Stacking the States, Stacking the House: The Partisan Consequences of Congressional Redistricting in the 19th Century

Abstract

C onsiderable debate exists over the impact of redistricting on the partisan composition of the U.S. Congress. I address this debate by turning to an era of congressional redistricting that has received little systematic attention--the politics of gerrymandering in the 19th century. Using statewide-, county-, and ward-level electoral data from 1870 to 1900, I show that when a single party controlled the districting process, they used districting to systematically engineer a favorable partisan bias. These partisan biases affected the partisan composition of state congressional delegations and at times even helped determine party control of the House of Representatives.The dose of gerrymandering, with which the Democratic legislature has repaid old wrongs of the same character, has made more changes in the map of Ohio than have occurred in African geography in recent years. (New York Times, July 25, 1890, p. 5) Because elections affect tomorrow's majority, today's politicians attempt to manipulate them so as to bias electoral outcomes in their favor. (Stewart and Weingast 1992, 225)

Measuring Partisan Bias in Single‐Member District Electoral Systems

“…(Constituency size is a matter of efficiency because the party that wins districts with smaller numbers of voters claims more seats with fewer votes.) Many important studies since then have also used symmetry as a measure but described some form of efficiency as the concept of interest (e.g., Campagna and Grofman 1990;Cox and Katz 2002;Engstrom 2006;Erikson 1972;Gilligan and Matsusaka 1999;Grofman, Koetzle, and Brunell 1997;Kastellec, Gelman, and Chandler 2008).…”

The Participatory Effects of Redistricting

“…In 1 For recent works, see Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart (2000); Cameron, Epstein, and O'Halloran (1996); Canon (1999); Carson, Engstrom, and Roberts (2006); Cox and Katz (2002); Desposato and Petrocik (2003); Engstrom (2006); O'Halloran (1999, 2000); Gelman and King (1994); Hetherington, Larson, and Globetti (2003); Hill (1995); Lublin (1997); McKee (2008); Petrocik and Desposato (1998);Rush (1993). In many ways, the focus on electoral outcomes and partisan advantage is not especially surprising, given the development of the redistricting process over time.…”

“…Representatives at large, in multimember districts, and in single-member districts, and some states used different combinations of these selection methods (Congressional Quarterly 1998). Further, in the nineteenth century it was not uncommon to find several states that redistricted at mid-decade solely for partisan advantage (Carson, Engstrom, and Roberts 2006;Engstrom 2006). Eventually, however, the lack of uniformity in the drawing of congressional maps-and the presence of extreme malapportionment in particular-prompted the Supreme Court to wade into the redistricting thicket in the 1960s, imposing mandates to protect the equality of voting across the country.…”

Gerrymandering on Georgia's Mind: The Effects of Redistricting on Vote Choice in the 2006 Midterm Election*

“…5 This study constitutes a unique opportunity to assess the impact of redistricting on voting behavior by making use of individual-level data. Previous research has relied on various levels of aggregate data to assess the partisan consequences of redistricting by distinguishing between the same and redrawn parts of an incumbent's U.S. House district with the following units of analysis: (1) blocks (Desposato and Petrocik, 2003), (2) wards (Engstrom, 2006), (3) counties and townships (Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart, 2000;Engstrom, 2006;Rush, 1992Rush, , 1993Rush, , 2000, and (4) parts of congressional districts (McKee, Teigen, and Turgeon, 2006;Petrocik and Desposato, 1998).…”