I bet that the issue is the same one we had in Arizona: drawing competitive districts in a Republican leaning state that has to adhere to the Voting Rights Act is difficult.  Once the (heavily Democratic) Voting Rights districts are drawn, there are few Democrats left to spread around to draw competitive districts.

Michael P. McDonald
Assistant Professor, George Mason University
Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution
703-993-4191
mmcdon@gmu.edu
elections.gmu.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: Nathaniel Persily <npersily@law.upenn.edu>
Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 10:23 am
Subject: Nonpartisan redistricting in Georgia and district-level non-competitiveness

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/