Aspectos éticos

If only about six Republican gains are attributable to the perverse effects of the new African American districts, what explains the other 19 GOP seats gained in 1992 and 1994? There is an alternative explanation for the Republican growth. Scholars have argued that the partisan realignment that occurred in the South is a major reason for this growth (see McKee 2000, 137; Hill and Rae 2000, 18; Rae 2001, 136).32 This

realignment changed the party preference of many white voters.

As Jonathan Knuckey argues, “Any search for an explanation of southern Republican congressional gains in the 1990s requires a focus on the dramatic change in the vote choice of white southerners” (2001, 259). He argues that changes in southern

31 _{In 1992, Democrats were elected in North Carolina’s Second and Third Districts but they lost these} districts to Republicans in 1994.

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partisanship, racial attitudes, and racial resentment have contributed to the Republican growth (2001, 267; 2005, 14, 17). Similarly, Beachler writes, “Clearly the major source of the Democrats’ problems in southern House elections is the growing percentage of southern whites who vote Republican” (1995, 78).

Beachler presented exit poll results showing that white southerners’ support for Democratic candidates in U.S. House districts decreased in the 1990s (2000, 56). In 1990, 50 percent of southern whites voted for the Democratic candidate; in 1992, this figure dropped by 3 percentages points, and in 1994, it dropped another 15 percentage points (ibid, 59). He argues that the change in white voter behavior has contributed to the Republican surge in the southern U.S. House delegation.

Hill and Rae found that a secular realignment was the major reason for the

Republican growth (2000, 18). They note that the Republican takeover in the U.S. House delegation would have occurred regardless of racial redistricting.33 Similarly, McKee argues that a secular realignment contributed to the Republican growth (2002, 137). McKee believes that racial redistricting hastened the Republican Party ascendancy. He states, “given the scant number of white Democrats, it is no wonder that the voting behavior of Deep South whites reveals a strong preference for Republican candidates” (ibid, 137).34

It has been noted that the post-1990 round of redistricting was followed by an increase in open seats. These open seats were often a result of forced retirement and a

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Rae and Hill state, “as our models consistently show, even if the Republicans had not defeated a single Democratic incumbent [from 1988 to 1996], the open seats they took from the Democrats would have alone been enough to produce a GOP majority in the South’s 125 House seats” (2000, 18).

34 _{In the Deep South, as noted by McKee, there are more African American voters who identify with the} Democratic Party than white voters who identify with the Democratic Party (2002, 137).

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loss of a representative’s core constituency from his or her district.35The Republicans won 34 open seats (55 percent) in the elections between 1992 and 1998 (Knuckey 2001, 259). Knuckey found that it was the increase in the Republican vote in open seats that produced the GOP gains (2000, 187). Beachler also notes that open seats contributed to the Republican growth (1995, 360). And Rae, in his examination of the 1994 election in the South, notes that many of the open seats in the South were won by Republican candidates (2001, 137).

Southern States’ Lower Legislative Chambers and the Perverse Effects Thesis

The extent to which the perverse effects thesis applies to seats in the southern states’ lower legislative chambers has received far less attention than that received by the U.S. House delegations from southern states. Lublin and Voss (2000b) and Lublin (2004) have examined elections to lower chambers of southern states and found evidence for the perverse effects thesis. Examining all southern states’ lower legislative chambers from 1990 through 1998, they state that “reducing the share of blacks [in a] …district from 30 percent to 10 percent…drops the likelihood of a Democrat holding the seat by 52.2 percentage points…to only 39 percent” (2000b, 803).

Lublin and Voss (2000b) used a decomposition model like Grofman and Handley (1998). This model allowed them to decompose shifts in the number of Democrats across elections into three categories: a redistricting effect, realignment effect, and

interaction effect.36 They found that redistricting cost Democrats at least one seat in each

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Hill and Rae state, “since 1988, the Republicans have defeated 14 Democratic incumbents, while losing only 7 seats themselves. Further, they have wrested 22 of 57 Democratically held open seats into their camp, while losing only 4 of their own to the other party” (2000, 18).

36 _{Redistricting effect is the same as Grofman and Handley’s (1998) “composition effect” and the}

realignment effect is the same as Grofman and Handley’s “behavioral effect” (Lublin and Voss 2000b, 796- 797).

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state (2000b, 802). They also report that the independent effect of redistricting cost Democrats in South Carolina and Virginia control of their lower legislative chamber (ibid,802). South Carolina’s Democrats lost six seats in 1994 and 1996 (id, 802). Democrats lost eight seats in South Carolina and five in Virginia that were attributed to the interaction effect (id, 802). South Carolina Democrats won 59 percent (73 of 124) of the lower chamber seats in 1992, but by 1994, the percentage decreased to 52 (id, 802). By 1996, Democrats only held 48 percent of South Carolina’s lower legislative seats (id, 802). North Carolina’s Democrats lost 25 seats due to the realignment effect in 1994, but according to them, they “made up over one-half of those losses over the next two elections” (id, 802).

Using the decomposition model, Lublin, in his 2004 study, states that

redistricting accounts for a substantial number of lower chamber seats lost by Democrats in the South between 1990 and 1994 (2004, 109). The independent effect of redistricting accounted for 34 of 105 Democratic losses, or 32 percent (ibid, 109, 112).The

Democratic losses due to the interaction effect decreased the total number of Democratic lower chamber seats further to 45 or 43 percent (id, 112).37 Losses in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina cost Democrats about 7.6, 5.5, and 6.7 percentage points,

respectively, in seats (id, 112).38