Redistricting Cycle Structures

Todd argued that the ten-year redistricting cycle structures state legislative elections in a way that did not exist prior to the 1960‘s. The study showed that the desire to obtain majority party status is a powerful influence on party strategy in states with legislative redistricting processes. Rather than contribute money to candidates solely on the basis of viability, party organizations from both the legislative majority party and minority party focus their energies on seats held by the majority party. Contrary to previous findings, however, these offensive and defensive strategies are not universal party strategies. Rather, the value of being a legislative majority party is so magnified, due to the possibility of creating the next decade‘s districts, that redistricting motivates these
It also showed that party organizations are highly responsive to the contours of new redistricting plans, and they incorporate this information when deciding which candidates to support financially. In career legislatures, where constituency manipulation is central to redistricting strategy, party organizations focus on districts whose boundaries have been drastically reconfigured, while in springboard legislatures, money flows to districts whose partisan composition has changed significantly. This study is somewhat limited in that it focuses on the most highly observable outputs of party finance and redistricting: direct financial contributions and the physical geography of districts. Looking at the percentage of constituency change can also be a blunt instrument in analyzing the changes districts undergo during the redistricting