Electoral Institutions and Descriptive Representation: Evidence from the CVRA

• In Event: Voting Behavior and Elections in Cities

Abstract

The rules that dictate how votes translate into seats on governing bodies have long been recognized as important, but most empirical political science research on this subject in the U.S. context has focused on the descriptive representation of ethnic minorities. We expand the scope of this literature by asking how converting from at-large to single member electoral districts affects representation not only along ethnic lines, but also in terms of geography and income. To do so, we leverage the California Voting Rights Act, which induced a conditionally exogenous wave of conversions from at-large to district elections across the state. Detailed data on the geolocations of all California city council candidates’ homes allows us to measure both a) the underlying inequality of economic and geographic representation found in at-large systems and b) the extent to which the composition of city councils shifted to better reflect the composition of the electorate.

Authors

• Michael Hankinson, George Washington University

• Asya Magazinnik, MIT