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Why local elections may become less and less competitive

May 11th, 2008
By PAUL SILVER


In Vote Like Thy Neighbor William Galston and Pietro Nivola bring to me some new insight on the reason for the partisan divide. And some realism about the remedies.

…41 percent of the voters in 1984 were located at or near the midpoint of the ideological spectrum, compared with only 28 percent in 2004. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters clustering toward the left and right tails of the spectrum rose from 10 to 23 percent.

They describe how people are increasingly likely to live near people with similar values and world views thus making communities less politically heterogeneous.

Our study shows that this geographical sorting worsens polarization in several ways. When counties become more homogeneous, it becomes harder to use redistricting to create more competitive Congressional districts. (Recent research indicates that gerrymandering accounts for, at the very most, one-third of noncompetitive districts in the House of Representatives.) When states become more homogeneous, presidential campaigns begin by conceding a large number of contests to the opposition, disheartening their supporters in those states and increasing the majority’s electoral advantage. Polarization feeds on itself.



This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 6:40 am and is filed under Redistricting, Elections. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    Once again, political correctness forces liberal researchers to skip over the ethnic and racial component of the uniformity. To find the Democratic landslide counties that the authors references, just look at the percentages of the public school at is white. In a place like Chicago where the public school is 9% white, the Republicans have no chance of winning. If you look at places like Northern Virginia that have gone from Republican to Democratic, it tracks very well with the delclining number of white students in the public schools.
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    The 'birds of a feather' tendency is a major motivator in all aspects of society.
    It's as natural as rain.
    It can be quite benign, and even enriching, in terms of preserving a wide array in terms of cultural heritage

    Homogenous groups, however, can also produce very dull people who lack intellectual inqusitiveness. about the outside world and a dispassionate understanding of their own.,

    When there is disproportionality in power among the groups, the wrost kind of divisivess occurs. The winners have no incentive to acknoledge their own role in
    producing negative results. They cling to their power advantage. no matter what, and in the face of any amount of evidence that this divided state of affairs serves no one well in the long run.

    It's easy to see, then, why safe seats come about, and why gerrymandered districts are not the only cause of the problem.
    That doesn't in any way reduce the severity of the problem, however.

    I wouldn't dismiss gerrymandering as an issue just because ficxng that isn't a miracle cure for everything.

    I would be much happier if everyone could just agree that it's a problem for everyone, winners and losers alike. Then we would be free to search for better fixes instead of getiing stuck in hostile power struggles.

    ..
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    I have to wonder how much the free access to a broad range of information sources also contributes to this. If I'm liberal-leaning now, I can spend my entire day only reading liberal news sources and getting few opinions other than the ones I already think are correct.

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