Effects of Districting Systems on Republican Representation in Southern State Legislatures

An analysis of voting patterns in the lower houses of legislatures in nine southern and border states from 1968 to 1986 shows that the Republican party has benefitted from the use of single-member districting. The Republican ratio of seats to votes has been consistently higher in single-member than in multimember districts, though the magnitude of that difference varies considerably from state to state. The Republican seats/votes ratio in particular types of districts varies from state to state, however, depending on several other variables such as the size of the Republican vote and those factors that affect the slope of the regression between votes and seats.