On Political Representation by the Political Parties in the Texas Legislature

 In November, 2012, after the members of the 83^rd Texas legislature were elected, Professor Mark Jones authored a Baker Institute Blog post entitled: “Which Party best Mirrors Texas in Austin?” As Professor Jones noted:

The 95-member GOP caucus is almost exclusively Anglo, with 88 Anglos (93 percent), three Hispanics (3 percent), 3 African Americans (3 percent), and 1 Asian American (1 percent). On the other side of the aisle will be a much more diverse 55-member Democratic caucus, comprised of 30 Hispanics (55 percent), 15 African Americans (27 percent), eight Anglos (15 percent), and two Asian Americans (4 percent).

He then uses the Loosemore and Hanby Index (LHI), an index of disproportionality, to determine which political party in the legislature is more representative of Texas. He concludes that:

The composition of the Democratic delegation in the House comes closest to reflecting the entire Texas population, while the Republican delegation comes closest to reflecting Texas registered voters and actual voters.

This analysis of which political party is more representative of the population of Texas exhibits several major problems. First, political representation is a complex concept and includes several types or meanings.  Hannah Pitkin notes that the types of representation include formalistic representation, symbolic representation, descriptive representation, and substantive representation. Formalistic representation focuses on the institutional arrangements for selecting representatives (authorization) and for allowing the people being represented to punish or reward their representative for their actions in representing them (accountability). Symbolic representation concerns the meaning that the representative has for the people he or she represents. Descriptive representation has to do with the extent to which a representative resembles the people he or she represents in important characteristics. Substantive representation focuses on the activities of the representative, assessing the degree to which he or she takes positions that reflect the positions of the people he or she represents on public policy.

According to which meaning of representation, which political party—Democratic or Republican—better represents the people of Texas? Let’s focus on descriptive representation because that’s the meaning or type that Professor Jones assessed. Professor Jones only focused on one characteristic of the population: race or ethnicity.  Are there other descriptive characteristics that are important and should be included? I would argue that gender is also important, especially considering the recent public debates over women’s reproductive and work-related rights.

The Loosemore and Hanby Index (LHI) is usually employed to measure disproportionality in electoral systems, more specifically to measure the disproportion of seats won versus election votes in different electoral systems. So, I am not going to employ it. Instead, I will use percentages to compare the two political parties, comparing the percentage of each category (gender and different ethnicities or races) in the population of Texas to the percentages of each category in each party in the Texas House and Senate. Furthermore, I will also use a parity ratio to compare the ratio of the party’s membership to the percentage in the population (the ratio is explained in a paper prepared by Carol Hardy-Fanta et al. for presentation at the 2005 American Political Science Association’s national convention entitled “Race, Gender, and Descriptive Representation: An Exploratory View of Multicultural Elected Leadership in the United States” ). The data is from the National Council of State Legislatures’ Web site, which is here. This will allow a comparison with state legislatures in the United States.

In the table below are comparisons between the Republican Party’s and Democratic Party’s members in the Texas House and Senate and the percentage of each category (gender and ethnicity) in Texas in 2013, using projected population data from the Texas State Data Center at the University of Texas-San Antonio).

Category	Tx Pop Proj 2013	House Rep	House Dem	Senate Rep	Senate Dem
Male	49.7%	84.2%	70.9%	84.2%	72.7%
Female	50.3%	18.8%	29.1%	15.8%	27.3%
Anglo	43.9%	92.6%	14.5%	100.0%	27.3%
Hispanic	38.8%	3.2%	54.5%	0.0%	54.5%
African American	11.5%	3.2%	27.3%	0.0%	18.2%
Other	5.8%	1.1%	3.6%	0.0%	0.0%

	House Rep	House Dem	Sen Rep	Sen Dem
	Difference	Difference	Difference	Difference
Male	-34.5%	-21.2%	-34.5%	-23.0%
Female	31.5%	21.2%	34.5%	23.0%
Anglo	-48.7%	29.4%	-56.1%	16.6%
Hispanic	35.6%	-15.7%	38.8%	-15.7%
African American	8.3%	-15.8%	11.5%	-6.7%
Other	4.7%	2.2%	5.8%	5.8%

In the table above, the negative percentages indicate overrepresentation of the group in the Texas House or Senate, and positive percentages indicate underrepresentation of the group in the Texas House or Senate.

In the table below, the parity ratios for all state legislatures and for the Texas House and Senate are displayed:

	Anglo	African American	Hispanic	Male	Female
U.S. Population	64.7%	12.2%	16.0%	49.2%	50.8%
State Legislatures	86.0%	9.0%	3.0%	75.9%	24.1%
Parity Ratio	1.33	0.74	0.19	1.54	0.47

In the table below, the parity ratios for the Texas House and Senate are displayed:

	House	House	Senate	Senate
	Males/Rep	Males/Dem	Males/Rep	Males/Dem
Parity Ratio	1.69	1.43	1.69	1.46
	Females/Rep	Females/Dem	Females/Rep	Females/Dem
Parity Ratio	0.37	0.58	0.31	0.54
	Anglo/Rep	Anglo/Dem	Anglo/Rep	Anglo/Dem
Parity Ratio	2.11	0.33	2.28	0.62
	Hispanic/Rep	Hispanic/Dem	Hispanic/Rep	Hispanic/Dem
Parity Ratio	0.08	1.40	0.00	1.40
	Af Am/Rep	Af Am/Dem	Af Am/Rep	Af Am/Dem
Parity Ratio	0.28	2.37	0.00	1.58
	Other/Rep	Other/Dem	Other/Rep	Other/Dem
Parity Ratio	0.19	0.62	0.00	0.00

What do the results indicate about the descriptive representation by each party in the Texas House and Senate? First, to interpret the parity ratios, a ratio of zero indicates that there are no members of that category in the party’s legislative chamber (e.g., African American Republicans in the Senate). A ratio smaller than one indicates that the members of party in the legislative chamber constitute a smaller percentage than the percentage of the category in the Texas population (.i.e, the category is underrepresented). A ratio of one indicates that the members of that party in the legislative chamber are represented proportionately. A ratio larger than one indicates that the members of that party in the legislative chamber constitute a larger percentage than the members of the category in the population (i.e., the category is overrepresented).

The table below indicates which categories are over- and underrepresented in each party in each chamber:

	Overrepresented	Underrepresented
Republican House Members	Anglos, Males	Hispanics, Others, African Americans, Females
Democratic House Members	African Americans, Males, Hispanics	Anglos, Females, Others
Republican Senate Members	Anglos, Males	Others, African Americans, Hispanics, Females
Democratic Senate Members	African Americans, Males, Hispanics	Others, Females, Anglos

What can we conclude from the comparison of the two parties’ members in the Texas legislature? That is, which political party better represents the people of Texas descriptively? In both parties’ legislative contingents, males are overrepresented. However, the Republican Party’s members of both the chambers exceed the parity score for all state legislatures, but Democratic Party’s parity scores are lower than the parity score for all state legislatures. The situation is similar in terms of the parities’ parity scores for females. In the Republican Party’s legislative members, males are overrepresented (to a greater degree in the Senate), while males are underrepresented among the Democratic Party’s legislative members (to a greater degree in the Senate). Hispanics are overrepresented among the Democratic Party’s members in both chambers (and to the same degree) and are underrepresented among the Republican Party’s members in both chambers (to a greater degree in the Senate). Similarly, African Americans are underrepresented among the Republican Party’s members of both chambers and overrepresented among the Democratic Party’s members of both chambers. Others, primarily Asian Americans, are underrepresented in both parties’ contingents (to a greater degree in the Senate than in the House). In the House, others receive a better parity ratio from Democrats than from Republicans.

In conclusion, neither party is descriptively representative of the Texas population. However, the Texas Democratic Party’s members in the House and Senate are more like the diverse population of Texas than are the Republican Party’s members. And as ethnic minorities, especially Hispanics and Asians, become a larger percentage of the Texas population, the Republican Party needs to include more ethnic minorities among its legislative members or it will become even less representative of the Texas population.

In the next post, I’ll consider another form or type of representation: substantive representation.