Optimal partisan gerrymandering

Owen, Guillermo; Grofman, Bernard

doi:10.1016/0260-9827(88)90032-8

Cited by 113 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Our work builds on Owen and Grofman (1988). Their model can be interpreted as a special case of ours with two voter types and one party controlling all districts.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic Redistricting

Gül

Pesendorfer

2010

American Economic Review

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We develop and analyze a model of strategic redistricting. Two parties choose optimal redistricting plans for their respective territory. Parties redistrict before aggregate uncertainty is resolved. We show that in the unique equilibrium, parties maximally segregate their opponent's supporters but pool their own supporters into uniform districts. We show that the stronger a party gets, the more it segregates. Hence, of the two competing parties, ceteris paribus, the stronger party segregates more than the weaker one. Finally, we show that if the district level uncertainty is sufficiently small, the stronger party chooses polarizing policies while the weaker party accommodates the stronger party's supporters.

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“…Our work builds on Owen and Grofman (1988). Their model can be interpreted as a special case of ours with two voter types and one party controlling all districts.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic Redistricting

Gül

Pesendorfer

2010

American Economic Review

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“…But parties care about who wins the various seats at stake, not about lines per se, and so districting plans are usually described in terms of their political rather than literal characteristics. One approach (see, e.g., Owen and Grofman 1988;McDonald N.d.) focuses on how boundary lines affect the resultant partisan make-up of each district (measured, for example, by the number of registered Republicans and Democrats).…”

Section: A Model Of the Redistricting Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reapportionment Revolution and Bias in U. S. Congressional Elections

Cox¹,

Katz²

1999

American Journal of Political Science

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“…Our model represents a significant departure from previous work in two respects. First, while the literature has emphasized partisan bias due to gerrymandering (for example, Owen and Grofman (1988), Sherstyuk (1998), Gilligan and Matsusaka (1999), and Shotts (2001)), here we focus on policy bias. 2 We believe policy bias is important to understand because not all Democrats (or Republicans) are alike.…”

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confidence: 99%

Public choice principles of redistricting

Gilligan

Matsusaka

2006

Public Choice

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Abstract. This paper uses fundamental principles of public choice, mainly the median voter theorem, to develop a simple theory of redistricting. The focus is on how closely policy outcomes correspond to majority rule. The main results are: (1) Potential policy bias in favor of nonmajority groups is structurally linked to the number of legislative seats and the population, and the structure of most states puts them very close to the theoretically maximum bias. (2) Random districting, which might seem like the essence of neutrality, does not eliminate policy bias on average. (3) Traditional principles of compact, contiguous districts that respect existing political boundaries, stressed in the Supreme Court's Shaw v. Reno decision, minimize the chance of nonmajoritarian outcomes. Our analysis also offers a gerrymandering explanation for the positive relation between seats and spending that is usually taken as support for the "Law of 1/n."

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Optimal partisan gerrymandering

Cited by 113 publications

References 15 publications

Strategic Redistricting

Strategic Redistricting

The Reapportionment Revolution and Bias in U. S. Congressional Elections

Public choice principles of redistricting

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