Subject: Nonpartisan redistricting in Georgia and district-level non-competitiveness
From: Nathaniel Persily
Date: 11/10/2004, 7:23 AM
To: "election-law@majordomo.lls.edu" <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>

<x-flowed>Listmembers may be interested in the data available at the following link:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/shared/news/politics/results/ga/index.html

It shows the results of the Georgia legislative races.  Following Larios v. Cox, the district court approved a new redistricting plan.  As one who drew the lines, I can vouch for the extreme nonpartisanship of the process and resulting map.  We did not look at partisan data at all -- think of the process as Issacharoff's dream come true.

I am struck (as I am sure you will be) by how non-competitive these elections were, despite nonpartisan districting.  In the 180 person house, only 8 districts had a margin of victory between 0 and 5%. (Another 10 had margins between 5 and 10% but most were 8% or more.)  In the 55 person senate, only 3 districts had a margin between 0 and 5% and another 2  were between 5 and 10%.  Of course, there ended up being huge turnover in both chambers (with Republicans capturing the House and increasing their margin in the Senate)  but much of that was due to open seats following resignations and (a few) primary losses.

Only 6 incumbents lost in the House -- and almost all of these are cases where a Democratic incumbent was placed in a Republican district (i.e., those districts will be safe next time).

Only 4 (and maybe 3 after a recount) incumbents in the Senate lost.

-- 
Nathaniel Persily
Assistant Professor
University of Pennsylvania Law School
3400 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(o) 215-898-0167
(f) 215-573-2025
npersily@law.upenn.edu
http://persily.pennlaw.net/

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