A Logical Model for Predicting Minority Representation: Application to Redistricting and Voting Rights Cases

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
YUKI ATSUSAKA
Keyword(s):  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Minority Representation ◽  
Logical Model ◽  
Exact Probability ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Candidate Emergence ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Minority Candidate ◽  
State Legislative

Understanding when and why minority candidates emerge and win in particular districts entails critical implications for redistricting and the Voting Rights Act. I introduce a quantitatively predictive logical model of minority candidate emergence and electoral success—a mathematical formula based on deductive logic that can logically explain and accurately predict the exact probability at which minority candidates run for office and win in given districts. I show that the logical model can predict about 90% of minority candidate emergence and 95% of electoral success by leveraging unique data of mayoral elections in Louisiana from 1986 to 2016 and state legislative general elections in 36 states in 2012 and 2014. I demonstrate that the logical model can be used to answer many important questions about minority representation in redistricting and voting rights cases. All applications of the model can be easily implemented via an open-source software logical.

Minority Success in Non-Majority Minority Districts: Finding the “Sweet Spot”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lublin ◽  
Lisa Handley ◽  
Thomas L. Brunell ◽  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Maximum Likelihood ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
Racial Minorities ◽  
Minority Population ◽  
Sweet Spot ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Minority Candidate ◽  
State Legislative

AbstractThough African-American and Latino electoral success in state legislative and congressional elections continues to occur almost entirely in majority-minority districts, minorities now have new opportunities in districts that are only 40–50% minority. This success can primarily be explained in terms of a curvilinear model that generates a “sweet spot” of maximum likelihood of minority candidate electoral success as a function of minority population share of the district and the proportion of the district that votes Republican. Past racial redistricting legal challenges often focused on cracking concentrated racial minorities to prevent the creation of majority-minority districts. Future lawsuits may also follow in the steps of recent successful court challenges against racially motivated packing that resulted in the reduction of minority population percentage in a previously majority-minority district in order to enhance minority opportunity in an adjacent non-majority-minority district.

Can States Promote Minority Representation? Assessing the Effects of the California Voting Rights Act

2019 ◽  
pp. 107808741989685
Author(s):  
Loren Collingwood ◽  
Sean Long
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Average Treatment Effect ◽  
City Council ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Minority Representation ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Control ◽  
The City

One goal of the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) is to broaden representation in largely White-controlled city councils state-wide by incentivizing cities to shift council electoral jurisdictions from at-large to single-member districts. However, little research has investigated whether the CVRA helped contribute to increased minority representation at the city level. This article employs matching and difference-in-difference methods to determine whether cities that switched to district elections as a result of the CVRA enhanced city council diversification. By comparing matched treatment and control group’s racial composition of city councils before and after fully switching from at-large to district election jurisdictions, we estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) of city switching on minority city council representation at 10% to 12%. Further analysis reveals treatment effects are larger among cities with larger shares of Latinos (21%). Thus, states seeking to increase local-level minority representation should consider policies similar to those found in the CVRA.

Toward a Multiracial Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles P. Henry
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Political Campaign ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Racial Issue ◽  
Black Mayors ◽  
The Right

This chapter traces the evolution of Blacks from voters to candidates following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It argues that there were two waves of Black electoral success. Focusing on Black mayors, it contrasts the “insurgent strategy” with the later “deracialized strategy.” The “insurgent” strategy often resembles a social movement more than a political campaign and is directed at mobilizing the candidate's racial support base. The “deracialized” strategy attempts to downplay any racial issue as the candidate reaches out to form a broad coalition of supporters. The chapter also gives credit to Harold Washington and Jesse Jackson for their strategy of expanding the base of the Democratic Party rather than moving to the right to capture “Reagan Democrats.”

scholarly journals Demand and Supply: Racial and Ethnic Minority Candidates in White Districts

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Gonzalez Juenke ◽  
Paru Shah
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Minority Representation ◽  
Demand And Supply ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
White Voters ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Legislative ◽  
Racial And Ethnic Minority ◽  
Unique Dataset

AbstractDo voters in white districts systematically obstruct minority representation? Despite a great deal of public and scholarly attention, this question remains largely unresolved. We demonstrate that the narrow focus on the relationship between white voters and minority representation is inadequate to understand why we do not see more minority-elected officials in the United States. We use a matching technique to investigate three theoretical perspectives of descriptive representation using a unique dataset from the 2012 general elections for state legislative seats in 14 states, the first elections after the 2010 redistricting process. Our findings challenge the venerable notion that minority candidates consistently underperform in white districts, and complicate our understanding of the political expression of bigotry in the voting booth.

scholarly journals White Voters, Black Representatives, and Candidates of Choice

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 267-289
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Ronald Keith Gaddie ◽  
Ben Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
African American ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
The United States ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Minority Representation ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Level Information

The challenge of minority representation is an important area of public policy that relies heavily on the work of political scientists. Minority voting rights in the United States encompasses not just access to the ballot, but also guarantees that the ballot has meaning in areas with historic discrimination. In this paper we explore the nomination and election of African-American congressional representatives, with an emphasis on the unsuccessful primary re-nomination fight of Cynthia McKinney. Relying on both precinct level racial participation data and also unique, voter-level information on the partisanship of all white primary participants, we ascertain the extent to which the African-American incumbent’s loss to an African-American challenger was a product of strategic voting by white Republicans under Georgia’s open primary law. We also draw conclusions about the implications of such strategic white voting for the election of African-American candidates of choice, and discuss the implications of those conclusions for the interpretation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

scholarly journals Southern Republican Subnational Advancement: The Redistricting Explanation

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 15-32
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Aistrup
Keyword(s):  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern State ◽  
Representational System ◽  
Voter Preference ◽  
Before And After ◽  
State Legislative

Implicit in numerous explanations concerning the Republicans’ problems in the South is the rationale that the Democrats gerrymander away any Republican gains. However, with the enforcement of provisions o f the Voting Rights Act, others have found evidence that it is the Republicans who gain from the redistricting process. This article tests these propositions by analyzing the extent o f bias and the swing ratio for southern state legislative contests both before and after the 1970s and the 1980s redistricting, respectively, as well as controlling for single-member (SMD) and multimember (MMD) districts. We find that the orthodoxy described above is not strongly supported. The district lines for contested elections were not substantially biased toward the Democrats in the first place, and the bias of the representational system does not show a substantial movement toward the GOP after the switch from MMDs to SMDs. Democrats appear to benefit from redistricting as a result of a decline in the swing ratio, thus making their incumbents better protected from aggregate swings in voter preference.

scholarly journals An Empirical Examination of Representational Equity in Consolidated Governments, 1965-2002

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Acuff
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Interrupted Time Series ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Interrupted Time Series Analysis ◽  
Minority Representation ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
County Governments ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Racial And Ethnic Minority

Research on the impacts of city-county consolidation often focus on issues relating to efficiency, effectiveness, and economic development; yet, relatively few studies have addressed the issue of racial and ethnic minority representation. While existing research is limited, findings indicate that consolidating city and county governments dilutes minority voting strength and has a disparate impact on minority representation. However, it is not clear if this is a nationwide trend, particularly in preclearance states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act. Thus, the question becomes, does consolidation negatively affect minority representation, and to what extent? This study employs a quasi-experimental interrupted time-series analysis in order to ascertain the overall impact of consolidation on the descriptive representation of African Americans since 1965. Results indicate that while representation has increased in recent decades, there are discernible declines in following consolidation, and noticeable representational disparities in counties previously covered by the Voting Rights Act.

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