Date of Award
5-1-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Political Science
First Advisor
Jonathan C. Winburn
Second Advisor
Gregory J. Love
Third Advisor
Jonathan D. Klingler
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Which party benefits the most from partisan gerrymandering? Extant literature attempting to measure this phenomenon is largely atheoretical, primarily focused on designing tools that could be used in court cases. I argue that measuring the partisan consequences of gerrymandering should require deeper conceptualization of the notion of fairness. I make the normative claim that proportionality, which I define as the alignment between a party’s share of the vote and its share of congressional districts in a given state, should be used as a standard of fairness. Using the redist R package, I measured the partisan consequences of gerrymandering by generating samples of 5,000 plans per state apportioned with more than one congressional district after the 2020 census. A first simulation uses a proportionality constraint to generate plans where the mean Democratic seat share is close to the statewide Democratic vote share, while a second simulation uses a neutral baseline similar to most of the existing literature. After comparing the mean number of Democratic seats under the plans enacted in 2022 to the mean number of Democratic seats under both simulations, I found that the proportional simulation shows a 12-seat Republican advantage under the plan enacted in 2022 while the neutral simulation finds a marginal 3-seat advantage in favor of Democrats. The directional difference between the simulations can be explained by a geography favorable to the Democratic Party. The results call for a reassessment of the electoral consequences of partisan gerrymandering in congressional elections. They show that partisan gerrymandering is more widespread than previous studies find and that the plans used in the 2022 elections are strongly biased in favor of Republicans, to an extent that could determine which party controls the House of Representatives through the 2030 Census.
Recommended Citation
Zaour, Guélan Kossi, "On the Importance of Proportionality in Congressional Redistricting" (2026). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8885.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/8885