Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T03:41:38.945Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democratic Representation and Partisan Bias in Congressional Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Gary King  and
Robert X Browning
Gary King
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Robert X Browning
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The translation of citizen votes into legislative seats is of central importance in democratic electoral systems. It has been a longstanding concern among scholars in political science and in numerous other disciplines. Throughout this literature, two fundamental tenets of democratic theory, partisan bias and democratic representation, have often been confused. We develop a general statistical model of the relationship between votes and seats and separate these two important concepts theoretically and empirically. In so doing, we also solve several methodological problems with the study of seats, votes, and the cube law. An application to U.S. congressional districts provides estimates of bias and representation for each state and demonstrates the model's utility. Results of this application show distinct types of representation coexisting in U. S. states. Although most states have small partisan biases, there are some with a substantial degree of bias.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 81 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 1251 - 1273
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, Christopher. 1982. Interpreting and Using Regression Analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Balinski, Michel L., and Young, H. Peyton. 1982. Fair Representation. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Berndt, E. K., Hall, B. H., Hall, R. E., and Hausman, J. A.. 1974. Estimation and Inference in Nonlinear Structural Models. Annals of Economic and Social Measurement 3:653–65.Google Scholar
Browning, Robert X. 1986. Politics and Social Welfare Policy in the United States. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Browning, Robert X, and King, Gary. N.d. Seats, Votes, and Gerrymandering: Estimating Representation and Bias in State Legislative Redistricting. Law and Policy. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Cain, Bruce. 1984. The Reapportionment Puzzle. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Congressional Quarterly. 1975. Guide to U.S. Elections. Washington: author.Google Scholar
Cox, Edward F. 1972. State and National Voting, 1910–1970. Hamdon, CT: Archon.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1956. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
DeGroot, Morris H. 1975. Probability and Statistics. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Farrand, Max. 1911. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gourieroux, C., Monfort, A., and Trognon, A.. 1984. Pseudo Maximum Likelihood Methods: Theory. Econometrica 52:681–700.Google Scholar
Grofman, Bernard N. 1975. A Review of Macro-Election Systems. Political Yearbook 4:303–52.Google Scholar
Grofman, Bernard N. 1983. Measures of Bias and Proportionality in Seats-Votes Relationships. Political Methodology 9:295–327.Google Scholar
Grofman, Bernard N., Lijphart, Arend, McKay, Robert B., and Scarrow, Howard A.. 1982. Representation and Redistricting Issues. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath.Google Scholar
Hay, and Rumley, . 1984. On Testing for Structural Effects in Electoral Geography, Using Entropy-maximizing Methods for Estimate Voting Patterns. Environment and Planning: A 16:233–40.Google Scholar
Hinckley, Barbara. 1981. Congressional Elections. Washington: Congressional Quarterly.Google Scholar
Johnson, Norman L., and Kotz, Samuel. 1969. Discrete Distributions. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Kendall, M. G., and Stuart, A.. 1950. The Law of Cubic Proportion in Election Results. British Journal of Sociology 1:183–97.Google Scholar
King, Gary. 1986a. How Not to Lie with Statistics: Avoiding Common Mistakes in Quantitative Political Science. American Journal of Political Science 30(3):666–87.Google Scholar
King, Gary. N.d. Statistical Models for Political Science Event Counts: Bias in Conventional Procedures and Evidence for the Exponential Poisson Regression Model. American Journal of Political Science. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
King, Gary. 1987. Variance Specification in Event Count Models: From Restrictive Assumptions to a Generalized Estimator. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Political Science Methodology Group, Durham, NC.Google Scholar
King, Gary, and Ragsdale, Lyn. 1987. The Elusive Executive: Discovering Statistical Patterns in the Presidency. Washington: Congressional Quarterly.Google Scholar
Linehan, William J., and Schrodt, Phillip A.. 1978. A New Test of the Cube Law. Political Methodology 4:353–67.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1965. Two Treatises of Government. New York: New American Library.Google Scholar
Lowell, Frederick K., and Craigie, Teresa A.. 1985. California's Reapportionment Struggle: A Classic Clash between Law and Politics. Journal of Law and Politics 2:245–62.Google Scholar
March, James G. 1957/1958. Party Legislative Elections as a Function of Election Results. Public Opinion Quarterly 11:521–42.Google Scholar
Michels, Robert. 1911. Political Parties. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Niemi, Richard G., and Fett, Patrick. 1986. The Swing Ratio: An Explanation and an Assessment. Legislative Studies Quarterly 11(1):75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Polsby, Nelson W. 1971. Reapportionment in the 1970s. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Quandt, Richard E. 1974. A Stochastic Model of Elections in Two-Party Systems. Journal of the American Statistical Association 69(346):315–24.Google Scholar
Rae, Douglas. 1967. The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ranney, Austin. 1976. Parties in State Politics. In Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 3d ed., ed. Jacob, Herbert and Vines, Kenneth N.. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Scammon, Richard, and McGillivray, A. V.. Annual volumes 1950–84. America Votes. Congressional Quarterly.Google Scholar
Scarrow, Howard A. 1983. Parties, Elections, and Representation in the State of New York. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, Elmer E. 1942. The Semi-sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Schrodt, Philip A. 1981. A Statistical Study of the Cube Law in Five Electoral Systems. Political Methodology 7:31–53.Google Scholar
Taagepera, Rein. 1973. Seats and Votes: A Generalization of the Cube Law of Elections. Social Science Research 2:257–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taagepera, Rein. 1986. Reformulating the Cube Law for Proportional Representation Elections. American Political Science Review 80:489–504.Google Scholar
Theil, Henri. 1969. The Desired Political Entropy. American Political Science Review 63:521–25.Google Scholar
Theil, Henri. 1970. The Cube Law Revisited. Journal of the American Statistical Association 65:1213–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tufte, Edward R. 1973. The Relationship between Seats and Votes in Two-Party Systems. American Political Science Review 67:540–54.Google Scholar
United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census. Annual volumes 1950–1984. Statistical Abstract of the U.S. Washington: GPO.Google Scholar
Wright, Gerald C. Jr., Erikson, Robert S., and McIver, John P.. 1985. Measuring State Partisanship and Ideology with Survey Data. Journal of Politics 47:469–89.Google Scholar
Zellner, Arnold. 1984. Basic Issues in Econometrics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.