Do Redistricting Principles and Practices Affect U.S. State Legislative Electoral Competition?
Do Redistricting Principles and Practices Affect U.S. State Legislative Electoral Competition?
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选区重划原则和实践是否会影响美国各州立法选举竞争？
DOI：
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发表时间：
2009
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
John W. Winkle
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Richard G. Forgette;A. Garner;John W. Winkle
批评美国国会和州立法机构重新划分选区的人士认为，不公正地划分选区严重破坏了选举竞争力，甚至违反了宪法平等保护标准。在本文中，我们评估重新划分的原则和过程是否对州立法选举竞争有任何可衡量的后果。除了其实质性的重要性之外，州立法选举的竞争提供了比国会数据更大的差异，以经验评估关于重新划分原则和过程的理论命题。我们发现，在整个20世纪90年代，即使在任期限制改革实施之后，州立法选举的竞争力也在下降。自20世纪70年代以来，无竞争的州立法席位的比例翻了一番，选区的平均胜率也略有上升。我们的研究结果表明，政治原则和一些传统的“政治中立”重划原则显著降低了无竞争州立法选举的可能性。相比之下，独立的选区重新划分委员会似乎并没有影响州立法机构的竞争。最后，我们讨论了我们的研究结果与重新划分改革辩论的关系。
Critics of U.S. congressional and state legislative redistricting have argued that gerrymandering severely undermines electoral competitiveness to the point of violating constitutional equal protection standards. In this article, we evaluate whether redistricting principles and processes have any measurable consequence on state legislative electoral competition. In addition to their substantive importance, state legislative general election contests provide greater variance than congressional data for empirically assessing theoretical propositions regarding redistricting principles and processes. We find that electoral competitiveness in state legislative races declined throughout the 1990s, even after term limit reforms were implemented. The proportion of uncontested state legislative seats has doubled since the 1970s, and there has also been a slight increase in average margin of election district victory. Our results show that political principles and some traditional, “politically-neutral” redistricting principles significantly decrease the probability of uncontested state legislative elections. In contrast, independent redistricting commissions did not appear to affect state legislative competition. We conclude with a discussion of how our findings relate to the redistricting reform debate.