No, Gerrymandering Is Not THE Cause for Non-Competitive Congressional Elections and Legislative Polarization

Description

Perhaps the most hotly-debated case the Supreme Court has taken up in the past year is Gill v. Whitford, which will consider the partisan gerrymandering of legislative districts and, some hope, end it once and for all. Some politicos and analysts insist that this kind of gerrymandering is responsible for — among other things — reducing the competitiveness of districts and increasing partisan polarization in Congress and the electorate.

Whatever the Court decides in the Gill case, those of us who are concerned about polarization in Congress are bound to be disappointed. Why? Because newly-examined data on county-level partisan voting through the 2016 election shows us that, as an explainer of polarization, partisanship, and a lack of healthy competition, gerrymandering falls well short. Instead, the larger problem is the so-called “Big Sort,” a process of partisan sorting, in which partisan voters increasingly are living closer together and forming like-minded communities rather than mingling with the other party.