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

[Rob Richie]

Here's some relevant information:

*1. California congressional districts and competition: *When you look at
the 2012 presidential elections and use that as a basis for measuring
partisanship (the "partisan index" FairVote pioneered in the popular  press
in 1997 and that Charlie Cook later that year adapted to the Cook PVI),
there's actually no increase in competition in California from the
districts as used in 2008 and those in 2012. My former colleague Devin
McCarthy wrote this November 2013 piece
<http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/blog/did-the-california-citizens-redistricting-commission-really-create-more-competitive-districts/>
about how the underlying partisanship of the congressional districts. The
number of swing districts with a 50-53% partisanship (5), those lean
districts with 53%-60% partisanship (16) and those landslide districts with
60%-plus partisanship (32, or nearly two-thirds of all districts) were
exactly the same in both plans as applied in those two elections.

There was a big shakeup in congressional incumbents in 2012, however,
because incumbency was shaken up -- that definitely was new to California
and the clearest outcome of the commission. But things settled down a lot
in 2014, when all 47 congressional incumbent won (albeit some in close
races). With nearly every incumbent "sorted" into a district that matches
their own partisan label, expect future incumbent defeats to be largely
confined to same-party contests (although no incumbent lost for that reason
in 2014).

*2. Arizona  congressional districts*: After the 2001 redistricting in
Arizona, 15 of 16 congressional races in 2002 and 2004 were won by at least
20%,including all 13 races with incumbents. Things did get more competitive
later in the decade in a relative way within the same district plan,
showing that there was underlying competitiveness in several districts in
those plans.


As along as  accept winner-take-all electoral rules that make general
election participation irrelevant in most districts, we can expect such
results - and also the basic conflict between having fair representation
and having electoral competition. If we moved toward multi-seat districts
with ranked choice voting (that is,single transferable), you can have both.

Rob


On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 1:13 PM, Kogan, Vladimir <kogan.18 at osu.edu> wrote:

>  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.
>
>
>
>
>
> [image: 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
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> kogan.18 at osu.edu
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