Political Conditions and the Electoral Effects of Redistricting

Abstract

Redistricting can have considerable electoral consequences because it undermines the incumbency advantage. Numerous voters are drawn into districts with a different incumbent seeking reelection. With regard to vote choice, these redrawn constituents rely more on their partisanship and prevailing political conditions because they lack familiarity with their new representative. Macropartisanship, the aggregate party identification of the electorate, is an excellent barometer of the political climate and hence the partisan direction guiding voters. Because redrawn constituents have at best a tenuous bond with their new incumbent, partisan tides have more influence on their vote choice. Analyses of the 1992 and 2002 U.S. House elections show that higher district percentages of redrawn constituents significantly reduced the vote shares of southern Democratic representatives in 1992 and Democratic incumbents regardless of region in 2002. Given the stated behavioral implications associated with redistricting, these findings speak to the political conditions occurring at the time of these respective elections: a Republican realignment picking up steam in the South in 1992 and a short-term national GOP tide in the first post-9/11 midterm.

Keywords

redistricting political conditions U.S. House elections redrawn voters macropartisanship

Redistricting is the spatial redistribution of voters. The simple act of relocating a district boundary alters the representational relationship for numerous voters and this can have considerable electoral consequences. Redrawn constituents, those who reside in a district with a new incumbent because of redistricting, are naturally less familiar with their representative and this bears directly on their voting behavior. The incumbency advantage that accrues to those who cultivate a personal vote with their constituents is severely discounted among redrawn residents because the representative cannot appeal to these new constituents on nonpartisan grounds since they have not yet had the opportunity to work for them (Desposato & Petrocik, 2003; but see Boatright, 2004) and thus nurture a home style (Ansolabehere, Snyder, & Stewart, 2000). Lacking familiarity with their new incumbent, these redrawn constituents are more reliant on partisan cues and the prevailing political conditions when they cast a vote.

Redistricting fosters a high degree of electoral uncertainty in the minds of representatives (see Fenno, 1978) and it is tied directly to the presence of large numbers of new constituents (Cain, 1984; Cain & Campagna, 1987). What can make matters even more perilous for those who seek reelection in a redistricting cycle is the partisan tenor of prevailing political conditions. The political climate is a complex mixture of long- and short-term forces. The immediacy of recent events and how they impinge on presidential approval and the state of the economy shape the electorate’s macropartisanship, which has a direct bearing on election outcomes (MacKuen, Erikson, & Stimson, 1989). Likewise, secular changes set in motion by issue evolutions occurring long ago can be tempered by contemporary political events or they can be accelerated by short-term conditions that reinforce a partisan realignment.

The latter scenario is exemplified by the political transformation of the American South.¹ This region of the United States finally broke in favor of the Republican Party in the late 1960s in presidential contests, but it was not until the 1990s that GOP support in congressional elections reached commensurate levels. The nearly three decades-old split-level alignment, in which southerners voted Republican in presidential elections and Democratic in House races was swiftly undone by the dislocating effects of redistricting.² For southern Democrats, the incumbency advantage served to thwart strong Republican challengers and maintain district-level voting majorities (E. Black & M. Black, 2002). But in the 1990s this electoral status quo was shattered by the presence of constituents who were poised to vote Republican when drawn into districts with a different, and most likely, unfamiliar Democratic incumbent (McKee, 2010; Petrocik & Desposato, 1998).

At the same time that southern Whites were trending in favor of the Republican Party, nationally, voters were re-sorting themselves to better fit their partisanship with the positions advocated by the major parties (Levendusky, 2009). Voters recognize the growing policy divide among partisan elites (Ansolabehere & Jones, 2010; Hetherington, 2001), and this enables them to pick sides. As Bartels (2000) has shown, voters have responded by moving away from political independence and their growing partisanship has strengthened the relationship between political affiliation and vote choice in presidential and congressional elections. The increase in mass partisanship since the 1970s has weakened the electoral pull of incumbency (Fiorina, 2005) and in turn strengthened the role of national forces in House elections (Jacobson, 2009). Whereas in the 1970s and even in the 1980s, incumbency could considerably mollify the effects of what appeared to be a harmful redistricting (Born, 1985; Rush, 1992, 1993), by the 1990s and early 2000s redistricting exhibits a different electoral dynamic.

The political climate is a fundamental factor impinging on the degree to which redistricting affects election outcomes. Redrawn voters are the electoral wild card because their relatively greater unfamiliarity with the incumbent makes them more susceptible to prevailing political conditions. And if conditions clearly favor a party, redrawn constituents will exhibit greater support for the party benefiting from the political climate because they are not restrained by the personal vote most incumbents have cultivated among those residents they have represented before redistricting.

In this study the electoral effects of redistricting are captured by evaluating the influence of redrawn constituencies on House vote shares in 1992 and 2002. In 1992 and 2002, political conditions tilted in favor of the Republican Party, but in the former election the effects of redistricting were only substantial and significant in the South, where the White electorate continued to realign in favor of the GOP. By comparison, in 2002, partisan re-sorting had all but run its course and a more divided electorate behaved in a more predictable manner when placed in new congressional districts. Even so, the first post-9/11 election proved a net winner for the Republican Party because terrorism materialized as an issue voters perceived as being owned by the GOP (Jacobson, 2003). With this issue casting a massive shadow over the 2002 midterm, redrawn constituents broke in favor of Republican House candidates, but this had little overall effect on partisan outcomes because so many districts were successfully drawn to protect incumbents of both political parties (Hirsch, 2003).

This article proceeds in the following order. First, I introduce some of the theoretical and conceptual components conditioning the relationship between redistricting and incumbent support. Then I provide an overview of the 1992 and 2002 redistrictings and discuss how redrawn constituents are expected to influence electoral outcomes given what we know about the state of political conditions and macropartisanship during these elections. Next, I present the data and methods, followed by the results of the analyses. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the electoral effects of redistricting that goes beyond the two elections studied here to explain how different political conditions have affected contests under previous and more recent boundary changes.

Redistricting and Incumbent Support

Recent studies of the incumbency advantage and how it interacts with redistricting have greatly improved our understanding of this relationship. Specifically, the work of Scott W. Desposato and John R. Petrocik (Desposato & Petrocik, 2003, 2005; Petrocik & Desposato, 1998, 2004) demonstrates that the incumbency advantage is highly sensitive to the presence of a redistricting. The key feature of any redistricting is the role of redrawn voters. Will these voters, who now have a new representative because of a boundary change, exhibit the same level of support for their new incumbent? Ceteris paribus, the answer is no and the reason why is because of the informational deficit resulting from the lack of a shared history between redrawn voters and their new incumbent. Redrawn constituents are considerably less likely to be familiar with their representative vis-à-vis constituents who retain the same incumbent following a redistricting (Hayes & McKee, 2009; McKee, 2008b) and this reduces the likelihood of voting for the incumbent (Hood & McKee, 2010).

Simply put, the incumbency advantage does not apply to the vast majority of redrawn constituents. Without the requisite time to establish a personal vote with their new residents, it follows that a redrawn voter’s calculus relies more heavily on partisanship and the extant political conditions shaping the election. Indeed, as Petrocik and Desposato (2004, p. 366) claim, redrawn voters resemble open-seat voters because “the absence of personal vote cues that anchor a predisposition for the incumbent” makes both types of voters more susceptible to short-term political forces. Petrocik and Desposato refer to their conceptualization of the incumbency advantage as the “anchor model” because incumbency serves to reduce the pull of short-term factors that may favor the party of the challenger. Indeed, lacking the anchoring effect of incumbency, redrawn voters should drift with the prevailing partisan tide. There is empirical support for this theory of redrawn voter behavior in the American South (Petrocik & Desposato, 1998), California (Desposato & Petrocik, 2003), and national U.S. House elections (McKee, 2008a).

It is of course true that political conditions may not significantly favor one party over another and thus the electoral impact of a redistricting—in the form of redrawn voting behavior, should exhibit no significant partisan bias. Instead, partisanship and challenger viability should be the most relevant factors for redrawn voters during a politically neutral environment. And since redistricting (at least in the short term) eliminates the representational relationship for numerous voters, quality candidates are more likely to mount a challenge in a redistricting year (Hetherington, Larson, & Globetti, 2003). Historically, smoothing over the vicissitudes of specific elections, we see that incumbents perform worse among their redrawn constituents (Ansolabehere et al., 2000); no doubt a consequence of their new residents relying more on their partisan inclinations and greater susceptibility to the appeals of strong challengers, who are more likely to emerge at those times when incumbents experience a boundary change.

Thus, controlling for other factors, we can posit two general claims regarding the effects of redistricting on incumbent vote shares: (a) under politically neutral conditions (no party is clearly advantaged at the time of the election) incumbents of both parties should receive less support from redrawn voters and (b) when the political climate favors one party, redrawn voters will only serve to reduce the vote shares of incumbents who are affiliated with the disadvantaged party. With respect to the first claim, because redrawn voters lack the personal vote cue (the anchoring effect of incumbency) they will be less supportive of their new incumbent regardless of that representative’s party affiliation.³ As for the second claim, redrawn voters will be much less supportive of incumbents who represent the party harmed by political tides because conditions push these voters toward candidates of the favored party. Conversely, redrawn voter support for incumbents of the advantaged party may be no different from the support given by same-incumbent voters (a null finding) because the partisan tide will push redrawn voters toward these incumbents at a level of support exceeding their partisanship—a boost that is roughly tantamount to the personal vote. The next section of the article explains why there are reasons to expect that the second claim is borne out in both the 1992 and 2002 U.S. House elections.

Redistricting in 1992 and 2002

There is evidence that both the 1992 and 2002 House elections occurred when short-term political conditions favored the Republican Party. The GOP netted 10 seats in 1992 and 6 in 2002 (Jacobson, 2009). The 2002 elections were only the third midterm since the Civil War in which the president’s party gained seats. Many scholars view the 1992 House elections as breaking in favor of the GOP (see Abramson, Aldrich, & Rohde, 1994; McKee, 2008a; the American South in the case of Petrocik & Desposato, 1998). The anti-incumbent mood disadvantaged Democrats (see Abramson et al., 1994; Gaddie & Bullock, 2000) since they were the majority party in Congress.⁴ The House Bank scandal proved more detrimental to Democratic incumbents because they were more likely to have bounced checks and, for this reason, Republican Newt Gingrich made it a campaign issue (Jacobson, 2009). Finally, the large number of newly drawn majority-minority districts concentrated the most loyal Democratic voters in a smaller number of districts and this concomitantly increased the number of Republican voters in adjacent districts (E. Black & M. Black, 2002; Lublin, 1997). However, since most new majority Black districts were located in southern states (Epstein & O’Halloran, 2000) and all but one of the 10 Republican seat gains were in the South, whatever GOP redistricting advantage there was, may have been confined to this region.

Despite a large number of incumbent protection plans (Forgette & Platt, 2005), overall, the 2002 redistricting aided the GOP (see Hirsch, 2003; Jacobson, 2009, pp. 8-11; La Raja, 2009; McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2009; Schweers, 2003). As Jacobson points out, the states that gained seats through reapportionment were heavily Republican while the states that lost districts favored the Democratic Party. This is not a surprise considering the ongoing population movement and growth away from the Democratic Frost Belt to the Republican Sun Belt. What really allowed Republicans to capitalize on reapportionment was their success in winning districts in those states where the GOP controlled redistricting and to a lesser degree in those states with divided partisan control (see Jacobson, 2009, p. 9, Table 2-1). In addition to a favorable redistricting, short-term forces swung in favor of the GOP. The president’s high approval rating, Republican candidates’ success in their efforts to “own” the terrorism issue (Jacobson, 2003), and the fact that a sluggish economy failed to gain electoral traction (Jacobson, 2009) presaged a Republican edge in the 2002 midterms.

Unlike the nation at large, in the South its ongoing realignment hastened with the 1992 congressional elections. Whereas 9 of the 11 ex-Confederate states had Democratic plans in 1992, only four southern states advanced Democratic objectives in 2002 (see McDonald, 2004). The prevalence of southern Democratic control of the redistricting process in 1992 belies the party’s declining status, which is made evident by two important and electorally consequential realities. First, with the exception of Arkansas and Tennessee, southern states are covered by the Voting Rights Act and of particular importance, Section 5, which dictates federal preclearance of proposed boundary changes. Second, 1992 denotes the initial point of Republican ascendancy in southern U.S. House elections (McKee, 2010). This was the first election in a string of three in which southern Republicans made extraordinary gains in House contests.

As the agency in charge of reviewing district plans, the Department of Justice (DOJ) leaned hard on several southern states to greatly increase, wherever geographically possible, their number of majority-minority districts (Bullock, 2010; Butler, 2002; Cunningham, 2001). To comply with the DOJ and hopefully limit the electoral damage to White southern Democrats representing districts bordering newly created majority Black districts, southern Democratic-controlled legislatures drew extremely convoluted maps, shocking in their complexity to the naked eye (see the examples provided by Monmonier, 2001).

Recognizing the danger of saddling their own incumbents with a large percentage of new constituents, southern Democratic mapmakers made sure that Republican incumbents would receive a much greater percentage of redrawn residents.⁵ Table 1 documents the percentage of redrawn constituents for incumbents in 1992 and 2002, at the national level and regional level (South and non-South) and according to each party (Democrat or Republican). The notable partisan disparity in the percentage of redrawn constituents is found in the South. In 1992 and 2002, southern Republicans represented districts whose constituent populations were much more likely to be altered vis-à-vis their Democratic counterparts. Whether it is the median, mean, or maximum, the percentage of redrawn constituents was markedly higher for southern Republicans and this was especially true in 1992. Based on measures of central tendency, differences in the percentage of redrawn constituents outside the South according to an incumbent’s party are hardly detectable in 1992 and 2002. In both 1992 and 2002, the higher national percentage of redrawn constituents in Republican districts is being driven by the greater number of new constituents placed in districts represented by southern Republicans.

Table 1.

Percentage of Redrawn Constituents for U.S. House Incumbents Seeking Reelection in 1992 and 2002.

	Median redrawn (%)	Mean redrawn (%)	Max redrawn (%)	N
1992 Elections
All incumbents	19	24		309
Democrats	19	23	95	192
Republicans	21	26	100	117
Southern incumbents	18	26		82
Democrats	15	20	69	57
Republicans	37	39	100	25
Nonsouthern incumbents	19	24		227
Democrats	21	25	95	135
Republicans	18	23	100	92
2002 Elections
All incumbents	20	23		296
Democrats	19	21	76	149
Republicans	23	24	97	147
Southern incumbents	17	22		65
Democrats	12	16	54	30
Republicans	25	27	84	35
Nonsouthern incumbents	20	23		231
Democrats	20	23	76	119
Republicans	22	23	97	112

Note: These data include only contested (Democrat vs. Republican) districts with incumbents running for reelection in 1992 and 2002. Redrawn is the district percentage of constituents an incumbent inherited after redistricting. The variable was calculated based on data from the following links: http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/websas/geocorr90.shtml; http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/websas/geocorr2k.html.

To limit the electoral effects of the less predictable behavior of redrawn voters, southern Democrats redistricted the lion’s share of these constituents into Republican-held districts. But they did not go far enough. Democratic line drawers were hamstrung by the DOJ because its insistence on having southern states maximize its number of majority-minority districts assured that many White Democratic incumbents would still be faced with a substantial number of redrawn voters. Nonetheless, the redistribution of constituents into districts with different incumbents would have altered only a handful of election outcomes if these voters’ partisan preferences were static. They were not.

In an insightful analysis, Petrocik and Desposato (1998) demonstrate with American National Election Studies (ANES) data on southerners’ House vote choices, that even a substantial reduction in the Black percentage of the district population would not be enough to defeat the typical Democratic incumbent, if the political environment was in fact neutral. But Petrocik and Desposato contend that in the South, in 1992 and 1994, partisan tides were moving decidedly in a Republican direction and under these conditions, redrawn constituents were at the vanguard of shifting their preferences in favor of Republican House candidates. The greater exposure of southern Republican incumbents to the presence of new voters was not electorally detrimental because in this region of the country, the ongoing Republican realignment was bolstered by the presence of short-term GOP tides in 1992 and 2002.

Macropartisanship in the 1992 and 2002 House Elections

The most direct empirical support for the potential influence of political conditions at the time of the 1992 and 2002 elections is illustrated by data on the macropartisanship of House voters presented in Table 2. To provide evidence of change in the macropartisanship of the voting electorate, data are presented for 1990 and 1992, and also for 2000 and 2002. ANES data on the party identification of respondents who claimed to have voted in these elections are presented for all voters, southern voters, and nonsouthern voters. For the three categories of Democrat, Republican, and Independent, those independents who lean toward a party are coded as identifiers of that party. The results are substantively the same if these independents are classified as such but since their voting preferences are more in line with weak identifiers (Keith et al., 1992), they are designated as partisans. The last row for each set of voters displays the difference in the percentage of partisans—Democrats minus Republicans. Finally, two columns show the difference in each row of partisan category between the consecutive election years (1990 vs. 1992 and 2000 vs. 2002).

Table 2.

Macropartisanship of Voters in U.S. House Elections.

Year	1990	1992	Δ(1992-1990)	2000	2002	Δ(2002-2000)
All voters (%)
Democrats	50	51	+1	50	47	−3
Republicans	35	40	+5	43	49	+6
Independents	15	9	−6	8	4	−4
N	(1,014)	(1,694)		(1,173)	(951)
Dem minus Rep	+15	+11	−4	+7	−2	−9
Southern voters (%)
Democrats	54	54	0	47	39	−8
Republicans	28	37	+9	45	57	+12
Independents	18	9	−9	8	5	−3
N	(370)	(458)		(406)	(266)
Dem minus Rep	+26	+17	−9	+2	−18	−20
Nonsouthern voters (%)
Democrats	48	50	+2	52	50	−2
Republicans	39	41	+2	41	46	+5
Independents	13	9	−4	7	4	−3
N	(644)	(1,236)		(767)	(685)
Dem minus Rep	+9	+9	0	+11	+4	−7

Note: These data were calculated by the author from the American National Election Studies (ANES) cumulative file. Independent leaners are classified as partisans. Data include only those respondents who claimed they voted in the election. Similar results were obtained when independent leaners are classified as independents. Likewise, exit poll data for these years also yield similar results (the three-category classification for political affiliation in the exit poll data is Democrat, Republican, and Independent).

The data in Table 2 once again indicate a very different set of political conditions in 1992 and 2002. In 1992 the shift in the macropartisanship of the voting electorate since 1990 is confined to voters in the South, whereas outside the region neither party is advantaged by the changing distribution of identifiers. In the South the formidable advantage in Democratic identification is constant between 1990 and 1992: 54% of southern voters call themselves Democrats. Starting with a much lower base in 1990, however, there is a considerable increase in the percentage of southern voters who identify as Republicans between 1990 and 1992, going from 28% to 37% of the voting electorate. This large increase in Republican identifiers serves to reduce the overall Democratic identification advantage in the South by 9 points, narrowing the Democratic surplus from 26 to 17 percentage points in 1992. By comparison, for nonsouthern voters, the percentage of Democrats and Republicans both increase 2 percentage points. In fact, the only commonality in the pattern of macropartisanship between voters in and outside the South, is the decline in the share of Independents—a pattern that persists through the 2002 elections.

According to the macropartisanship data for 2000 and 2002, the changing distribution of partisanship favors the Republican Party in and outside the South although the GOP advantage is much more pronounced in the latter region. Among all voters, Democratic identification declines 3 percentage points between 2000 and 2002 and increases 6 points for Republicans, who now comprise a slightly larger share of the voting electorate (49% Republicans vs. 47% Democrats). A 7-point Democratic identification advantage in 1990 becomes a 2-point deficit by 2002.

For nonsouthern voters the Republican shift is evident as the percentage of voters identifying with the GOP increases 5 points, whereas Democratic identifiers decline 2 points between 2000 and 2002. In the case of southern voters, we see a mature stage of the Republican partisan realignment in 2002. The percentage of Democratic voters drops 8 points in 2002 compared to 2000, and a remarkable 15 points since 1992. Even more dramatic is the increase in the share of Republican voters, who jump from 45% in 2000 to 57% by 2002, more than doubling the total percentage of Republicans since 1990. What was a slim Democratic identification advantage of 2 points in 2000 is rendered an 18-point Republican identification advantage in 2002—an incredible 20-point Republican shift in the span of 2 years. Finally, irrespective of region, the decline in the share of Independents is evident, demonstrating partisan re-sorting all across the country.

Figure 1 further supports the evidence showing that only in the South did voters move toward the GOP in their party affiliation in 1992, whereas voters in and outside the region both shifted toward the Republican Party in 2002. The figure graphically displays the percentage difference between Democratic and Republican identifiers based on exit poll data for the 1990, 1992, 2000, and 2002 elections. A downward slope between consecutive elections (e.g., 1990 vs. 1992) indicates a trend in favor of the GOP. Between 1990 and 1992 the decline in Democratic voters versus Republican voters in the non-South was a mere 0.4 percentage points whereas in the South the decline was a more notable 2.7 points in the Republican direction. By contrast, between 2000 and 2002, gains in Republican voters are obvious among southern and nonsouthern voters. In the non-South the partisan balance moves 3.5 percentage points in favor of the GOP and in the South a 3.1 percentage point Democratic margin in 2000 becomes a 9-point deficit favoring the Republican Party in 2002.

Figure 1.

Macropartisanship by region: 1990 versus 1992, and 2000 versus 2002.

The next section turns to an examination of the effects of redrawn constituents on House elections in 1992 and 2002. Multivariate analysis allows us to determine whether the presence of redrawn residents exhibited an electoral effect on vote shares in these election cycles.

Data, Method, and Results

The research design is set up to capture the effects of redistricting at the time of the 1992 and 2002 House contests. Because redrawn constituents are no longer tied to a familiar incumbent, they are in effect barometers of the political environment at the time of the election. Hence, if political conditions favor a party, then redrawn constituents should reflect this in their voting behavior as their preferences shift with the partisan tide.⁶ The underlying theory is tied directly to the effect of macropartisanship on voting behavior. To be clear, a shift in macropartisanship that decidedly benefits one of the major parties will produce an across-the-board swing in voter preferences toward the favored party,⁷ but redrawn voters (other factors constant) will be the most susceptible to voting in accordance with the short-term partisan tide because they are not constrained by the personal vote. In other words, it is their lack of a relationship with their new incumbent that makes redrawn voters the most likely to vote for the candidate affiliated with the party benefiting from favorable short-term political conditions.

After controlling for several relevant factors that affect House vote share, the key relationship is between the district percentage of redrawn constituents and the party affiliation of the incumbent (Democrat or Republican). By controlling for other variables, if there is an independent effect of redrawn constituents on the House vote according to an incumbent’s party, it is due to the prevailing political climate at the time of the 1992 and 2002 elections. If the percentage of redrawn constituents only reduces the support given to Democratic incumbents then this suggests that conditions in these elections benefited the Republican Party. Because it is argued that 1992 and 2002 were elections with political conditions benefiting the GOP, redrawn voters should only depress the votes of Democratic incumbents. This hypothesis is tested with an interactive model so that

\begin{array}{l} Republication House Vote = β_{0} + β_{1} Redrawn + β_{2} Democratic Incumbent \\ + β_{3} Redrawn \times Democratic Incumbent + β X + ε . \end{array}

Redrawn = the district percentage of constituents who are new to the incumbent as a result of redistricting. Democratic Incumbent = 1 if the respondent’s district has a Democratic incumbent seeking reelection and 0 if a Republican representative runs for another term. X is a vector containing the remaining control variables and ϵ is the error term. Finally, Redrawn × Democratic Incumbent is the main variable of interest. It is expected that the interaction will be positive and statistically significant. This means that an increase in redrawn constituents for Democratic incumbents increases the Republican share of the two-party House vote. Thus, given a political climate that favors the Republican Party, lacking the anchoring effect of incumbency, redrawn constituents should decrease the votes of Democratic incumbents.

The district-level data are from three sources: (a) The Almanac of American Politics (Barone & Cohen, 2003; Barone & Ujifusa, 1993), (b) Congressional Quarterly (Congressional Districts in the 1990s: A Portrait of America; Congressional Districts in the 2000s: A Portrait of America; CQ’s House Ratings), and (c) The Missouri Census Data Center. The Missouri Census Data Center has a transposition of population tool that allows one to determine the percentage of redrawn constituents assigned to each House incumbent seeking reelection in the 1992 and 2002 elections.⁸

Ordinary least squares (OLS) models are used to evaluate the district-level effect of redistricting on Republican vote shares. There are a total of nine multiple regressions. The first three regressions present national results for 1992, 2002, and the two elections pooled. Because the results of the national models may in fact mask an effect limited to the South, the next six regressions display the results for the South and the non-South separately. As discussed, the variable of interest is the interactive term Redrawn × Democratic Incumbent. The coefficient is expected to be positive and significant so that an increase in the percentage of redrawn residents for Democratic representatives increases the Republican House vote.

All analyses are limited to contested races (Democrat vs. Republican)⁹ with an incumbent¹⁰ seeking reelection, and include the following controls: the Republican two-party percentage (1992 or 2000) of the presidential vote, percentage Black voting age population, Congressional Quarterly’s measure of district competitiveness scaled from safe Democrat to safe Republican (0 = safe Democrat, 1 = favors Democrat, 2 = leans Democrat, 3 = no clear favorite, 4 = leans Republican, 5 = favors Republican, 6 = safe Republican), the total change in the number of House seats for each state, median household income (in thousands), indicators for the political party in control of a state’s congressional redistricting¹¹ (dummies for Republican plans and Democratic plans, with the base category consisting of bipartisan or neutral plans), a dummy for South (1 = 11 former Confederate states, 0 = otherwise) in the national models, and a year dummy (1 = 1992, 0 = 2002) is included for all of the pooled models.¹²

Table 3 presents the estimates for the national models in 1992, 2002, and the elections pooled. As anticipated, the interaction term Redrawn × Democratic Incumbent is positive and significant, providing evidence that Democratic incumbents were placed at greater electoral risk as a consequence of representing redrawn constituents. The effect is largest in 2002 and the region dummy (“South”) is not significant for this year, suggesting there was a national Republican tide in this midterm. By comparison, in 1992 the South dummy is positive and significant, which indicates that the Republican House vote was notably higher in this region. The findings from Table 3 warrant further investigation by segmenting the analysis on the basis of region: South and non-South.

Table 3.

The Effect of Redistricting on House Vote Shares in 1992, 2002, and Pooled Contests.

	1992	2002	Pooled
Variables of interest
Redrawn constituents (%)	−.014 (.029)	−.024 (.021)	−.022 (.018)
Democratic incumbent	−.075 (.019)***	−.113 (.054)*	−.085 (.020)***
Redrawn constituents × Democratic incumbent	.092 (.036)**	.115 (.035)***	.105 (.025)***
Controls
Republican presidential vote (%)	.279 (.056)***	.424 (.047)***	.356 (.036)***
Black voting age population (%)	−.175 (.035)***	−.037 (.037)	−.108 (.025)***
Competitiveness (safe D to safe R)	.037 (.003)***	.033 (.009)***	.037 (.003)***
Δ Total seats in state	−.003 (.001)**	.0004 (.0049)	−.002 (.001)*
Median household income (thousands)	.0004 (.0005)	.0007 (.0004)*	.0005 (.0003)
Republican plan	−.034 (.013)**	−.014 (.011)	−.021 (.008)**
Democratic plan	−.0002 (.0089)	−.007 (.010)	−.001 (.007)
South	.022 (.010)*	.002 (.014)	.016 (.007)*
1992 election	−	−	−.018 (.007)**
Constant	.265 (.035)***	.214 (.058)***	.239 (.027)***
R ²	.86	.92	.89
N	309	296	605

Note: OLS coefficients with robust standard errors (clustered on the district in the pooled models) in parentheses. The dependent variable is the Republican percentage of the two-party U.S. House vote. These data include only contested races (Democrat vs. Republican) with an incumbent seeking reelection.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, one-tailed tests.

Table 4 presents the results for the South and the non-South, respectively, in 1992, 2002, and both contests pooled. By parsing the analysis on the basis of region we see that in 1992 it was only in the South where Democratic incumbents were negatively affected by the presence of redrawn constituents. The interaction is easily significant in the South in 1992, but in the non-South there is no significant effect. Apparently, in the 1992 redistricting, political conditions favoring the GOP only manifested themselves in southern House elections. In 2002, and in the pooled models, regardless of region, we see that an increase in redrawn constituents for incumbent Democrats increased the Republican House vote.

Table 4.

The Effect of Redistricting on House Vote Shares, by Region, in 1992, 2002, and Pooled Contests.

	Southern districts			Nonsouthern districts
	1992	2002	Pooled	1992	2002	Pooled
Variables of interest
Redrawn constituents (%)	−.049 (.054)	.008 (.049)	−.039 (.037)	.000 (.035)	−.040 (.021)*	−.020 (.020)
Democratic incumbent	−.089 (.026)***	−.265 (.123)*	−.138 (.046)**	−.065 (.025)**	−.032 (.030)	−.062 (.019)***
Redrawn constituents × Democratic incumbent	.153 (.059)**	.206 (.122)*	.168 (.048)***	.055 (.044)	.105 (.033)**	.081 (.028)**
Controls
Republican presidential vote (%)	.174 (.106)	.435 (.086)***	.257 (.075)***	.351 (.071)***	.440 (.057)***	.415 (.043)***
Black voting age population (%)	−.140 (.067)*	.091 (.078)	−.040 (.057)	−.144 (.042)***	−.066 (.035)*	−.097 (.027)***
Competitiveness (safe D to safe R)	.037 (.004)***	.010 (.019)	.031 (.007)***	.036 (.004)***	.047 (.006)***	.039 (.003)***
Δ Total seats in state	.009 (.007)	.006 (.011)	.010 (.005)*	−.004 (.001)***	−.004 (.005)	−.004 (.001)**
Median household income (thousands)	.0018 (.0009)*	.0014 (.0007)*	.0014 (.0005)**	.0002 (.0005)	.0005 (.0004)	.0002 (.0003)
Republican plan	−	.002 (.022)	.005 (.023)	−.038 (.014)**	−.033 (.012)**	−.035 (.009)***
Democratic plan	.013 (.022)	−.015 (.019)	.008 (.013)	−.007 (.012)	−.000 (.012)	−.005 (.008)
1992 election	−	−	−.003 (.015)	−	−	−.024 (.007)***
Constant	.287 (.085)***	.287 (.145)*	.280 (.077)***	.232 (.043)***	.146 (.032)***	.207 (.026)***
R ²	.88	.91	.88	.86	.93	.90
N	82	65	147	227	231	458

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, one-tailed tests.

One way to demonstrate the size of the effect of the interaction term is to calculate the Democratic share of the House vote for Democratic incumbents given various increments of the district percentage of redrawn constituents. Because interpretation of interaction terms is not intuitive (see Brambor, Clark, & Golder, 2006), assigning values for the constituent parts of the variables of interest and determining the corresponding two-party vote provides a clearer sense of the substantive effects of redrawn constituents on Democratic incumbent vote shares. All of these calculations are based on simulations produced by CLARIFY (Tomz, Wittenberg, & King, 2003).¹³ Table 5 displays the two-party share (%) of the Democratic incumbent vote, given select percentages of redrawn constituents (0% to 100% in 20-point intervals; the difference in the vote based on one standard deviation, the median redrawn, and the actual maximum percentage of redrawn constituents based on the data shown in Table 1).

Table 5.

The Two-Party Vote for Democratic Incumbents Based on the Percentage of Redrawn Constituents.

	Percentage of redrawn constituents
Democratic vote	0%	20%	40%	60%	80%	100%	Max Δ	± 1 SD	Median	True Max
Nation 1992	57	56	54	53	51	50	7	1.6	56	50
Nation 2002	57	55	53	52	50	48	9	1.6	55	50
Non-South 2002	54	52	51	50	48	47	7	1.2	52	49
South 1992	57	55	53	51	49	47	10	2.4	55	50
South 2002	63	58	54	50	45	41	22	3.9	60	51

Note: Predicted probabilities were calculated from the models in Tables 3 and 4 using CLARIFY (Tomz, Wittenberg, & King, 2003). All entries were produced at the 95% confidence level with the remaining variables set at their means. Based on the entry for “South 2002,” moving from a district with no redrawn constituents (0%) to an entirely redrawn district (100%), the Democratic incumbent’s vote goes from 63% to 41%—a maximum difference in the two-party vote of 22 percentage points. In addition, a one standard deviation in the percentage of redrawn constituents (19% redrawn) moves the Democratic incumbent’s vote by just under 4 percentage points (3.9). Finally, given the median redrawn percentage of constituents (12% redrawn), the Democratic incumbent vote is 60% and in the case of the Democratic district with the actual highest percentage of redrawn constituents (54% redrawn), the Democratic incumbent’s share of the two-party vote is 51%.

Setting the other variables at their means, in the South in 1992 the Democratic House vote for Democratic incumbents is 57% with no redrawn constituents, and 47% Democratic with 100% redrawn constituents. In 2002 in the non-South the Democratic House vote for Democratic incumbents is 54% with no redrawn constituents, and 47% Democratic with 100% redrawn constituents. Finally, in the South in 2002 the Democratic House vote for Democratic incumbents is 63% with no redrawn constituents, and it plummets to 41% Democratic with 100% redrawn constituents.¹⁴

Figure 2 provides a more comprehensive look at the effect of redrawn constituents on the Democratic incumbent vote in the South in 1992 and in the South and non-South in 2002. The y-axis plots the Democratic share of the House vote for Democratic incumbents according to the percentage of redrawn constituents plotted on the x-axis. It is clear from all three plotted lines that Democratic incumbents lose vote shares as their district percentage of redrawn constituents increases. The largest effect is found among southern Democratic incumbents in 2002. Nonetheless, redistricting proved less of an impediment to reelection in 2002 because incumbents were more electorally insulated. For example, compared to 1992, in 2002 the median share of the two-party House vote for Democratic incumbents seeking reelection was higher and their vote share standard deviations were lower.¹⁵

Figure 2.

The effects of redistricting on democratic incumbent vote shares.

Discussion and Conclusion

This research shows that redrawing congressional boundaries creates a dynamic electoral environment due to the responsiveness of redrawn voters. Depending on political conditions, representatives may find their new residents to be either friends or foes. The analysis of district-level data show asymmetric support for U.S. House incumbents during the last two decennial redistrictings. In the South in 1992 and nationwide (South and non-South) in 2002, redrawn constituents depressed the votes of Democratic incumbents because the political climate favored the Republican Party. Without the anchoring effect of incumbency, redrawn voters shifted in the direction of partisan tides—making them less supportive of Democrats (Petrocik & Desposato, 2004).

Previous research has not explicitly addressed or made clear the regional distinction between the electoral effects of congressional redistricting in the 1992 and 2002 contests. The 1992 redistricting triggered a swift Republican rise in southern House elections after three consecutive election cycles in which the GOP was stuck holding one third of the region’s seats (McKee, 2010). As shown in this study, partisanship data indicate that only in the South does the voting electorate shift toward affiliating with the GOP in the 1992 House elections (see Table 2 and Figure 1), and this evidence of changing macropartisanship is the grounds for explaining why only in the South does a higher percentage of redrawn constituents reduce the votes of Democratic incumbents.

Furthermore, the shift in the South is not a short-term phenomenon, rather the Republican tides running through Dixie in 1992 and 1994 (see Petrocik & Desposato, 1998) were reinforced by the secular Republican realignment of southern Whites underway since the 1960s and carried forth primarily through generational replacement (Green, Palmquist, & Schickler, 2002). In short, southerners primed to vote Republican in 1992 were part of an enduring movement in favor of the Republican Party and short-term political conditions favoring the GOP ensured that redistricting would accentuate this voting behavior.

Compared to 1992, however, the 2002 elections occurred at a time when national political conditions swung in favor of the Republican Party. There is no question that the 2002 redistricting generally protected incumbents from serious competition, as evidenced by the average vote shares of representatives who ran for reelection, the small number of incumbent defeats and retirements, and the remarkably small number of districts rated competitive by Congressional Quarterly (see Jacobson, 2009). Nonetheless, despite the greater protection afforded both party’s incumbents in 2002, redrawn constituents were much less supportive of Democrats. And contrary to popular commentary that suggests redistricting makes incumbents immune to defeat—under the right political conditions no gerrymander is foolproof. For the sake of comparison, given the prevailing political climate during the 2006 elections, if a national redistricting had been implemented for this midterm then redrawn constituents would have severely punished Republican incumbents and likewise, Democratic losses in 2010 would have been even more acute under altered district boundaries.

The 2002 congressional elections highlight a short-term political environment favoring the Republican Party. To be sure, since 1992 White southerners have been moving to the GOP in House races and partisan re-sorting in and outside the region was steadily progressing, but only in the South are the 2002 House races occurring against the backdrop of a long-term trend in favor of the Republican Party. In the non-South, 2002 merely constitutes a set of short-term political conditions (i.e., the high approval rating of President Bush, Republican control of the terrorism issue) benefiting Republicans, and the political behavior of redrawn constituents responds accordingly by turning against Democratic representatives. In the absence of a long-term shift toward one of the major political parties, outside the South short-term political conditions will increase electoral volatility in a redistricting cycle. With rough parity in the aggregate in terms of Democratic and Republican identifiers, coupled with a recently growing number of political independents,¹⁶ redistricting will exacerbate wins and losses according to which party is the beneficiary of ephemeral partisan tides (like those favoring Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and Republicans in 2010).¹⁷

Redistricting has always been controversial because it has the potential to skew electoral outcomes in a direction that comports with the intentions of mapmakers. But intentions and actual results can be two very different things (on this point see Hill, 1995; Petrocik & Desposato, 1998; Rush, 1992, 1993, 2000). Indeed, before gerrymander entered the American lexicon thanks to the shenanigans in Massachusetts in 1812 (see Cox & Katz, 2002), “enemies of the Federal Constitution in Virginia” in 1788 used redistricting “to prevent the election of James Madison to the first Congress, and fortunately it was unsuccessful” (Fiske, 1890, pp. 216-217). Fast forward to 1986 in the case of Davis v. Bandemer, in which the Supreme Court ruled partisan gerrymandering justiciable in congressional elections, and we find ironically enough that the Indiana state legislative districts that prompted the ruling were intended to yield large Republican gains, but Indiana Democrats actually netted more seats (Grofman, 1990, p. 39).¹⁸

As a last example of intentions failing to match results, once again consider congressional redistricting plans enacted by Democratic-controlled legislatures in the South for the 1992 elections (e.g., Georgia and North Carolina). Remarking on how well these boundary changes benefited Republicans, Grofman and Brunell (2005, p. 184) coined the term dummymander: “a gerrymander by one party that, over the course of the decade, benefits the other party, and actually looks as if it was designed by that party rather than the party in power.” The one thing all of these failed gerrymanders have in common is that political conditions countered partisan intentions.

With respect to electoral objectives, whether one advocates for redistricting plans that foster competition (e.g., Mann & Cain, 2005; McDonald, 2006) or instead protect incumbents (see Brunell, 2006, 2008)—it is successful gerrymanders that alarm critics of this institutional device. For instance, the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting has become the modern exemplar of how boundary changes can manufacture substantial partisan seat gains. But whether successful or not, what should raise concern is the increasing willingness of partisan elites to consider mid-decade redistricting as a means to gain seats (Levitt & McDonald, 2007). In addition to being costly, a time consuming diversion from substantive legislative business, and a hyperpolitical action (Bullock, 2010), mid-decade redistricting further disrupts the representational linkage between voters and officeholders. And this is demonstrated most clearly when partisan gerrymanders actually work, that is, when political conditions jibe with political intent.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the editor, anonymous reviewers, Ray Block, Gary Jacobson, Chad Murphy, and Antoine Yoshinaka for numerous suggestions that have greatly improved this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Seth C. McKee is an associate professor of political science at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. His research centers on voting behavior, southern politics, political parties, and redistricting. He is the author of Republican Ascendancy in Southern U.S. Elections (2010) and numerous journal articles.

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