Electoral Representation for Racial Minorities: Victims of Their Own Success?

Even as decades have passed since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African Americans and Hispanics continue to encounter disproportionately low levels of electoral representation. In search of an appropriate remedy, the U.S. Congress passed amendments to the Voting Rights Act in 1982, hoping to promote proportional minority representation. Challenges within the judicial system led to Thornburg v. Gingles (1982), a decision that upheld the amendments and clearly defined under what parameters electoral lines would be drawn in order to uphold descriptive representation.

New empirical research and analysis by Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos has led to the article, “Race, Place, and Power”—an ambitious effort to collect data on over 5,000 elected officials to State Senate seats since 1972. While significant resources have been dedicated to analyzing the impact of Gingles on the federal level, an insufficient amount of research at the state level led Stephanopoulos to collect data through a range of sources, including prior work, state-specific general election polls, and the spatial index of dissimilarity—a calculated index ranging over half a century, based on racial makeup and geographic location of census tracts.

Before diving into the data, a few terms should be defined. “Descriptive representation” is a type of electoral representation in which elected individuals are representative of their constituents in descriptive terms such as race and geographic area of birth. This is different from “candidate of choice,” which is a legal phrase used in the Gingles decision, indicating the representative for whom constituents vote. However, the terms are loosely interchangeable due to a high correlation between the two, particularly as minority candidates are generally favored by minority voters. Gingles prescribed special electoral lines based on descriptive representation as long as districts would be “sufficiently large and geographically compact,” “politically cohesive,” and confronted by a consistent “bloc” of majority voting by Whites.

“Substantive representation” is a type of electoral representation in which elected individuals are representative of the interests of their constituents, whether or not they are descriptively similar. For all intents and purposes, this term is expressed as Democrats generally being substantively representative of minority voters. On the federal level, an increase in descriptive representation for a minority often leads to a decrease in substantive representation. For example, an increase in elected African Americans could lead to a far greater loss of elected Democrats, which would decrease substantive representation for African Americans.

Stephanopoulos finds a number of informative results for those who support Gingles. First, there has been a striking level of desegregation across the country over more than four decades. Second, descriptive representation of African Americans has increased from 13 percent to 20 percent in the South and from 9 percent to 14 percent outside of the South. This has led to a high correlation between population share and seat share among African Americans, which mirrors a system of proportional representation. Finally, in states where Democrats control the redistricting process, there has been no decrease in substantive representation for African Americans.

In contrast, Stephanopoulos also brings attention to data useful to those who oppose Gingles. First, increased integration has led to increased polarization. Whites have not joined African Americans in voting for a mix of candidates that would provide adequate descriptive representation for both groups. In fact, the converse has occurred, where inter-group polarization (i.e., Whites voting for White candidates and African Americans voting for African American candidates) has increased. Second, Hispanics have not seen gains in descriptive representation, and polarization—while having slightly decreased during the 1980s and 1990s—is now equivalent to its pre-Gingles level. Finally, the growth of African American gains in State Senate seats has stopped, and due to substantial progress in integration, there is a significant possibility that they will lose seats as geographic districts no longer qualify for special electoral lines under Gingles.

The question thus becomes threefold: why have Hispanics not experienced benefits under the Gingles system; to what extent will African Americans lose descriptive representation as they become victims of successful integration; and finally, will a loss of descriptive representation due to further integration lead to decreased polarization? As the author points out, only time will tell, but this recent research provides an interesting exploration of the nuance behind the issue.

Article source: Stephanopoulos, Nicholas O. “Race, Place, and Power.” Stanford Law Review 68. (2016): 1323-1408.

Featured photo: cc/(hermosawave, photo ID: 145914665, from iStock by Getty Images)