National Party Organization and Congressional Districts

Abstract

HE RELATIVE stability of legislative tenure has long been noted by students of two-party systems. In statistical terms, over a number of years one-fourth or less of American congressional districts appear to be doubtful in any given election year,' and except in crisis situations or critical elections overwhelming likelihood is that party turnover will occur in less than one-sixth of all districts.2 In 1958, in an off-year election that was considered more than usually indicative of a trend, only 48 of 435 districts changed their party representation, and in a stratified random sample of 20 districts that same year only one incumbent was defeated. Such statistics not only support well-known practical principle of the advantage of incumbency, 3 but they also raise questions concerning meaning and importance of distinction between safe and competitive districts, which has been assumed by many studies of legislative behavior. How is competitiveness of congressional districts in party organization, kinds of candidates, and relationships between district (electoral) party organization and representative? In other words, if degree of party dominance in congressional districts is treated as independent variable, how do these other factors vary with respect to it? In 1958 a semester's leave provided opportunity to follow through some of these curiosities. Prior to field work, 428 identifiable congressional districts were ranked in descending order of percentage of party dominance (the arithmetic mean of winning party's percentage of vote in 14 House elections from 1928 to 1954).4 One hundred and fifty-eight, or approximately two-fifths of these appeared to lie in or include a metropolitan area of 250,000 or more. A 5 per cent, stratified random sample of 20 districts was drawn from rankorder list, divided between metropolitan and non-metropolitan districts, so that 8 came from former, 12 from latter. Table I shows resultant party distributions of 20 sample districts. They fell in 17 states, with 3 states, California, New York, and Pennsylvania having 2 districts each in sample.