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The Redistricting Cycle, Partisan Tides, and Party Strategy in State Legislative Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Todd Makse
Todd Makse*
Affiliation:
Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, USA
*
Todd Makse, Susquehanna University, 514 University Ave., Selinsgrove, PA 17870, USA. Email: makse@susqu.edu
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Abstract

State legislative elections are increasingly shaped by two factors that influence the prospects of winning a majority: the redistricting cycle and partisan tide elections. Winning control of the redistricting process offers the prospect of shaping elections for the next decade, making majority status significantly more valuable than it otherwise might be. Partisan tides, on the contrary, can dramatically alter perceptions of which seats are safe or vulnerable and of whether majority status is obtainable or not. In this article, I examine how the proximity of redistricting and the presence of partisan tides are reflected in the strategies of the party organizations that contest state legislative elections. Using party finance data from 29 states during the period from 1996 to 2010, I find that parties' majority-seeking behavior is more intense in states with legislative redistricting, when redistricting is imminent, and when partisan tides favor the minority party.

Keywords

party organizationsparties and interest groupsparties and electionslegislative electionslegislative politicselectionsredistricting
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 342 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2014

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