A Demographic Approach to Detecting Racial Gerrymanders in U.S. Congressional Districts

Abstract

The practice of racially gerrymandering political districts entails segregating one racial group from others into and out of individual districts. This study measures the racial segregation of black people in U.S. Congressional Districts using the Areal Unit Segregation Measure (abbreviated S^+/−), a statistic introduced to the literature recently. S^+/− measures how much a district packs or cracks some racial group by determining whether a district contains an unusually greater (or unusually lesser) share of black people than the share of black people among a district’s residents’ nearest N neighbors (where values of N equal the number of people in a state’s Congressional Districts). Since S^+/− is a new measure, the main goal of this paper is to interpret values of S^+/−. To do this, S^+/− values are generated for all U.S. Congressional Districts drawn after each census from 1990 to 2020 and for high-profile court cases in which judges overturned Congressional Districts that unduly segregated black voters into and out of districts. S^+/− values of actual districts are also compared with samples of computer-generated maps to determine when a 2022 district’s S^+/− is statistically unusual. Collectively, these results clearly indicate that when a district’s S^+/− value is about 18 or more points from zero a district is unduly packed or cracked.

Keywords

gerrymandering congressional districts redistricting racial segregation packing and cracking areal unit segregation measure Voting Rights Act

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barnes

Solomon

(2021). Gerrymandering and compactness: Implementation flexibility and abuse. Political Analysis, 29(4), 448–466. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2020.36

Becker

Duchin

Gold

Hirsch

(2021). Computational redistricting and the voting rights act. Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy, 20(4), 407–441. https://doi.org/10.1089/elj.2020.0704

Best

Magleby

McDonald

(2022). Do redistricting commissions avoid partisan gerrymanders? American Politics Research, 50(3), 379–395. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673x211053216

Chen

Rodden

(2013). Unintentional gerrymandering: Political geography and electoral bias in legislatures. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 8(3), 239–269. https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00012033

Chen

Stephanopoulos

N. O.

(2021). Democracy’s denominator. California Law Review, 109(3), 1019–1065. https://doi.org/10.15779/Z387P8TD9J

DeFord

Duchin

(2019). Redistricting reform in Virginia: Districting criteria in context. Virginia Policy Review, 12(2), 120–146.

DeFord

D. R.

Eubank

Rodden

(2022). Partisan dislocation: A precinct-level measure of representation and gerrymandering. Political Analysis, 30(3), 403–425. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2021.13

Eckman

(2021). Congressional redistricting criteria and considerations. Congressional Research Service. Technical report (accessed 28 Dec).

Fifield

Imai

Kawahara

Kenny

C. T.

(2020). The essential role of empirical validation in legislative redistricting simulation. Statistics and Public Policy, 7(1), 52–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/2330443x.2020.1791773

10.

Kenny

C. T.

McCartan

Fifield

Imai

(2021). redist: Simulation methods for legislative redistricting. The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). Available at.

11.

Kenny

C. T.

McCartan

Simko

Kuriwaki

Imai

(2022). Widespread partisan gerrymandering mostly cancels nationally, but reduces electoral competition. arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.06968.

12.

Krasno

Magleby

McDonald

Donahue

Best

(2018). Can gerrymanders be detected? An examination of wisconsin’s state assembly. American Politics Research, 47(5), 1162–1201. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673x18767890

13.

Levitt

(2016). Lulac v. perry: The frumious gerry-mander, rampant. In Douglas

J. A.

Mazo

E. D.

(Eds.), Election law stories (pp. 233–284). Foundation Press.

14.

Magleby

Mosesson

(2018). A new approach for developing neutral redistricting plans. Political Analysis, 26(2), 147–167. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2017.37

15.

Manson

S. M.

Schroeder

Van Riper

Kugler

Ruggles

(2022). Ipums national historical geographic information system: Version 17.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS.

16.

McCartan

Imai

(2023). Sequential monte carlo for sampling balanced and compact redistricting plans.

17.

McCartan

Kenny

C. T.

Simko

Garcia III

Wang

Kuriwaki

Imai

(2022). Simulated redistricting plans for the analysis and evaluation of redistricting in the United States. Scientific Data, 9(1), 689. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01808-2

18.

Niemi

R. G.

Grofman

Carlucci

Hofeller

(1990). Measuring compactness and the role of a compactness standard in a test for partisan and racial gerrymandering. The Journal of Politics, 52(4), 1155–1181. https://doi.org/10.2307/2131686

19.

Powell

R. J.

Clark

J. T.

Dube

M. P.

(2020). Partisan gerrymandering, clustering, or both? A new approach to a persistent question. Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy, 19(1), 79–100. https://doi.org/10.1089/elj.2019.0605

20.

Saporito

Maliniak

(2022). Using the areal unit segregation measure to identify racially “packed” and “cracked” legislative districts. Electoral Studies, 80, Article 102526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2022.102526

21.

Young

H. P.

(1988). Measuring the compactness of legislative districts. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 13(1), 105–115. https://doi.org/10.2307/439947

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.25 MB