the voting rights act, legislative elections, and southern partisan change: conversion or...

The Voting Rights Act, LegislativeElections, and Southern PartisanChange: Conversion or Competition∗

Richard Forgette, University of Mississippi

Andrew Garner, University of Wyoming

John Winkle, University of Mississippi

Objective. Has the shift from a one-party Democratic South to an (increasingly)Republican South been marked by partisan conversion or partisan competition oflegislative district seats? That is, as Democratic incumbents retired, did the districtsswitch from uncontested Democratic incumbents to uncontested Republican seats(conversion), or did the two parties contest the district after the period of Democraticretirement (competition)? Method. We analyze all state legislative elections since1967 to explain southern partisan change. We report rates of uncontested legislativeelections, and we model candidate entry in southern and nonsouthern legislativeelections. Results. Our findings support the conversion hypothesis implying thatsouthern legislative districts are increasingly polarized along partisan and racial lines.Conclusions. Despite growing partisan parity within the southern electorate, southernstate legislatures are increasingly composed of uncontested white Republicans anduncontested black Democrats. We discuss the implications of party-based, racialpolarization for the ongoing constitutional debate regarding the Voting Rights Act’sSection 5.

Two of the most transforming changes in American politics during thepast half-century have been the Voting Rights Act and southern Republicanrealignment. The Voting Rights Act has had a demonstrable effect on politicalrights and electoral influence of minorities since 1965.1 Additionally, socialscientists have presented strong evidence of the contributing role of race insouthern Republican realignment (Stanley, 1987; Black and Black, 2002). Therelationship between these two changes, though, is not fully recognized. Thisarticle examines state legislative elections to inform the current constitutionaldebate about the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 and to inform our understand-ing of southern partisan change. We argue that extensions of the Voting RightsAct have contributed to persisting rates of uncontested legislative elections.

∗Direct correspondence to Richard Forgette, Department of Political Science, University ofMississippi, 134 Deupree Hall, University, MS 38677 〈[email protected]〉.

1See Grofman and Davidson (1992) and Bullock and Gaddie (2009).

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 93, Number 2, June 2012C© 2012 by the Southwestern Social Science AssociationDOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00855.x

292 Social Science Quarterly

Particularly, we question whether the shift in state legislative partisan balancefrom a one-party Democratic South to an increasingly Republican South hasbeen marked by electoral competition or conversion of state legislative seats.As Democratic incumbents retired, did the districts switch from uncontestedDemocratic incumbents to uncontested Republican seats (conversion), or didthe two parties contest the district for some period of time (competition)? Weassess patterns of legislative candidate entry in the South as Republicans beganto supplant Democratic dominance.

These questions of legislative electoral contestedness relate to both demo-cratic theory and contemporary political practice. For some versions of demo-cratic theory, democratic elections presume at least two contending choices(Dahl, 1956; Downs, 1957). One cannot occur without the other. Legislativescholars have demonstrated that candidate entry, though, is endogenous topolitical and economic contexts unique to any election season (Jacobson andKernell, 1981; Jacobson, 2009). While contending electoral choices—partiesor candidates—may be an ideal, they are not a practical reality assumingcostly candidate entry. Uncontested elections may be a function merely ofa quiescent electorate satisfied with incumbent performance. Alternatively,chronically uncontested elections may be symptomatic of a broader structuralproblem with the electoral process. In this article, we assess whether chal-lenger entry in southern state legislative elections is structurally inhibited bythe growing importance of racial and political redistricting.

Our research questions also are relevant to contemporary politics, partic-ularly partisan change in the South. Lublin (2004) argues that voting rights(democratization) and strategic elites have resulted in varying levels and rates ofsouthern partisan change. He finds that strategic candidate entry is particularlyimportant in understanding split-level partisan change within southern states.There is significant variation in the rate of two-party electoral contestednessbetween national and subnational elections. Southern state legislative electionshave had persisting high rates of uncontested races despite the growing con-testedness in congressional races (Squire, 2000). More generally, Moncrief,Squire, and Jewell (2001) demonstrate that incumbents for local and statelegislative office run unopposed at a significantly higher rate than incumbentsfor national- or state-wide office.

The split-level pattern of candidate recruitment within the South haschanged over time. Figure 1 shows the change in the percent of uncon-tested elections by year for both southern and nonsouthern states, respec-tively. While uncontestedness has increased in the non-South, especially sincethe early 1990s, the uncontested rates are generally higher in the South thanelsewhere. At the extremes, the highest rates of uncontestedness are foundin Mississippi and South Carolina, where the percent of uncontested elec-tions exceeds 65 percent. Why does this high rate of uncontestedness persistdespite the apparent partisan change toward two-party competition in theSouth?

Conversion or Competition 293

FIGURE 1

Uncontested Rates Among Southern and Nonsouthern States, 1968–2008

We find that redistricting structures that are legal outgrowths of the VotingRights Act extensions of 1982 have contributed to a persistence of electoraluncontestedness in the American South. The next section gives some legalcontext for understanding southern partisan change. We also present an ex-planation for southern electoral uncontestedness based on the redistrictingstructures that have evolved from the Voting Rights Act. We then present ourresults assessing the conversion versus competition thesis. We conclude with adiscussion of the implications for southern state politics as well as the currentround of legislative redistricting.

The Unprincipled South: Electoral Competitiveness and Electoral Lawin Southern States

State legislative elections are structured both by federal and state electionlaws. Standards prescribed by Congress and the federal courts emphasizeequality and fairness in voting policies and procedures. The federal litany isfamiliar: one person, one vote; avoidance of retrogression of minority votingrights in covered jurisdictions under the Voting Rights Act; avoidance ofvote dilution by creation of majority-minority districts; prohibition on racialgerrymandering; and contiguity of voting districts. The standards associatedwith the protection of minority rights resonate especially in any discussion ofsouthern elections and redistricting.

State redistricting must operate within legal constraints set by the VotingRights Act of 1965 and interpreted by the federal courts. No doubt this


Act (renewed in 2006 for another 25 years2), along with the minority voiceit empowered, has served to transform electoral politics in the nation andespecially in the South (Bullock and Gaddie, 2009; Epstein et al., 2006;Nadeau et al., 2004; Stanley, 1987). The Act encourages states, moreover, tocreate majority-minority legislative districts that by design ensure descriptiverepresentation (Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 1986). The Supreme Courtin Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003) has recognized, though, that lawfulredistricting may take into account the formation of biracial coalitions as away to create voting “districts of influence” that fulfill the expectations of theAct and Thornburg.

The two most heavily litigated and highly complex sections of the VotingRights Act (Katz, 2007) inform our discussion. Section 2, which is permanentand applies nationwide, protects racial minorities against denial, abridgment,and dilution of the right to vote. The Act prohibits voting changes inwhich members of a racial minority would have “less opportunity thanother members of the electorate to participate in the political process and toelect representatives of their choice” (42 U.S.C. § 1973 (b)). Vote dilution,stemming from either benign or invidious redistricting efforts, has becomea focal point of recent litigation involving majority-minority districts, mostof which has resulted in favorable rulings for racial minorities. The SupremeCourt, however, set limits on Section 2 coverage in 2009. It ruled, in a5–4 decision in Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U.S. (2009) that the Act didnot apply to a so-called crossover district, one in which a racial minorityin a North Carolina county did not comprise a numerical majority (only39 percent) and could only “influence” rather than determine an electoraloutcome if voters from other racial groups supported its candidate.

While there are similarities, even overlap, between Sections 2 and 5 in theVoting Rights Act, the most visible and controversial difference lies in thepreclearance requirement of the latter. Jurisdictions covered by Section 5 mustfirst seek federal approval before implementing any proposed changes in votingpolicies or procedures. Except for Arkansas and Tennessee, all southern statesnow come under Section 5 coverage in toto or in part. The congressional aimbehind this protocol is to prevent retrogressive intent or effect (see Persily,2005 as well as the ruling in Georgia v. Ashcroft). Said differently, legislatorsin covered jurisdictions must be careful to safeguard minority rights. Forexample, they may neither “pack” (concentrate) or “crack” (disperse) minoritypopulations. Ever since the Department of Justice has included Section 2 inits preclearance review under Section 5, the focus goes beyond the issue ofretrogression. Lawmakers in affected jurisdictions are now under an affirmativeduty to expand opportunities for minorities as well.

2The Senate passed the reauthorization by a vote of 98–0, and the House, 390–33. PresidentGeorge W. Bush signed the legislation to extend the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years.Congress had previously renewed the Act three times, in 1970, 1975, and 1982.


Litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 challenged the con-stitutionality of the recent reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act and itsavailable federal remedies, including the extension of Section 5 protections.The case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder(NAMUDNO, for convenience), 557 U.S. (2009) raised two importantquestions: (1) whether the 2006 reauthorization was a valid exercise of theremedial power of Congress under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment; and,(2) whether a nonpolitical subdivision (such as a utility district) of a stateunder §4 (a) of the Voting Rights Act may “bail out” of the coverage for-mula if it demonstrates at least a 10-year history of compliance. The Courtavoided the more consequential constitutional question (and its complex di-mensions of the congruence and proportionality of the remedy to the harm).Instead, it ruled that the utility district and its five-member election boardqualified for bailout. The majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts andthe partial dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, however, raise the questionwhether preclearance, the foundation of Section 5 remedies, will survive newlegal challenges. That provision has become more constitutionally vulnerable(Bullock and Gaddie, 2009).

It is evident that the dynamic of changing meanings and applications ofthe Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act will influence state legislativeredistricting decisions. Responsible lawmakers must be ever vigilant and re-sponsive to federal court rulings. And that is especially so in southern statesgiven increasing populations of African American and Hispanics.

Southern states have fewer formally declared redistricting principles in theirelection laws and are more likely to use the legislative process for redistrictingcompared to nonsouthern states (author(s) citation). States may supplementfederal law with their own principles to guide or inhibit lawmakers. Traditionalredistricting principles at the state level include those based on considerationsof form, population, and politics. Form-based principles, such as compact-ness and contiguity, relate to the physical appearance of legislative districts.Population-based principles take into account jurisdictional boundaries andpatterns of demography. Simply put, states may opt to preserve the integrity ofpolitical subdivisions, preserve so-called communities of interest, and maintaindistrict cores. Because the foregoing principles are presumably neutral, somestates introduce the political notion of incumbency protection as a principle.

Among southern states, only South Carolina formally claims all these spe-cific principles for state legislative redistricting (author(s) citation). Otherstates claim to follow as few criteria as one (Florida), two (Arkansas, NorthCarolina, Tennessee, Texas), or three (Mississippi). Even the formal presenceof such principles, however, does not eliminate the discretion of lawmakers.There are, for example, multiple methods to calculate compactness. The no-tion of a presumptive community of interest begs definition of social andeconomic similarities. Recent research shows, moreover, the inherent incom-patibility between and among these formal principles (Cain, MacDonald, and


McDonald, 2005; Lublin and McDonald, 2006). Political tradeoffs becomean inevitable part of legislative decision making.

Scattered states nationwide have moved toward less political and decidedlymore neutral decisional frameworks for legislative redistricting. Observerssuggest these actions stem from prevailing public perceptions that state partyleaders engage in veiled partisan power plays to enhance legislative seat advan-tages (Hirsch and Mann, 2005). Arizona, Iowa, Washington, and Iowa, forexample, have moved toward nonpartisan redistricting processes. The failed2005 ballot initiatives in California and Ohio, moreover, would have removedthe legislature from the redistricting process, and created instead special com-missions, composed of former judges in California and citizens in Ohio, forthat task. Of note, southern states have neither adopted nor even seriouslyconsidered such neutral options.

Compared to congressional districts, state legislative districts are less pop-ulous and do not have to meet strict standards of population equality. As aresult, state legislative districts afford greater opportunity for partisan manip-ulation. The relevant standards derive from federal decisional law and are wellsettled. More than 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Wesberry v.Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964) that one person’s vote should be worth as much asanother’s “as nearly as is practicable,” a standard extended to the state legisla-tive districts in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964). Despite the politicalchallenge facing lawmakers to achieve mathematical equality, the Court hasconsistently upheld a higher standard for congressional districts. Recall thatthe U.S. Supreme Court rejected a New Jersey proposal that permitted lessthan 1 percent variance from absolute equality in population between mostand least populous districts (Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, 394 U.S. 526, 1969). Incontrast, the legal standard for state houses is more permissive. In two 1973cases, which remain good law today, the Court retreated from the “one person,one vote” standard. A variation of 9.9 percent in the Texas House failed, inthe Court’s view, even to reach a threshold requirement of invidious discrim-ination under the equal protection clause (White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755).The Court, moreover, permitted a variation of 16.4 percent in the Virginialower chamber because of the justifiable need to preserve the integrity of polit-ical subdivisions. These rulings remain unchanged today, meaning that stateshave considerable flexibility, ranging from no justification for populations upto about 10 percent and requiring modest proof for those up to 16.4 percent(Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S. 315).

From this evolving legal and political context for redistricting, what impact,if any, has legislative redistricting had on southern partisan change over thepast 40 years? Certainly, the rate and pattern of partisan change have notbeen uniform among southern states in the latter half of the 20th century.Two watershed years, 1964 and 1984, mark the partisan transformation of themodern South. The former produced the momentous Civil Rights Act that,in turn, transferred transient electoral support from disgruntled Democratsto Republican standard-bearer Barry Goldwater. Twenty years later, a more


permanent realignment took place as a majority of southern voters identifiedthemselves as Republicans and secured Ronald Reagan’s reelection. Presiden-tial realignments, however, failed to produce simultaneous partisan changesin Congress or state legislatures. In large measure because of fewer AfricanAmericans (Black and Black, 2002), the rim or peripheral South (includ-ing the states of Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, andVirginia) witnessed partisan changeover in congressional seats more quicklythan did the deep South (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and SouthCarolina).

The trickle-down partisan effect on state legislatures throughout the regionproceeded even more slowly. In the modern South, state legislative partisanseat shares have lagged electoral partisan changes and national election parti-san outcomes. By 1984, for example, Republicans controlled only 20 percentof seats in southern lower chambers and even less in state Senates (Bullock andRozell, 2003). Ten years later, the Republican Party, as part of the successful“Contract for America” campaign, captured Senate chambers in Tennesseeand Florida as well as house chambers in the two Carolinas. Republican con-trol, however, was short lived. The rise of independent voters, among otherforces, soon reseated Democratic majorities in Tennessee and North Car-olina. The split-level partisan change in the South between state legislativeseats on the one hand and electoral and national outcomes on the other isperplexing. How do we explain increasing rates of state legislative uncontest-edness despite rising levels of partisan change and competition within theelectorate?

Figure 2 shows the pattern of sophomore contestedness in southern andnonsouthern state legislative races over time. “Sophomore” elections are onesin which the legislative seat is occupied by an incumbent seeking reelection forthe first time. Jacobson and Kernell (1981) demonstrate that challengers arestrategic in entering congressional electoral races. All else equal, sophomoreincumbents attract a greater share of quality challengers since these first-timeincumbents tend to have lower name recognition (compared to other incum-bents) and have not yet hardened their reelection constituency. We wouldexpect decreasing rates of sophomore uncontestedness as state electorates ap-proach partisan parity.

Figure 2, though, does not indicate such a pattern. The rate of sophomoreuncontestedness has not decreased in the South. Instead, the number ofunopposed Republican sophomores has increased considerably since the 1980sin the South, despite the growing partisan parity in seat share. Moreover,while Democratic uncontested rates have varied over the years, there is nolong-term downward trend. The gap between Democratic and Republicansophomores in uncontested rates that existed during the 1970s and much ofthe 1980s has also narrowed to the point that the uncontested rates for bothparties are roughly equal. Again, these trends exist despite the growing partisanparity in seat share. Figure 3 shows the decline in the percent of Democratic


FIGURE 2

Uncontested Rates for Sophomore Incumbents by Region and Party, 1968–2008

FIGURE 3

Percent Democratic Victories by Region, 1968–2008


candidates winning election each year; this trend is most pronounced in theSouth.

In summary, the rate of sophomore uncontestedness has not decreased insouthern state legislatures. We argue that this is an understandable empiricalpattern in light of the region’s redistricting structures. The constraints of theVoting Rights Act and the absence of southern state redistricting principlesand processes have worked together to diminish the possibility of electoralcontestedness despite partisan changeover. These twin forces have perpetuateda legacy of electoral inertia in the South. The greater number and smallerpopulation of state legislative districts (compared to congressional districts)allow mapmakers greater capacity to manipulate district lines for political ends.Southern state lawmakers will continue to choose between secondary andcompeting redistricting principles to guide mapmaking, and that mapmakingmay create safe but severely imbalanced partisan districts for Democrats andRepublicans alike. These choices underscore the inescapable political nature ofredistricting in the South. In the next section, we discuss data, methods, andresults assessing our redistricting explanation for southern legislative partisanchange.

Data and Methods

The data are drawn from the 1967 to 2003 State Legislative Election Returnsdata set collected by Carsey et al. We have updated this data file to includeall legislative elections to 2008. The unit of analysis for our study is thestate legislative House or Senate district. There are a total of 107,417 generalelection, single-member districts for this time period where the uncontestedstatus of the current election and the open-seat status of the previous electioncould be determined. Most of the states hold state legislative elections everytwo years coinciding with presidential and congressional midterm elections,although a handful of states elect their legislators during off years or holdelections every four years. States holding off-year elections include Louisiana,Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia.

The dependent variable is coded 1 if only one of the two major partiesfielded candidates in the district and 0 if the election was contested by bothmajor parties. Our primary hypothesis is that sophomore incumbents willbe more likely to draw challengers than veteran incumbents, but that thisrelationship will vary by region. Specifically, we expect that southern sopho-more incumbents will not be challenged to the same extent as sophomoresin other regions of the country. It is also possible that this relationship willdiffer according to the candidate’s party affiliation, especially in the South.The model includes a pair of dummy variables indicating whether the districtwas contested by a Republican incumbent or a Democratic incumbent, re-spectively. Open-seat contests are therefore left as the baseline category and,consequently, the incumbency dummies are expected to be positive, indicating


that elections with an incumbent present are more likely to be uncontestedthan are open-seat contests.

The model also includes a pair of dummy variables indicating whether thedistrict is contested by a Republican sophomore or a Democratic sophomore,respectively.3 We expect that sophomore incumbents will be more likely todraw a challenger (e.g., less likely to run uncontested), but that this relationshipwill not be as strong in the South as in other regions of the country. 4 Separatemodels are estimated for the South and non-South, allowing comparison ofcontestation rates for sophomores and veteran incumbents across region.

We also control for other factors that could influence the probability thatthe race will be uncontested. First, we expect that Senate seats will be moreattractive to candidates, resulting in more competitive elections than those forlower houses. Thus, we include a dummy variable coded 1 for Senate electionsand 0 for House with the expectation that the coefficient will be negative,indicating that Senate elections are less likely to be uncontested. Second, wecontrol for whether the election takes place during a presidential election.We also control for cross-state differences in redistricting practices, whichare likely to create different patterns of contestation. Some states prohibitmapmakers from knowing the incumbent’s place of residence and otherwiserestrict the ability of redistricting to protect incumbent legislators. Otherstates actually require incumbency protection, and still other states are silenton the practice. We include a variable coded 1 if states prohibit incumbencyprotection, −1 if they require it, and 0 if there is no explicit guidance givenby the state.5 The expectation is that prohibiting incumbency protectionwill lower uncontested rates while explicitly requiring that incumbents beprotected during redistricting will increase the likelihood that the race will beuncontested. We also include a dummy variable coded 1 if the legislature isresponsible for drawing redistricting maps and 0 if an independent commissionor some other outside body draws the maps. Dummy variables for each

3These sophomore dummies can also be viewed as interaction terms between the incum-bency variables and another dummy variable indicating whether this is the first time theincumbent ran for reelection. As with other interaction terms, the coefficients for these sopho-more dummies indicate how much higher or lower the probability of running uncontested isfor first-term incumbents than for all other incumbents. Thus, with the incumbency variablesincluded in the model, the sophomore coefficients are expected to be negative, indicating thatsophomores are more likely to draw a challenger than other incumbents.

4The inclusion of separate party-specific dummies allows the effects of incumbency andsophomore effects to vary by party across regions and time. For instance, we find below thatRepublican sophomores were more likely to draw challengers prior to 1990 than afterwards.These results could be an artifact of different contestation rates by party in the South versusthe non-South and including the separate dummy variables for the two parties allows us tocontrol for this possibility.

5Data for the districting principles and processes used for redistricting were obtainedfrom the Center for Voting and Democracy: 〈http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting/reports/remanual/frames.htm〉. State legislative redistricting principles were cross-checked from Table5 of the National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL) publication Redistricting Law 2000(NCSL Reapportionment Task Force, 1999).


election year are included to control for cross-election changes in uncontestedrates.

Finally, we also control legislative professionalism, which we expect to de-crease the electoral competitiveness of a district. Professionalism is a con-cept with a rather complex meaning, containing both an institutional andindividual or member-specific element.6 Berry, Berkman, and Schneiderman(2000) write that “professionalization changes both the incentives and capabil-ities of legislators because it gives them resources [such as money, perquisites,staff, and information] that make a long career in the legislature attractive”(2000: 860). Squire (1997) and Berry, Berkman, and Schneiderman (2000)note that professionalism provides resources to insulate members from short-term political forces, thus creating boundaries that lead to institutionalization.Professionalism also refers to the attractiveness of legislative office. Higher payand better resources should encourage stronger challengers in states with moreprofessionalized legislatures, which should reduce the overall competitivenessof elections in these states. Several studies have used a professionalism indexconsisting of legislative expenses, session length, annual salary, and total com-pensation to the legislators (Berry, Berkman, and Schneiderman 2000; Carey,Niemi, and Powell, 2000). However, as Carey, Niemi, and Powell (2000) note,these indexes are highly correlated with legislative salary (r = 0.95). While thevarious indexes are theoretically stronger, we measure professionalism accord-ing to legislative compensation (in thousands) for practical purposes.

The results for our model of state legislative contestation are presented inTable 1. The first two columns of the table restrict the model to election yearsprior to the 1982 redistricting cycle, the second two columns examine resultsfor elections during the 1992 redistricting era, and the final two columns covercontestation in the South and non-South for election years during the 2002redistricting era. Many of the important judicial cases regarding redistricting(e.g. Thornburg v. Gingles) were decided during the mid-1980s, before the1990 census and redistricting cycle, and thus we examine contestation ratesfor the two time periods. Also, the year dummies included in both models areomitted from Table 1.

As expected, the coefficients for the Republican and Democratic incumbentdummies are positive and statistically significant across all six models. Priorto 1990, having a veteran incumbent of either party in the race increased theprobability of an uncontested election by as much as 23 percent for Democratsin the South and 21 percent for Democrats in the non-South. It is also no-table that, during this period, Republican incumbents were challenged about21 percent more often than were Democratic incumbents in the South and11.5 percent more than were Democratic incumbents in the non-South. In-terestingly, the impact of incumbency on contestation rates grew following

6Rosenthal (1996) argues against the inclusion of member compensation precisely for thisreason. The concept, Rosenthal argues, becomes intertwined with careerism and other aspectsunrelated to the institution itself.


TABLE 1

Logit Regression Model of Uncontested Elections, by Redistricting Period

Uncontested Seat Uncontested Seat Uncontested Seat(Pre-1990s) (1990s) (2000s)

Independent Variables South Non-South South Non-South South Non-South

Republican incumbent 0.223∗∗ 0.498∗∗∗ 1.131∗∗∗ 1.033∗∗∗ 0.753∗∗∗ 0.727∗∗∗(0.084) (0.042) (0.088) (0.060) (0.074) (0.044)

Democratic incumbent 1.272∗∗∗ 1.033∗∗∗ 0.852∗∗∗ 1.052∗∗∗ 0.818∗∗∗ 0.988∗∗∗(0.059) (0.037) (0.072) (0.059) (0.073) (0.043)

Republican sophomore −0.696∗∗∗ −0.455∗∗∗ −0.650∗∗∗ −0.496∗∗∗ −0.313∗∗ −0.653∗∗∗(0.123) (0.051) (0.109) (0.070) (0.109) (0.064)

Democratic sophomore −0.478∗∗∗ −0.489∗∗∗ −0.506∗∗∗ −0.589∗∗∗ −0.477∗∗∗ −0.687∗∗∗(0.068) (0.040) (0.085) (0.067) (0.109) (0.061)

Senate −0.058 −0.175∗∗∗ −0.332∗∗∗ −0.122∗∗ −0.401∗∗∗ −0.239∗∗∗(0.055) (0.030) (0.066) (0.047) (0.066) (0.037)

Presidential election 0.264 0.723 −0.840∗∗∗ −0.499∗∗∗ −0.117 0.060(0.230) (0.484) (0.126) (0.054) (0.081) (0.046)

Professionalism −0.044∗∗∗ −0.010∗∗∗ −0.022∗∗∗ −0.019∗∗∗ −5.951 −2.394∗∗(0.004) (0.032) (0.005) (0.001) (5.425) (1.078)

Prohibit incumbency 0.359∗∗∗ 0.328∗∗∗ 0.081 0.074 0.390∗∗∗ 0.239∗∗∗protection (0.049) (0.315) (0.059) (0.048) (0.060) (0.037)

Legislature redistricts 1.538∗∗∗ −0.468∗∗∗ 0.595∗∗∗ −0.221∗∗∗ 0.235∗∗ −0.379∗∗∗(0.129) (0.031) (0.113) (0.050) (0.110) (0.038)

Constant 0.124 −1.591∗∗∗ 0.652∗∗∗ −0.707∗∗∗ 0.099 −0.523∗∗∗(0.234) (0.485) (0.114) (0.067) (0.107) (0.054)

Observations 10,237 37,081 6,063 13,717 6,289 18,668Log-likelihood −5,860.43 −17,295.95 −3,954.59 −7,702.61 −4,018.53 −12,062.03p > χ2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

NOTE: Entries are unstandardized logistic regression coefficients; year dummies excluded from table; standarderrors in parentheses.∗∗∗p < 0.01; ∗∗p < 0.05; ∗p< 0.1.

the 1990 round of redistricting, where incumbent races were approximately20–25 percent more likely to be contested in the South and about 20 per-cent more likely to be uncontested elsewhere than were open-seat contests.In addition to veteran incumbents, all of the coefficients for the sophomorevariables are statistically significant and negative, indicating that sophomoresgenerally have lower uncontested rates than veteran incumbents. Put differ-ently, sophomores tend to draw challengers more often than incumbent statelegislators who have been in office for more than one term.

For the most part, the other control variables performed as expected. Thecoefficients for Senate elections were statistically significant for five of the sixmodels and all had the correct sign. Legislative professionalism also gener-ally had a significant negative effect on uncontested elections. While moreprofessionalized legislatures can provide institutional resources to protect in-cumbents, these results demonstrate that professionalism makes seats moreattractive to challengers and therefore increases the likelihood that electionswill be contested by both major parties. The coefficients for incumbencyprotection were also generally positive, although the coefficient was not sig-nificant for the 1990 model. Formal laws prohibiting incumbency protectionhad the strongest effect in the South, where states prohibiting incumbencyprotection had uncontested rates about 14 percent lower than those requiring


that incumbents be protected (28.3 percent difference before 1990 and 10.4percent after). In contrast, laws prohibiting incumbency protection reduceduncontested rates by only 3.2 percent in the non-South (5.3 percent before1990 compared with 1 percent after).

The two remaining control variables, on the other hand, had an inconsistenteffect on legislative contestation. States holding elections during presidentialelection years had lower uncontested rates during the 1990 cycle, but thecoefficients were statistically insignificant in other cycles. Furthermore, thevariable for states in which legislatures redraw district boundaries had the ex-pected positive effect (higher rates of uncontested elections) only for southernstates.

Most importantly, we find support for our argument that sophomore con-testation rates differ across regions, although the effect is further conditionedby party and majority-minority status. Table 2 lists the predicted probabil-ities associated with veteran and sophomore incumbents, as compared toopen-seat contests, across region and the three redistricting periods examined.In the South prior to 1990, Republican sophomore incumbents were muchmore likely to be challenged compared to sophomore Democrats. SouthernRepublican sophomores ran unopposed 42.1 percent of the time, significantlyhigher than the 16.4 percent uncontested rate among nonsouthern Republi-can sophomores. Southern Democratic sophomores, on the other hand, rarelydrew Republican challengers prior to the 1990s with 72.2 running unopposed,compared to 24.9 percent of nonsouthern Democratic sophomores. The re-gional asymmetry of uncontested rates has been true for both parties, but wasmuch more pronounced among southern Democrats.

The pattern of contestation within the South changed dramatically in the1990s after the onset of changed redistricting structures. The predicted proba-bilities from the model indicate that southern Republican sophomores becamemuch more likely to run unopposed while the opposite trend occurred forsouthern Democratic sophomores. While uncontested rates for southern Re-publican sophomores grew by almost 50 percent over the three election cyclesfrom 42.1 percent to 60.3 percent, the uncontested rates for southern Demo-cratic sophomores dropped by about 15 percent. This current rate is doublethe corresponding rate for non-South Republican sophomores. Moreover, un-contested rates for Democratic sophomores outside the South increased byabout 10 percent during the three redistricting cycles.

Table 2 also reports predicted uncontested rates for Democrats from (andnot from) majority-minority districts for the 1990 and 2000 redistrictingcycles. Although southern Democratic sophomores as a group were increas-ingly drawing Republican challengers, the decline in uncontested rates wasalmost entirely confined to nonmajority-majority districts. Democratic sopho-mores in majority-minority districts had uncontested rates of about 80 per-cent, nearly double the uncontested rates for Democratic sophomores innonmajority-minority districts. Interestingly, southern Democratic sopho-mores in majority-minority districts ran uncontested about as frequently


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as veteran Democrats, especially when compared to nonmajority-minoritydistricts where sophomores were much more likely to draw a Republican chal-lenger than veteran incumbents in the South. Outside the South, candidatesfrom majority-minority districts likewise draw fewer challengers, though thedifferences are not nearly as dramatic as in the South. Even so, there has beenan increase in uncontested rates outside the South and the increase is largest inmajority-minority districts. The results presented in Table 2, in sum, supportthe argument that redistricting structures appear to be promoting significantlyhigher rates of uncontested elections.

Disappearing WMDs and the South

Why have uncontested legislative election rates increased in the Southdespite growing partisan parity? Our results generally show that southernpartisan change at the state-legislative level has been defined by partisan con-version rather than partisan competition. We find that southern Democrats,generally, have had lower uncontested rates since the 1990s. However, astraditional Democrats have lost seat share over time in southern state legisla-tures, they have been replaced by increasingly uncontested Republicans andDemocrats from majority-minority districts. This replacement effect has oc-curred both on partisan and racial lines. The disappearance of WMDs—whitemale Democrats—in southern state legislatures has political, theoretical, andlegal importance, possibly.

Substantively, the decline of white Democrats corresponds with a declinein ideological moderate legislators. Southern state legislatures are increasinglymirroring the U.S. Congress in their shift to partisan polarization. The changeis even more dramatic, though, given many southern states’ tradition of bi-partisan coalition formation. Agenda control is increasingly exercised by thelegislative majority party or the governor. This increasingly partisan agendacontrol has policy and electoral significance.

Theoretically, our conversion findings have important implications for un-derstanding redistricting effects in elections and legislative behavior. Redis-tricting effects have typically been assessed by electoral changes in the electionimmediately following a redistricting cycle. In other words, redistricting effectsoccur in years ending in “2.” Our findings do not counter this conclusion.However, we argue that redistricting effects occur between redistricting cyclessince challenger entry is highly conditioned by open seats. We argue thatredistricting effects may only occur when contending candidates fail to enternoncompetitive, open-seat races.

Legally, our findings provide some context for interpreting the currentconstitutional question regarding the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5. Havingcontrolled for alternative explanations, our model of state legislative candidateentry shows that southern uncontested rates changed in expected ways tothe Voting Rights Act extensions of 1982. We conclude that these changes


are contributing to a persistence of uncontested elections in the AmericanSouth by creating a legal environment in which legislative redistricting lessensincentives for challenger entry. Nonetheless, we find that the effects of theseredistricting structures have already occurred and, most likely, will not bereversed regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court’s actions. The outcome of thepending and future voting rights cases may have little, if any, direct effect onsouthern electoral competitiveness. The pattern and pace of partisan changein southern states appear well settled. This observation is especially defensibleif the Court bases its decision on the more narrow ground of acceptablebailout for nonpolitical subdivisions. It may also be true even if the Courtmajority opts to invalidate the 2006 extension of the Voting Rights Act on thebroader ground that the remedy is neither congruent with nor proportionalto the present harm.7 Even this dramatic and sweeping declaration arguablywould generate little change in present electoral configurations throughoutsouthern states, and especially those affecting African Americans. It is unlikely,for example, that state legislatures would interpret such a Court ruling as amandate to dismantle majority-minority districts. After all, if the ruling isbased on considerations of congruence and proportionality, as expected, thefederal government would arguably step in to act if future harms arise. And thatprediction may hold even for representation of growing Hispanic populationsin the South outside the states of Florida and Texas where majority-minoritylegislative districts already exist.

In conclusion, our analysis confirms that state legislative candidate entryis highly contextual. Particularly, these effects on candidate entry are pro-nounced in southern state legislatures that have historically higher rates ofincumbency uncontestedness. We show, however, that the nature of this leg-islative uncontestedness has changed markedly over the last three redistrictingcycles. All else held constant, the probability of uncontested seats held bysouthern Republican sophomore incumbents has increased by more than 50percent since 1990. We attribute these growing rates of uncontestedness tothe increasingly racial, partisan, and incumbency-based redistricting that hasbecome more prevalent due to the legal and political environment. These find-ings underscore the complex and counterintuitive nature of southern partisanchange.

REFERENCES

Berry, William D., Michael B. Berkman, and Stuart Schneiderman. 2000. “Legislative Profes-sionalism and Incumbent Reelection: The Development of Institutional Boundaries.” AmericanPolitical Science Review 94(4):859–74.

7If the reactions of Justices during oral argument on April 29, 2009 are reliable indicators,then the Court may in fact choose to limit Congress. As one observer noted, Chief Justice JohnRoberts appeared “unhappy” that more states in the South remained under coverage than inthe North and other members of the conservative bloc raised similar misgivings.


Black, Earl, and Merle Black. 2002. The Rise of Southern Republicans. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Bullock, Charles S. III, and Ronald Keith Gaddie. 2009. The Triumph of Voting Rights in theSouth. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Bullock, Charles S. III, and Mark J. Rozell, eds. 2003. The New Politics of the Old South, 2nded. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Cain, Bruce E., Karin MacDonald, and Michael McDonald. 2005. “From Equality to Fairness:The Path of Political Reform.” Pp. 6–30 in Thomas E. Mann and Bruce E. Cain, eds., PartyLines: Competition, Partisanship, and Congressional Redistricting. Washington, DC: BrookingsInstitution Press.

Carey, John M., Richard G. Niemi, and Lynda W. Powell. 2000. “Incumbency and theProbability of Reelection in State Legislative Elections.” Journal of Politics 62(3):671–700.

Carsey, Thomas M., William D. Berry, Richard G. Niemi, Lynda W. Powell, and James M.Snyder. 2008. State Legislative Election Returns, 1967-2003. Release Version 1.

Dahl, Robert. 1956. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Epstein, David L., Richard Pildes, Rodolfo O. de la Garza, and Sharyn O’Halloran. 2006. TheFuture of the Voting Rights Act. New York: Russell Sage.

Grofman, Bernard, and Chandler Davidson. 1992. Controversies in Minority Voting: The VotingRights Act in Perspective. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Hirsch, Sam, and Thomas E. Mann. 2005. “For Election Reform, a Heartening Defeat,” NewYork Times November 11.

Jacobson, Gary. 2009. The Politics of Congressional Elections, 7th ed. New York: LongmanClassics.

Jacobson, Gary, and Samuel Kernell. 1981. Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections. NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press.

Katz, Ellen. 2007. “Not Like the South?: Regional Variations and Political ParticipationThrough the Lens of Section 2.” Pp. 183–221 in A. Henderson, ed., Voting Rights Reau-thorization of 2006: Perspectives on Democracy, Participation and Power. Berkeley, CA: BerkeleyPublic Policy Press.

Lublin, David. 2004. The Republican South: Democratization and Partisan Change. Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lublin, David, and Michael McDonald. 2006. “Is It Time to Draw the Line? The Impactof Redistricting on Competition in State House Elections.” Election Law Journal 5(2):144–57.

Moncrief, Jeffrey, Peverill Squire, and Malcolm Jewell. 2001. Who Runs For the Legislature?Candidates and Recruitment in the States. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Nadeau, Richard, Richard G. Niemi, Harold W. Stanley, and Jean-Francois Godbout. 2004.“Class, Party, and South/Non-South Differences: An Update.” American Politics Research32(1):52–67.

Persily, Nathaniel. 2005. “Forty Years in the Political Thicket: Judicial Review of the Redis-tricting Process since Reynolds v. Sims.” Pp. 67–91 in Thomas E. Mann and Bruce E. Cain,eds. Party Lines: Competition, Partisanship, and Congressional Redistricting. Washington, DC:Brookings Institution Press.


Rosenthal, Alan. 1996. “State Legislative Development: Observations from Three Perspec-tives.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 21(2):169–98.

Squire, Peverill. 1997. “Another Look at Legislative Professionalization an the CaliforniaAssembly.” Journal of Politics 54:1026–54.

———. 2000. “Uncontested Seats in State Legislative Elections” Legislative Studies Quarterly25(1):131–46.

Stanley, Harold. 1987. Voter Mobilization and the Politics of Race. New York: Praeger Publishing.

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