How fair were the 2016 elections in Tennessee? By one account, very.
Mike Reicher
It may seem counter-intuitive considering Tennessee’s Republican dominance, but by one measure the 2016 election here could be considered exceptionally balanced.
A new voting data analysis by the Associated Press shows the state's political representation essentially reflects the number of votes cast for each party.
While that sounds like it should be the norm nationwide, some states have lopsided representation because lawmakers crafted district boundaries that gave one party advantage over another.
With skewed districts, lawmakers have less incentive to compromise, leading to hyper-partisanship and congressional gridlock. Voting map manipulation is at the heart of a potentially landmark upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that could determine the legality of partisan redistricting.
► Related:Supreme Court to rule on how election districts are drawn
► More: What is gerrymandering and what does it really mean in practice?
The term gerrymandering was coined after Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts’s governor who in 1812 approved a voting district shaped like a salamander, and improved his party’s electoral chances.
Tennessee’s balanced results, however, don’t necessarily mean lawmakers were altruistic when they drew the state’s maps.
“A lot of that is less about gerrymandering, and more about the way our population has self-sorted itself,” said Middle Tennessee State University political science professor Kent Syler. “Democratic-leaning voters are more concentrated in urban areas and Republican-leaning voters are more concentrated in suburban and rural areas.”
Voting districts — especially those for Congress — tend to reflect the geographic divide. Also, Syler said, the sheer number of Republican-leaning voters renders partisan gerrymandering unnecessary in many cases.
“There are very few competitive House districts in the state,” Syler said, “and there are really no congressional seats that are competitive between Democrats and Republicans.”
Read more:
► Supreme Court upholds offensive trademarks as form of free speech
Seven of nine congressional seats, and 74 of the 99 state House seats, are held by Republicans.
The Associated Press examined the results of the 2016 elections for the lower chambers in state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. It excluded state senate races because they weren’t held on the same year throughout the country.
Using a statistical method called an “efficiency gap” analysis, the AP compared the share of votes cast for candidates of each party to the share of seats won by each party.
In states with skewed voting maps, the thinking goes, a party would capture a disproportionate share of seats compared to the vote. Wisconsin is a prime example. Republicans there won 52 percent of the vote statewide for 2014 Assembly elections, but captured 63 of the chamber's 99 seats.
Republican lawmakers in Madison controlled the statehouse after the 2010 census and drew district boundaries that contributed to the big gains. Now, the Supreme Court is reviewing a ruling that struck down the Wisconsin Assembly's map.
Nationwide, the analysis found four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones.
But Tennessee was one of the most proportional states. In congressional and state House districts, the average share of Republican voters ranged between 61 percent and 64 percent.
That translated to 78 percent of congressional seats and 75 percent of House seats —nearly the expected result, according to the formula developed by researchers at the University of Chicago and the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
For each percentage point gain over 50 percent in its statewide vote share, a party normally increases its seat share by 2 percentage points.
Traditional battlegrounds such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia were among those with significant Republican advantages in either their U.S. or state House districts. All had districts drawn by Republicans after the last Census in 2010.
The majority party in the state legislature redraws Tennessee district maps to account for population changes every 10 years, based on the decennial census. Many other states follow the same process.
“I think we did everything we could to be fair and equitable in drawing the lines,” said House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville. “Overall, I’m very proud.”
But critics of gerrymandering say balanced results don’t mean the process is fair. U.S. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, has introduced legislation that would require states to use independent bipartisan commissions for redistricting. Another bill he introduced would add more transparency to the process.
“The people in power draw it up for themselves,” said Cooper, who likens the process to a restaurant operating without independent health inspectors. “Who would eat in the restaurant if it hadn’t been inspected? No one. A lot of people think the whole system is corrupt. Often they’re right.”
Reach Mike Reicher at 615-259-8228, at mreicher@tennessean.com, and on Twitter @mreicher.