Abstract
This paper analyzes whether redistricting commissions impact electoral competition in the US House of Representatives. Data from the last three redistricting cycles are used to estimate a fixed-effects regression model that controls for state and time invariant effects. The model shows that independent redistricting commissions enhance electoral competition and that this effect has become stronger since the introduction of these commissions in Arizona and California. The model also shows that other types of redistricting commissions as a whole produce districts that are no more competitive than those produced by partisan-controlled legislative redistricting.
Highlights
In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court found that Florida’s state legislature had failed to comply with the requirements of Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment and ordered the state to redraw its congressional districts.1 In 2017, the United States Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina had engaged in an unconstitutional gerrymander and ordered the state to redraw its congressional districts.2 Both cases involved the “packing” of minorities into a small number of districts in order to dilute their voting power
The model shows that independent redistricting commissions enhance electoral competition and that this effect has become stronger since the introduction of these commissions in Arizona and California
The model shows that other types of redistricting commissions as a whole produce districts that are no more competitive than those produced by partisan-controlled legislative redistricting
Summary
In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court found that Florida’s state legislature had failed to comply with the requirements of Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment and ordered the state to redraw its congressional districts. In 2017, the United States Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina had engaged in an unconstitutional gerrymander and ordered the state to redraw its congressional districts. Both cases involved the “packing” of minorities into a small number of districts in order to dilute their voting power. This means that the DNPV is independent of the characteristics of the House candidates themselves This greatly simplifies the analysis since factors like incumbency status, campaign finance and the personal vote no longer have to be controlled for in order to isolate the effect of redistricting. All of these measures need to be controlled for when the results from candidate-specific elections are used to gauge competitiveness, making it much more difficult to isolate the effect of redistricting when these results are used instead of the DNPV. I provide some preliminary measures of competitiveness in US House elections before moving on to conduct a fixed-effects regression analysis that is used to identify the effect of redistricting commissions on competitiveness
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