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Unintentional Gerrymandering: Political Geography and Electoral Bias in Legislatures

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  • Chen, Jowei
  • Rodden, Jonathan

Abstract

While conventional wisdom holds that partisan bias in U.S. legislative elections results from intentional partisan and racial gerrymandering, we demonstrate that substantial bias can also emerge from patterns of human geography. We show that in many states, Democrats are inefficiently concentrated in large cities and smaller industrial agglomerations such that they can expect to win fewer than 50% of the seats when they win 50% of the votes. To measure this "unintentional gerrymandering," we use automated districting simulations based on precinct-level 2000 presidential election results in several states. Our results illustrate a strong relationship between the geographic concentration of Democratic voters and electoral bias favoring Republicans.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Jowei & Rodden, Jonathan, 2013. "Unintentional Gerrymandering: Political Geography and Electoral Bias in Legislatures," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(3), pages 239-269, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00012033
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00012033
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    Cited by:

    1. Barry Burden & Corwin Smidt, 2020. "Evaluating Legislative Districts Using Measures of Partisan Bias and Simulations," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, December.
    2. Mario Chacon & Jeffrey Jensen, 2017. "The Institutional Determinants of Southern Secession," Working Papers 20170001, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Mar 2017.
    3. Niklas Potrafke, 2018. "Government ideology and economic policy-making in the United States—a survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 145-207, January.
    4. Amy Pond, 2021. "Biased politicians and independent agencies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 33(3), pages 279-299, July.
    5. Olivia Guest & Frank J. Kanayet & Bradley C. Love, 2019. "Gerrymandering and computational redistricting," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 119-131, July.
    6. Su-Min & Alexandru, 2022. "Do Labels Polarise? Theory and Evidence from the Brexit Referendum," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2227, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    7. Thomas Choate & John A Weymark & Alan E Wiseman, 2019. "Partisan strength and legislative bargaining," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(1), pages 6-45, January.
    8. Christian Haas & Lee Hachadoorian & Steven O Kimbrough & Peter Miller & Frederic Murphy, 2020. "Seed-Fill-Shift-Repair: A redistricting heuristic for civic deliberation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-34, September.
    9. Mattozzi, Andrea & Snowberg, Erik, 2018. "The right type of legislator: A theory of taxation and representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 54-65.
    10. Potrafke, Niklas & Roesel, Felix, 2020. "The urban–rural gap in healthcare infrastructure: does government ideology matter?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 54(3), pages 340-351.
    11. Mario Chacón & Jeffrey Jensen, 2017. "The institutional determinants of Southern secession," Working Papers 2017/16, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    12. Christopher Warshaw & Eric McGhee & Michal Migurski, 2022. "Districts for a New Decade—Partisan Outcomes and Racial Representation in the 2021–22 Redistricting Cycle," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 52(3), pages 428-451.
    13. Aaron Brick & Cameron Brick, 2021. "Districting that minimizes partisan bias," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-6, December.
    14. David K. Levine & Andrea Mattozzi, 2020. "Voter Turnout with Peer Punishment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(10), pages 3298-3314, October.
    15. Balázs R Sziklai & Károly Héberger, 2020. "Apportionment and districting by Sum of Ranking Differences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-20, March.
    16. Serhat Hasancebi, 2023. "The Maltese single transferable vote experience: a case study of gerrymandering?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 572-597, December.
    17. Cho, Wendy K. Tam & Liu, Yan Y., 2018. "Sampling from complicated and unknown distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 506(C), pages 170-178.
    18. Matthew P. Dube & Jesse T. Clark & Richard J. Powell, 2022. "Graphical metrics for analyzing district maps," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 449-475, May.
    19. Jeanne Clelland & Haley Colgate & Daryl DeFord & Beth Malmskog & Flavia Sancier-Barbosa, 2022. "Colorado in context: Congressional redistricting and competing fairness criteria in Colorado," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 189-226, May.
    20. Andrei Gomberg & Romans Pancs & Tridib Sharma, 2023. "Electoral Maldistricting," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1223-1264, August.
    21. De Santo, Alessia & Le Maux, Benoît, 2023. "On the optimal size of legislatures: An illustrated literature review," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    22. Hyytinen, Ari & Saarimaa, Tuukka & Tukiainen, Janne, 2014. "Electoral vulnerability and size of local governments: Evidence from voting on municipal mergers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 193-204.
    23. Simons Joseph & Mallinson Daniel J., 2015. "Party Control and Perverse Effects in Majority-Minority Districting: Replication Challenges When Using DW-NOMINATE," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1-2), pages 19-37, December.
    24. Acuff, Christopher, 2022. "Beyond the City-County Divide: Examining Consolidation Referenda Since 2000," SocArXiv pb7ug, Center for Open Science.
    25. Artés, Joaquín & Kaufman, Aaron Russell & Richter, Brian Kelleher & Timmons, Jeffrey F., 2022. "Are Firms Gerrymandered?," Working Papers 320, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.

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