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Drawing the Line on District Competition: A Rejoinder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2006

Alan Abramowitz ,
Brad Alexander  and
Matthew Gunning
Alan Abramowitz
Affiliation:
Emory University
Brad Alexander
Affiliation:
Emory University
Matthew Gunning
Affiliation:
Emory University
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Extract

In “Drawing the Line on District Competition,” Michael McDonald (2006) challenges our conclusion that redistricting is not responsible for declining competition in House elections. McDonald claims that this conclusion is incorrect largely because our measure of district partisanship in 1992 is flawed. According to McDonald, using the normalized 1992 major party presidential vote as a measure of House district partisanship in 1992 seriously overstates the competitiveness of House districts in that year because of the impact of the vote for Ross Perot. McDonald recommends instead using the 1988 presidential vote to measure district partisanship in 1992, or using a procedure developed by Gelman and King (1994a) to estimate the partisan bias of House districts. With either of these methods, McDonald claims that a significant proportion of the decline in competitive districts between 1990 and 2002 was caused by redistricting. In addition, contrary to our finding that nonpartisan redistricting commissions have failed to produce increased competition in House elections, McDonald claims that nonpartisan redistricting in Arizona provides a positive example of what can be accomplished by nonpartisan redistricting commissions elsewhere.

Type
FEATURES
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 95 - 97
Copyright
© 2006 The American Political Science Association

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