A Social Science Approach to Race, Redistricting, and Representation

In his critique of our earlier paper on majority-minority voting districts, David Lublin suggests that our conclusions with respect to the election of minorities to office are flawed, and that we incorrectly estimate optimal districting strategies for the substantive representation of minority interests in Congress. Subjecting these claims to direct empirical examination, we find that our previous results are unaltered by the inclusion of Latino voters in our estimates of equal opportunity, and that incumbency advantage cannot fully explain the recent victories of minority candidates in the South. Neither do the critiques of our results regarding substantive representation stand up to systematic analysis: Evidence at both the state level and over time confirm our conclusion that districts on the order of 45% black voting age population maximize the expected number of votes for minority-supported legislation.