The Swing Ratio: An Explanation and an Assessment

Niemi, Richard G.; Fett, Patrick J.

doi:10.2307/439910

Cited by 47 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The very high estimate of Democratic bias in the most recent elections (1984 to 1988) is probably a result of the small variance in this triplet (see Niemi and Fett, 1986). In the three elections there was only a range of seven seats and less than 2.5 percent of the national congres sional vote.…”

Section: Chaptermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 While there is general agreement on measuring bias at the 50 per cent vote point in the estimated relationship between votes and seats, there are differences over how partisan bias at this vote point should be estimated and what data are most appropriate to use in evaluating the electoral system. Niemi and Fett (1986) nicely assess the different ap proaches used in estimate characteristics of electoral systems, both re sponsiveness (or the swing ratio) and partisan bias. They note that there have been two general approaches to assessing electoral system character istics, the historical (multiyear) approach and the hypothetical (single year) approach.…”

Section: Q the Concept And Measurement Of Partisan Bias •mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are achieved by a modification of the hypothetical vote method (Niemi and Fett, 1986) discussed in chapter 4. The second and third esti mates are derived using of a uniform partisan seat analysis of the 1992 and 1994 elections, respectively.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Cheap seats: the Democratic Party's advantage in U.S. House elections

1997

Choice Reviews Online

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Section: Chaptermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Q the Concept And Measurement Of Partisan Bias •mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cheap seats: the Democratic Party's advantage in U.S. House elections

1997

Choice Reviews Online

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“…Figure 3 offers some explanation by tracing out the seats-votes curves for the both the old districts and the new ones. A seats-votes curve displays the relationship between the average share of votes received by a party in each district and the seats won as a result across a broad range of potential election outcomes (Niemi and Fett 1986). The curves therefore allow us to identify the partisan seat share we should expect for any average vote share in that plan.…”

Section: Figure 3 Seats-votes Curves: Existing Maps Vs Final Crc Mapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Redistricting California: An Evaluation of the Citizens Commission Final Plans

Kogan¹,

McGhee²

2012

CJPP

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For the first time in California history, a carefully vetted commission of citizens has overseen the delicate task of redrawing the state's political boundaries. By analyzing the maps produced by the commission and comparing these plans to the redistricting overseen by the legislature a decade earlier, we show that the new process has produced important improvements in terms of both the criteria voters said they cared about and the representational implications of interest to academics and political observers. In many respects, however, the magnitude of these gains has fallen short of what many political reformers may have hoped for. Perhaps the most important lesson from the 2011 round of redistricting is that a fair process, no matter how nonpartisan and participatory, cannot avoid the reality that any redistricting scheme produces both political winners and losers.

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“…The most widely used assumption in the literature is called "uniform partisan swing" and was introduced by Butler in 1951 (for recent applications, see Niemi and Deegan 1978, Gudgin and Taylor 1979, Niemi 1985, Niemi and Fett 1986, and many others). The assumption is that vote proportions in every district all move in lockstep, swinging back and forth in response to national or statewide electoral forces and without any random error or local factors to make them behave differently.…”

Section: The Uniform Partisan Swing Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representation through Legislative Redistricting: A Stochastic Model

King¹

1989

American Journal of Political Science

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This paper builds a stochastic model of the processes that give rise to observed patterns of representation and bias in congressional and state legislative elections. The analysis demonstrates that partisan swing and incumbency voting, concepts from the congressional elections literature, have determinate effects on representation and bias, concepts from the redistrictihg literature. The model shows precisely how incumbency and increased variability of partisan swing reduce the responsiveness of the electoral system and how partisan swing affects whether the system is biased toward one party or the other. Incumbency, and other causes of unresponsive representation, also reduce the effect of partisan swing on current levels of partisan bias.By relaxing the restrictive portions of the widely applied "uniform partisan swing" assumption, the theoretical analysis leads directly to an empirical model enabling one more reliably to estimate responsiveness and bias from a single year of electoral data. Applying this to data from seven elections in each of six states, the paper demonstrates that redistricting has effects in predicted directions in the short run: partisan gerrymandering biases the system in favor of the party in control and, by freeing up seats held by opposition party incumbents, increases the system's responsiveness. Bipartisan-controlled redistricting appears to reduce bias somewhat and dramatically to reduce responsiveness. Nonpartisan redistricting processes substantially increase responsiveness but do not have as clear an effect on bias. However, after only two elections, prima facie evidence for redistricting effects evaporate in most states. Finally, across every state and type of redistricting process, responsiveness declined significantly over the course of the decade. This is clear evidence that the phenomenon of "vanishing marginals," recognized first in the U.S. Congress literature, also applies to these different types of state legislative assemblies. It also strongly suggests that redistricting could not account for this pattern.

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The Swing Ratio: An Explanation and an Assessment

Cited by 47 publications

References 8 publications

Cheap seats: the Democratic Party's advantage in U.S. House elections

Cheap seats: the Democratic Party's advantage in U.S. House elections

Redistricting California: An Evaluation of the Citizens Commission Final Plans

Representation through Legislative Redistricting: A Stochastic Model

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