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Drawing the Line on District Competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2006

Michael P. McDonald
Michael P. McDonald
Affiliation:
George Mason University
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Extract

In “Don't Blame Redistricting for Uncompetitive Elections” in this issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, Abramowitz, Alexander, and Gunning (2006) argue that redistricting is not responsible for the decline in the number of competitive districts, defined as a district with a near balance of partisanship. Further, the authors claim that non-partisan redistricting institutions are not correlated with the number of competitive districts. The relationship between redistricting institutions and competitive districts is of importance not only to academics who study redistricting and elections, but also to policy makers and reformers who advocate redistricting reform. If these claims are true, then policymakers are expending much misguided effort to enact redistricting reform to treat the greater problem of the decline of electoral competition in recent U.S. congressional elections.

Type
FEATURES
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 91 - 94
Copyright
© 2006 The American Political Science Association

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