Gerrymandering and Polarization
Tom Friedman becomes the latest in a very long string of pundits to blame congressional polarization on partisan gerrymandering of House districts. As Joshua Tucker points out no matter how many times people say this, there’s still no evidence that it’s true. You can see this pretty quickly if you consider that the Senate features perfect partisan sorting—Olympia Snowe is more conservative than all the Democrats and Ben Nelson is more liberal than all the Republicans. Senators are responsive to public opinion to some extent—Snowe is more liberal than other Republicans and Nelson more conservative than other Democrats—but only to a limited extent. You have lots of examples of two different senators representing the exact same state, and they amass very different voting records.
More rigorously, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal have a paper called “Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?” The answer is no:
Both pundits and scholars have blamed increasing levels of partisan conflict and polarization in Congress on the effects of partisan gerrymandering. We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link. First, we show that congressional polarization is primarily a function of the differences in how Democrats and Republicans represent the same districts rather than a function of which districts each party represents or the distribution of constituency preferences. Second, we conduct simulations to gauge the level of polarization under various “neutral” districting procedures. We find that the actual levels of polarization are not much higher than those produced by the simulations. We do find that gerrymandering has increased the Republican seat share in the House; however, this increase is not an important source of polarization.
Note also that historically polarization has been the rule in American politics. The times we live in are typical, not exceptional. It just happens to be the case that a lot of people alive today were acculturated to the unusual non-polarized politics of the 1930s-1970s in which the salience of racial issues scrambled partisan/ideological configurations. I think polarization is a good thing but even if you disagree the only proven way to minimize it is to have a large and influential white supremacist movement obtain substantial congressional representation.
23 Responses to “Gerrymandering and Polarization”
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October 1st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
It just happens to be the case that a lot of people alive today were acculturated to the unusual non-polarized politics of the 1930s-1970s in which the salience of racial issues scrambled partisan/ideological configurations.
Also, the Cold War (preceded by WWII) tended to compress ideological differences on foreign policy issues, although this dynamic was breaking down by Nixon’s day.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
States, of course, were also Gerrymandered after a fashion. Why on earth would we need two Dakotas, except to give 19th Century Republicans that many more Senators? Some of those schemes have faded out with the passage of time, but one notes that those big, empty states out West still elect a lot of Republicans, while California elects a whopping two Democrats.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I think polarization is a good thing but even if you disagree the only proven way to minimize it is to have a large and influential white supremacist movement obtain substantial congressional representation.
You say that like we don’t have such a movement currently!
(Paging Al)
October 1st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
@2: Lately I’ve been advocating for the merger of Montana, Wyoming, and both Dakotas into one state (Montakotaming). I also favor the creation of Kansaskahoma. Why the hell do we need so many empty states?
October 1st, 2009 at 4:35 pm
OK, let me get this straight …. you’re suggesting that Tom Friedman is wrong about something?
October 1st, 2009 at 4:35 pm
You’d have to do some very fancy gerrymandering to create liberal districts in Wyoming or conservative districts in NYC or Boston. Hell, you’d have to do very fancy gerrymandering to make competitive districts.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Friedman is the least intellectual intellectual I can imagine.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Wait a second, Matt.
Are you saying that racism is non- (or bi-) partisan and nonideological? Wouldn’t it be simpler to simply claim that the ’30s through the ’70s were actually normative, and that racism was perhaps the dominant partisan/ideological dividing line?
October 1st, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Democratic Senators: X2= MT, ND, CO, NM. 1X= SD, NE, NV.
Until 1932 California & Kansas were punching in the same Electoral College weight class.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:58 pm
gerrymandering probably does not make a huge impact on polarization, but it does help incumbents keep their seats. this makes elections much less competitive, and that’s probably not a good thing.
in a district with an overwhelming majority of voters in one party, an incumbent only has to worry about assuring the party that he can win and keep the special interests happy enough to keep donating money. of course, if people just want to vote the party line or check the name they recognize most, i assume we will continue to get the government we deserve.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Polarization is roughly proportional to the degree of advantage incumbency gives: huge in Gerrymandered ’safe seats’, fairly high in the Senate, far less in competitive districts…
October 1st, 2009 at 5:18 pm
@9: Yeah, the GOP got pasted in the last couple of election cycles, and Montana has always liked Democratic Senators. But, on the whole, the big empty Western states crank out a lot of GOP Senators. And they absolutely crank out a lot of Electors, but that’s another discussion. California couldn’t have been a deliberate attempt to deprive lots of Democrats of appropriate representation, especially as it has been a Republican state in the past. It just has that effect today.
@4: “Neb-kaaaaaans-io-homa, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plains….”
October 1st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Craig Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
States, of course, were also Gerrymandered after a fashion. Why on earth would we need two Dakotas, except to give 19th Century Republicans that many more Senators? Some of those schemes have faded out with the passage of time, but one notes that those big, empty states out West still elect a lot of Republicans, while California elects a whopping two Democrats.
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If that had been the Republican aim, there would have been a LOT more states. Try North and South Colorado. They actually was a general concensus after the Civil War to try to make the new states in the middle of the country at least roughly the same size – see a great book titled “How the States Got Their Shapes”. If you throw out Alaska, they generally fall into a smaller range around 75-85,000 sq mi (OK, KS, NE, ND, SD, UT, ID, WA) and a larger range around 100-120,000 sq mi (CO, NM, NV, AZ, OR, WY) Montana is the fatty that squirted out at almost 150,000.
In the late 19th century a lot of people really thought that the Plains states would fill up more than they have. There was a whole school of scientific thought that was convinced that breaking the sod on the prairie would release moisture from the soil and make rainfall increase. Oops
October 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
CJColucci Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 4:35 pm
You’d have to do some very fancy gerrymandering to create liberal districts in Wyoming
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You’d need to have a skinny, dumb-bell shaped district that included Laramie then ran down the median of I-80 to connect with downtown Cheyenne.
Though truth be told, Wyo has a conservative Democratic governor, Dave Freudenthal, who’s pretty popular.
October 1st, 2009 at 6:11 pm
For crying out loud, the easiest way to prove that gerrymandering is not the cause of polarization is the US senate.
Anyone want to argue that the senate is not plagued with polarization?
October 1st, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Unless of course you would count dividing the country into states as gerrymandering …
I know! All national office holders should be elected by all people living everywhere!
Wait, no, that won’t change anything …
How can i get on this “study” gravy train?
October 1st, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I think this is a strawman argument, at least somewhat. The complaint about gerrymandering is not that it favors partisanship rather than harmony but that it increases the median number of partisan hacks who get elected.
The theory goes: A districting system that creates more competitive elections should elect better people. Party machines would learn they can’t put up total automatons because they need to persuade a decisive set of swing voters, and they’d choose people who are more intellectually nimble and persuasive. When those people got to congress, they might still get in big partisan fights, but they’d be better at legislating, debating, negotiating, compromising, mocking and humiliating each other and the country would be better governed for it.
Now, I don’t know if any of that would actually happen, but appeals to the ideological sorting of the senate don’t seem to disprove it.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Question:
Is the House have more liberal Democrats and more conservative Republicans than the Senate?
Yes, I know there are 435 vs 100. That is not my point.
I believe the answer is yes. If that is correct then it seems like gerrymandering is a reasonable cause.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:11 pm
The difference between modern partisanship and past partisanship, expect that of the 1850s, is that there is no body of behaviorial norms–manners, integrity, and similar cultural restraints–to channel partisan behavior into respectful interaction.
Despotisms can be run by narcissists, lunatics, and psychotics and still function, but a democracy is run by committee. If the committee members–officials and citizenry–cannot restrain their prejudices and emotions enough to make rational decisions, then the system fails.
A traditional congress would always consist of a spectrum of crooks and saints, of fools and thinkers. It could still govern as long as they could agree that “truth is good” even while lying as often as they could manage it, and as long as the functional illiterates respect the idea that “smart is better than dumb.” Most importantly, all sides had to share the concept that children throw tantrums and grown-ups settle matters calmly.
The modern partisanship, and the blame lies mostly with the conservatives, doesn’t believe in manners, integrity, or self-restraint. It has the emotional immaturity we normally try to train out of five year-olds so they don’t embarrass us in kindergarten.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:36 pm
@19 Midland: “The modern partisanship, and the blame lies mostly with the conservatives, doesn’t believe in manners, integrity, or self-restraint. It has the emotional immaturity we normally try to train out of five year-olds so they don’t embarrass us in kindergarten.”
Like that son of a bitch Jim Demint? Actively committing treason by seeking to advise a foreign nation, Honduras, ruled by an illegal junta, to actively resist the policies of the United States? Or Glenn Beck last night, pasting a Cancer/Warning sticker on a bulletin board between the photos of Michelle and Barrack Obama, winking at the audience and intoning “the cancer among us, eh?”
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:33 am
WTF? What does the US senate have to do with gerrymandering? Senatorial elections are statewide. You can’t gerrymander an entire state.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
WTF? What does the US senate have to do with gerrymandering? Senatorial elections are statewide. You can’t gerrymander an entire state.
Which may have helped save democracy in America over the last ten years. Republicans could gerrymander the house into obedience and use their media power to erase progressive thought from the TV screen, but they could not delete Democratic senators from the Beltway social elite. Even in the worst years of the Kiss-up Era (1980-2008), there were always Democratic senators somewhere amidst the talking heads, not saying much but maintaining a presence of an opposition faction.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
[...] thought I might add that not only do I not believe that gerrymandering is responsible for political polarization, I don’t even think gerrymandering has played a large role in making House seats [...]