All about Location: The Geographic Politics of District Office Placement

• In Event: Representation in the United States Congress

Abstract

Field offices for members of Congress allow staff to engage in casework and solve local problems. The location of these field offices also reflects geographic representation of voters. We develop a theory of geographic representation and use archived websites to track the physical location of members of Congress’ district offices from 2000-2020. Generally, when there was a party change, members were likely to move their district offices. However, when there was no party change, Republicans are more likely to change their office compared to Democrats. Using geolocation at the zip code level, we find members move their offices to areas that are politically more advantageous. The results suggest members shift district offices to accommodate new constituencies.

Authors

• Shana Hardin, University of Houston

• Jeronimo Cortina, University of Houston

• Brandon Rottinghaus, University of Houston