan gains from redistricting.9 Since Republicans controlled only two states 1992, with no changes in the number of seats, states controlled by Democrats are left to show possible partisan advantages. However, as Table 3 shows, in states the Democrats controlled, the GOP gained 1,86 percent more seats per percentage win of votes. This means a reverse effect of controlling the state government on the election results harming instead of beneficial to a party. The authors give two possible reasons for the fact that gerrymandering did not seem to have an effect in the 1992 congressional elections. On the one hand it could be that Republican state legislatures in Democratic controlled states actively fought against Democratic redistricting plans, although they were in the minority. On the other hand, the 1986 Davis v. Bandemer Supreme Court verdict made gerrymandering justiciablemeaning that legal complaints raised on partisan redistricting had standing in courtcould have restrained state legislatures in drafting district lines predominantly beneficial to one political party.
Table 3: Party Control of State Government and the Results of the 1992 Congressional Elections
Republican control 2,49 0,00 0,00 2 5 5 Divided control 1,62 1,55 0,96 23 286 280 Democratic control 1,95 3,63 1,86 17 133 141

Change in avg.% Rep. vote Change in % Rep. seats Swing ratio Number of states Number of seats in these states in 1990 Number of seats in these states in 1992

Extending the research to the new millennium in Table 4, the redistricting advantage becomes apparent again, especially in Democratic controlled states where Republicans gained more than 2 percent in votes, but lost almost 4 percent in seats. Both under Republican and divided control, however, the swing ratio was almost 1, resulting in a high level of responsiveness to the election outcome, but low indication of partisan gerrymandering.

Richard G. Niemi and Alan I. Abramowitz, Partisan Redistricting and the 1992 Congressional Elections, Journal of Politics 56, no. 3 (1994): 815, doi:10.2307/2132195.

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Table 4: Party Control of State Government and the Results of the 2002 Congressional Elections
Republican control 4,15 5,32 1,28 8 91 89 Divided control 2,17 1,79 0,83 27 237 236 Democratic control 2,17 -3,93 -1,81 8 100 103

Change in avg.% Rep. vote Change in % Rep. seats Swing ratio Number of states Number of seats in these states in 2000 Number of seats in these states in 2002

When comparing the votes-seats relationship in all four elections, the overall low swing ratio is often quite low, especially during the 1992 and 2002 elections. Furthermore, it varies less in states that are not controlled by either party. This could lend support to the theoretical trade-off between security and seats which forms the basis of the hypothesis of bipartisan gerrymandering, although this would be circumstantial as the swing ratio in dividedly governed states often is close to 1, the number reflecting no influence of redistricting at all. By and large however, the fact that the swing ratio does not indicate huge benefits of partisan control of the state government, or even a reversed effect on the swing ratio in 1992, undermines the narrative often portrayed about the large impact of gerrymandering. There are some additional questions that can be raised on measuring the impact of partisan redistricting by using the swing ratio. As is true in the results for 1972 and 1992, the most significant swing ratio is based on only a small number of states, which does make it susceptible to small anomalies within the data. Furthermore, the test does not take into regard those states that had commission or court ordered redistricting plans. Their removal from the measurements might produce a more explicit effect of partisan control of state governments. 10 Campagna and Grofman take opposition with what they see as Abramowitz doubly flawed methodology by mixing responsivenessare votes reflected by seat returnswith biasis the system biased towards one party, as well as using the swing ratio as a measurement all together.11 Although their objections on the former is a definitional matter on which there is no consensus, their objections with regards to using the swing ratio have been widely accepted.12 In an article exclusively dealing with the swing ratio, Niemi and Fett argue against using what they call historical swing ratiohistorical meaning based on historic election resultsstating that [e]ven when the focus is on a single pair of years, as in Abramowitz

Janet Campagna and Bernard Grofman, Party Control and Partisan Bias in 1980s Congressional Redistricting, Journal of Politics 52, no. 4 (1990): 1243, doi:10.2307/2131690. 11 Ibid., 1244. 12 Niemi and Winsky, The Persistence of Partisan Redistricting, Footnote 2, 566.

10

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(1983), its extreme sensitivity to small changes in input makes its use questionable. 13 Had Abramowitz method resulted in a more obvious result pointing towards a large benefit in increasing the number of districts for a party controlling the redistricting process, these objections would have been futile. That this is not the case tells more about the actual impact of gerrymandering than about the method itself.

Competitive Districts Besides to looking at the swing ratio, there are other measurements that could indicate the influence of gerrymandering, for instance the competitiveness of districts. There are different interpretations as to why redistricting would affect competitiveness. On the one hand, with partisan gerrymandering plans, a party could create additional safe district in which they face little to no opposition by packing as many of the opposing party supporters in as few as possible districts.14 It could also split opposing party voters of one competitive district, and divide them evenly amongst several safe districts, increasing the competition in those districts slightly, but not enough to make them into competitive districts, and thus increasing the total number of noncompetitive districts (a process that is know as cracking).15 With bipartisan redistricting plans, both parties could agree to protect the incumbents and draft districts where they would not face opposition from opposing parties. In both situations the number of competitive districts would decline, while the number of safe and unopposed districts would increase in the election following redistricting. In a hypothetical state with 200 Republican (red) and 100 Democratic (blue) voters with 6 Congressional Districts, each district would be composed of 50 voters. In the most competitive plan, as is shown in Figure 3, this would create four competitive districts, where both parties have an equal change of winning, and creating two districts with a Republican majority. If a Republican gerrymandering plan would be enforced, however, they could adopt a plan in which the Democratic voters would be divided amongst six districts. In each one of these districts, however, Republican voters are in the majority, resulting in six Republican representatives. Figure 5 reflects another possibility in the case of a partisan or bipartisan redistricting plan. Both supporter groups are packed into their own districts, leading to no competitive districts, but with two Democratic, and four Republican representatives.
13 14

Niemi and Fett, The Swing Ratio, 78. Michael Cooper, 5 Ways to Tilt an Election, New York Times, September 25, 2010, http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/weekinreview/20100925-redistricting-graphic.pdf (accessed January 12, 2011). 15 Ibid.

Chapter 2 Figure 3: Most competitive Figure 4: Cracking Figure 5: Packing

22

A decrease in the number of competitive districts was noticed early on after the 1962 Supreme Court ruling mandating states to redistrict. In 1973, Tufte noticed that the percentage of districts in which the victory margin was less than 5% percent, declined from 22 percent in 1958 to only 13 percent in 1970.16 Seats in the U.S. Senate, where redistricting could not influence the number of competitive districts, had roughly the same percentage of marginal victories between in this period. Tufte concluded that a major element in the job security of incumbents is their ability to exert significant control over the drawing of district boundaries. 17 Also more contemporary research notes the impact of redistricting on the number of competitive districts. Fiorina et al. points towards a remarkable situation: [A]s elections have gotten closer in the aggregate, the number of competitive elections have declined. In 2000, when the presidential race was a cliff-hanger, only seventy-four of the 435 House seats were won by margins of less than 55 percent. In 2002, following the decennial reapportionment and redistricting cycle, the number of such competitive districts fell to forty-seven. 18 According to Fiorina et al. this was the result of a bipartisan gerrymander that left almost 90 percent of U.S. House seats safely in the hands of one or the other of the two parties, despite the close division of the aggregate vote.19 Just as was the case with measuring the swing ratio, the analysis depends on how the data is interpreted, and, as McDonald shows, also on the decision which dataset to use. McDonald compared before and after redistricting levels of competitiveness using three different data sets and two brackets of competitivenessone with districts within the 45-55% election results, and one with an even stricter measure of 48-52% resulting in a maximum of a 4
Edward R. Tufte, The Relationship between Seats and Votes in Two-Party Systems, American Political Science Review 67, no. 2 (1973): 550, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1958782. 17 Ibid., 551. 18 Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. (New York: Longman, 2004), 108. 19 Ibid., 109.
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percent victory margin. 20 Although Table 5 shows that not all operationalisations show a decrease in the number of competitive districts in both brackets during all three redistricting cycles, in general redistricting seems to have resulted in a decline in the number of competitive districts. Table 5: Number of Competitive Districts, 1980-2002

While the numbers both Tufte and McDonald point towards a decrease in the number of competitive districts due to redistricting, others have found evidence confirming a decline in competitive districts, but suggests that this is not due to redistricting. In a rebuttal to Tuftes findings, John A. Ferejohn suggests that in order for gerrymandering to have an influence on the decline of competitiveness of districts, one must see a difference between districts that have been redistricted, and those that have not.21 While he also finds that the percentage of competitive districts drops after being redistricted, almost the same drop can be measured for districts that had not been redistricted between 1962 and 1970. As the decline occurred in unredistricted areas as well, this suggest[s] that redistricting has no influence at all on the number of competitive districts.
22

This analysis is furthermore supported by more

contemporary research by Abramowitz, Alexander and Gunning. A visualization of the changes between the number of competitive seats before and after redistricting, as shown in Figure 6, does seem to confirm McDonalds numbers, but also shows that [t]he most significant changes in the competitiveness of House districts occurred between redistricting

Michael P. McDonald, Drawing the Line on District Competition, PS: Political Science and Politics 39, no. 1 (2006): 92, doi:10.1017/S1049096506060161. 21 John A. Ferejohn, On the Decline of Competition in Congressional Elections, American Political Science Review 71, no. 1 (1977): 168, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1956960. 22 Ibid.

20

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cycles.23 For instance, the number of competitive districts declined with 34 from 1992 to 2000.24 Both Ferejohn and Abramowitz et al. show that redistricting can not be blamed for the decrease in competitive districts, as it also happens in unredistricted areas, as well as between rather than during redistrict cycles. Figure 6: Number of Competitive Districts Before and After Redistricting, 1980-2002.

Incumbency Part of the influence of the redistricting narrative as portrayed in the media, is the incumbency protection it would provide both in partisan but even more so in bipartisan redistricting plans. Since bipartisan redistricting has become more common due to the increase in states with split governments (figure 2), recent redistricting cycles should have been good times for incumbent House members. With reelection rates having increased since the 1960s to sometimes more than 95 percent, the data seem to support this effect of partisan redistricting. Lyons and Galderisi, in their 1995 article on the partisan redrawing of Congressional Districts lines in the 1990-92 redistricting cycle, measured the incumbent displacementthose candidates who were not reelected as representativesunder partisan and bipartisan redistricting plans.25 Although they expected incumbency protection to be part of a partisan redistricting plan, they believed the creation of additional partisan districts (as shown in figure 4) would be at the forefront in those plans. This might have an adverse affect
Alan I. Abramowitz, Brad Alexander, and Matthew Gunning, Incumbency, Redistricting, and the Decline of Competition in U.S. House Elections, Journal of Politics 68, no. 1 (2006): 79, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00371.x. 24 Ibid., Don't Blame Redistricting for Uncompetitive Elections. PS: Political Science and Politics 39, no. 1 (2006): 88, doi:10.1017/S1049096506060185. 25 Michael Lyons and Peter F. Galderisi, Incumbency, Reapportionment, and U.S. House Redistricting, Political Research Quarterly 48, no. 4 (1995): 850, http://www.jstor.org/stable/448978.
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on incumbency reelection. On the other hand, with bipartisan redistricting plans, incumbency protection might be the only benefit both parties can gain, so the authors expect less incumbent displacement in those states. During reapportionment process some states gain while other states loose CDs. Since this might affect the focus of the redistricting planwhen seats are lost more attention is paid towards retaining the partys incumbentsthis too is part of the research. As shown in table 6, incumbent displacement was at its lowest in states which held the same number of seats before and after reapportionment, and were redistricted in a bipartisan fashion. This outcome supports the idea that incumbents receive most protection from bipartisan redistricting plans if the political landscape is not in turmoil. The variations between partisan and bipartisan plans in other categories, however, do not always appear to support general ideas about which type of plan would be favorable towards incumbents. For instance, in states losing seats, incumbents are better of with partisan instead of bipartisan redistricting plans. However, from these numbers Lyons and Galderisi concluded that incumbents do seem to benefit from partisan redistricting. Table 6: Incumbent Displacement in 1992 by Type of Plan

This result is remarkable, because research in decade following the 1962 Supreme Court decision regarding redistricting focused on an averse affect of redistricting on incumbency reelection. As Charles S. Bullock notes in his 1975 research on this topic, redistricting had the potential of introducing uncertainty into all multi-member congressional delegations.26 While he finds no support for higher incumbency defeat or even more retirements due to redistricting, other research does support the idea that redistricting does not have a positive, but rather a negative effect on incumbency reelection. For instance Friedman and Holdens article discussing the rise in incumbency shows that redistricting since the 1970s resulted in

26

Charles S. Bullock, Redistricting and Congressional Stability, 1962-72, Journal of Politics 37, no. 2 (1975): 569, doi:10.2307/2129009.

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almost 7.6% less reelection success for incumbents in the 2000s.27 Although their specific model prevents easy comparison with other research, the basis of their method is similar to other arguments against an effect of redistricting on incumbency reelection. Since redistricting usually only happens after the Census, its effect on incumbency would be easily identified as a once a decade impact. Measuring the direct consequence or redrawing district lines, they conclude that its disruptive nature has negative implications for incumbents. While models as this one measure the impact of partisan redistricting through a regression analysis hard to explain in laymens terms, there is other research available that is easier to grasp, while at the same time more effective in rebutting the idea that incumbents would benefit from bipartisan redistricting. The increase in incumbency reelection is not limited to the U.S. House of Representatives, where redistricting could have had an effect, but an increase of roughly the same degree is also measured for incumbents in the U.S. Senate and all statewide offices in the United States. Such a striking, common trend suggests that there is likely a common cause, which could impossibly be redistricting as senators and statewide offices get elected on the basis of statewide districts which are not redrawn every decade.28 While Lyons and Galderisi provide compelling evidence that suggests incumbents have a higher reelection rate under (bi)partisan redistricting plans than those under nonpartisan plans, other research shows that incumbency is negatively affected by redistricting. Although these two outcomes are incompatible, the general increase in incumbent reelection rate sine the 1960s amongst both redistricted and statewide political offices suggests that if redrawing district lines has an influence, this is extremely limited. This does not support the narrative which suggests that partisan redistricting provided increased incumbency protection.

Conclusion Combining the results of the several measurements does not result in the kind of clear conclusion expected from the elegant narrative describing the effects of redistricting. Although there are decades in which research shows modest support for the idea that partisan governments are able to redistrict in ways that result in a larger increase in seats than in votes, the method showing this effect is not without flaws and does not provide convincing results for all redistricting cycles. Furthermore, although at first sight the numbers seem to suggest a
27

John N. Friedman and Richard T. Holden, The Rising Incumbent Reelection Rate: Whats Gerrymandering Got to Do With It?, Journal of Politics 71, no. 2 (2009): 602, doi:10.1017/S0022381609090483. 28 Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder, Jr., The Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Elections: An Analysis of State and Federal Offices, 19422000, Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 1, no. 3 (2002): 319, doi:10.1089/153312902760137578.

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decline in competitive districts due to redistricting, the fact that this number also declines in areas unaffected by redistricting proves that redistricting has little to do with this decline. Besides, most of the changes in competitiveness occur outside rather than during the redistricting process. Because incumbency reelection rates changed almost roughly at the same time that redistricting became required practice, a connection between the two was made early on. While both the redistricting narrative as well as different studies claim a beneficial effect of redrawing district lines on incumbency reelection, other research in the decade following the Supreme Court reached opposite conclusions. The disruptive effect of redistricting would be harmful instead of beneficial towards incumbents. While the research results are difficult to compare, more compelling evidence that redistricting does not affect incumbency reelection is given by the overall rise of reelection rates in both district as well as statewide elected offices. This suggests that there is another reason for the increase in incumbency reelection. Overall, the research shows that the effect of redistricting on the composition of the U.S. House of Representatives is not as clear as the (media) narrative portrays it to be. If there is an effect of redistricting at all, this is likely to be extremely limited in scope. However limited, this effect is claimed to increase polarization in the House, which is and issues that will be discussed in the following chapter.

Chapter 3: Partisan Redistricting and Polarization in U.S. House of Representatives

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Abraham Lincoln1

Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, ed. Roy P. Basler (New York: The Library of America, 1989), 461.

Chapter 3 Chapter 3: Partisan Redistricting and Polarization in U.S. House of Representatives

29

With claims on the partisan advantages of controlling the redistricting process proved to be inconclusively supported by research, this chapter turns to a perhaps even more destructive attributed claim of redistricting: its influence on the polarization of the U.S. House of Representatives. In much of the opposition to redistricting in the hands of politicians the creation of additional party seats is seen as only the first step of its destructive impact. The democratic process in Washington, according to advocates of the influence of partisan redistricting theory, is not helped by a procedure that they belief decreases competitive elections. What really worries many editorial writers, politicians, and voter groups advocating for nonpartisan redistricting practices, however, is the influence of gerrymandering on the partisan and ideological divide between the two parties. While their claims will be developed in further details further on in this chapter, the basic premise consists of a three step argument: First, partisan redistricting increases the number of safe, noncompetitive and politically homogenous Congressional Districts. Second, primary voters, who due to a lack of substantial opposition in the general election de facto elect representatives in these districts, have stronger and more extreme political beliefs than the general public. Representatives elected in these districts therefore cater to these primary voters, and are more partisan and ideological members of the House. This pulls the two parties to opposite ends of the political spectrum and creates a legislative gridlock. Similar to the claim of electoral advantages gained from controlling the redistricting process, this reasoning sounds both reasonable and logical. However, research shows the redistricting effect on polarization is not supported by evidence. Presented evidence can be explained through more compelling and better supported studies which conclusively show that partisan redrawing of district lines has no effect on the level of polarization in the House. This is not to say that Congress has not become increasingly polarized over the last couple of decades; redistricting, however, is not to blame. This chapter will analyze the academic debate on the partisan redistricting causes polarization narrative, and subsequently provide evidence to the contrary. It will start, however, with an explanation on the median voter theorem, and the polarization of the House, since both provide the foundation of this debate.

Chapter 3 Median voter theorem

30

Although not coined by Anthony Downs, the median voter theorem received its popularity due to his book An Economic Theory of Democracy from 1957. It describes inter alia the situation that in a two party system both parties move to the political median of all constituents in order to win the majority. The median is the position most voters hold on a scale from left to right with on either side the extreme (ideological) positions on a single issue. Figure 1 shows that the median of each party is either left or right of the ideological scale. However, Figure 2 shows that if you combine the frequency of positions of both parties, the median shifts to the exact middle of both extremes. The median, in short, is where most of the voters are positioned. This means that, in order to win the majority, candidates from both parties have to win the votes of those constituents in the middle of both parties ideologies. Moving away from the center median by taking more ideologically extreme positions, in line with the parties own median, would mean less votes. Since extremist voters would be forced to vote for the one [party] closest to them, no matter how distasteful its policies seemed in comparison with those of their ideal government, there is politically speaking little risk of this move to the center.2 Figure 1: Ideological Position of Each Party Figure 2: Ideological Position of Total Constituency

Extreme differences between the two parties are not expected in the median voter theorem. However, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are now more distant than they have ever been in recent history. Moving away from the median would suggest that parties either disregard moderate voters in favor of more ideological partisan supporters, or that the constituency became more partisan and ideological. These two competing explanations for polarization are discussed below, but both use redistricting as an explanation for polarization in addition to existing levels.
2

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 118-9.

Chapter 3 Polarization of Congress

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With the current debate focusing on the dire consequences of party polarization in Congress, it seems hard to imagine a time when [c]ommentators derided the two parties as Tweedledum and Tweedledee and warned that a lack of opposing, coherent visions of policy threatened to undermine Americans faith in their democratic institutions.3 This was, however, the case only a few decades ago. Since then, parties have not only become more partisan and cohesive, they have also ideologically drifted apart, with Republicans getting more conservative, and Democrats becoming more liberal. The continuing polarization in Congress is widely acknowledged. Although there are several methods for measuring the polarization of both Houses, either based on ideological self-identification or special interest scoring cards, the DW-NOMINATE program is most often used in academic research. This dataset contains all votes of members of Congress, which are ranked according to ideology. The scale goes from -1, extreme liberal, to 1, extreme conservative. The distance between the mean score of both parties politicians is the amount of polarization in both chambers of Congress. Figure 3 shows how both the House and the Senate have polarized substantially especially since the mid-1970s. While in recent years the Senate seems less polarizedan issue that will be addressed later on in this chapterthe ideological differences in the House have reached nearly 1. Figure 4 and 5 show how in forty years the representatives have moved away from the ideological center towards more liberal or conservative extreme positions. Figure 3: Distance Between Parties

Michael P. McDonald, Representational Explanations of the Ideological Polarization of the House of Representatives, Legislative Studies Section Newsletter 22, no. 2 (1999), http://www.apsanet.org/ ~lss/Newsletter/jul99/polar.html.

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Figure 4: DW-NOMINATE Scores 89th House, 1965-1967

Figure 5: DW-NOMINATE Scores 109th House, 2005-2007

The reason why politicians have polarized, however, is widely debated. There is no agreement whether it is limited to elite polarization, or if the general public has polarized as well. Most common object of discussion is the importance of the realignment of the South after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Some point out that [o]nce the Democrats became the party of civil rights, their conservative Southern members began leaving the party that had called home since the Civil War, to become, or be replaced by, conservative Southern Republicans.4 If issues of race, and the top-down Republican Southern Strategy focusing on states rights, is the reason for this realignment, or if it was caused by economic changes in the South which led to the creation of a sizable new wealthy suburban class who began

Paul Waldman, How Congress Became Polarized, American Prospect, October 19, 2010, http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_congress_became_polarized (accessed June 29, 2011).

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to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests, is part of further debate.5 McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal point out that the realignment-induced replacement effect cannot be the whole story.6 Figure 6 shows that the polarization of the House with and without the Southern members is highly correlated, meaning that they are almost the same, which suggests that polarization among non-southern legislators is the driving force of this polarization trend, not the Souths change from a Democratic into a Republican stronghold.7 Figure 6: Distance Between Parties With and Without the South, 1959-2007

The discussion on other reasons for the polarization of Congress is again split between those who believe that rising polarization is due to large demographic and social changes of the American publiclike Stonecash et al. who inter alia combines increasing district disparities in immigration figures, median family income and urbanization numbers to show why voters elect more polarizing legislators,8 and those who blame political elites. Fiorina et al. sees little indication that voters are polarized now or that they are becoming more polarized, but points to the political classoffice holders, candidates, party activist, and interest group leaders who with rhetoric, strategies and behavior have created elite

Clay Risen, The Myth of the Southern Strategy,New York Times, December 10, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magzine/10Section2b.t-4.html (accessed August 4, 2011). 6 Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 32. 7 Ibid. 8 Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Mark D. Brewer and Mack D. Mariani, Diverging Parties: Social Change, Realignment, and Party Polarization (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003), 69-80.

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polarization that is largely without foundation in a polarized electorate.9 Hetherington, who points to at least 12 different possible sources of polarization both on the political level changes in the Rules Committee in the Houseas well as on the level of the general public the influence of polarizing mass media, believes that there is a connection between both levels of polarization through the great sorting outa movement of politicians and voters into two ideological camps.10 With polarization on the elite level, the general public better understands the ideological differences between the two parties and sorts accordingly to their own ideology, while with party sorting in the electorate, ideologically extreme elites will, in turn, feel even less pressure to moderate their positions.11 Whatever the source of polarization, this chapter will address whether polarization is heightened, above and beyond underlying levels, because of redistricting practices for seats in the U.S. House, which voters, pundits and others claim is what redistricting does.12 Those believing there is only polarization at the elite level, claim that party representatives in the state legislatures draw the lines to diminish competitive districts resulting in incumbents who only have to fear for challenges from their party extremes.13 According to them, [v]oters will be less enthusiastic about their choices and about election outcomes than previously, but given a choice can only elect and extremist.14 Others who see mass polarization, belief that in order to gain partisan advantages above and beyond any national or statewide trends, mapmakers can exploit the underlying polarization by drawing districts in creative ways which further contributes to polarized legislative behavior.15 Both sides on the polarization debate employ redistricting as one of the reasons for increased ideological differences in the House. This chapter does not take sides in that debate, nor does it look at all possible sources of polarization, but simply looks if redistricting is rightly blamed. Like Thomas E. Mann described it: [A]s historians and political sociologists, we would be inclined to look for those broad set of forces, but as economists or rational choice political scientists, we are driven for the single cause, it is the Voting Rights Act, or in this case, it is gerrymandering.16

Fiorina, Abrahams and Pope, Culture War?, 77-78. Alan Brinkley, Extreme Politics, New York Times, November 11, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/ 2007/11/11/books/review/Brinkley-t.html (accessed June 29, 2011). 11 Marc J. Hetherington, Putting Polarization in Perspective, British Journal of Political Science 39 (2009): 444-445, doi:10.1017/S0007123408000501. 12 Jamie L. Carson and others, Redistricting and Party Polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives, American Politics Research 35, no. 6 (2007): 881, doi:10.1177/1532673X07304263. 13 Fiorina, Abrahams and Pope, Culture War?, 108, 110. 14 Ibid., 80. 15 Carson and others, Redistricting and Party Polarization, 882-883. 16 Thomas E. Mann and others, Polarizing the House of Representatives: How Much Does Gerrymandering Matter? (Panel, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., October 30, 2006).
10

Chapter 3 Safe, Politically Homogenous Districts Cause Polarization

35

While there are several ways in which the effect of redistricting on polarization is claimed, this chapter will start with the most frequently used explanation focusing on the safety and political homogeneity of districts. After that it will turn towards evidence in support of redrawn districts electing polarizing representatives, and to how continued increase in polarization can be explained through pressure on representatives caused by redistricting. The primary explanation pursues the following route: When the number of safe or politically homogenous districts increases through partisan redistricting, more extreme primary voters get to elect more Representatives who, in a way to get and keep their vote, adopt more partisan and ideological positions. This then causes an overall increase in polarization in the House. If redistricting does create polarization, each step must be true and followed by the next step. First, redistricting must create safer or politically more homogenous districts. Second, primary voters must be more partisan and ideological extreme, to which politicians cater their positions. And thirdly, this should lead to evidence which shows that safe districts elect more polarizing representatives. The first step, however, already presents contradicting evidence. Figure 7 shows an increase in the number of safe districts during redistrict cycles. Most notably an additional 18 safe districtsa district that is considered safe when it voted at least 10 percentage points more for one of the two parties than the national averagewhere created during the 1990 redistricting process. However, the most notable increases in the number of safe districts did not happen during the redistrict process, but between two redistricting cycles, especially between 1992 and 2000. Dissecting safe districts even further, Figure 8 shows the percentage of safe districts (black and gray), where one presidential candidate did 5 percent better, or very safe districts (black), where one candidate did 10 percent better than they did nationwide in cross-over elections.17 Again, while there is a slight increase in the percentage of safe and very safe districts before and after redistricting, the more pronounced changes occur between redistricting cycles. Measuring the number of districts won with a certain percentage is a way to measure the political safety of a district, but there are methods available to measure the increase in political homogeneity which might be caused by redistricting. McDonald, for instance, measured the partisan registration before and after the redrawing of district lines, and found that [t]he average difference in the percentage of Democratic registration of districts electing

17

Sean M. Theriault, Party Polarization in Congress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 73.

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Figure 7: Number of Safe Districts Before and After Redistricting, 1980-2002.

Figure 8: The Percentage of Safe and Very Safe Districts, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s

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Republicans and districts electing Democrats increased from 11.7% in 1972 to 12.3% in 1982, to 14.0% in 1992.18 Through redistricting, he argues, districts with Democratic Representatives increasingly contained more registered Democrats than districts represented by Republicans. Just like safe seats, the partisan composition of a district is alleged to influence the partisan and ideological polarization of the Representative. When the political homogeneity of a district increases, the median shifts away from the middle towards the more ideological positions of the party now in the majority in the districts. While McDonalds research is compelling, additional research shows less conclusive evidence. In Figure 9 partisan strength is measured in districts before and after redistricting, which is taken as a measurement of district homogeneity. In 2000, a district on average voted 61.30 percent for one of the two presidential candidates under the 2000 Congressional District lines. However, if the same election had taken place after the 2000-2002 redistricting cycle, the average vote for a district winner increased to 61.34 percent. The 0.04 percent increase in partisanship, and similarly low changes in previous redistricting cycles, do not support the theory that redistricting leads to substantially more politically homogenous districts. The changes in partisan registration as observed by McDonald can, just as the increase in the number of safe districts, perhaps better be attributed to factors other than redistricting. Figure 9: Change in Partisan Strength Brought About by Redistricting,1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

Michael P. McDonald, Representational Explanations of the Ideological Polarization of the House of Representatives in LSS Newsletter, July 1999.

18

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While there is extensive evidence contradicting the common belief that redistricting leads to a larger number of safe and political homogenous districts, the second and third step of the premises that redistricting effects polarization might still hold true. Journalistic accounts on the more partisan primary voters in presidential elections provide ample suggestion that the same might be true with regards to primary voters in congressional elections. Primary voters are claimed to exert strong centrifugal pulls on politicians, away from the middle and towards more extreme positions on the ideological scale.19 Primary elections historically have a substantially lower turnout than general elections, and while turnout in general elections fluctuates, turnout is relatively stable across both on- and off-presidential election years in primaries, suggesting that primary elections draw a more-stable base of voters.20 This group is most likely a subset of the general population who are more politically engaged than those who only vote during the general election, or do not vote at all. Their political engagement, however, also makes them more polarized than those who are not as engaged. Engagement is measured by combining interest in election campaigns, political knowledge, and participation or contributions to rallies, GOTV efforts or donations. On a ten point scale the third least politically engaged part of the electorate distribute themselves similar to what the median voter theorem suggest, and manly hold moderate positions, like shown in Figure 10. The third most politically engagedand most likely voters in Congressional primary electionshowever, turn away from moderate positions and have stronger ideological views (Figure 11). This supports the idea that those in charge of electing Representatives in safe or politically homogenous districtswhether those are created by redistricting or by other factorsare more ideological, which perhaps makes the politicians they elect more polarized as well. Figure 10: Third Least Engaged Figure 11: Third Most Engaged

19

Barry C. Burden, Candidate Positioning in US Congressional Elections, British Journal of Political Science 34, no. 2 (2004): 214, doi:10.1017/S000712340400002X. 20 David W. Brady, Hahrie Han and Jeremy C. Pope, Primary Elections and Candidate Ideology: Out of Step with the Primary Electorate?, Legislative Studies Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2007): 91, doi:10.3162/036298007X201994.

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If the centrifugal force of primary voters holds true, Representatives from safe and politically homogenous districts will be more polarized than members of Congress from more competitive districts. While the medium voter theorem supports this reasoning, studies suggest there is no connection between district safety and the ideological extremity of a Representative. Research comparing the victory margins and DW-NOMINATE scores of all Representatives from 1952 to 2000, shows no correlation between the safety of the election and the position on the ideological scale of the Representative. Figure 12 shows a visual representation of this research. The left side, with a small proportion of Democratic votes in the election results of these members of Congress, represents Republican victories. The right side represents Democratic wins. The line running through each cloud of Representatives gives the average DW-NOMINATE score. If the so-called safe seats elect more ideologically extreme members, we would expect the line for the Democrats to slope downwards as we move along the x-axis toward 1, and the line for the Republicans to slope upward as we move along the x-axis towards 0.21 The Republican average, however, is completely horizontal, while the Democratic average even slopes up when reaching safer districts. This contradicts the expectation and leads to the conclusion that Representatives from safe districts are not necessarily more ideologically extreme than their colleagues from more competitive districts. While redistricting is most frequently claimed to produce more polarized Representatives through a three step process, two stepsredistricting creates safe and more politically homogenous districts, and safe districts lead to more polarized Representativescan be refuted by research. Figure 12: The Relationship Between Victory Margin and Ideology for House Members, 1952-2000

Thomas L. Brunell and Bernard Grofman, Evaluating the Impact of Redistricting on District Homogeneity, Political Competition, and Political Extremism in the U.S. House of Representatives 1962-2006, in Designing Democratic Government: Making Institutions Work, ed. Margaret Levi and others (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 130.

21

Chapter 3 Redrawn and New Districts Cause Polarization

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There are, however, other ways in which the alleged influence on the polarization of the House is claimed, albeit less frequently. These do not focus on the safety or homogeneity of the district, an alleged outcome of redistricting, but on the redrawing of district lines itself. Both the similarly focused research by Carson et al. and Theriault will be discussed, and a more compelling explanation for their results, outside of the redistricting realm, will be provided. Carson et al. created a system in which they divided districts into two categories after each redistricting plan was enacted: new and continuous. In continuous districts at least 50% of the population in the old district remain[ed] in the redrawn district.22 New districts, on the other hand, are often the result of the reapportionment of seats, and contain less than 50% of the old constituency. Because of the creation of these new districts, varying from between 18 in 1972 to 63 in 1992, most other districts get redrawn during the reapportionment process as well. During intradecade redistrictingmost commonly enacted by courts declaring districts unconstitutional based on specific legal criteriaonly a few district boundaries are redrawn.23 Linking all districts from 1964 till 2002, this research found 174 new districts, while 261 were considered continuous. In Figure 13 the partisanship of both sets of districts, measured in the standard deviation of the Democratic presidential vote, is compared with the average partisanship of all districts.24 The higher percentage a district vote differs from the average vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, the more partisan a district is. The figure suggests that although all districts have grown more polarized over time, the class of new districts are always more extreme in the underlying preferences of voters.25 Carson et al. not only seem to find a connection between redistricting and the polarization of voters, they also suggest that Representatives from these redrawn districts are more polarized as well. Figure 14 shows their polarization scores compared to Representatives from other district groups. Those elected from new districts are almost always more polarized than the Representatives from the other groups, sometimes considerably so. Districts which underwent considerable redistricting before continue to be more polarized than continuous districts as well as single district states, although this difference is less pronounced in recent years.

22 23

Carson and others, Redistricting and Party Polarization, 886. Ibid., 887. 24 Ibid., 889. 25 Ibid., 890.

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Figure 13: District Partisanship by District Type

Figure 14: Polarization of Members by District Type

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Theriault uses a similar technique to distinguish between new and continuous districts, and adds the distinction between surviving and obliterated districts.26 The latter two take into account that in the process or reapportionment, Congressional Districts disappear in those states with a smaller growth or even a declining population. While Carson et al. measured the percentage of constituency before and after redistricting to determine the class of a district, Theriault looks at the behavior of incumbents. A new district in a state is the district in which no incumbent is running, while the obliterated district is the one whose representative was not elected to a subsequent term in the House.27 Figure 15 shows that in the elections following four redistricting cycles, House members elected from new districts were, on average, 16.2 percent more polarized that those members elected from continuing districts.28 Furthermore, the new districts created in states that gained congressional representation were 27.5 percent more polarized than the obliterated districts in states that lost congressional representation.29 Figure 15: Polarization Score for Members from Surviving, Obliterated, Continuing and New Districts, 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002.

Sean M. Theriault, Party Polarization in Congress (Paper, Rice University, Houston Texas, October 14, 2005) , 10. 27 Ibid., Party Polarization in Congress, 67. 28 Ibid., 69. 29 Theriault, Party Polarization in Congress, 11.

26

Chapter 3 Reapportionment Explanation for Results

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Both Theriault and Carson et al. provide compelling evidence that the partisan redistricting process is causing increased polarization in the House. Newly created districts are more partisan, and elect more polarized Representatives than districts which have only modestly or not at all redrawn borders. They seem to support the idea that the polarization we are observing in Congress is artificially generated by mapmakers responsible for drawing district boundaries at the state level.30 However, these studies fail to take into account one important aspect which skews their sample of districts. Reapportionment rather than partisan redistricting makes these new districts more partisan and polarized than continuous or obliterated districts. Since 1960, the West and South of the United States have (almost) doubled in population size, while states in the Northeast and Midwest only experienced somewhere between a 20 to 30 percent growth. Due to the fact that the number of House seats has been restricted to 435, reapportionment has meant a shift of Congressional Districts from slow growth states like New York (-16) and Ohio (-7), towards states like Arizona (7), California (23) and Texas (14). As old districts get obliterated in the states with declining House representation, new districts are created in these high growth areas of the country. Figure 16 shows the cumulative change in CDs from 1953 till 2013.

Figure 16: Cumulative Change in Congressional Districts per State, 1953-2013

30

Carson and others, Redistricting and Party Polarization, 899.

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Although these changes would be inconsequential if the country was equally partisan and polarized in all areas, this is not the case. As the following maps show, those areas experiencing the loss of Congressional Districts, are amongst the least partisan and polarized states of the country. On the other hand the states which have gained House representation since the 1950s are amongst the most partisan and polarized. Consequently, new congressional districts and those significantly redrawn are not a random sample of all districts, but are heavily concentrated in polarized regions.31 For example, Texas has gained 14 House seats since 1950, but has a 27% gap between those who ideologically identify themselves as liberals, and those who are conservatives. Furthermore, a Republican Presidential candidate today wins Texas with an additional 9.3% of the vote when compared to 1960. In contrast, however, a state like Massachusetts has lost 5 Representatives, while this state has only a 1.8% gap between ideologies, and has become only slightly more partisan since 1960.

Figure 17: Changes in Partisanship, 1960-2004.

Measured in changes in the distance to the median vote in a 50-50 Presidential election

Nolan McCarthy, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?, American Journal of Political Science 53, no. 3 (2009): 668, doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00393.x.

31

Chapter 3 Figure 18: Ideological Difference Between Voter Identification

Measured is the difference between self indentified liberal and conservative voters

45

Not only have Congressional Districts been obliterated in less partisan and polarized states, and new districts created in more partisan and polarized states, research suggests that Representatives elected from in these high-growth districts are also more polarized. For instance, Figure 19 shows the correlation between the population growth, and the Republican Representatives positions on the DW-NOMINATE scale. The higher the growth percentage of a district between 2000 and 2007, the more conservative the Republican Representative is. Democrats representing high-growth districts are also considerably more liberal than their colleagues from districts experience less population growth.32 These maps and graphs doe not explain why certain districts are more partisan and polarized. It could be the case that people migrating to these high-growth districts are less informed about local issues, and base their vote for their Representative on the position they take on national issues. With the national debate polarizing, more polarized politicians could benefit from this. There can also be specific issues regarding these particular high-growth areas, for instance a high rate of immigrants with a non-English speaking background, which could increase the polarization levels of the elected Representatives. Either way, both the shift of Congressional Districts towards more partisan and polarized parts of the country, and the fact that high growth districts tend to elect more polarizing Representatives, explains the results Carson et al. and Theriault presented on the polarization of new districts. This process, driven by relocating Americans, occurs with or without partisan redistricting. The results from Carson et al. and Theriaults research show the correct effects, but focuses on the wrong cause.
Ian McDonald, Migration, Polarization, and Sorting in the American Electorate, (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2009), 89, http://www.duke.edu/~irm16/documents/dissertation.pdf.
32

Chapter 3 Figure 19: DW-NOMINATE Scores Connection with Districts Growth for Republican Representatives, 2000-2007

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Senate polarization There is an obvious reason why supporters of the redistricting-polarization link often neglect polarization in the U.S. Senate. With Senators being elected through state wide elections, partisan redistricting can not possible influence their polarization levels. Nonetheless, it is still the case that the Senate has undergone substantial polarization as well. Showing that both chambers have undergone the same amount of polarization would suggest that there is a common underlying reason, affirming the impossibility of partisan gerrymandering influencing polarization even more. There is, however, a difficulty in comparing polarization across chambers. They are not alike. For instance, both are governed under a special set of rules, with politicians with a different (reelection) agenda, who in one chamber have the ability to be a specialist on a certain topic, while in the other chamber have to be a generalist and know a little bit of all topics. This results in two problems. First, due to the difference in legislative voting, normal DWNOMINATE scores of both chambers are incomparable. Second, due to the difference in the number of Representatives and equal number of Senators from each state, a disparity occurs. As shown in the previous section of this chapter, high growth areas of the country are represented by more polarizing politicians. As the number seats in the Senate does not get reapportioned according to population growth, the votes of Senators from these high growth states are muted by less polarized politicians from less partisan and polarized areas of the country.33

33

McCarthy, Poole, and Rosenthal, Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?, 668-9.

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There are however, solutions to both these problems. Each election, a group of House members run a successful campaign to represent their state as Senators. Comparing the voting records during their time as representative with those of their time as Senators, gives an opportunity to eliminate institutional differences between Congressional chambers. By additionally applying House-weightinggiving a Senator from Texas 32 times more weight in the polarization of the Senate as the Senator from VermontFigure 20 shows that the polarization in both the House and the Senate (House-weighted) are almost similar.34 This provides even more concluding evidence that partisan redistricting is not of influence on the polarization of the U.S. House of Representatives. Figure 20: House and Senate Polarization

Conclusion The median voter theorem provides the basis for the idea that redistricting, by creating more politically homogenous and safe districts, results in the election of more ideologically extreme members in the U.S. House of Representatives. However, research shows that redistricting does not create more of these types of districts, and there is further proof that the politically safety of the districts has no connection to the ideological extremity of its representative in Congress. Studies showing that newly created districts deviate farther away from the median partisanship and have higher polarization levels, do not show the effect of redistricting. They show the effect of reapportionment of Congressional Districts away from moderate areas of the country towards more ideological extreme states. These high-growth districts elected more extreme politicians as their representatives, perhaps because of
34

Ibid., 669.

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polarizing issues within the district, or a bigger influence of national politics in the vote decision. Furthermore, the fact that the Senate has undergone the same level of polarization at the House, provides further strength to the idea that not redistricting but a larger national trend is at the root of this cause. While there are maybe dozens of reasons for the polarization of Congress, redistricting is not one of them. Although this and the previous chapter have shown that partisan redistricting is unjustly blamed for much of the problems in Washington, the demand for redistrict reform persists. The following chapter will discuss why redistricting reform is not only unnecessary, but also produces a serious detriment from the current situation.

Chapter 4: Unwanted Ramifications of Redistricting Commissions

Trying to find a nonpartisan in redistricting is like finding a neutral in the war between the sexes. E. Mark Baden1

Mann and others, Polarizing the House of Representatives, Brookings Institution.

Chapter 4 Chapter 4: Unwanted Ramifications of Redistricting Commissions

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The previous two chapters have shown that the most common method of redistricting as is performed every decade by most state legislatures, does not cause partisan advantages or increased polarization. Nevertheless, fueled by politicians, opinion pages and researchers stating otherwise, voters in several states have demanded that the responsibility of redrafting be shifted away from the legislature towards special commissions. These are commonly known as nonpartisan or independent redistricting commissions, although this terminology often does not accurately describe the process through which redistricting is achieved within these commissions. When these commissions are ballot initiatives, as was the case with Arizonas Independent Redistricting Commission and Californias Citizens Redistricting Commission, proponents tout these commissions ability to prevent conflicts of interest in the redistricting process, and leading to fairly drawn, competitive districts in order to gain enough support from voters on election day.2 However, contrary to the endorsements this process receives in the op-ed pages of national newspapers, the creation of these commissions can be objected to on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Not only are there serious difficulties in creating truly independent redistricting commissions, but there is also opposition to letting unaccountable and disinterested commissioners execute inherently political acts with far reaching (policy) implications. Moreover, statistics from the states that let commissions draw their district lines show that they are not better but often worse than state legislatures, if measured along the standards of those supporting redistricting reform. This chapter will begin with an overview of the different redistricting commissions currently used, after which the general objections towards redistricting commissions will be raised. Here, the motives behind those advocating for redistricting reform will be discussed before moving on to discussing the intrinsically political nature of the process. This will be followed by the observed differences in competitive, partisanship and polarization levels between regular and commission redistricting, which will lead to the conclusion that this type of redistricting reform is not only undemocratic, but also worsens the current situation.

League of Women Voters of California. The League of Women Voters Recommends Support Prop. 11 on November 4!, http://ca.lwv.org/lwvc/action/redistrict/ prop11_flyer_front.pdf (accessed June 25, 2011).

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While legislative redistricting is still the most common method used for redistricting38 states used it to draw new district lines after the 2000 Censusother processes have been used for Congressional redistricting as early as 1964.3 While there are several ways to classify these extra-legislative methodssome go as far as dividing them up into 10 different categories, in the most basic form there the first division is between judicial and other commission redistricting. Courts are, in most states, the last resort when it comes to disagreements on maps that have been approved by the state legislature, which is what happened in both the Texas and Pennsylvania cases described in Chapter 1. However, the State Supreme Courts are sometimes not only asked rule on the legality of a map, but also to create a new map if the state legislature is unable to agree upon new district linessomething that occurs most frequently under divided state government. Courts are also asked to draw district lines in case the legislatively approved map was ruled to be in violation of state or federal law. Most common procedure in these cases is the appointment by the court of a commission of special masters, composed of (retired) judges, who, with outside help of academic researchers, draw a new map. The non judicial commissions, on the other hand, can be further divided into three categories: commission only, legislative appointed commissions, and commissions with legislative approval.4 Each category shows increasing control of the legislature on the commission, from having little to no control over the process in the commission only category, to having the final say over the implementation of the map in the commission with legislative approval category. These commissions are, in contrast to the courts, the starting point of the redistricting process, taking the whole process out of the hands of the state g o v e r n m e n t u n t i l t h e m o m e n t a n a p p ro v a l o f a s p e c i f i c m a p i s r e q u i r e d . Figure 1: Methods of Redistricting

Michael P. McDonald, A Comparative Analysis of Redistricting Institutions in the United States, 200102, State Politics and Policy Quarterly 4, no. 4 (2004): 381, doi:10.1177/153244000400400402. 4 Jamie L. Carson and Michael H. Crespin, The Competitive Effects of Redistricting Approaches: Legislatures, Courts and Commissions over Time, (Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, April 25, 2006), 5.

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Since the 1970s, extra-legislative redistricting has become more common. Table 1 and Table 2 show an increase in the number of states using this method as well as the number of districts affected by commission and court redistricted maps. Judicial redistricting, which was particularly significant during the 1991-92 redistricting cycle due to various Supreme Court verdicts concerning the Voting Rights Act, has lost some of its prominence after the 2000 Census. At the same time as court drawn plans became less prominent, the number of commission drawn plans grew from 8 districts in 1972, to 54 in 2002.5 In 2001, the courts in Mississippi and Georgia were amongst those who had to create a new Congressional District map, while Maine used a commission to draw its map, on which also the legislature had to vote.6 Illinois and Pennsylvania, on the other hand, used a commission composed of partisan members appointed by the legislature for their redistricting process. Arizonas commission was most independent from the state government, with strict rules regulating that commissioners could not achieve personal political gains from the process, as well as preventing favors to a political party or incumbent.7 With the passing of several redistricting reform laws in states like California after the 2000 Census, extra-legislative redistricting is even more prominent during the current redistricting process. This rise to prominence, however, should not be uncritically celebrated, ad there are serious objections against commission redistricting. Table 1: Redistricting Methods Used by States by Year

Table 2: Districts Affected by Redistricting Methods by Year

5 6

Ibid., 6. McDonald, A Comparative Analysis, 383. 7 Ibid., 384.

Chapter 4 General Objections towards Redistricting Commissions

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While redistricting reform is often veiled in a cloak of a good-government reform, proponents of extra-legislative or commission redistricting often have an additional political motives for supporting reform.8 For instance, in 2005, California Governor Schwarzenegger first initiated a ballot measure, Proposition 77, which would put three retired judges in charge of redrawing state legislative and congressional district lines and ultimately let the voters decide which map to implement on the basis of a popular vote. 9 However, [h]e called a special electioncosting the state $45 millionrather than waiting until the regular statewide elections next year since he would benefit from a quick change in the cast of characters in the Democratic-controlled State Legislature in time for a hoped-for second term. 10 In Ohio, a similar reform initiative was supported by a nonpartisan group. However, the Democrats and union officials who dominate[d] the group also view[ed] new boundaries as a way to break the Republican hold on both the statehouse and the Congressional delegation, and to revive a lackluster Democratic Party.11 Although both initiatives eventually did not receive enough support by voters in both states, research by Tolbert, Smith and Green shows that voter support of redistricting reform is also based on self-interested political motives rather than (only) on lofty ideals about removing conflicts of interest or the supposed need for competitive elections. They find that representational losersthose voters whose party identification is at odds with who represents their district, and whose party does not hold the majority in the state legislature, are significantly more likely to support or vote for nonpartisan redistricting reform.12 The difference can be as much as 40 percent more support for reform from representational losers than from representational winners. 13 The electorate votes strategically to change a system which it feels is unfair. Just like proponents behind redistricting reform initiatives, voters decide on these issues on the basis of their own political self-interest, rather than just on the basis of the abstract ideals used in support of these extra-legislative redistricting commissions. Support for the reform of a system which is blamed to serve the self-interests of politicians, is based on the voters own self-interests.
Dean E. Murphy, Who Should Redistrict?, New York Times, October 23, 2005, p. E24. Caroline J. Tolbert, Daniel A. Smith and John C. Green, Strategic Voting and Legislative Redistricting Reform, Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 1, March 2009, p. 93. 10 Dean E. Murphy, Who Should Redistrict?, New York Times, October 23, 2005, sec. E. 11 Ibid. 12 Caroline J. Tolbert, Daniel A. Smith and John C. Green, Strategic Voting and Legislative Redistricting Reform: District and Statewide Representational Winners and Losers, Political Research Quarterly 62, no. 1 (2009): 105. doi:10.1177/1065912908314201. 13 Ibid.
9 8

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However, it is not surprising that the motives behind the support of these commissions are no different from those in regular politics, since redistricting itself is inherently political. Therefore the responsibility cannot and should not be taken away from politicians. While redistricting reformers often decry the partisan, self-interested aspect of the current legislative redistricting, it is almost impossible to design institutions to be authentically nonpartisan and politically disinterested. 14 Extralegislative redistricting, either through who is represented in the commission, how commissioners are elected to serve, and who they serve, are always to some degree partisan and political. All commissions, even those praised to be the most independent, are subject to the same allegations of partisanship and political gain as regular legislative redistricting. In Gaffney v. Cummings, a Supreme Court case from 1975, the new district map of Connecticut, drawn after the 1970 Census by a commission composed of three judges, was alleged to be a political gerrymander and contained a build in bias in favor of the Republican Party. 15 Californias Citizens Redistricting Commission has five partisan representatives from both parties, in addition to the four independent commissioners. While Californias legislature was not allowed to choose who would become commissioner, both parties could veto candidates. 16 Furthermore, Republicans have been focal about the commissions use of a map drawing firm with alleged Democratic ties, as well as angry about the commissions agreement to have Democratic staff manipulate them. 17 Iowas Legislative Service Bureau (LSB), which is run by the states civil service, is frequently used as an example of how independent commissions can create competitive districts. However, the LSB is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Legislative Council, which the majority party in the legislature controls.18 Furthermore, the commission only exists under state statute, and the legislature can assume redistricting authority through the same statute, while the legislature is also allowed to veto the LSBs plans.19 Executing apolitical, nonpartisan and independent redistricting is not only infeasible; it is also objectionable. Redistricting is an intrinsically political process, which should not be
Nathaniel Persily, In Defense of Foxes Guarding Henhouses: The Case for Judicial Acquiescence to Incumbent Protecting Gerrymanders, Harvard Law Review 116, no. 2 (2002): 674, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342612. 15 Ibid., 676. 16 Kathay Feng, Steven Ochoa, Joe Methews, Dan Schnur, and Jessica Levinson (moderator), Can Redistricting Improve California? Panel discussion at Zcalo Public Square, Museum of Contemprary Art, Los Angeles, June 15, 2011. 17 Richard E. Cohen, Growing Pains for California Hispanics, Politico, June 29, 2011, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/58053.html (accessed June 30, 2011). 18 Persily, In Defense of Foxes, 677. 19 McDonald, A Comparative Analysis, 384.
14

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executed by unaccountable and disinterested commissions. 20 The seemingly neutral regulations guiding the redistricting processeswhether legislative or extra-legislativepose political choices between competing redistricting goals, which makes the fact that commissions are not accountable to the voters problematic. The decision commissioners take on how to draw district lines not only has political, but also far reaching policy implications. These are taken into account with legislative redistricting in which politicians have a vested interest in policy outcomes, but are often disregarded by redistricting commissions who have no stake in the effect the new district map has on these issues. Both the political influence of seemingly neutral redistricting standards, as well as the far reaching policy implications connected to redistricting, will be further discussed. The principles of redistricting, which are often part of the states constitution or described in federal law, can be divided into three groups: form-based, population-based and politically-based criteria.21 Form-based criteria include the federal requirement of contiguity of districtsthe district must be connected to all its parts, as well as striving for geographically compact rather than odd shaped districts which are commonly associated with gerrymandering. While contiguity is relatively non-controversial 22 and the most widely accepted redistricting criterion across states, a compactness standard in states with highly diffused or concentrated minority partisans tend to advantage a majority party.23 Populationbased criteria include measures like the adherence to the federal Voting Rights Act, which requires sufficient majority-minority districts to be drawn to represent historically unrepresented racial groups, preserving communities of interest (although this standard has no objective definition24 ) or even respecting historical political subdivisions as city and county borders. Although there is much to say in favor of these measures, due to the fact that [b]irds of a partisan feather flock together and minorities often overwhelmingly vote Democratic, these population-based criteria create uncompetitive politically homogenous districts. 25 The last category of criteria entails political considerations. They include restrictions on incumbent-blind redistrictingwhen the residence of an incumbent cannot

Persily, In Defense of Foxes, 677. Richard Forgette and Glenn Platt, Redistricting Principles and Incumbency Protection in the U.S. Congress, Political Geography 24, no. 8 (2005): 936. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2005.05.002. 22 Michael P. McDonald, Regulating Redistricting, PS: Political Science and Politics 40, no. 4 (2007): 676. doi:10.1017/S1049096507071077. 23 Forgette and Platt, Redistricting Principles, 937. 24 McDonald, Regulating Redistricting, 677. 25 Jennifer A. Steen, The Rap on This Map: Redistricting Will Fix Everything in CaliforniaExcept For Its Problems, Zcalo Public Square, June 12, 2011, http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/06/12/therap-on-this-map/read/nexus/ (accessed June 21, 2011).
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be taken into account when redrawing district lines, creating the possibility of drawing an incumbent out of his or her own districtor even requiring the creation of politically competitive districts which favors the statewide minority party, which was part of the Washington State and Arizona constitution during the 2001-2 redistricting cycle.26 McDonald points out that once these criteria are piled upon one another, it is impossible to optimize all criteria simultaneously.27 These three groups of redistricting principles, whether required by federal law of imposed by the state constitution, constitute opposing ideals about democracy and representation, a situation in which favoring one ideal over the other has far reaching implications. For instance on minority representation, Steven Ochoa, national redistricting coordinator for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, noted in a panel discussion on Californias redistricting commission that trying to actually attempt competitive districts harms minority voting rights.28 The danger of adopting seemingly neutral criteria is that they may have subtle second-order biases that intentionally or unintentionally affect a political outcome.29 In addition, favoring one principle over the other also has far reaching implications as far as policy goes. Due to the fact that commissioners do not have a vested interest in the changes occurring from their new map, they are indifferent to the implications their line drawing has on, for instance, environmental or infrastructure projects.30 From personal experience as an assistant to judicial redistricting commissions in New York and Maryland, Persily recalls redrawing a district as to no longer include an uninhabited swamp. The now-swampless legislator argued that the change would disrupt certain environmental projects that he helped initiate and wanted to see through to completion. The move of this area obviously had no identifiable political or partisan effect. The result, however, could have a tangible public policy effect.31 Likewise, a Californian voter laments the proposed new district map, created by its Citizens Commission, by pointing out that her previous district is now consumed by East Los Angeles where the issue of the 710 Freeway is not known or debated, and therefore opposition to this detrimental development is greatly weakened.32

Forgette and Platt, Redistricting Principles, 939-40. Michael P. McDonald, In Support of Redistricting Reform, (Paper, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, May 8), 6. 28 Feng, Ochoa, Mathews, Schnur and Levinson, Can Redistricting Improve California?, Zcalo Public Square. 29 McDonald, Regulating Redistricting, 676. 30 Persily, In Defense of Foxes, 678. 31 Ibid., Footnote 95, 678. 32 The Takeaway: Debating Californias New Boundaries, Zcalo Public Square, June 17, 2011, http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/06/15/debating-californias-new-boundaries/read/thetakeaway/ (accessed June 25, 2011).
27

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It is clear that [t]hrough redistricting, legislatures not only make the tough value-laden decisions as to how communities should be represented, but they [also] create service relationships between representatives and constituents that fit into larger public policy programs. Both these aspects demand accountable and interested redistricting executers, not disinterested and unaccountable commissioners. If voters are unhappy with a [redistricting plan] enacted by the legislature, they can at least vote their state representatives out of office. In contrast, if citizens are upset with a commissions plan, they have nowhere to turn.33

Results under Commission Redistricting Proponents of commission redistricting not only unjustly disregard these theoretical objections, but also empirical evidence does not support the use of extra-legislative redistricting over regular redistricting, especially when looking at the two aspects for which redistricting is often blamed to affect: competitiveness and polarization. Both show inconclusive or even worse results for commission redistricting, by not creating more competitive districts while at the same time increasing the polarization of the representatives elected through commission drawn districts.

Competitiveness and Commissions While increasing the number of competitive districts is used as the main reason for changing to extra-legislative redistricting, only a limited amount of research is available of the competitiveness differences between redistricting plans. While research in Chapter 2 showed that partisan redistricting has no effect on district competition, Carson and Crespin have published and presented several papers comparing competitiveness under various redistricting plans, seeking for evidence that courts and commissions are better at creating competitive districts. Although they suggest that their research confirms that more competitive elections occur when courts and commissions are directly involved in the redistricting process, as opposed to when redistricting is handled only in the state legislative process, their results are not as conclusive as this quote suggests.34 In Table 3, the mean competitiveness of all districts under various partisan legislative and extra-legislative redistricting schemes is compared, with higher scores corresponding with more competitiveness. While both commission and court redistricting usually show higher competitive scores than Bi-partisan and Democratic
Eli Rosenbaum, Redistricting Reforms Dead End, Washington Post, October 29, 2005, sec. A. Jamie L. Carson and Michael H. Crespin, The Effect of State Redistricting Methods on Electoral Competition in United States House of Representatives Races, State Politics & Policy Quarterly 4, no. 4 (2004): 455. doi:10.1177/153244000400400406.
34 33

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redistricting plans, this is not the case when compared to Republican drawn plans. Except for 2002, Republican drawn plans are almost similarly competitive or vastly more competitive than both commissions and courts. However, none of the supporters of competitive elections is demanding Republicans to take over the redistricting process in all states. These numbers do suggest that extra-legislative redistricting is not always better at creating competitive districts than regular redistricting. Table 3: Mean Competitiveness by Districting Plan by Year

A more sophisticated model giving the percentage more or less competitive as compared to the baseline of bipartisan redistrictingwhich, according to the authors, are plans where the status quo is maintained with no increase in competitiveness of districtsis shown in Table 4.35 The percentages marked by an asterisk, for instance the one suggesting that during all four redistricting cycles those maps drawn through a commission only process were 5,07% more competitive than bipartisan redistricting plans, are statistically significant. In this model, partisan redistricting by a unified state government results in a somewhat higher percentage of competitive districts, as is also the case if redistricting is performed by a panel of judges. Those commissions who need legislative approval of the redistricting plan, perform worse when it comes to competitiveness, although there is only the almost 12 percent less competitive figure in 1972 that is statistically significant. Table 4: Effects of Redistricting Plans on Electoral Competition, 1972-2002

35

Carson and Crespin, The Competitive Effects, 8.

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While the overall figures appear to be particularly in favor of independent commissions, like the one used in Arizona in 2002, one look at the individual years makes clear that these commissions do not always draw more competitive districts. In 1992, these commission-only plans were more than 15 percent less competitive than bipartisan plans, the largest negative difference with bipartisan plans of all redistricting methods. The researchers acknowledge that the effects [of plans that are designed by either commissions or courts] are not always as pronounced in individual election years. 36 Furthermore, in a separate study specifically focusing on the 1992 and 2002 redistricting cycles published in 2004, Carson and Crespin not only found that the marginal effects on the increase in competitiveness [were] not overwhelming with regards to states using commission drawn maps, but also that some states showed a decrease or no change in competition at all.37 The most troubling aspect of their study, however, is that Carson and Crespin have not measured the impact of redistricting before and after the process, but looked at the competitiveness of districts only once every decade. With research in previous chapters showing that the largest changes in competitiveness of districts happen between rather than during the redistricting cycle, the numbers produced by Carson and Crespin could easily have been influenced by other factors than whether states used a legislative or extra-legislative redistricting process. Even so, the research does not conclusively show that the method of redistricting has an effect on the competitiveness of districts. Apart from these specific objections to the research by Carson and Crespin, Figure 2 shows further evidence of the difference in possible outcome and limited impact of commission drawn districts on competitive districts. Whereas House members in commissions and court redistricted districts experienced higher victory margins in 1992, in 2002, incumbents running in states where the legislature drew the district maps experienced a slightly higher victory margin than both other redistricting methods. However, the overall difference between the three methods is very small, all between an average victory margin of 30 to 35 points in later years, justifying the conclusion that [t]here is no meaningful difference between the states based on how districts are redrawn.38

Ibid., 15. Carson and Crespin, The Effect of State Redistricting Methods, 461, 467. 38 Seth E. Masket, Jonathan Winburn and Gerald C. Wright, The Limits of the Gerrymander: Examining the Impact of Redistricting on Electoral Competition and Legislative Polarization, (Paper, Lubbock, Texas, May 18, 2006), 16.
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Anecdotal evidence further supports the idea that extralegislative redistricting does not increase competitiveness. During the 2002 election cycle, nine percent of House contests in nonpartisan commission redistricted states were decided within a 10 percent victory margin, compared to eight percent in all other states. Furthermore, all 65 incumbents running in court or nonpartisan drawn districts were reelected that year. 39 In Arizona, whose Independent Redistricting Commission is constitutionally required to draw competitive districts, half of the Congressional Districts were regarded as competitive before the commission redrew the states district lines in 2002, whereas after the redistricting process only two of eight districts had a less than 10 percent difference between Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, a common measure of competitiveness.40 On the one issue that is the driving force behind the push for extra-legislative redistrictingcompetitiveness, districts drawn by courts and commissions are shown not to perform better than those drawn by the state legislature. Not only is there a possibility that they perform substantially worse, the overall differences between the redistricting processes are extremely limited. Anecdotal evidence suggests that commissions, even those with the most independence from the legislature, do not create more competitive elections.

Polarization and Commissions The demand for competitive elections is rooted in the belief that they would result in less partisan and polarized representatives, and often is accompanied by the demand for extralegislative redistricting methods. Like Dan Schnur argued during a panel discussion on redistricting in California: Not only has the passage of Prop. 11 [establishing the redistricting commission] eliminated the conflict of interest that legislators face, but as a happy
39 40

Abramowitz, Alexander and Gunning, Dont Blame Redistricting, for Uncompetitive Elections, 88. Ibid., Drawing the Line on District Competition: A Rejoinder, PS: Political Science and Politics 37, no. 1 (2006): 95.

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ramification what we will see is an increasing number of centrists get elected.41 Although the previous chapter already showed that partisan redistricting does not lead to increased polarization, proponents of extra-legislative redistricting continue to claim commission redistricting will lead to less partisan and polarized representatives. Not only is the claim based on the false assumption that partisan redistricting leads to increased polarization, research shows that representatives elected from districts drawn by judges or other extralegislative commissions are more extreme than those from districts drawn by the legislature. The only study which finds statistically significant evidence about the ability of independent systems for redistricting to reduce conventional appearance of partisanship in congressional voting behavior is seriously flawed, while other studies find higher polarization levels from representatives from districts drawn by courts and commissions.42 In their 2009 article, Oedel et al. for the sake of argument, accept at face value the hypothesis that partisan redistricting may foster partisanship in the behaviors of congressional representatives and study if it it is possible that depoliticizing the methods of redistricting may reduce broader examples of partisanship.43 After sorting all redistricting methods into ten groups with increasing influence of partisan politics, they selected only five states to constitute the entire universe of states which, during the 2001-02 redistricting cycle, used a relatively independent form of redistricting commission or system. 44 During this cycle Arizona used the aforementioned independent redistricting commission, while Idahos bipartisan commission consisted of equal numbers of party representatives, without an independent or partisan tiebreaker. Alabama, Connecticut and Maine did not use a commission, but if their legislature was unable to create a new map before a certain deadline, a panel of judges would draw the district boundaries. Using a partisanship measure devised by the National Journal, which similarly to the DWNOMINATE system divides every congressmans vote into a conservative or liberal category, Oedel et al. look at the absolute difference between the most conservative scoring representatives and the most liberal scoring representatives from the same congressional delegation of each state. When this number decreases, the authors argue, the delegation has become less partisan and polarized. Although the mean overall partisanship score of all five states decreases from 45.67 before redistricting to 33.93 after redistricting, three of the five
41 42

Feng, Ochoa, Mathews, Schnur and Levinson, Can Redistricting Improve California?, Zcalo Public Square. David G. Oedel and others, Does the Introduction of Independent Redistricting Reduce Congressional Partisanship?, Villanova Law Review 54, no. 1 (2009): 88. 43 Ibid., 66. 44 Ibid., 80.

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states do not show a statistically significant reduction in partisanship differences.45 Amongst these three states is Arizona, which Oedel et al. placed in the most independent category of redistricting methods. Maine and Idaho, the two states that do show a significant difference, have either a bipartisan commission, or have redistricted legislatively (but with the possibility of judges stepping in). Both methods are in no way similar to the nonpartisan or independent commissions demanded by those who seek redistricting reform, and can hardly be called depoliticized, which is what this article does.46 By limiting their research to only five states, without producing statistically significant results for all of them, and with the most promising results from states using a partisan or legislative form of redistricting, this article does not justify the authors conclusion favoring various forms of extra-legislative redistricting over regular redistricting in order to reduce partisanship. Additionally, two separate studies, one focusing on the redistricting cycle after the 1990 Census and one focusing on redistricting after the 2000 Census, find that representatives elected in districts drawn by courts or commissions, are ideologically more extreme than members from legislatively drawn districts. Ryan uses adjusted ADA scores to measures before (1992) and after (1993) polarization levels, as shown in Table 5. While both the mean district ideology, as measured by the ideology of its representatives, and the maximum polarization of a district within a redistricting group increases for all three methods, the mean polarization scores for commission and court drawn districts are substantially higher than the mean score of legislatively drawn districts. Research focusing on the 108th Congress, which served right after the 2001-2002 redistricting cycle, confirms Ryans findings. By using DWNOMINATE scores to measure the average ideological distance from the median House member, Masket et al. find that representatives elected in extra-legislatively drawn districts are further away from the ideological center. Figure 3 shows that members from legislaturedrawn districts are somewhat more moderate that those from states using nonpartisan redistricting methods. 47 While they do not measure the polarization scores before the redistricting cycle, these figures confirm Ryans results from the redistricting cycle a decade earlier, and provide ample evidence that contrary to popular belief, court and commission drawn districts elect more polarized representatives. Perhaps it could be the case that these extra-legislative redistricting methods are more prone to create districts with more extreme

45 46

Ibid., 83. Ibid., 87. 47 Masket, Winburn and Wright, The Limits of the Gerrymander, 20.

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ideologies because they lack the oversight typically associated with a representative body, a point raised earlier in this chapter.48

Conclusion Redistricting commissions are a bad solution for a nonexistent problem. Not only are they unnecessary, redistricting through commissions also leads to the creation of an undemocratic system with worse results on both competitiveness and polarization. The current move towards extra-legislative redistricting should therefore be reversed. Politicians should establish other principals of drawing district lines which will increase voter representation. One, perhaps surprising, optionthe creation of less competitive districts which ensures voter representation and increases voter satisfactionwill be addressed in the following chapter.

Table 5: District Polarization per Redistricting Method

Figure 3: Ideological Extremism among Members of the 108th Congress, by Redistricting Method

Josh Ryan, The Effect of Partisan Redistricting on Congressional Polarization, (Paper, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 10, 2008), 24-5.

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Chapter 5: Better Representation through Noncompetitive Homogeneous Districts

People always say it would be great to have competitive districts, Mac Donald explained. But you talk to them for two minutes about what it would mean, and in the end they say, I dont want to live in a competitive district Why, I asked? Because in a competitive district they might not get what they want.1

Murphy, Who Should Redistrict? New York Times

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Chapter 5: Better Representation through Noncompetitive Homogeneous Districts

The claims made against legislative redistricting boil down to its influence on the representation of voters. With the current redistricting system, politicians would deprive voters of a faithful representation by drawing uncompetitive districts as they see fit. Safe districts would result in increasingly polarized representatives, since they only have to appeal to the ideological base of their party to insure that they will not face any primary opposition. Furthermore, the party in charge of a redistricting process would create a map which makes sure that the states House delegation consists of more partisan representatives than justified by the electoral composition of the states voters. According to those seeking changes in the current system, competitive districts would lead to representatives responsive to their constituency, since every election their district is up for grabs. Since their constituency consists of voters of equal partisan makeup, representatives from these districts would appeal to the median moderate voters whose support they need for their (re)election. Due to the competitive nature of districts, parties would have an equal chance of sending representatives to Washington D.C. Legislative redistricting would diminish competition, and therefore lead to worse representation. However, previous chapters have shown that the fear of partisan redistricting leading to worse voter representation in D.C. is not supported by evidence. In the aggregate, it does not make districts unresponsive to voter demands, both on the district and state level, nor does it decrease competitiveness or increase polarization. Nonpartisan redistricting, however, does worse on all accounts. This chapter will show that it is not partisan redistricting that leads to worse representation, but competitive districts that leave voters unrepresented in Washington D.C. Representatives from noncompetitive homogeneous districts are better at representing their voters, which is reflected in the positive attitudes of their constituency both of their representatives as well as of government as a whole. Therefore, if representation of voters is the crucial aspect of American democracy, creating less competitive rather than more competitive districts would be the best way to go. This chapter will discuss the negative effects of competition, as well as the positive aspects on noncompetitive districts on representation. In this respect, it concludes with a positive movement that has occurred in the last three decades. First, however, the link between competition and polarization will be revisited.

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The link between competition and polarization has logical appeal. However, Chapter 3 showed that the safety of an incumbent, measured in the share of Democratic votes he or she received on election day, has no impact on the polarization of that representative. A comparison between the district safety, measured in 2000, 2004 and 2008 presidential election results per congressional district, and polarization scores of representatives from the 108th to the 111th Congresses, again shows that this appeal, however logical, is not based on facts. The 41 most competitive districts, which had a 6 point or less difference in presidential election results, were on average more polarized than 158 less competitive districts. This group of 41 included Wisconsins first district, currently represented in Congress by Republican Representative Paul Ryan, which is the 18th most polarized district in the country, as well as Minnesotas second congressional district, which is amongst the most competitive districts, but more polarized than 382 less competitive districts. The 55 least polarized districts, with DW-NOMINATE scores similar to those of the whole House in 1983, were on average less competitive than 140 other districts with higher polarization scores. These 55 include Mississippis fourth CD, which is the second least polarized district in the country, but less competitive than 351 other, more polarized districts. The fifteen least competitive districts are less polarized than 43 percent of the other 420 more competitive districts, while the fifteen most polarized districts are more competitive than 45 percent of the 420 less polarized districts.2 These figures again show that the alleged link between competition and moderation, or the one between district safety and ideological polarization, does not hold true. Polarization occurs both in competitive and in noncompetitive districts. However, this chapter will show that Representatives from competitive districts are more likely to deviate from the median demands of their constituency than representatives from noncompetitive homogeneous districts. The latter should therefore be favored instead of more competitive districts.

Representation in Competitive Districts Whatever the source of polarizationwhether it is elite polarization of mass polarization, the best measure of representation is the ideological closeness of a representative to his or her constituency. Representatives who are ideologically close to the median voter of their districts, will not only naturally think and act the same as their voters, but they are also more aware of issues that matter to their constituents and less likely to be out of tune or in the dark about
Based on authors calculations using: Royce Carroll and others, DW-NOMINATE Scores With Bootstrapped Standard Errors,;Swing State Project, Presidential Results by Congressional District, 2000-2008.
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voter demands. From a political economy perspective competition determines whether parties will be responsible and honest to the voters.3 Competition is seen as the best way to ensure politicians are, and continue to be, responsive to their constituency median. However, increasing the competitiveness of a district turns it into a microcosm of the state, reflecting the state or national political differences rather than the local partisan makeup of the voters. 4 On the district level, competition enlarges the ideological distance between a constituency and its representatives. On the aggregate level, the system becomes increasingly less representative of the nations ideological diversity. In other words, by trying to ensure party-proportionality in every district, individual representatives are ideologically more distant from their constituencies, while for the system as a whole it leads to less proportional election results. The problem with competition and adherence to the median voter on the district level is twofold: one if the traditional median voter model stands, and another if more than just the median voter is a force in the ideological placement of representatives in a district. If the model stands, a representative is unable to faithfully represent all his or her constituents, while additional research shows that in competitive districts, candidates are pulled away from the median voter towards partisan extremes. Competitive districts by nature are composed of heterogeneous constituencies. In order for both parties to have equal change of winning, the district needs to consist of voters from both sides of the ideological divide. The median voter theorem suggests that in this situation, candidates from both political parties will position themselves in the ideological center of the district in order to gain as many votes as possible. Although this means that the elected representative takes into account the average ideological position of the district, many voters hold ideological positions that are very distant from the position of the representative, and are therefore not well represented in Congress. Evidently, the will of the majority is the will of the majority and not the will of the people. The latter is a mosaic that the former completely fails to represent.5 Figure 1 shows the distribution of voters in a competitive heterogeneous district (red) compared to those of a noncompetitive homogeneous district (blue). In both cases, the median ideological position is 0. However, due to the fact that competitive districts have voters that
3

Downs, An Economic Theory, 102.

Justin Buchler, The Inevitability of Gerrymandering: Winners and Losers under Alternative Approaches of Redistricting, Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy 5 (2010): 33, http://www.law.duke.edu/ journals/djclpp/index.php?action=downloadarticle&id=165. 5 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, (London: Routledge, 1996), 272.

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are ideologically more diverse, a large number of voters will be ideologically distant from the representative. He or she is faithful towards the average ideological position of the voters in the district, but many voters will not feel that their representative is taking into account their views. [W]ide swaths of the population will become losers because they will be left without representation.6 While the additional benefits of noncompetitive districts will be discussed further on, a comparison between the two shows that representatives from these districts are better at representing the ideas of all voters. Noncompetitive districts contain a more homogeneous group of voters who are therefore more closely centered around a similar position. This means that voters are ideologically closer to their representative, ensuring that their voice is represented in Washington, D.C. If the traditional median voter model holds true in competitive elections, then a large number of voters in these districts will not be represented. Figure 1: Representation in Competitive and Noncompetitive Districts

However, both models and empirical research show that representatives from competitive districts are likely to deviate from the median voter, rather than confirm to it. Either due to party pressure or concerns about voter turnout, politicians in competitive districts take ideological positions away from the median of all constituents and towards partisan extremes. Due to the high turnover in competitive districts, constituents in competitive districts vacillate between representatives from ideological extremes, causing even less voters in these districts to be well represented in Congress. A model by Adams et al. suggests that especially candidates in close elections emphasize policy appeals to their voter base rather than courting the median voter.7 They explain this occurrence in their model by pointing out the possibility of partisan voters abstaining from voting in an election. These partisan voters favor their own party candidate over the candidate of the opposite party, however, only vote for
Buchler, The Inevitability of Gerrymandering, 33. James Adams and others, Why Candidate Divergence Should be Expected to be Just as Great (Or Even Greater) in Competitive Seats as in Non-Competitive Ones, Public Choice 45, no. 3-4 (2010): 417, doi:10.1007/s11127-009-9573-1.
7 6

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their candidate if they agree with the ideological position he or she takes. Shown in Figure 2, this means that the candidate would move away from the median position of all constituents towards the median ideology of their respective party. [M]oderate Democratic and Republican partisans will support their partys candidate at high rates even when these candidates propose radical positionswhich give candidates the leeway to shift away from the center, in order to boost turnout among their core supporters.8 This loyalty of moderate partisans ensures that there is political gain for candidates and representatives in competitive districts to move away from the median voter. Figure 2: Median Positions of Constituency versus Party Base

Empirical research confirms these findings. Geber and Lewis, studying election results in Los Angeles County in the early 1990s, find that [l]egislators from heterogeneous districts often take policy positions that diverge substantially from the median voter in their district.9 Just like Adams et al., they also point towards partisan pressure as an explanation of the move away from the median voter by representatives. Politicians representing homogeneous districts, however, continue to represent their overall district median.
10

A visual

representation of district ideologymeasured by subtracting the district average vote for President Clinton in 1992 and 1996 from the average national votecompared to the DWNOMINATE scores of representatives in the House from 1993 to 2000, shows that politicians representing districts where either party could winwhich have a district ideology around 0are less faithful to the ideology of their constituency than representatives from noncompetitive partisan districts. Politicians in competitive districts are further away from the representing the expected ideological position of House members based on the ideology of
Ibid., 428. Elisabeth R. Gerber and Jeffrey B. Lewis, Beyond the Median: Voter Preferences, District Heterogeneity, and Political Representation, Journal of Political Economy112, no. 6 (2004): 1378, http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 10.1086/424737. 10 Ibid.
9 8

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their district. Furthermore, [m]embers who have survived at least three elections tend, on average, to be more faithful representatives, while their more junior members were less faithful.11 If one combines this with additional research showing that competitive districts had a 43% chance of at least one member turnover between 1994 and 2000, and the fact that each election could be won by either party, one cannot conclude any differently than that competitive districts tend to have representatives that fit those districts less well, and that those districts are most likely to swing between ideological extremes.12 Figure 3: District and Member Ideology, 1993-2000

Not only on district level are competitive districts bad for voter representation. In the aggregate, the wish to make all districts a mirror of the national competition between the two parties will lead to election results that are unrepresentative. Although the House is not based on proportional representation, the demand for more competition is accompanied by the belief that it will lead to a better representation of all voters. An example shows that this is not the case. In a state with a voting population equally divided in its loyalties, the procompetition redistricter would create as many districts as possible in which Democrats and Republicans each constitute 50% of the district population. Under such conditions, the slightest shift in voter preference would lead to a landslide victory for one of the parties. If, for example, a presidential winner has coattails that shift 5% of the vote to his party, then that party could win almost 100% of the seats in the legislature, despite the fact that 45% of the voters voted for the opposition.13 By promoting all districts to represent the national partisan divide, the slightest difference in election results can ensure that almost half of the voters will not be represented in the U.S.
11

David C. King, Congress, Polarization, and Fidelity to the Median Voter, (Paper, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, MA, March 10, 2003), 31. 12 Ibid., 32. 13 Persily, In Defense of Foxes, 668.

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House of Representatives. Thus, [c]ompetitive districts produce disproportionate election results based simply on the statistical properties of competitive elections.14 Both on district and House level, competitive districts would leave a large number of voters without adequate representation. Competitive elections will not make representatives more responsive to their constituency, but does ensure that they will spend more time campaigning and raising money for their reelection.15 Legislators, who fear losing their positions, spend a great deal of time raising money and securing reelection at the expense of legislating. 16 This is also the biggest concern of voters, of which 62 percent stated that tough competition leads politicians to focus too much on campaigning and fund raising, while only 22 percent believed that it would make representatives work harder to represent their district better.17 Trying to draw competitive districts effectively cracks ideologically congruent voters into separate districts, which has the effect of increasing the absolute number of voters who will be unhappy with the outcome and dissatisfied with their representative.18 Less, not more, competition solves these issues of constituent representation, and in addition increases voter satisfaction with their representative and Congress as a whole. Representation in Noncompetitive Districts Noncompetitive districts, which by nature are composed of a homogeneous group of voters, do not suffer from representatives deviating away from the median voters interests, nor do they cause large groups of voters to be unrepresented in Congress. Since all voters in noncompetitive districts have, relatively speaking, the same ideology, they are closely packed around the district median. This not only means that representatives are ideologically closer to all constituents in noncompetitive districts, but there is no political justification to take policy positions away from the district median, which happens in competitive districts. Research therefore shows that legislators take policy positions that are close to their districts median

Justin Buchler, The Statistical Properties of Competitive Districts: What the Central Limit Theorem Can Teach Us about Election Reform, PS: Political Science and Politics 40, no. 2 (2007): 335, doi:10.1017/S1049096507070540. 15 Thomas L. Brunell, Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America (New York: Routledge, 2008), 27. 16 Justin Buchler, Competition, Representation and Redistricting: The Case Against Competitive Congressional Districts, Journal of Theoretical Politics 17, no. 4 (2005): 461, doi:10.1177/0951629805056896. 17 Pew Research Center, Lack of Competition in Elections Fails to Stir Public http://pewresearch.org/ pubs/264/lack-of-competition-in-elections-fails-to-stir-public (accessed May 20, 2011), 5. 18 Thomas L. Brunell, Rethinking Redistricting: How Drawing Uncompetitive Districts Eliminates Gerrymanders, Enhances Representation, and Improves Attitudes toward Congress, PS: Political Science and Politics 39, no. 1 (2006): 77.

14

Chapter 5

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when many constituents share these preferences. 19 Furthermore, creating a homogeneous distribution of partisan supporters amongst state districts ensures that voters not only have a representative close to their own ideology, but also a congressional delegation that is reflective of the ideological diversity in their state. This ensures that a sizeable Republican minority in an otherwise Democratic state still receives representation in the House, and vice versa. Again, while proportionality is not ensured nor required in the U.S. Constitution, the founding fathers envisioned the House to be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.20

Voter Satisfaction in Noncompetitive Districts An obvious, but additional benefit to noncompetitive districts is the creation of a large group of electoral winners in each district. Since the constituency almost entirely consists of partisan supporters, most if not all voters will vote for the winning candidate each election. It is true that with noncompetitive districts, the losing part of the electoratethose who will not vote for the winning candidateis known before the election, rather than after the elections as is the case with competitive districts. However, the number of losers in a noncompetitive district is simply a function of insufficient district homogeneity, not insufficient district heterogeneity.21 Increasing the number of voters who support the winning candidate in a district has beneficial effects on how voters feel about the democratic process and its institutions. For instance, a Pew Research Center poll in 2006 showed that voters in noncompetitive districts are six percent more satisfied with the choices they have on election day than voters from competitive districts. 22 This almost counterintuitive attitudeless, not more, competition leads to more satisfied choicescould be a result of the different attitudes of winning and losing voters towards the amount of attention an incumbent pays to the district. Table 1 shows that losing voters, in comparison to voters who supported the winning candidate, feel that incumbents pay less attention to their district. These numbers, gathered from post-election interviews from 1948 to 2004, confirm the poll research previously showing voters belief that tough competition will lead to politicians focusing too much on their campaign, rather than on their district. By creating more homogeneous districts, and thus increasing the number
19 20

Gerber and Lewis, Beyond the Median, 1378. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856), 4: 195 (accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2102 on 2011-07-31). 21 Buchler, The Inevitability of Gerrymandering, 22. 22 Pew Research Center, Lack of Competition, 4.

Chapter 5

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of voters who support the winning candidate, voters are not only better represented due to the fact that they are ideologically closer to their representative, but also because they feel that their representative is paying closer attention to them. Table 1: Relationship between Voting and Impression of Attention Paid to District How much attention incumbent pays to district Not much Some A good deal Losing voter 22,1% 57,5% 20,5% Winning voter 18,5% 60,0% 21,9% Total 19,5% 59,0% 21,5%

Increasing the number of winning voters in a district also increases the approval of incumbents and the House as a whole. Table 2 and 3 show the ratings given by both losing and winning voters for their incumbent and Congress. Again, we see more favorable positions from those voters who supported the winning candidate. Naturally, the differences with regard to approval of the incumbent are larger than with the ratings of Congress, but even the latter shows that winning voters are consistently more positive than those who voted for the losing candidate, with 4,4 percent more voters rating Congress as doing a good job. Winning and losing matters with respect to attitudes toward individual members as well as attitudes towards the institution as a whole. 23 Particularly since Congressional support has been abysmally low in recent years, increasing voter satisfaction with the governments most representative body should be applauded, even more so since this increase is driven by giving voters in noncompetitive districts better representation in the Houseenough reasons to start creating noncompetitive homogeneous districts straight away. Table 2: Relationship between Voting and Approval of Incumbent Approve of House incumbent Approve Disapprove Losing voter 44,7% 55.3% Winning voter Total 86,4% 76,3% 13,6% 23,7%

Table 3: Relationship between Voting and Approval of Congress Performance of Congress rating Very poor job Poor job Fair job Good job Very good job Losing voter 5,7% 31,1% 50,1% 12,0% 1,1% Winning voter 3,9% 27,0% 51,5% 16,4% 1,3% Total 4,4% 28,3% 51,1% 15,0% 1,2%

23

Brunell, Redistricting and Representation, 45.

Chapter 5 The Big Sort into Homogeneous Districts

74

Luckily for those in charge of the redistricting process, creating homogeneous districts is easier now than it has even been before. In his book The Big Sort, Bill Bishop describes how [a]s Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and, in the end, politics.24 In Chapter 3, the influence of population changes in Congressional Districts on polarization was discussed. While fluctuations in the size of a districts population are caused by demographical changes in, for instance, the birth-to-death ratio, in the United States, migration also plays a very important role. Each year 4 to 5 percent of the total population relocates across county lines.25 While Americans have historically been a nation of movers, Bishop argues that due to the past decades of prosperity and economic security, people [have been] reordering their lives around their values, their tastes, and their beliefs, rather than out of job necessity and economic forces outside of their own capacity.26 The results of this sorting, which started around the mid 1970s, can be seen in the distinctly different maps in Figure 4 and 5. Both show the competitiveness of countieswhich unlike Congressional Districts have fixed historical bordersduring presidential elections, with noncompetitive counties marked. While in 1976, a quarter of the voters lived in counties won by a margin of 20 percentage points or more, in 2004 48,3 percent of the voters lived in these uncompetitive districts. 27 Voters increasingly, but for the most part unconsciously, sort themselves into homogeneous counties with like-minded voters.

Conclusion While Chapters 2 and 3 proved that legislative redistricting cannot be blamed for the decrease in competitive districts, or the increase in safe districtsboth also occurred in nonredistricted districts or between redistricting cyclesthe sorting discussed here could be part of the explanation why both movements have happened in Congressional Districts as well. Bishop regards the increasing homogeneity of counties and districts as a source for increased polarization, and bad for democratic politics.28 However, research in this chapter showed that noncompetitive districts are not by nature more polarized, and contrary to competitive districts do increase the representation and approval ratings of voters. If legislators from
Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008), 5. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 12 27 Ibid., 10 28 Ibid., 248
24

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heterogeneous districts represent only a subset of their constituents, then the people who live in those districts but who are not part of the legislators core constituency really lose out. In terms of having their preferences expressed in policy, they would be better off in different districts along with like-minded citizens and representatives.
29

This Big Sort should

therefore be capitalized by creating less competitive and more homogeneous congressional districts to strengthen the American democracy.

Figure 4: 1976 Presidential Election Results by County, Carter vs. Ford

Figure 5: 2004 Presidential Election Results by County, Kerry vs. Bush

29

Gerber and Lewis, Beyond the Median, 1378.

Conclusion

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. John Adams1

John Adams, Legal Papers of John Adams, ed. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1965), 3: 269.

Conclusion Conclusion

77

The previous chapters delved into the question of the effect of redistricting on the U.S. House of Representatives. While the (media) narrative portrays the current process as depriving voters from real elections and faithful representation, a closer look into academic research on the matter showed a different story. In Chapter 1 the current debate on redistricting was addressed by giving an overview of various opinion pieces in national newspapers, remarks and actions on the issue by the Supreme Court as well as Beltway insiders. At first glance, these all appeared to support the idea that redistricting has much influence on the composition and polarization of the House. However, specific details, like the lack of an agreed upon judicial standard to rule of partisan gerrymandering, or the fact that the redistricting which let to the creation of the word gerrymander did not succeed in succeed in creating political gains to those in charge of drawing the district lines, provides reason to question some of the assumptions made on the influence of redistricting. The most persistent assumption is the idea that the party in control of the redistricting, benefits from this by drawing district lines in its favor, which was focus of Chapter 2. Although there are some redistrict cycles in which there appears to be modest benefits to controlling the processresulting in a higher seat gain than justified on the basis of votes, this is certainly not a given. Furthermore, the methods used to measure these benefits are not without debate in the academic community. Other possible advantage or redistricting, a decline in competition in districts, does seem to happen. However, this decline is also measured in districts which do not have their lines redrawn, and the largest changes occur not within, but outside of the redistricting cycles. The same holds true for the claim on incumbency advantage. While some studies conclude that incumbents are more secure of their reelection after their district is redrawn, earlier studies noted the disruptive effect of changing district lines as a reason for more incumbency loss due after the redistricting cycle. Although these different conclusions are hard to reconcile, compelling evidence showing a general rise of incumbency reelection rates, also in public offices that are not redistricted, gives reason to propose that a general trend, rather than redistricting, is to blame. While the common

narrative of redistricting portrays the party in charge as gaining vast advantages by drawing district lines, this is not supported by research. If redistricting has an effect on the aggregate seat distribution in the House at all, this is extremely limited.

Conclusion

78

In Chapter 3 discussed the issue of polarization and the possible influence of redistricting. First the median voter theorem, which suggests that in competitive two party elections, both candidates move to the ideological center in order to gain the majority of votes, was discussed, before turning to a clarification on the debate surrounding the increased ideological difference between Democrats and Republicans. Although there are several theories as to why polarization occurs, this thesis, from a political economy perspective, only addressed the question whether redistricting has an influence, as it is claimed to have, or not. Two of the three steps used to explain how redistricting has an influencethe creation of additional safe districts and safe districts election more polarized representativeswere unsupported by evidence. Other research, which found that newly created districts are more polarized than old and obliterated districts, are correct in their findings, but provide the wrong conclusion that this is due to partisan redistricting. Due to population changes, Congressional Districts have been reapportioned, leaving less partisan and polarized areas in the country with fewer representatives, and more polarized and partisan parts of the country with more representatives in Congress. Additional research suggests that high-growth district also tend to elect more polarizing representatives. Reapportionment, not redistricting, is why new districts are more partisan and polarized. Although both the claims of partisan gain and increased polarization on legislative redistricting are shown to be false, Chapter 4 dealt with the fact that voters and politicians in several states have continued to demand the creation of redistricting commissions to draw Congressional District maps. While they justify their demands by claiming commissions will solve the issue of politicians drawing self-interested districts, the support of these extralegislative commissions is shown not without political self-interest either. They also support the creation of these commissions because they hope it will give their own political party more seats. It is normal that the creation of redistricting commissions boils down to regular politics, since redistricting is an inherently political process. Decisions made on which redistricting principle gets preference over the other, and how district lines are exactly drawn, have far reaching representational and policy implications. They should therefore be made by accountable representatives of the public, not by undemocratic disinterested commission members. Additionally, analyzing the scarce amount of research supporting the creation of redistricting commissions showed that these do not result in additional competitive districts, but do result in more polarizing representatives getting elected to the House of Representatives. Redistricting commissions are therefore a bad solution for a nonexistent problem.

Conclusion

79

Chapter 5 broadened the discussion on redistricting by looking at the accompanying claim that districts need more competition in order to elect more faithful representatives. However, both if case the regular median voter theorem holds, and in the situation where partisan pressure has increased influence on candidates in 50/50 districts, competitive elections in result in a large group of voters who are ideologically distant from their representatives. Representatives elected in competitive districts regularly take positions that deviate from the median voter. Voters are better represented, research shows, in noncompetitive homogeneous districts, which is reflected in the increased satisfaction with the choices these voters have during an election, higher approval ratings of their incumbents as well as Congress as a whole. Furthermore, during the last couple of decades Americans have increasingly relocated to live along like-minded citizens, making the creation of noncompetitive, homogeneous easier then ever before.

Influence of Redistricting Although the debate on redistricting is controlled by those who see it as the one thing that turned Congress into the Broken Branch, research shows their supporting claims are either exaggerated or false. In the aggregate, redistricting has no effect on the seat distribution in the House, nor does it lead to increased polarization. Redistricting commissions are undemocratic, and, when measured along the same principles, often results to far worse outcomes. The assumption that competition leads to better representation is also false, which suggests that the creation of noncompetitive, homogeneous should be promoted in order to increase voter representation and satisfaction with incumbents and Congress.

Suggestions for further Research This thesis limits itself on discussing the influence of redistricting of the U.S. House of Representatives. While national debate also focuses on this topic, further study on the influence of redistricting on the state legislatures could possibly result in a different conclusion. Especially since there is a more direct link between redistricting of state legislative districts and those in charge of drawing the lines, as well as possibly smallerand therefore easier to manipulatedistricts. Furthermore, since Congressional Districts are currently redrawn to be in place for the 2012 Congressional Elections, this provides a new dataset that could be analyzed to support, or even refute, the conclusions made in this thesis.

Tables and Figures

80

Tables and Figures

Introduction
Figure 1: Created by the author using: U.S. Geological Survey, Congressional Districts of the United States: 106th and 107th Congress, http://www.nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html#cgd106p.

Chapter 2
Table 1: Alan I. Abramowitz, Partisan Redistricting and the 1982 Congressional Elections, Journal of Politics 45 (1983): 769, doi:10.2307/2130716. Note: To facilitate comparison between the several tables, Table 1 to 4 are adapted to the Niemi and Winskys 1992 model. Table 2: Richard G. Niemi and Laura R. Winsky, The Persistence of Partisan Redistricting Effects in Congressional Elections in the 1970s and 1980s, Journal of Politics 54, no. 2 (1992): 569, doi:10.2307/2132040. Table 3: Richard G. Niemi and Alan I. Abramowitz, Partisan Redistricting and the 1992 Congressional Elections. Journal of Politics 56, no. 3 (1994): 813. doi:10.2307/2132195. Table 4: Created by the author using: U.S. House of Representatives Office of the Clerk, Election Statistics, http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/index.aspx; Louisiana Secretary of State, Statewide Official Election Results, http://staticresults.sos.louisiana.gov. Table 5: Michael P. McDonald, Drawing the Line on District Competition, PS: Political Science and Politics 39, no. 1 (2006): 92, doi:10.1017/S1049096506060161. Table 6: Michael Lyons and Peter F. Galderisi, Incumbency, Reapportionment, and U.S. House Redistricting, Political Research Quarterly 48, no. 4 (1995): 860, http://www.jstor.org/stable/448978.

Figure 1:

Thomas L. Wyrick, Management of Political Influence: Gerrymandering in the 1980s, American Politics Research 19, no. 4 (1991): 400, doi:10.1177/1532673X9101900402.

Figure 2:

Created by the author using: Clamer Klarner, State Partisan Balance 1959 to 2007, http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/SPPQ/journal_datasets/klarner.shtml.

Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5: Figure 6:

Created by the author. Created by the author. Created by the author. Alan I. Abramowitz, Brad Alexander, and Matthew Gunning, Incumbency, Redistricting, and the Decline of Competition in U.S. House Elections, Journal of Politics 68, no. 1 (2006): 79, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00371.x.

Chapter 3
Figure 1: Figure 2: Created by the author. Created by the author.

Tables and Figures

Figure 3: Polarization (updated with 111th Congress data), Voteview Blog, January 14, 2010, http://voteview.spia.uga.edu/blog/?p=722 (accessed February 15, 2010). Figure 4:

81

Justin Buchler, The Inevitability of Gerrymandering: Winners and Losers under Alternative Approaches of Redistricting, Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy 5 (2010): 24, http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/djclpp/index.php?action=downloadarticle&id=165.

Figure 5: Figure 6:

Ibid., 24. House Polarization and the South: 1879-2010, Voteview Blog, March 16, 2011, http://voteview.spia.uga.edu/blog/?p=1278 (accessed June 18, 2011).

Figure 7: Figure 8:

Abramowitz, Alexander, Gunning, Incumbency, Redistricting, and the Decline, 79. Sean M. Theriault, Party Polarization in Congress (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 74.

Figure 9: Figure 10:

Ibid., 72. Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle J. Saunders, Why Cant We All Just Get Along? The Reality of a Polarized America, The Forum 3, no. 2 (2005): 6, doi:10.2202/1540-8884.1076.

Figure 11: Figure 12:

Ibid. Thomas L. Brunell, Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America (New York: Routledge, 2008), 96.

Figure 13:

Jamie L. Carson and others, Redistricting and Party Polarization in the U.S. House of Representatives,American Politics Research 35, no. 6 (2007): 890, doi:10.1177/1532673X07304263.

Figure 14: Figure 15:

Ibid., 891. Sean M. Theriault, Party Polarization in Congress (Paper, Rice University, Houston Texas, October 14, 2005) , 10.

Figure 16: Figure 17:

Created by the author. Created by the author using: Fair Vote, Partisanship by State, 1960-2004, http://www.fairvote.org/media/perp/presidentialinequality.pdf.

Figure 18:

Created by the author using: Gallup, Self-Identitfied Ideology by State 2009, 2010, http://www.gallup.com/poll/146348/ and http://www.gallup.com/poll/125480/.

Figure 19:

Ian McDonald,Migration, Polarization, and Sorting in the American Electorate, (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2009), 90, http://www.duke.edu/~irm16/documents/dissertation.pdf.

Figure 20:

Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?, American Journal of Political Science 53, no. 3 (2009): 668, doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00393.x.

Chapter 4
Table 1: Jamie L. Carson and Michael H. Crespin, Comparing the Effects of Legislative, Commission, and Judicial Redistricting Plans on U.S. House Elections, 1972-2002, (Paper, Portland, OR, March 11, 2004), 27.

Tables and Figures

Table 2: Ibid., The Competitive Effects of Redistricting Approaches: Legislatures, Courts and

82

Commissions over Time, (Paper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, April 25, 2006), 21. Table 3: Table 4: Table 5: Ibid., Comparing the Effects,28. Ibid., The Competitive Effects,23. Josh Ryan, The Effect of Partisan Redistricting on Congressional Polarization, (Paper, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 10, 2008), 23.

Figure 1: Figure 2:

Created by the author using: Carson and Crespin, The Competitive Effects, 5. Seth E. Masket, Jonathan Winburn and Gerald C. Wright, The Limits of the Gerrymander: Examining the Impact of Redistricting on Electoral Competition and Legislative Polarization, Paper, Lubbock, Texas, May 18, 2006). 38.

Figure 3:

Ibid., 39.

Chapter 5
Table 1: Table 2: Table 3: Adapted from: Brunell, Redistricting and Representation, 38. Ibid., 37. Ibid.

Figure 1: Figure 2:

Created by the author using: Buchler, The Inevitability of Gerrymandering,32. Created by the author using: Daniel Stevens, The HotellingDowns model of TwoParty Competition and the Median Voter Theory, PPE Blah!, July 19, 2008, http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dcstevens/entry/the_hotelling-downs_model/ (accessed June 18, 2011).

Figure 3:

David C. King, Congress, Polarization, and Fidelity to the Median Voter, (Paper, Harvard University, MA, March 10, 2003), 30.

Figure 4:

Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008), I.

Figure 5:

Ibid., II.

Bibliography

83

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