[EL] Flaws in Politico and NY Times articles about gerrymandering

[Kogan, Vladimir]

We show in the same chapter that the commission plans benefited Democrats precisely because the previous bipartisan gerrymander the legislature adopted had the effect of helping Republicans. In particular, the 2001 plan packed existing Republican districts to keep safe as the price of getting the GOP on board, even as the state became less Republican in terms of the composition of the electorate over the next decade. When the commission undid this intentional incumbent protection, it “unfroze” these Republican districts, allowing the changes in the electorate seen over the previous decade to become translated into more Democratic seats. You can see this in the seats-votes curves below. Unfortunately, this was not enough to substantially increase the number of competitive districts for some of the reasons we discuss.

Of course, as Jonathan Rodden and Jowei Chen would point out, it’s not obvious that we should expect the seats-votes curves to look as “fair” as they do, given the natural Democratic disadvantage in California’s political geography. So perhaps this is still evidence that the commission gave the Democrats a little extra help.

[cid:image006.jpg at 01D0B4D0.8B15BFC0]

[cid:image007.jpg at 01D0B4D0.8B15BFC0]


From: Larry Levine [mailto:larrylevine at earthlink.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 1:57 PM
To: Kogan, Vladimir; djohnson at ndcresearch.com; 'Rick Hasen'; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] Flaws in Politico and NY Times articles about gerrymandering

Interesting observation? Twice in my experience the redistricting maps for the California legislature were done by entities other than the legislature – once by a court of master and once by the newly created commission. In each case the first elections conducted in the new districts produced the largest Democratic majorities in my 50+ years of involvement in CA government and politics. Both elections produced super majorities for the Democrats. Could it be that the give and take of the partisan atmosphere in the legislative arena had some moderating impact on the process? Anyone got a better answer?
Larry

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Kogan, Vladimir
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 10:14 AM
To: djohnson at ndcresearch.com<mailto:djohnson at ndcresearch.com>; 'Rick Hasen'; law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Flaws in Politico and NY Times articles about gerrymandering

The NYT analysis is also somewhat deceiving because it focuses only  on the congressional maps. As Eric McGhee and I showed<http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/files/2014/08/govca-25eiqbe.pdf> a few years ago, California’s commission-produced maps produced a substantive increase in competitive districts for the congressional plan, but not for either of the two state legislative plans.

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[The Ohio State University]
Vladimir Kogan, Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
2004 Derby Hall | 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210-1373
510/415-4074 Mobile
614/292-9498 Office
614/292-1146 Fax
http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/
kogan.18 at osu.edu<mailto:kogan.18 at osu.edu>



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