A Measure of Partisan Advantage in Redistricting

Eguia, Jon X.

doi:10.1089/elj.2020.0691

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 37 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Notably, the 538 project used a different method to measure proportionality, using an election index based on averaging Presidential contests to designate a target seat split; this is then paired with Congressional voting history to gauge the lean of the seats. 15 Thus, if the 538 proportionally partisan ("538-Pro") map succeeds in FTV Test terms, it is a good sign that the FTV standard is robust to different ways of aiming at proportionality.…”

Section: Finding Proportional Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See for instance [14], where we see that an election index would obscure the fence-out effect for Massachusetts Republicans that was present for a large number of individual elections, studied serially. 15 "This [proportionally partisan] map seeks to draw districts that favor each party in proportion to the overall political lean of each state. For example, if a state has 10 districts and Republicans won an average of 70 percent of its major-party votes in the last two presidential elections, we drew seven districts to favor Republicans and three to favor Democrats... once again lives up to its name.…”

Section: Finding Proportional Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…7 And there are many more, with some that also take geography into account. These include DeFord-Eubank-Rodden's partisan dislocation, which compares a voter's district to that voter's nearest neighbors [12]; Eguia's artificial partisan advantage, which compares a voter's district to their county [15]; and Campisi-Ratliff-Somersille-Veomett's GEO metric [6], which compares each district to its neighboring districts. An ideal seat share could be derived from partisan dislocation and artificial partisan advantage, but we do not attempt that here.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Redistricting for Proportionality

Duchin

Schoenbach

2022

The Forum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

American democracy is currently heavily reliant on plurality in single-member districts, or PSMD, as a system of election. But public perceptions of fairness are often keyed to partisan proportionality, or the degree of congruence between each party’s share of the vote and its share of representation. PSMD has not tended to secure proportional outcomes historically, partially due to gerrymandering, where line-drawers intentionally extract more advantage for their side. But it is now increasingly clear that even blind PSMD is frequently disproportional, and in unpredictable ways that depend on local political geography. In this paper we consider whether it is feasible to bring PSMD into alignment with a proportionality norm by targeting proportional outcomes in the design and selection of districts. We do this mainly through a close examination of the “Freedom to Vote Test,” a redistricting reform proposed in draft legislation in 2021. We find that applying the test with a proportionality target makes for sound policy: it performs well in legal battleground states and has a workable exception to handle edge cases where proportionality is out of reach.

show abstract

Section: Finding Proportional Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Finding Proportional Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%