The Redistricting Cycle, Partisan Tides, and Party Strategy in State Legislative Elections

Abstract

State legislative elections are increasingly shaped by two factors that influence the prospects of winning a majority: the redistricting cycle and partisan tide elections. Winning control of the redistricting process offers the prospect of shaping elections for the next decade, making majority status significantly more valuable than it otherwise might be. Partisan tides, on the contrary, can dramatically alter perceptions of which seats are safe or vulnerable and of whether majority status is obtainable or not. In this article, I examine how the proximity of redistricting and the presence of partisan tides are reflected in the strategies of the party organizations that contest state legislative elections. Using party finance data from 29 states during the period from 1996 to 2010, I find that parties' majority-seeking behavior is more intense in states with legislative redistricting, when redistricting is imminent, and when partisan tides favor the minority party.

The Pseudoparadox of Partisan Mapmaking and Congressional Competition

“…Second, it is also plausible, although untested in this article, that national tides could interact with districting to create competition at the level of state legislative elections. Past work has varied in its treatment of national tides as applicable to state politics (see, for example, Makse 2014, for discussion). Recent research does suggest that state legislative election results consistently follow waves in congressional elections (see, for example, Rogers 2013).…”

Endogenous Institutions: The Case of U.S. Congressional Redistricting

“…Jeong and Shenoy (2017) shows that the party that holds a majority before the redistricting election is 4 times as likely to barely retain control of the assembly as to barely lose control. It achieves this not by poll rigging but by switching to what political scientists call "defensive" or "majority-seeking" tactics (Makse, 2014). As shown by Snyder (1989), these tactics heavily favor the party that already has an advantage-in this case, the party that previously held a majority and thus contests the election with more incumbents.…”

Polarization and the Nationalization of State Legislative Elections

“…“It was extremely difficult for any Kentucky Democrat to overcome the Trump tide” (Loftus, 2016). Although scholars have long noted the influence of national electoral conditions on state election outcomes (e.g., Chubb, 1988; Makse, 2014), this leaves some questions unanswered. For instance, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 margin in the state of 60% was only slightly smaller than Trump’s 2016 margin, yet the Kentucky Democrats’ majority in state legislature was not in doubt.…”