Now, let’s name names. Which Utah legislators miss the most votes?
Winners of the (almost) perfect attendance award
Nobody had perfect attendance in 2011, but a few legislators came close. These are the 10 legislators with the best attendance record during the 2011 session.
Legislator
Number of missed votes
Number of votes held
Percent of missed votes
Rep. Stephen Handy
1
651
0.2%
Rep. Dean Sanpei
2
651
0.3%
Rep. Tim Cosgrove
3
651
0.5%
Rep. Fred Cox
4
651
0.6%
Rep. Keith Grover
5
651
0.8%
Rep. Jim Nielson
6
651
0.9%
Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck
8
651
1.2%
Rep. Val Peterson
8
651
1.2%
Rep. Joel Briscoe
11
651
1.7%
Rep. Steve Eliason
11
651
1.7%
You’ll notice that all of those folks are in the House. In fact, no Senator came close to being in the top 10. The best attendance in the Senate was by Sen. Ralph Okerlund, who missed 37 of the 940 votes held in the Senate in 2011, missing “only” 3.9% of his votes. There were 24 Representatives with a better attendance record than that.
Legislators who missed the most votes
Five legislators missed more than 30% of their votes in 2011. Starting from the most frequently absent legislator, here are the ten worst offenders.
I suppose we might also excuse Speaker Lockhart on account of her leadership position. After all, research in the Congressional context has found that U.S. House speakers tend to have higher absentee rates than rank-and-file Representatives. Of course, Senate President Waddoups missed only 6.2% of his votes (6th best attendance in the 29-member Senate) despite holding a similar leadership position.
The complete data table
If you want to see every legislator’s absentee rate for every session from 2007 through 2011, you’ll find that data here: Absenteeism in the Utah legislature. At first, you’ll see averages that span the 2007 through 2011 sessions. You can view a specific year by following the relevant links.
What do some legislators miss so many votes?
I’ve already written a post explaining why some votes get a higher absentee rate than other votes. (Among other things, legislators are more likely to skip a lopsided vote, and they’re less likely to skip a vote if it’s on a bill sponsored by leadership.) However, I haven’t yet offered any analysis as to why some legislators have a higher absentee rate than other legislators. Stay tuned. That’s coming soon.
Legislators are far less likely to skip party-line votes
Recently, I wrote that Utah’s legislators skip a LOT of votes. Today, let’s ask why. There are two ways to come at this. First, we can ask which votes get skipped the most. Second, we can ask which legislators skip the most votes. Today, I’ll address the first question.
I collected data on every vote held in the Utah House or Senate during the 2007 through 2011 general sessions. I ignore votes held in committee, focusing only on floor votes. I also ignore votes on motions, including motions to amend. I’m looking only at votes on complete bills. In total, I have data on 7,473 roll call votes that were held in the Utah legislature during these years. Of those, 4,317 were held in the Senate, while 3,156 were held in the House.1
For each vote, I calculated the “absentee rate,” which is the percent of legislators who missed the vote. I use percents to make this comparable across chambers. If 8 of 75 Representatives (10.7%) miss a vote in the House, that’s comparable to 3 of 29 Senators (10.3%) missing a vote in the Senate.
I analyzed the data using a technique that allows me to isolate the effect of various conditions. Here’s what I found.
The biggest movers and shakers
The biggest influence on absenteeism appears to be controversy. The legislature passes many bills by overwhelming majorities, with both Republicans and Democrats voting together. However, 9.0% of votes are party-line votes, meaning that most Republicans vote one way and most Democrats vote the other. Legislators are far less likely to skip party-line votes; other things being equal, the absentee rate is 6.4 percentage points lower. This effect is especially strong in the Senate, with the absentee rate falling by 15.1 percentage points in party-line votes.
As another manifestation of controversy, the vote margin influences absenteeism. Legislators show up for close votes, but they skip lopsided votes. If the winning side has only 1 vote more than the losing side–a margin of 1 vote–expect absenteeism to be 0.13 percentage points lower than if the margin were 2 votes. Now, 0.13 may sound small, but it can add up. If the vote were decided by a 1 vote margin instead of a 11 vote margin, for example, then expect absenteeism to fall by around 1.3 percentage points.
It turns out that a bill’s chamber of origin also matters. Every bill must pass through both chambers to become a law, but the bill can start its journey in either the House or the Senate. If it starts in the House, it will have higher absenteeism in the Senate than in the House–and vice versa. Absenteeism is 2.4 percentage points lower when voting on bills that originated in the chamber holding the vote (e.g. when the Senate votes on a Senate bill). This effect is especially strong in the Senate. Senators are far more likely to skip votes on House bills (absenteeism rises by 2.8 percentage points) than Representatives are to skip votes on Senate bills (absenteeism rises by 0.6 percentage points). I’d be curious to hear what members of the House have to say about this finding.
Leadership bills also have less absenteeism. If the bill being voted on is sponsored (or floor sponsored) by a member of the chamber’s majority leadership, absenteeism falls by around 0.5 percentage points. This is especially true in the House, where absenteeism falls by around 0.9 percentage points on leadership bills. In the Senate, the effect appears to be too close to zero to be meaningful; apparently Senators are more willing to offend their leaders than Representatives are.
A hugely important caveat
These are probabilistic results, not deterministic results. It appears to be true, on average, that absenteeism falls by roughly 6.4 percentage points on party line votes. That’s a probabilistic interpretation. It is not true, though, that absenteeism always falls by 6.4 percentage points on party line votes. That would be a deterministic interpretation.
The statistical technique I am using to produce these results returns probabilistic estimates that tell you roughly what to expect on average. There will, of course, be many anomalous cases. Just because the average white American woman is 5’5″ tall doesn’t mean that there aren’t white American women who are shorter than 4′ or taller than 7′. It happens.
Detailed results
I included many variables in my analysis. This table lists most of them.
If this happens…
The predicted absentee rate changes by this much (other things being equal)…
Chamber of origin. The bill originated in the chamber holding the vote.
Rises by 2.4 percentage points
Party line vote. A majority of Republicans vote against a majority of Democrats.
Drops by 6.4 percentage points
Leadership bill. The bill is sponsored2 by a member of the chamber’s majority leadership
Drops by 0.5 percentage points (no effect if sponsored by minority leadership)
Repeated votes. The bill has already been voted on once before (in either chamber)
Drops by 1.4 percentage points for each previous vote. If a bill is on its third vote, absenteeism drops by 4.3 percentage points.
Vote margin. Margin is the number of “ayes” minus the number of “nays.”
Drops by 0.13 percentage points with each increase in margin.
Failed votes. There are more “nay” votes than “yea” votes.
Drops by 2.8 percentage points
Day of vote. The vote is held later in the session.
Rises by 0.019 percentage points each day. After 45 days, that’s a 0.8 percentage point rise.
Vote held in House, not in Senate.
Rises by 1.3 percentage points
Concurrence vote. One chamber is voting whether to “concur” with changes made to a bill by the other chamber.
Rises by 2.7 percentage points.
I reported yesterday that absenteeism is more frequent in the Senate than in the House, so you may be wondering why the table above shows the opposite. The statistical technique estimates the effect of each variable when all the other ones are accounted for. Apparently, the higher absenteeism in the Senate can be explained by other variables listed here, such as vote margins, party line votes, and so on. Once those things are taken into account, it appears that absenteeism is actually more common in the House.
What this really implies is that it’s easier to predict absenteeism in the Senate using the variables listed here, while it’s harder to predict absenteeism in the House. (Warning: Statistical mumbo jumbo ahead.) When I run the model using only Senate votes, the model explains a respectable 29% of the variance (that’s R-squared); when I run it using only House votes, the model explains only 9% of the variance. (Okay, no more statistical mumbo jumbo.)
Okay. We see that we can predict that absenteeism will be higher on certain types of votes. But there are two questions we want to ask. First, we want to ask which votes get skipped the most. We just did that. But second, we want to ask which legislators skip the most votes. I’ll address that next time. Stay tuned.
Legislators are more likely to be absent than to vote “no.”
A legislator’s most visible job is to cast votes in the legislature on behalf of his or her constituents, yet it turns out that Utah’s legislators miss a LOT of votes.
Each year’s general session of the Utah legislature lasts a mere seven weeks. During the 2011 session, 651 separate roll call votes were held on the floor of the Utah House; on average, 7.1% of Representatives (i.e. 5.3 Reps) missed each vote. Meanwhile, 940 votes were held in the Utah Senate; on average, 14.4% of Senators (i.e. 4.2 Senators) missed each vote.
These statistics are from the 2011 general session, but 2011 was not unusual. If I look at all the votes from the 2007 through 2011 sessions, I find that an average vote in the House has a 7.3% absentee rate, while an average vote in the Senate has an 11.2% absentee rate. Overall, looking across both chambers, the average absentee rate is 9.6%.
Something stranger: Missed votes are even more common than “no” votes. If we look at the 361,854 individual votes cast between the 2007 and 2011 general sessions, there were 307,820 “yes” votes (85.1%), 22,715 “no” votes (6.3%), and 31,319 absent votes (8.7%). Legislators are more likely to be absent than to vote “no.”
(To be clear, I’m looking only at floor votes, not committee votes. I’m also looking only at roll call votes on complete bills; I’m not looking at votes to amend a bill, or at votes on other motions. I would imagine that absenteeism is far higher in the sorts of votes that I’m not looking at.)
Of course, absentee rates vary widely when we look across the 2007 through 2011 sessions. There were votes in both chambers with 0% absent. But there have also been votes with 44.8% absent, which surely violates the legislature’s quorum rules.
The table below should give you a sense for how common absenteeism is. The figures are percentiles. In the Utah House, 5 percent of votes had 1.3% (or less) of Representatives absent; 10 percent of votes has 2.7% (or less) absent; 25 percent of votes had 4.0% (or less) absent; and so on. At the median (the 50th percentile), 6.7% were absent. That means half the votes in the House had less than 6.7% absent, and half the votes had more than 6.7% absent.
Percentile
Utah House
Utah Senate
5th
1.3% absent
0.0% absent
10th
2.7%
3.4%
25th
4.0%
6.9%
50th (median)
6.7%
10.3%
75th
9.3%
13.8%
90th
13.3%
20.7%
95th
14.7%
24.1%
The Senate clearly has higher absenteeism than the House at almost every percentile. The 90th percentile is particularly interesting. In the Utah Senate, 90 percent of votes had fewer than 20.7% absent. Let’s turn that around. In fully 10 percent of the Senate’s votes between 2007 and 2011, more than 20.7% of Senators were absent during the vote.
I’ve shown in this post that there’s a lot of absenteeism in the Utah legislature. I haven’t offered an explanation as to why. Not yet, anyway.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways we can explain absenteeism. First, we can ask which votes get skipped the most. Second, we can ask which legislators skip the most votes. If you check back over the next few days, you’ll see posts addressing both those questions. I’ll also post a table showing exactly how many votes each legislator has missed over the past five years. Stay tuned.
Shout out: It was conversations with a former student, Dan Birdsall, that got me thinking about this topic. Although the analysis is mine, I should give him credit for inspiring me to collect this data.
Certain segments of Utah’s political class advocate for a rural-urban mix for the new congressional districts. The argument sounds something like the following: “It would be horrible for Utah to not have all Congressional seats invested in both the rural and urban issues that this state faces. We deserve four balanced voices to maximize our voice in DC” (source).
What effect will this strategy have on representation? Is it possible to effectively combine two distinct interests into one district and expect the representative to represent the two effectively?
It depends on what you want from representation. Political scientists often use two concepts of representation: substantive and descriptive. Substantive representation means that the representative takes into consideration the interests of the groups in the district and tries to faithfully represent those interests. Descriptive representation means the representative and the district share important characteristics (e.g. race, gender, religion, occupation). The argument for descriptive representation rests on the types of experiences shared by the representative and the constituents. Constituents are also more likely to identify with a representative who looks like they do. (For an academic discussion of these issues see Mansbridge 1999.)
The question in creating a rural-urban mix is the following: does a combining of rural and urban interests make it more difficult to achieve either “descriptive” or “substantive” forms of representation?
It is not clear how constituents could identify “descriptively” with a candidate seeking to represent a district where the aggregation of all the constituents becomes the “average” Utahn. Candidates are normally from urban or rural areas. They have either adopted urban or rural tastes, passions, dress, and manners. They can have experience with both, but mainly they will have acquired, over the course of time, an urban or rural “style.” (For an academic description of styles, see the classic study by Richard Fenno.) What this means is that constituents from urban areas may not recognize themselves in the rural representative. Conversely, the constituents from rural areas may not identify with the urban representative. A representative, who seeks an amalgamation of styles, runs the risk of being unrecognizable to both urban and rural voters.
Also, how does the representative “substantively” bridge the gap between the opinions of urban and rural constituents? Using opinion data taken from the Utah Colleges Exit Poll, differences do exist between urban and rural interests. In a 1992 exit poll, 65.5% of voters living in urban counties thought air pollution was a serious problem. 48.3% of voters living in rural counties thought the same. Voters from urban counties were also more likely to believe that hazardous waste and water pollution were more serious problems than voters from rural counties, although by smaller margins.
In 2004, the exit poll asked voters to characterize their neighborhood as urban, suburban, or rural. The following tables show that voters who said they lived in rural areas have differences on such issues as the Patriot Act, gun ownership, and abortion.
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
The argument for a district in which all the different interests add up to an “average” interest may be at odds with Madison’s formulation of interests in Federalist #10. Madison recognized the specific interests that regions, occupations, and industries would have. He believed those specific interests needed to be encouraged and allowed to compete individually in the national policymaking arena. Madison’s argument recognized multiple “communities of interest.” Utah’s approach to redistricting suppresses the multiplicity of interests and encourages its replacement with an “average” interest. Average representation may not necessarily produce better representation since it may result in the dilution of both urban and rural interests. It may also put a representative at a competitive disadvantage when competing with representatives who have more homogeneous districts to represent.
Back in February, I released data on the educational attainment of Utah’s legislators. I found that the Utah Senate’s education level was above average for a state legislative chamber, while the Utah House was well below average. Details are here: How educated are Utah’s legislators? I collected my data in September 2009.
Yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education released a similar dataset, one they collected (apparently) in spring of this year. It’s worth taking a look at their interactive map.
Unfortunately, they present their data by state, not by chamber. So you can see from their data that Utah is a bit above average in terms of the number of legislators who earned an associate’s degree or higher, but you can’t use their data to compare the Utah Senate to the Utah House like I did.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted a ridiculous amount of research about the redistricting process here in Utah. What have we learned? Here’s the Cliff Notes version.
Utah’s population is growing quickly, especially along the urbanized Wasatch Front.
To create a fourth U.S. House district, each existing district will lose 22-28% of its current population. The third district will shed the most people.
During the 2000s, Utah shifted even further toward the GOP than in the 1990s.
With the state becoming more Republican, the legislature can almost certainly draw four Republican-majority U.S. House districts if it tries. Of course, that doesn’t mean Rep. Matheson won’t keep winning in one of them.
Most Democratic-held legislative districts are underpopulated. Most Republican-held districts are overpopulated. That means Democratic districts are more likely to be merged, and Republican districts are more likely to be split.
Even without a partisan gerrymander, population change will cost Democrat 2 seats in the Utah House and 1 in the Senate.
There is a growing population of Hispanics in northern Salt Lake County. In Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, Taylorsville, and West Valley City, Hispanics now constitute 19-33% of the total population.
The legislature needs to be careful not to disperse a concentrated minority population into several white-majority districts. Otherwise, the new map may face a lawsuit based on the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
It’s hard to say. It does appear that Matheson’s new district was somewhat more Republican in 2004 than the old one had been in 2000. However, the difference is not large enough to say with certainty that a gerrymander occurred.
Matheson’s poor showing in the 2002 elections may have had more to do with the sudden influx of unfamiliar voters into his district than with a partisan gerrymander.
Yes. Single member districts tend to hurt minority parties. This is true in every state, not just Utah. But with a consistently large Republican majority among Utah voters, this consistently hurts Democrats.
In 2010, Democrats won 23% of the seats in the Utah House, even though they won 30% of the total votes in Utah House races statewide. However, this is not evidence of a partisan gerrymander. The nature of a single-member district electoral system is that the majority vote winner tends to win far more seats than votes.
In Utah County, 20% of the votes cast in the 12 Utah House races held in 2010 went to Democratic candidates, but Democrats won 0% of the county’s races. This is not the result of a gerrymander; it is the result of an unfortunate distribution of Democratic votes around the county. Democrats are not concentrated enough to win any seats in Utah County, no matter how the maps are drawn.
In Salt Lake County, 45% of the votes cast in the 31 Utah House races went to Democratic candidates, but Democrats won 52% of the seats. This is definitely not the result of a Republican gerrymander, since it favors Democrats. Instead, it results from a better distribution of Democratic votes around the county.
Both counties have a disconnect between how many voters support Democrats and how many seats Democrats win. In both counties, the disconnect is caused less by a gerrymander than by single member districts.
That’s just a bullet point summary. Click one of the links above for greater detail.
I have not written this series of posts with any particular partisan goal. My goal is simply to examine the data and see where it takes me. Some of these posts support Republican talking points; others support Democratic talking points.I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading all these posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.
Although Democrats win 30% of the Utah House votes statewide but only 23% of the seats, we cannot conclude that partisan gerrymandering is to blame.
If you add up all the votes cast for Utah House candidates statewide in 2010, you’ll find that Democrats won 30% of the votes, yet they won only 23% of the seats. Democrats often attribute this disparity to gerrymandering.
Rather than look at all 75 Utah House districts, let’s take a look at Utah’s two most populous counties: Salt Lake County and Utah County. To probe for any partisan gerrymanding in the 2001-2010 district maps, I’ll use precinct level data from these two counties. Unlike districts, precincts are not drawn for political reasons. Rather, they are merely administrative divisions. Salt Lake County administered the 2008 elections in 989 precincts; Utah County used 251.
Utah County
There is not a single precinct in Utah County that comes close to partisan balance. The most left-leaning precinct in the county still gave an overwhelming 65% of its votes to John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.1
Suppose that we were to divide Utah County’s precincts into four legislative districts of equal population. If we took the most left-leaning precincts and grouped them together, they still would have given 74% of their votes to McCain in 2008. Meanwhile, if we took the most right-leaning precincts and grouped them together, they would have given 86% of their votes to the GOP.
There’s not a lot of daylight between 74% and 86%. We see that Utah County’s Democrats are too dispersed to exercise any sort of voting power. Although 29,567 (19%) Utah County voters supported Obama in 2008, they were too dispersed to win a single precinct.
These are exactly the circumstances under which SMDs can produce massive disparities in favor of the majority party. If Democrats are too dispersed in Utah County to win a single precinct, then Republicans will not need to gerrymander the map in order to deny Utah County Democrats representation in the legislature. SMDs alone will ensure that Republicans win every district, no matter how the maps are drawn.
Now let’s move from precincts to legislative districts. There are 12 Utah House districts that lie mostly within Utah County. In 2010, 20% of the votes in these 12 races went to Democratic candidates. Having won 20% of the votes, they might have expected to win 20% of the seats–that is, 2.4 seats. They didn’t. They won 0% of the seats.
Although Democrats won 20% of the votes but 0% of the seats, we cannot conclude that this was the result of a partisan gerrymander. It is simply the result of an unfortunate distribution of Democratic votes around the county. Utah County Democrats are not concentrated enough to win any seats in an SMD system. Even if Democrats were given complete authority to draw district lines in Utah County however they wish, there is no map that they could draw that would ensure a single district with anything close to a Democratic majority. If Democrats want to win any seats in Utah County, they should complain more about SMDs than about partisan gerrymandering.
Salt Lake County
So what about Salt Lake County? Because of its higher concentration of Democratic voters, Salt Lake County is much more prone to a partisan gerrymander than Utah County is.
Unlike Utah County, Salt Lake County does have strongly Democratic precincts. In 2008 its most Democratic precinct gave only 12% of its vote to McCain, with 88% of its vote to Obama.2
Suppose we were to divide Salt Lake County’s precincts into four districts of equal population. If we put the most left-leaning precincts into a single district containing 25% of the voting population, the most Democratic district would have given 69% of its votes to Obama in 2008. That represents a significant concentration of Democrats in Salt Lake County. Meanwhile, the most Republican district would have given 68% of its vote to McCain. We see that Salt Lake County is home to concentrated Democratic populations and also concentrated Republican populations.
Of course, we are completely ignoring contiguity. We cannot just put a bunch of precincts into a single district unless they are physically contiguous (i.e. adjacent). Still, this illustration shows that there is sufficient Democratic concentration within Salt Lake County to win elections, even in an SMD system. That’s a major difference from Utah County.
Let’s move from precincts to legislative districts. There are 31 Utah House districts that lie mostly within Salt Lake County. In 2010, 45% of the votes in these 31 races went to Democratic candidates. Meanwhile, 16 of 31 races (52%) were won by Democrats. In Salt Lake County, Democrats are actually winning slightly more seats than votes. That’s exactly the opposite of what happens in the rest of the state.
It’s safe to conclude that Salt Lake County’s districts were not drawn in a way that gives obvious advantage to Republicans. If Republicans had gerrymandered Salt Lake County, then Democrats would not be winning more seats than votes. Instead, the SMD system is actually helping Democrats in Salt Lake County, just as it helps Republicans in the rest of the state. (It also helps Democrats that their districts are currently underpopulated; see details here.)
What do we learn?
In Utah County, Democrats won 20% of the votes but 0% of the seats in 12 Utah House races held in 2010. In Salt Lake County, Democrats won 45% of the votes but 52% of the seats in 31 races.
In an SMD system, the geographic distribution of voters matters a lot. Because Democrats are dispersed in Utah County, there is no district map imaginable that would allow a Democrat to coast to victory. Democrats’ poor performance in Utah County is caused by SMDs, not gerrymandering.
Meanwhile, Democrats are concentrated in Salt Lake County. A Republican gerrymander would break up these concentrated Democratic populations, causing them to win fewer seats than they deserve. Clearly, there is not a Republican gerrymander hurting them, since Democrats there are winning even more seats than votes.
Let’s extrapolate from these two counties to the entire state. Although Democrats win 30% of the Utah House votes statewide but only 23% of the seats, we cannot conclude that partisan gerrymandering is to blame. It looks from these data that the geographic distribution of Democratic voters has a lot more to do with this outcome than the district map does.
This is part of a series of posts about redistricting in Utah. For an overview, read the introductory post. My talented research assistant, Robert Richards, contributed heavily to this series.
Even without a partisan gerrymander, Democrats cannot win a full 30% of seats unless Democratic voters are clustered in an optimal way.
In 2010, Democrats won only 17 of the 75 seats in the Utah House of Representatives. That’s 23% of the seats. But if you add up all the votes cast statewide, you’ll find that 30% of votes in these 75 races were cast for Democrats. How is it that Democrats can win 30% of votes but only 23% of seats? Some Democrats have cited this sort of disparity as evidence that the districts were gerrymandered back when they were drawn in 2001.
As it happens, they are jumping to conclusions. In Utah, we use single-member districts (SMDs), where the winner in each district is the one candidate who wins the most votes. There are many, many, many other electoral systems used around the world, and each is just as democratically valid as SMDs. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. The major drawback of SMDs is that they tend to magnify partisan disparities. Even with perfectly fair districts, we would expect our SMDs to award more seats to Republicans than their vote share might suggest.
A not-so-hypothetical thought experiment
To see how this is true, imagine that Utah voters were exactly 70% Republican and 30% Democratic. (That shouldn’t be too hard to imagine.)
If Republicans and Democrats were evenly sprinkled throughout the state, and if the 75 districts were randomly drawn, then you would expect every district to be (on average) 70% Republican and 30% Democratic. And what happens if every district is 70% Republican? Republicans win 100% of the elections. In other words, even without any sort of partisan gerrymander, you would expect a 70% Republican voting majority to produce a 100% Republican legislative majority.
Now, let’s consider the opposite example. Instead of being evenly sprinkled around the state, suppose that Democrats and Republicans were concentrated into completely separate areas, so that 30% of districts are 100% Democratic and 70% of districts are 100% Republican. Democrats would win 30% of votes statewide and also 30% of seats.
Obviously, Democrats and Republicans are not evenly sprinkled around the state, nor are they clustered into ghettoized districts. In some areas, such as Salt Lake City, Park City, and Moab, Democrats are clustered enough together that they form a local majority. Because of this clustering, we would expect Democrats to win seats in those areas. But we still would not expect them to win 30% of seats statewide. After all, many Democratic votes are “wasted” in Utah County and other overwhelmingly Republican areas. Even without a partisan gerrymander, Democrats cannot win a full 30% of seats unless Democratic voters are clustered in an optimal way.
Yes, single member districts hurt the minority party
So, do single member districts hurt Democrats? Without question. Single member districts create a disparity that over-represents the majority party. Multimember districts might be better, or they might even be worse–depending on the details of how they are set up. But that’s not the point of this post, so I’ll hold off for now.
We see that the presence of SMDs might be enough to explain why Democrats win 30% of the legislative votes statewide but only 23% of the seats. Note the word “might.” It’s also possible that SMDs cause only part of that disparity, with partisan gerrymandering causing the rest. I’ll address that in my next post.
This is part of a series of posts about redistricting in Utah. For an overview, read the introductory post. My talented research assistant, Robert Richards, contributed heavily to this series.
It’s not clear that the legislature actually made Matheson’s district more Republican in 2001.
It’s often said that the Utah legislature tried to gerrymander Utah’s second district (Matheson’s) in 2001. By moving Republicans into the district and Democrats out of it, the story goes, the legislature hoped to force Rep. Matheson out of office.
I don’t know whether that was their intent. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. But looking at the data, we can see whether that was the effect. From the data, it’s difficult to say whether the legislature actually made his district more Republican back in 2001.
The usual narrative about Matheson’s district
After the 2000 Census, the Utah legislature needed to adjust district boundaries to ensure that each district would have equal population. Of three U.S. House districts, the first and third were represented by Republicans (Jim Hanson and Chris Cannon). The second district was represented by a Democrat, Jim Matheson, first elected in 2000. Relative to the first and third districts, Matheson’s second district had become slightly underpopulated. It needed around 42,000 more voters to remain in balance.
The Utah legislature could have made minor adjustments to the district boundaries to correct this slight population imbalance. Had they done so, then most Utahns would have been able to continue being represented by their current representative.
Instead, the legislature decided to completely redraw the lines. Rather than move 40,000-50,000 voters from the first and third districts into the second, the legislature moved 684,000 Utahns into different districts. Many voters found themselves moved from the 2nd to the 1st district, or from the 3rd to the 2nd, or whatever the case may be. You can examine the maps below to see just how drastic this change was. The mostly urban second district (dark blue) suddenly covered a large chunk of the state. (Click either image to enlarge.)
Even Republicans perceived this as an unfair attack on Matheson. The conservative Wall Street Journal called this a “scam” to defeat Matheson, one likely to produce “effective disenfranchisement.” The WSJ went on to quote Ronald Reagan’s 1989 warning about the “conflict of interest” legislators have in drawing districts, accusing Utah’s legislators of ignoring Reagan’s “sensible voice.”1
The Salt Lake Tribune reported criticism from two of Utah’s prominent elected Republicans: “Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) called it one of the worst examples of political gerrymandering he had ever seen. Republican Congressman Jim Hansen, whose district [Utah’s first] was made less Republican as a result of gerrymandering, criticized the redistricting process, saying that ‘if there was ever an argument for letting someone other than the legislature do redistricting, this is one.'”2
Most criticism focused on Matheson’s new district. And, indeed, he struggled to win reelection under the new map. In 2000, his first race, he had won by 56%-41% in the 1990s-era district. But in 2002, using the new map, Matheson won by only 1,641 votes in a 49%-49% near-tie.
If the story ended there, we’d probably conclude that there was an ugly partisan gerrymander. But the story doesn’t end there. By 2004, Matheson had recovered. And in 2006 and 2008, he won more votes (in the “gerrymandered” district) than he had won back in 2000 (under the old map). The figure below shows all Matheson’s election results from 2000 on. So was he really gerrymandered, or not?
Was this really a gerrymander?
After taking a closer look, it’s not clear to me that the second district was really gerrymandered. It’s true that 2002 was a rough year for Matheson. But I cannot say for sure whether gerrymandering is to blame.
First, let’s define “gerrymander.” The term usually refers to an intentional effort to change a district’s partisan makeup. When people say that Matheson’s district was gerrymandered, they usually mean that the legislature moved Republicans into the district and Democrats out of it. I’m using that definition of “gerrymander” in this post.
Let’s look at the evidence. The easiest way to spot a gerrymander is probably to look at how each district voted for president each year. If you look at Congressional election results, the numbers will be thrown off since each district is voting on different candidates, so you’re comparing apples to oranges. But if you look at presidential election results, you’re comparing apples to apples when you compare one district to the next.
Obviously, each district’s presidential votes will change a little bit each year. For example, if we compare 1996 to 1992, we find that all three districts moved a bit toward the Democratic column. That makes sense; Clinton’s vote nationally was higher in 1996 than in 1992, so we should expect all of Utah’s districts to move in the same direction. Take a look at the table below. Pay special attention to the right-most column.3
District
1992 GOP vote
1996 GOP vote
1996 vs 1992
1
69.6%
66.9%
-2.7
2
55.5%
53.7%
-1.8
3
77.1%
73.8%
-3.3
This next table (below) gives only the “difference” column. The first column is the difference in the GOP’s vote share between 1996 and 1992, copied from the previous table. In the absence of redistricting, we would expect all three districts to move together every four years. Sure enough, they all move somewhat to the left in 1996, then to the right in 2000, then to the left in 2008.
District
1996 vs 1992
2000 vs 1996
2004 vs 2000
2008 vs 2004
1
-2.7
+9.5
Hold
-8.9
2
-1.8
+9.1
Your
-8.4
3
-3.3
+2.1
Horses
-9.3
I left the “2004 vs 2000” column blank. That’s the most important column, since redistricting happened between 2000 and 2004. After the 2001 redistricting, everybody was saying that the legislature had moved Republicans in and Democrats out of Matheson’s second district. To compensate, they would have needed to do the opposite in the first and third districts.
If Matheson’s district was gerrymandered in 2001, we should see the districts moving in opposite directions in 2004. Matheson’s district should move to the right relative to 2000, and the other two districts (which absorbed Democrats from the old district 2) should move to the left. Here’s the data:
District
2004 vs 2000
1
-1.9
2
+5.0
3
+3.1
We see that district 2 did, in fact, move further to the right than the other districts during this period. Nationwide, Bush’s vote share rose by 1.5 percentage points between 2000 and 2004. The fact that his share fell in district 1 is evidence that Democrats were moved from district 2 to district 1 in 2001.
Note that the difference between districts 1 and 2 in “2004 vs 2000” is 6.9. (That is, +5.0-(-1.9)=6.9.) At most, then, we would estimate that redistricting in 2001 caused a 6.9 percentage point divergence between districts 1 and 2. (Of course, we’re ignoring district 3 entirely, where the divergence is much smaller.) So at most, redistricting caused Matheson’s district to be 6.9 percentage points more Republican than it would otherwise have been under the old map.
We need to be careful not to make too much of these numbers, though. Consider some important caveats.
First, district 1 moved more to the right in “2000 vs 1996” than either other district. Even without redistricting, we would expect a correction in “2004 vs 2000.” That’s just the nature of statistical phenomena; when there’s a sharp change in one period, things tend to revert back in the next period. (This is called “regression (or reversion) to the mean.”) So in district 1, the +9.5 movement between 1996 and 2000 may have foreshadowed to the modest -1.9 reversal between 2000 and 2004.
Second, the difference between districts 1 and 2 in “2004 vs 2000” is 6.9, as noted above. But let’s put this 6.9 divergence in context. The divergence between districts 1 and 3 in “2000 vs 1996,” when there was not any redistricting, is even larger: 7.4. If a divergence of 7.4 points can happen in the absence of redistricting, then we shouldn’t make too much of a smaller divergence of 6.9 points that happens after redistricting. Simply put, the 6.9 point divergence between districts 1 and 2 might just be within the margin of error.
So maybe Matheson’s district was gerrymandered in a partisan way causing, at most, a 6.9 percentage point shift toward the GOP. But maybe this shift would have happened anyway; it might be within the margin of error.
The evidence isn’t strong enough to say for sure whether redistricting had the effect of making Matheson’s district any more Republican.
So why was 2002 a tough election for Matheson?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume Matheson wasn’t gerrymandered at all. Then why did he almost lose in 2002? Isn’t his poor performance in 2002 sufficient evidence of a gerrymander?
Not quite. As a Democrat running in a majority-Republican district, he needs a personal connection with voters if he wishes to persuade them to cross party lines. With the new map, he had only one year to form that personal connection with lots of new voters who were suddenly placed in his district. Even if his district wasn’t any more Republican in 2002 than in 2000, the influx of unfamiliar voters would have made 2002 a tough year for Matheson.
By looking at the graph given at the beginning of this post, you can see that his electoral margins got better and better in 2004, 2006, and 2008. And these elections were not against stooges. In fact, the challenger in 2004 was the same challenger who almost beat him in 2002.
So maybe the legislature didn’t make Matheson’s district any more Republican. It did, however, take Republicans familiar with Matheson out of the district and replace them with Republicans unfamiliar with him. That probably hurt him more than anything else. Over time, he overcame this problem.
It’s difficult to study intent, but it’s easier to study effects. I can’t say for sure what the legislature’s intent was back in 2001. But I can say that it’s not clear that the legislature actually made Matheson’s district more Republican in 2001.
This is part of a series of posts about redistricting in Utah. For an overview, read the introductory post. My talented research assistant, Robert Richards, contributed heavily to this series.
We are professors of political science sharing academic research relevant to Utah. Posts are not peer reviewed and may discuss work in progress that is subject to future revision. Learn more. Each post reflects only its author’s views.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted a ridiculous amount of research about the redistricting process here in Utah. What have we learned? Here’s the Cliff Notes version.
Looking back: How has Utah’s population grown since 2000?
Looking back: Which counties will gain and lose seats in the Utah legislature?
Looking back: Could Republicans win all four U.S. House districts?
Looking back: Which counties have moved most to the right?
Looking back: Will redistricting hurt Democrats in the state legislature?
Looking back: Will Hispanic growth affect redistricting?
Looking back: Did the legislature gerrymander Matheson’s district in 2001?
Looking back: Do single member districts hurt Democrats?
Looking back: How badly were legislative districts gerrymandered in 2001?
That’s just a bullet point summary. Click one of the links above for greater detail.
I have not written this series of posts with any particular partisan goal. My goal is simply to examine the data and see where it takes me. Some of these posts support Republican talking points; others support Democratic talking points.I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading all these posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.