Assessing Robustness of Findings About Racial Redistricting’s Effect on Southern House Delegations

Abstract

AbstractWe assess whether racial redistricting increases the number of Southern representatives to the left of the US House median. Our results, which are based on Monte Carlo simulations and an alternative measure of representatives’ preferences, are generally null findings. The data do not support the claim that racial redistricting promotes liberal policy outcomes; nor do they support the claim that it promotes conservative policy outcomes. At a methodological level, we suggest techniques that researchers can use to assess how robust their findings are to noise in variables based on estimated values like DW-Nominate scores.