Geographic Representation

How should one evaluate the representation of a voter whose vote does not translate to a seat in her district due to (common) district-level vote-seat inaccuracies, but whose co-partisan residing elsewhere in the country is overcounted in his respective district, such that their party performs well overall, ultimately gaining more seats than its share of votes? To what extent is the undercounting of her voice offset by the overcounting of her co-partisan’s residing elsewhere in the country? While students of representation have extensively studied partisan distortions of representation – gaps in representation among voters, often neighbors, who support different parties – geographic representation remains largely overlooked. In this proposed paper, we theoretically develop and empirically analyze the concept of geographic representation in districted electoral systems, with a focus on co-partisans. We transpose the partisan framework to examine the (mis)representation of supporters of the same party who reside in different geographical units. We hold that when due to common dynamics in the conversion of votes to seats, the geographic origins of a party’s votes do not align with the districts where it wins seats, a geographic distortion of representation ensues. The problem is further compounded when co-partisans residing in different districts differ in their priorities or issue positions. The empirical analysis of the proposed paper is two pronged. First, we establish systematic differences in priorities and issue positions among co-partisans residing in different districts. Doing so, we demonstrate the political significance of discrepancies in within-party geographic representation. Second, we scrutinize discrepancies in the representation of geographically-based constituencies. We derive a general measure for the discrepancy between the votes a party gains and the seats it holds in different districts, namely, party-level geographic disproportionality (GeoDisp). Unlike malapportionment, GeoDisp is party specific, and draws on actual votes. We propose hypotheses regarding the conditions under which parties will be more or less geographically representative of their supporters, and empirically evaluate these hypotheses. To conduct this analysis, we draw on mass surveys (e.g., European Social Survey) as well as district-level data of 113 parties from 12 districted democracies, and geocoded district-level election data. Our preliminary findings support our argument, demonstrating that within the same party, voters speak in different voices, and these voices are not equally heard.