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Democratic Representation and Partisan Bias in Congressional Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Gary King  and
Robert X Browning
Gary King
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Robert X Browning
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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Abstract

The translation of citizen votes into legislative seats is of central importance in democratic electoral systems. It has been a longstanding concern among scholars in political science and in numerous other disciplines. Throughout this literature, two fundamental tenets of democratic theory, partisan bias and democratic representation, have often been confused. We develop a general statistical model of the relationship between votes and seats and separate these two important concepts theoretically and empirically. In so doing, we also solve several methodological problems with the study of seats, votes, and the cube law. An application to U.S. congressional districts provides estimates of bias and representation for each state and demonstrates the model's utility. Results of this application show distinct types of representation coexisting in U. S. states. Although most states have small partisan biases, there are some with a substantial degree of bias.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 81 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 1251 - 1273
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1987

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