Contestation versus Replacement: Republican Party Gains in Southern State Legislative Elections

The commentary of our colleagues is appreciated. Even though this reply will not settle this controversy, it might provide a starting point for others wishing to examine this topic. The article had two major findings. The first is that there was a minimal Democratic bias in contested southern state legislative districts in the 1970s and 1980s. The second is that the Democrats appear to have used the switch from multimember districts (MMDs) to single-member districts (SMDs) to insulate themselves from large vote swings by lowering the swing ratio (responsiveness) of the electoral system. Krassa and Combs make two criticisms of this research: First, the grouping time periods together means the analysis includes the effects of other structural and social events, thus confounding the analysis of changes in the swing ratio and bias. They suggest a need to adopt a similar methodology to King and Gelman (1991), which controls for the structural characteristics in southern state legislative elections. Their second critique is the interpretation of a declining swing ratio protecting incumbents is incorrect. A more desirable situation for Democratic incumbents is to have a high swing ratio because it converts lower vote shares into a higher proportion of Democratically controlled districts. Bullock’s critique notes the findings are not generalizable to the affirmative action gerrymandering associated with the 1990s redistricting process. I begin by addressing the methodological critique of Krassa and Combs. Then I turn to the latter two questions involving the interpretation of our findings.

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The Influence of Turnout and Constituency Diversity on Voting in Southern State House Races in the 1990s

American Review of Politics ◽

10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2002.23.0.141-166 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 23 ◽

pp. 141-166

Author(s):

Joseph A. Aistrup

Keyword(s):

South Carolina ◽

Congressional Elections ◽

The Political ◽

Legislative Elections ◽

Southern State ◽

The Subject ◽

State Legislative Elections ◽

The Impact ◽

The Relationship ◽

State Legislative

This research focuses on assessing the impact of participation on voting in southern state legislative elections in the 1990s. While turnout is the subject of much study as a dependent variable (Hill and Leighley 1999; Bullock, Gaddie, and Kuzenski 1995; Weber 2000, 233-246; Gaddie and Bullock 1997; Davidson 1994; Hogan 1999), its relationship to southern state legislative outcomes has not been extensively studied. I find that higher levels of turnout lead to increased votes for the Republicans. While this was the case only in South Carolina in the early 1990s, by the late 1990s, this pattern was consistent across five of the ten states under study. These findings suggest that the relationship between participation and voting in state legislative elections in the South may be becoming similar to congressional elections (Campbell 1996). This study also focuses on the influences of constituency diversity on voting outcomes at the state house level. In recent years, most of the discussion regarding the influences of constituency characteristics has been centered around assessing the impact of creating numerous majority-minority districts during the 1990s redistricting (see Lublin and Voss 2000). This study moves beyond this debate to assess the influence of constituency diversity on aggregate voting outcomes, beyond majority-minority districts. Using a measure of constituency diversity (based on the work of William Koetzle (1998)), which measures the “political diversity” of districts, the findings support the contention that constituency diversity has a significant influence in structuring aggregate voting outcomes.

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