Electoral Outcomes and Public Support for Congressional Redistricting

• In Event: Representation in the United States Congress

Abstract

State-level redistricting processes shape congressional representation, as redistricting restructures the US electoral landscape every decade. Recent reform movements and concerns over partisan gerrymandering have propelled redistricting into mainstream political discussion, and debates on redistricting reached a crescendo during the 2022 midterm elections, the first election cycle under the new congressional district map. We use questions on the pre and post-election waves of the 2022 Cooperative Election Survey (CES) to explore citizens’ support for their state’s redistricting system. Due to the unique nature of the CES, we can test hypotheses at the state level to leverage institutional variations in redistricting.

Redistricting processes vary by state. State legislatures and courts control the map-drawing process in many states, but some states have diverted this power to independent and bipartisan redistricting commissions. Our first analysis aims to shed light on the factors that influence citizens’ knowledge of and support for their state’s redistricting process. Specifically, we explore whether independent and bipartisan redistricting commissions increase citizens’ knowledge of and support for their state’s redistricting process.

Our second analysis explores how election results influence citizens’ support for their state’s redistricting process. We ask whether citizens’ satisfaction with redistricting in their state is shaped by ends (election results) or means (fairness of redistricting process), and we use the two-wave structure of the CES around the 2022 midterm election to answer this question. Respondents were asked to rate their support for their state’s redistricting process before and after the election, and we use the difference in support between the two survey waves as our dependent variable. Using both district-level and state-level election outcomes and respondents’ political preferences, we are able to examine how election outcomes shape support for redistricting processes.

Authors

• Peter T McLaughlin, University of Rhode Island

• Nathan Barron, University of Oklahoma

• Henry Ashton, University of Oklahoma

• Rachel Blum, University of Oklahoma

• Charles Finocchiaro, University of Oklahoma

• Michael Crespin, University of Oklahoma