How Majority-Minority Districts Fueled Diversity In Congress – By Geoffrey Skelley (fivethirtyeight) / Aug 14, 2023
And why people of color are winning more seats outside of those districts too.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to settle the debate over race, redistricting and representation. Instead, it started new ones.
Since the act prohibits states from reducing a minority group’s ability to elect its candidate of choice, the creation — and erasure — of majority-minority districts has become a particularly contentious aspect of the decennial redistricting process. Race is hugely important in understanding American politics and is strongly predictive of partisan preferences, so districts’ racial makeup can influence electoral outcomes and affect representation of people of color. Voters of color tend to be more Democratic-leaning and white voters tend to be more Republican-leaning. More broadly, candidates of color are more likely to get elected in districts in which the candidate’s racial or ethnic group constitutes a majority.
In an increasingly diverse nation, these trends have helped remake the congressional map: Districts in which one or more minority racial or ethnic groups constitute a majority of the population now make up nearly one-third of all House seats. Correspondingly, the number of representatives who identify as Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, American Indian and/or Alaska Native has also increased. Around 7 in 10 of these members hail from majority-minority seats, indicative of these seats’ importance in ensuring representation for minority groups. At the same time, people of color are winning more majority-white seats than in the past. Success in those sorts of districts has increased as our politics have grown more partisan, as voters are increasingly likely to back their party regardless of the candidate their party nominates.
