Congressional Redistricting and Strategic Copartisans: Partisan Gerrymandering in Pennsylvania, 1800–1824

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241254551
• Author: Aric Dale Gooch
• Date: 01 December 2024

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(4) 1096–1109

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241254551

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Congressional Redistricting and Strategic

Copartisans: Partisan Gerrymandering in

Pennsylvania, 1800–1824

Aric Dale Gooch

1



Abstract

The group-centered theory of party development provides a new theoretical frameworkfor understanding early party

development. Specif‌ically, it provides a logical framework to understand why early state legislators weremotivated to

engage in partisan gerrymandering during a period without national organizations. I use Pennsylvania as a case study to

determine if partisanship inf‌luenced the creation of congressional district maps in 1802, 1812, and 1822. Using county-

level congressional election returns and state legislative journals, I provide evid ence of strategic partisan gerrymandering

by the Democratic-Republicans during each apportionment year. I also show that the Federalist minority in Pennsylvania

knew the national political impact of the process and attempted to inf‌luence congressional maps for their own partisa n

advantage. Lastly, I demonstrate how multi-member districts were the Democratic-Republicans’weapon of choice to

engage in partisan gerrymandering throughout the period. These results highlight the connection between state leg-

islatures and congressional party politics during the f‌irst party era.

Keywords

American early republic, political parties, gerrymandering, state legislatures, congressional elections

The development of political parties and partisanship fol-

lowing the ratif‌ication of the Constitution quickly began to

inf‌luence state and national legislative politics alike. The

exact nature of these parties and if they constituted a national

party system is still an open question in the political science

and historical literature (Cohen et al. 2008;Dow 2022;

Formisano 1974,1981). Further, the inf‌luence of partisanship

on the way representation operated in the new American

republic is a growing f‌ield of study (e.g., Bailey 2019;Carter

2020;Dow 2017). At the intersection of these topics is

congressional redistricting. There are few studies that explore

this topic during the f‌irst party era and attempt to understand

if state legislators were inf‌luenced by partisanship while

redistricting their states.

John Aldrich’s work on the development of American

political parties uses rational choice models to understand

the inf‌luence of institutions on party development and

describes it as a national-level, elite-driven process

Aldrich (1995). However, political historians have re-

cently emphasized the importance of grassroots and state-

level actors in the development of American political

culture during the f‌irst party era (Newman 1997;Pasley

2013;Pasley, Robertson, and Waldstreicher 2004). These

accounts question the national-level, elite-driven frame-

work for understanding the development of American

politics. Marty Cohen and his coauthors present a com-

peting theory of party development that places these mid-

level actors at the center of party development. According

to their theory, “policy demanders”are the central actors

in party creation and operation (Cohen et al. 2008, 30;

Bawn et al. 2012). This group includes state legislators,

newspaper editors, and other state-level elites who were

motivated by national policy goals to construct political

parties.

This article offers an opportunity to explore the de-

velopment of the f‌irst two American political parties from

a decentralized, group-centered perspective. Specif‌ically,

this article holds that parties developed at the state-level

because of the motivations and strategic actions of intense

1

Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Aric Dale Gooch, Department of Political Science, Baylor University,

One Bear Place #97276, Waco, TX 76798, USA.

Email: Aric_Gooch@baylor.edu