Aggregating Census Data and Adding Congressional and Other Political Data: Tracking U.S. Democracy for 237 Years

Andrew A. Beveridge, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY) and Social Explorer

This paper will report the results of a concept demonstration and a pilot project to understand what could be gained in the understanding of United States Political Development and the extent to which Congressional Districts, those granted the franchise, and the way in which Congressional Districts were drawn affect the way in which the United States government developed. This project only became possible with the availability of several data resources, the combination of which could lead to new understandings of the demographic and voting structure that underlaid the development of political practices in the United States. It has been discussed with several potential collaborators, but to go forward and potentially raise the resources needed to move forward it was important to see what might be possible. Among the questions that could be addressed include, the following: 1) To what extent did the districts used for Congressional elections in various time periods follow that so-called traditional districting principles of equal population, compactness, and not splitting well known agglomerations, often called keeping communities intact. 2) To what extent after various minority groups were enfranchised, were their votes diluted based upon either cracking by spreading the minority groups in multiple districts or packing concentrate them in just a few.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 151. Beyond the Census--Adding What's Missing and Aggregating What's There