Competitive Gerrymandering and the Popular Vote

Felix Bierbrauer and Mattias K Polborn

No 15401, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy by creating many uncompetitive legislative districts, and generating the very real possibility that a party that wins a clear majority of the popular vote does not win a majority of districts. We present a new approach to the determination of electoral districts, taking a design perspective. Specifically, we develop a redistricting game between two parties who both seek an advantage in upcoming elections, and show that we can achieve two desirable properties: First, the overall election outcome corresponds to the popular vote. Second, most districts are competitive.

Keywords: Gerrymandering; Legislative elections; Redistricting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-des, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15401 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Competitive gerrymandering and the popular vote (2020)
Working Paper: Competitive Gerrymandering and the Popular Vote (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15401

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15401

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().