Race-based districting: does it help or hinder legislative representation? (original) (raw)
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Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy
Previous research shows that multimember districts (MMDs) disadvantage African American candidates. However, these studies focus on only a few aspects of the electoral process and they may be time bound. Using a new data set, we examine the impact of district magnitude (the number of candidates elected from a single constituency) on the emergence, nomination, and general election of African Americans to the state legislature. Using data from recent elections to the Maryland state legislature, we find no evidence that district magnitude dims the electoral prospects of African American candidates. Our findings suggest that biases attributed to MMDs may have resulted from laws, partisan practices, customs, and political attitudes. The implementation of the Voting Rights Act, broad societal changes, and strategic adjustments by black candidates and voters may have mitigated the effects of previous biases resulting in the election of more African Americans in MMDs and other districts.
Redistricting Principles and Racial Representation
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 2004
How do traditional redistricting principles-contiguity, communities of interest, political subdivisions, incumbent protection. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, preservation of district core, and compactness-affect racial minority representation in congressional districts? Using data from the 2001-02 redistricting process, we Hnd that compactness is the only principle that significantly affects minority representation, both in terms of majority-minority districts and minority influence districts, but these effects are contingent on the size of the minority community and extent of racial segregation in a state. Two other principles. Section 5 pre-clearance and protecting political subdivisions, improve minority representation in a more limited way. Thus, race-neutral redistricting criteria like the compactness principle, can dramatically aftect the racial composition of the resulting districts and, thereby, affect minority representation. THE PRACTICE OF CREATING majority minority electoral districts in recent decades has led to a fierce debate over whether this policy enhances the political influence of racial minorities. Some scholars have found that packing African Americans into a small number of legislative districts increases the conservatism of surrounding areas (Bullock 1995; Cameron, Epstein, and O'Halloran 1996; Lublin 1997;Swain 1995).Asaresult, some argue that African Americans would benefit more from the creation of "minority influence districts" (Lublin 1997, 121), where blacks constitute the swing vote that is crucial to a candidate's victory. Other scholars either downplay the unintended consequences of majority-minority districts (Engstrom 1995; Grofman and Handley 1998; Petrocik and Desposato 1998) or champion the descriptive representation that typically results from them (Davidson 1992). Obscured in this debate is the fact that those who draw political districts are constrained by a number of rules and principles that govern the redistrict
African American Turnout in Majority-Minority Districts
2011
The 1965 Voting Rights Act has been a central part of Federal efforts to increase minority participation in the U.S. The latest phase of enforcement under the Voting Rights Act has been the creation of majority-minority Congressional districts. To fight vote dilution, these districts are drawn so that a majority of the voting age population are minorities. One open question about minority-majority districts is whether they increase citizen participation in the form of turnout. While much of the empirical literature on this question has produced inconclusive answers, recent studies suggest that residing in one of these districts can significantly increase minority turnout. We argue that much of the variability in these findings can be attributed to the different design choices of previous researchers. In this study we address the weakness of previous research designs and offer a new design that exploits the redistricting process to gain additional leverage on this question. Unlike previous research, our design accounts for possible variation in treatment specification by ensuring that voters who were moved into minority-majority districts through the redistricting process are comparable to voters that remained in existing districts. Our use of the redistricting process also allows us to correctly model the selection process that leads voters to be moved into minority-majority districts. We find little evidence that minority voter turnout increases when minority voters are moved into these districts.
Social Science Quarterly, 2003
Objective. Fenno (1978), Wright (1989), and other scholars suggest that legislators will be particularly responsive to various subgroups in their constituency, i.e., what might be termed the ''core constituency.'' We explore the degree to which Republican and Democrat House incumbents respond differently to changes in the racial composition of their districts brought about by redistricting. We speculate that (1) Democrat House incumbents will be more responsive in their roll-call behavior to changes in African-American racial composition, since African-American voters are typically a major component of the Democrat core constituency, while (2) Republicans will be less responsive, since African-American voters are typically not part of the Republican coalition. Methods. We utilize data on the roll-call behavior, member characteristics, and constituency characteristics of House members who served during both the 102nd (1991-1992) and 103rd (1993-1994) Congresses. We model roll-call liberalism in 1993 as a function of levels of and changes in district racial composition, along with control variables. To capture the different effects of racial core constituencies, we estimate our models separately for Democratic and Republican House members. Results. Our findings provide strong support for our hypothesis: Democrat incumbents respond strongly both to levels of and changes in the African-American population in their districts, while Republican incumbents respond only modestly to changes in African-American population brought on by redistricting and negatively to African-American population levels. Conclusions. Democrats and Republicans appear to respond differently to constituent groups, depending on whether the groups are part of their core constituency. Our findings suggest the importance of considering core constituencies in studying roll-call behavior and legislative responsiveness.
Redistricting: Reading Between the Lines
Annual Review of Political Science, 2009
The redistricting process evokes major questions about representative democracy, fairness, and political accountability. This article covers the state of the field along three dimensions. First, it explains how redistricting bears on questions about racial and minority representation. Second, it examines how redistricting influences electoral competition, focusing on the alleged power of partisans and incumbents to draw maps that eliminate all but token opposition. Third and last, it discusses the issues surrounding the redistricting process itself and how various procedural reforms may influence political outcomes. Although significant progress has been made in understanding how different redistricting schemes create various biases in the electoral system, a review of the literature shows that major questions have not been resolved regarding the effects of redistricting on electoral competition, partisan polarization, and representation of communities of interest, especially minori...
Black Turnout and Registration in Majority-Minority Districts
Journal of Student Research
Understanding what can incentivize the entire and minority populations to participate in politicsis important to understand voting patterns. To answer this question, this study focuses onwhether race has an impact on voter registration and turnout. This study sought to determinewhether moving from a majority-White to a majority-Black district will increase turnout andregistration among the general population as well as the Black population. Utilizing ten-yearlegislative reapportionment, this study compares the percent voter registration and percentturnout both before and after the 2012 round of redistricting in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,Mississippi, and South Carolina. Results indicated that co-racial incumbents have the ability tomotivate increased voter registration among the total and Black population. Turnout results weremuch less straightforward, indicating that there are other factors that impact turnout than the raceof the incumbent. Thus, it appears the creation of majorit...
Minority Representation under Cumulative and Limited Voting
The Journal of Politics, 1998
We examine minority representation resulting from modified at-large elections (cumulative and limited voting) used in U.S. localities in the 1990s. Hypotheses about the relative proportionality of descriptive representation under various local election systems are presented and tested. We find that CV/LV elections produced descriptive representation of African-Americans at levels similar to those in larger single-member district places, and at levels that exceed those from some small, southern SMD places. Results for Latino representation are more qualified. Our results offer encouragement for those interested in facilitating minority representation without using the acrimonious process of drawing districts on the basis of races.