Evaluating partisan gains from Congressional gerrymandering: Using computer simulations to estimate the effect of gerrymandering in the U.S. House |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, USA;2. Program in Quantitative Social Science, Dartmouth College, USA;1. Department of Chemistry, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK;2. Department of Chemistry, School of Science, University of Sulaimani, Sulaimani, Iraq;1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, P.O. Box 1766, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates;2. Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, P.O.Box 1766, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates;3. Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Tawam Hospital, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates;1. CyberInfrastructure and Geospatial Information Laboratory and Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, 605 East Springfield Avenue Champaign, IL 61820, United States;2. CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1205 West Clark Street, Urbana, IL 61801, United States;3. Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1407 W. Gregory Street, Urbana, IL 61801, United States;4. Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 725 S. Wright Street, Champaign, IL 61801, United States;5. National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1205 West Clark Street, Urbana, IL 61801, United States;1. School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona, 315 Social Science Building, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA;2. Department of History and Political Science, Daemen College, 139 Duns Scotus, Amherst, NY, 14226, USA;1. Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, U.K.;2. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, U.S.A. |
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| Abstract: | What is the effect of gerrymandering on the partisan outcomes of United States Congressional elections? A major challenge to answering this question is in determining the outcomes that would have resulted in the absence of gerrymandering. Since we only observe Congressional elections where the districts have potentially been gerrymandered, we lack a non-gerrymandered counterfactual that would allow us to isolate its true effect. To overcome this challenge, we conduct computer simulations of the districting process to redraw the boundaries of Congressional districts without partisan intent. By estimating the outcomes of these non-gerrymandered districts, we are able to establish the non-gerrymandered counterfactual against which the actual outcomes can be compared. The analysis reveals that while Republican and Democratic gerrymandering affects the partisan outcomes of Congressional elections in some states, the net effect across the states is modest, creating no more than one new Republican seat in Congress. Therefore, the partisan composition of Congress can mostly be explained by non-partisan districting, suggesting that much of the electoral bias in Congressional elections is caused by factors other than partisan intent in the districting process. |
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| Keywords: | Gerrymandering Electoral bias Redistricting Electoral geography |
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