Partisan Goals and Redistricting

Assessing the Views of the Legislators

Abstract

Past research efforts in congressional redistricting have focused on party bias in redistricting plans without ever directly measuring the attitudes of the state legislators. In this study we specifically measure the goals that state legislators would like to achieve as they formulate a congressional redistricting plan. Overall, state legislators possess the party loyalty necessary to produce partisan plans, but a number of conflicting demands placed upon them inhibit the full realization of party objectives.