[EL] Gerrymandering and partisan composition of Congress

[Kogan, Vladimir]

I echo everyone — this is a very important and carefully executed paper — but I too wanted to add one additional caveat.

It is important to emphasize that the authors do find evidence of gerrymandering (compared to a computer-based randomly drawn counterfactual) in many states, but simply note that it is small (less than one seat in most states) and cancels out across states. However, the same is probably not true for state legislative districts. The reason the effect is so small for congressional districts is that most states have relatively small congressional delegations, so generating just one seat change still requires a large gerrymander in percentage terms.

Consider an example from Ohio. Here is the key figure from the paper:

[cid:image004.jpg at 01D286F7.EA3B13B0]

The gap between the average simulated plan and the real plan is about 10% of Congressional seats. Since Ohio has only 16 seats, that translates to just a seat or two. On the other hand, the lower house of the legislature has 99 members, so that would translate to 10-plus seats — enough to make the difference between a regular and veto-proof majority (currently) and majority control (in a good Democratic year). The fact that this advantage is offset by a potentially equivalent Democratic advantage in a legislature in a different state does not give much solace to folks in Ohio. Since the legislative districts are also smaller in population terms, there are potentially many more degrees of freedom, meaning the gerrymandering effect in the legislative districts might be even bigger than what they find.

Vlad

[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


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