The Political Consequences of an Uncontrolled Redisricting.

Redistricting is the most nakedly partisan activity in American politics. Political science research and the courts generally acknowledge that redistricting undertaken in a partisan environment where one party completely controls the legislative process results in a perpetuation of the majority at the cost of the minority. The 2001 Georgia redistricting did precisely that, perpetuating a legislative majority that was a popular minority. The rejection of those maps by the federal courts in 2004 led to a politically-uncontrolled redistricting of the state legislature. In this paper, we examine the effect of changing legislative boundaries by court order on the political outcomes of the Georgia House of Representatives in 2004. By examining the changing partisan structure of the districts, the altered racial structure, and the treatment and placement of incumbents, we develop a multivariate analysis of the changing structure of seat possession in the Georgia House of Representatives. Our analysis indicates that there are significant political effects due to the unexpected redistricting. These changes were sufficient to change the control of the chamber, based on the assumption that the same relationships between predictor variables remained constant from 2002 to 2004. We also find, however, that there are changes in the relationship between predictor variables and the political outcomes, indicating that the remap alone does not explain the magnitude of political gains by the Georgia Republicans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]