Race‐Based Redistricting, Core Constituencies, and Legislative Responsiveness to Constituency Change*

Abstract

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.