The Effect of Partisan Redistricting on Polarization in the House.

Party polarization among members of Congress has been increasing in recent years. While the evidence for this increasing polarization is substantial, the reasons for it have remained elusive. This paper proposes that partisan redistricting is one cause of polarization in the House of Representatives. While this explanation is not new, the theory developed in this paper uses median voter theory to explain how district level polarization can increase, while at the same time national levels of polarization among the voting public do not. Median voter theory provides an explanation of how the composition of voters within partisan redistricted districts incentivize House Members to become more ideologically extreme. Thus, partisan redistricting causes Members to change their behavior within the House in order to appease their more ideologically extreme constituency. A quantitative analysis is performed on Congressional districts using a statistical matching technique designed to demonstrate a statistically significant difference in ideological extremity among those Members within districts that have been gerrymandered as opposed to Members in non-gerrymandered districts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]