Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Partisanship During a Period of Tribal Politics



Two papers on party affiliation caught my attention recently. They help explain two contradictory and puzzling results in contemporary politics—the increasing importance of partisanship in explaining political behavior, especially voting, on the one hand, and the increasing percentage of people who identify as independents, meaning no party affiliation, on the other hand.

The first paper, by Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov and entitled “Social Desirability Bias in Measures of Partisanship” explains the problem of social desirability bias as it pertains to the measurement of party affiliation in surveys:

In this manuscript we address this possibility of this effect in one of the most fundamental measures in American politics: the measure of partisanship. In particular, we argue that social desirability pressures may lead individuals to misrepresent their partisan affiliations, and instead report that they are independent.  Further, we suggest that this tendency to eschew partisanship is most likely to happen when individuals are reminded of elite partisan disagreement and can be further exacerbated by question-wording in measures of partisanship.

Or, they might not be misstating their party affiliation: They may be fed up with the extremes among party elites in their partisanship during this period of tribal politics. Why is it that millennials are less attracted to political parties? Is it because young people are not likely to have party attachments? Or is it that millennials are more likely to seek the middle ground, comfortable with a “live and let live” political preference that eschews extremes? That’s my take.

The second paper, by Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster entitled “All Politics is National: The Rise of Negative Partisanship and the Nationalization of U.S. House and Senate Elections in the 21st Century,” discusses the effects of increased partisan behavior of strong partisans, weak partisans, and partisan leaners, especially since 2008. They attribute this to negative partisanship, which is explained below:

Negative partisanship develops when the partisan identities of voters are strongly related to
other salient social and political characteristics.  When this happens, supporters of each party
perceive supporters of the opposing party as very different from themselves in terms of their
social characteristics and fundamental values.  As a result, voters tend to hold very negative opinions of the opposing party’s leaders and supporters, prefer not to associate with those who
support the opposing party and are less likely to consider voting for candidates from the
opposing party (Pew Research Center 2014; Bafumi and Shapiro 2009; Greenberg 2004;
Jacobson 2005; Kimball, Summary and Vorst 2015).  These attitudes can be found among all
types of party identifiers including independents who lean toward a party.

Both papers make important contributions to our understanding of party attachments in contemporary national and state politics. There is no doubt in my mind that the tribal nature of contemporary politics is producing both results: Partisanship is less socially desirable to a large percentage of the population, and, at the same time, political activity is increasingly viewed through the lens of partisanship with negative views of one party by the individual becoming more influential in the vote choice.

For many people, it’s difficult to become involved in elections because of the conflict among these emotions. Consequently, voter turnout decreases, as was witnessed in the 2014 elections in Texas. 

Friday, December 11, 2015

What Happens to Austin's City Council Districts If Evenwel Wins?



I have previously posted on the issue involved in Evenwel v. Abbott. But what if the US Supreme Court decides that voting age population (VAP) must be used in redistricting? What will be the effect on Austin’s city council districts.

When the districts were created in 2013, total population was used to determine whether the districts were approximately equal in population. The results are shown below for each of the ten city council districts.

District
Population
Difference
Deviation
1
76,711
-3,072
-3.85%
2
79,587
-196
-0.25%
3
79,536
-247
-0.31%
4
79,360
-423
-0.53%
5
81,111
1,328
1.66%
6
82,747
2,964
3.72%
7
80,924
1,141
1.43%
8
77,399
-2,384
-2.99%
9
79,299
-484
-0.61%
10
81,152
1,369
1.72%
Total
797,826

7.57%

The ideal district population was 79,783; the difference from the ideal for each district is shown in the middle column, and the deviation from the ideal for each district is shown in the right column. The deviation between the smallest and largest district was 7.57 percent, well within the requirement that the deviation be less than ten percent.

If voting age population is used, these are the results:
District
VAP
Difference
Deviation
1
56,198
-5,872
-9.46%
2
54,835
-7,236
-11.66%
3
62,237
166
0.27%
4
56,552
-5,519
-8.89%
5
65,611
3,540
5.70%
6
63,136
1,065
1.72%
7
66,244
4,173
6.72%
8
57,647
-4,424
-7.13%
9
73,098
11,027
17.76%
10
65,149
3,078
4.96%
Total
620,707

29.42%

The ideal district population is now 62, 071. The difference from the ideal is shown in the middle column, and the difference from the ideal for each district is shown in the right column. The difference between the smallest and largest district is 18,263, which represents a deviation of 29.42 percent. This deviation is nearly three times the allowable deviation.

In addition, the smallest district in voting age population is also the district with the largest Hispanic voting age population (62.8 percent). Consequently, adding voting age adults would probably diminish the ability of Hispanics to elect a representative of their ethnicity in the district. The second smallest district in voting age population, District 4, is also heavily Hispanic (59.2 percent of the voting age population).

On the other hand, the largest district is District 9, which is heavily Anglo. Voting age adults would need to be distributed to districts with fewer adult voter age residents, reducing the percentage of Hispanic voting age population in those districts.