Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

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 esch...

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 ...