On Political Representation by the Political Parties in the Texas Legislature


 In November, 2012, after the members of the 83rd 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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whither the Republican Party?

Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes write in The Atlantic magazine: So we arrive at a syllogism: (1) The GOP has become the party of Trumpism. (2) Trumpism is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. (3) The Republican Party is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law. A syllogism is, according to dictionary.com: 1. Logic. an argument the conclusion of which is supported by two premises, of which one (major premise) contains the term (major term) that is the predicate of the conclusion, and the other (minor premise) contains the term (minor term) that is the subject of the conclusion; common to both premises is a term (middle term) that is excluded from the conclusion. A typical form is “All A is C; all B is A; therefore, all B is C.”. 2. deductive reasoning. 3. an extremely subtle, sophisticated, or deceptive argument. Which definition applies here?   First, has the GOP become the party of Trump? Has he taken control of the party appa...
Read more

Choices for the Final Four (ICRC Commissions, that is)

Image
With four commission positions remaining to be filled, whom should the commissioners select? The commissioners should choose an African American male from TCCC precinct 1. Since the greatest concentrations of African Americans are located in TCCC precinct 1 (see this map ), choosing an African American from this geographic area would provide the greatest voice to the area with the highest concentration of African Americans in the city and the area that would most likely be included in a council district that would possess a plurality of African Americans. The choice should Nathaniel Bradford because of his connections to the community. An Anglo male and an Anglo female should be chosen from TCCC precinct 2. One, if not both, should be chosen from those voter precincts slightly east and west of MOPAC that featured high voter turnout in the 2012 mayoral election (see this map ). The male and female from those voting precincts who the ARP considered the most qualified are He...
Read more

In Defense of a Theory

I’m a big fan of political scientist Seth Masket, but what he wrote in defense of the theory of presidential nominations expounded in The Party Decides intrigues me. First, he notes that his initial defense caused some blowback: Last week at Mischiefs of Faction , I wrote about the book The Party Decides and the extent to which the 2016 is causing trouble for it. I argued that the Republican race isn't providing a very clean test of the theory, while the Democratic race is. This invited substantial pushback from Jonathan Chait , Justin Grimmer , and others, suggesting that I was either protecting the theory from actual testing, or that the theory itself was untestable. So I'd like to clarify a bit and suggest just what evidence we've gathered this year. Then, he goes on to explain more fully: Now, in my recent post, I focused on what I see as the central claim of the book: The party generally gets what it wants. That is, when party elites have selected a...
Read more