Competing Criteria: Rethinking Congressional Redistricting and Representation

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241279084
• Author: Sam D. Hayes
• Date: 01 December 2024

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(4) 1431–1453

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241279084

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Competing Criteria: Rethinking

Congressional Redistricting and

Representation

Sam D. Hayes

1



Abstract

Congressional redistricting requires institutions to make decisions about which criteria they will use to draw new district

boundaries. These decisions unavoidably prioritize certain criteria at the expense of other criteria.Further, the

competitive nature of redistricting criteria also means that when institutions use certain criteria at the expense of others,

they are also correlating with certain forms of group representation at the expense of others. This paper argues that the

representational consequences of redistricting are best understood through an approach that accounts for this process

and the full array of redistricting institutions and criteria. Using a novel research design and an extensive data set covering

six decades of redistricting cycles, this paper supports these claims with empirical evidence describing the relationships of

seven categories of redistricting institutions with a wide range of criteria. This paper f‌inds that partisan legislatures,

bipartisan legislatures, and political commissions facilitate partisan group representation; statecourts facilitate geographic

group representation; federal courts facilitate racial and ethnic group representation; and independent commissions

facilitate both geographic and racial/ethnic group representation. These f‌indings emphasize that Americans are cate-

gorized and grouped differently during congressional redistricting depending on who is drawing the lines.

Keywords

redistricting, representation, gerrymandering, redistricting criteria, congressional redistricting, redistricting institutions

Redistricting and reapportionment are important compo-

nents of democratic representation in the U.S. The purpose

of congressional redistricting and reapportionment is to

maintain equal representation in a dynamic society. With

roots in the foundations of republican government, these

processes can help account for shifts in population within

and among states at least every 10 years.

The effects of redistricting and reapportionment also

impact representation. Legislative districts are regularly

altered and imposed, changing how votes are aggregated

and where power lies geographically. Redistricting and

reapportionment determine how constituents are grouped

and represented relative to one another; who votes where,

with whom and for whom; which groups compose ma-

jorities or minorities in each district; which parties or

groups compose majorities or minorities in each legis-

lature; and how counties, cities, and towns are grouped or

divided among districts.

Because both the purpose and effects of redistricting and

reapportionment are tied to representation, there has been

substantial research on this topic. However, much of this

scholarship is specif‌ic or narrow and does not fully account

for the interdependent and connected nature of the redis-

tricting process. Congressional redistricting and represen-

tation research often focuses on electoral outcomes (how will

the new districts translate votes into partisan seats in the

legislature?), specif‌icgroups(how does redistricting impact

minority group voting power?), or specif‌ic forms of political

behavior (how does redistricting impact political knowl-

edge?), rather than analyzing the overall impact of redis-

tricting on representation.

This paper attempts to f‌ill these scholarly gaps with a

research design built around the congressional

1

Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sam D. Hayes, Departments of Political Science, Public Policy and Law,

Trinity College, 300 Summit Street, Hartford, CT 06106, USA.

Email: shayes@trincoll.edu

redistricting process. The process of redistricting is the

redrawing of legislative district lines. Theoretically, there

are inf‌inite possibilities for potential district boundaries.

To decide where to draw a district boundary, redistricters

use redistricting criteria to guide their process. However,

using any criteria will necessarily conf‌lict with other

potential criteria that could be chosen—by using one

criterion, a redistricting institution may foreclose the

opportunity to use another, promoting certain goals while

subordinating others (Cain 1984). For example, priori-

tizing compact districts as your criterion may prevent you

from protecting county boundaries from your district

lines. This zero-sum nature of competing redistricting

criteria necessitates an empirical research design that

follows the same process, accounting for each redis-

tricting institution’s overall relationship with the full array

of redistricting criteria. This paper attempts to do just that.

Further, this paper observes that the competitive nature

of redistricting criteria also means that when institutions

correlate with certain criteria at the expense of others, they

are also correlating with certain forms of group repre-

sentation at the expense of others. Redistricting criteria

can be the spatial representations of political goals and,

therefore, categorize constituents based on specif‌ic group

characteristics. For example, prioritizing the criterion of

partisan advantage creates a redistricting plan that pri-

oritizes representation of constituents based on their

partisan identity over other possible group identities the

constituents possess, such as members of a racial, ethnic,

or geographic community. This conception of redistricting

criteria and group representation carries implications for

future research focused on constituent attitudes, group

identity formation, and political behavior.

This paper’s original research design, data set, and

f‌indings are contributions to the continued study of re-

districting and representation in political science. This

paper leverages an original data set of congressional

districts over six redistricting cycles (1972, 1982, 1992,

2002, 2012, and 2022). This analysis aims to account for

the real-world process of competing criteria and includes

16 dependent variables measuring common redistricting

criteria, including partisan advantage, minority voting

power, competitiveness, and compactness. This project

also puts empirical support behind Bruce Cain’s de-

scription of redistricting as competing criteria, provides

evidence for using more specif‌ic categories of redistricting

institutions in redistricting research, and includes an

original measurement for racial representation in

redistricting.

Using this novel research design, I f‌ind that different

redistricting institutions correlate with distinct sets of

redistricting criteria and that each institution only corre-

lates with a limited set of criteria. Further, because criteria

emphasize specif‌ic group characteristics, and because

criteria conf‌lict with one another, I argue that these results

have critical implications for understanding group rep-

resentation. I f‌ind that: 1. Partisan-controlled legislatures

facilitate partisan advantage and partisan group repre-

sentation when they create redistricting plans, 2. Divided

legislatures and political commissions facilitate incum-

bency protection and partisan group representation, 3.

Federal courts facilitate minority voting power and racial

group representation, 4. State courts facilitate traditional

criteria and geographic group representation, and 5. In-

dependent commissions facilitate traditional criteria and

minority voting criteria for both racial and geographic

group representation. Overall, these f‌indings show that

who draws constituents’districts matters for how people

are categorized, grouped, and represented in the U.S.

Congress.

Scholarship and Theory

In contrast to previous scholarship that looks at the impact

of a limited number of redistricting criteria or institutions

for congressional redistricting, this paper argues for a

different approach. Because the real-world redistricting

process requires redistricting institutions to use redis-

tricting criteria to draw districts and the criteria inherently

conf‌lict with one another, the consequences for repre-

sentation are best understood through a more compre-

hensive approach that accounts for the full array of

institutions and criteria. This section explains why the

process of redistricting necessitates this research approach

and how existing research on redistricting and repre-

sentation has not taken that approach. Additionally, it

observes that redistricting criteria categorize constituents

by group characteristics, such as race or party, and argues

that because the criteria conf‌lict with one another, vari-

ation in institutional correlation with redistricting criteria

carries important implications for group representation.

The Process of Congressional Redistricting

Congressional redistricting requires every state with

multiple congressional districts to redraw its legislative

boundaries at least once per decade. Theoretically, there

are an inf‌inite number of ways to create single-member

congressional district boundaries within any state.

Therefore, the people and institutions who redistrict turn

to specif‌ic criteria to provide guidance about where the

new district lines will go.

Across the United States, different institutions have the

responsibility of redistricting. Historically, state legisla-

tures have overseen redistricting for congressional dis-

tricts in the vast majority of states. In recent years,

independent redistricting commissions have become more

common, sometimes passed by popular ballot measures.

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1432 Political Research Quarterly 77(4)