How to Measure Legislative District Compactness If You Only Know It When You See It

Aaron R. Kaufman, Gary King, Mayya Komisarchik

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

To deter gerrymandering, many state constitutions require legislative districts to be “compact.” Yet, the law offers few precise definitions other than “you know it when you see it,” which effectively implies a common understanding of the concept. In contrast, academics have shown that compactness has multiple dimensions and have generated many conflicting measures. We hypothesize that both are correct—that compactness is complex and multidimensional, but a common understanding exists across people. We develop a survey to elicit this understanding, with high reliability (in data where the standard paired comparisons approach fails). We create a statistical model that predicts, with high accuracy, solely from the geometric features of the district, compactness evaluations by judges and public officials responsible for redistricting, among others. We also offer compactness data from our validated measure for 17,896 state legislative and congressional districts, as well as software to compute this measure from any district.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)533-550
Number of pages18
JournalAmerican Journal of Political Science
Volume65
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2021

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Political Science and International Relations

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