[ And why people of color are winning more seats outside of those
districts too.]
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HOW MAJORITY-MINORITY DISTRICTS FUELED DIVERSITY IN CONGRESS  
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Geoffrey Skelley
August 14, 2023
FiveThirtyEight
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*
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*
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*
*
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_ And why people of color are winning more seats outside of those
districts too. _

, ABC NEWS PHOTO ILLUSTRATION

 

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
[[link removed]],
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
[[link removed]] in
districts in which the candidate’s racial or ethnic group
constitutes a majority. 

In an increasingly diverse nation
[[link removed]],
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.1
[[link removed]]

We took a look at the racial and ethnic makeup of each congressional
district going back to the 1960s and ’70s.2
[[link removed]] Though
Congress has long trended toward
[[link removed]] increased
racial and ethnic diversity, the overall trajectory of
majority-minority seats and minority representation is neither linear
nor consistent across racial and ethnic groups. The number of
majority-Black seats has fallen, even as Black representation in
Congress has increased. Majority-Latino districts and Latino
representatives have climbed, although Latino representation remains
complicated by the lower share of Latinos who are in the citizen
voting age population. Asian Americans — the fastest-growing racial
group
[[link removed]] in
the American electorate — and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have seen
representation in Congress shoot up in the last two decades. However,
it’s been completely divorced from the number of majority-Asian
congressional districts, which hasn’t increased in 50 years. And the
number of representatives who identify as American Indian or Alaska
Native has also ticked up, despite this small group constituting
neither a majority nor a plurality of any district.

The evolution of majority-minority seats and representation for these
four major racial and ethnic groups over the last half century shows
both the continued need for majority-minority districts to ensure
representation, but also that broader forces — the strength of
partisanship
[[link removed]] and the
close ties between voting habits and race
[[link removed]] —
have elevated candidates of color in districts where they weren't
winning a few decades ago. “I think about where we've come since
1965,” said Paru Shah
[[link removed]], a political
scientist who studies race and politics at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “And this idea that the majority-minority place
is really the driver for representation, to today where it's much more
around partisanship.”

BLACK DISTRICTS HAVE DWINDLED EVEN AS REPRESENTATION TICKS UP

In the wake of the Voting Rights Act, Black voters quickly got easier
access to the franchise, but electoral district changes were slower to
come by. “After [the VRA] passed in 1965, Southern states
immediately moved to another set of strategies to try and minimize the
influence of Black voters,” said American University political
scientist David Lublin
[[link removed]], who studies race
and representation
[[link removed]].
“That was by drawing districts so that there would be very few
places where Blacks formed a majority, and African American candidates
would find it difficult to win in the face of racially polarized
voting.”

But in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision
in Thornburg v. Gingles
[[link removed]],
the Justice Department and voting rights advocates forced states to
make a more concerted effort to draw majority-minority seats. This
most impacted majority-Black districts, which nearly doubled from 17
to 32 during the post-1990 census redistricting. Not coincidentally,
that increase coincided with a rise in the number of Black
representatives, as candidates of color at that time only rarely won
in majority-white seats.

But after the 2020 round of redistricting, majority-Black
constituencies were roughly halved while seats that were 40 to 50
percent Black nearly tripled. Slow population growth in Northern
states
[[link removed]] led
to lost seats in reapportionment, which notably increased each
state’s population per district and complicated drawing seats with
Black majorities. For instance, New York’s three majority-Black
districts in New York City became plurality-Black seats as the state
lost a seat and the average number of people per district grew by
about 60,000. Lines drawn by partisan mapmakers
[[link removed]] or independent
redistricting commissions
[[link removed]] also
affected the number of majority-Black seats. Florida, for example,
drew two fewer majority-Black seats after the 2020 census (although
those seats remained solidly majority-minority overall) and
controversially unwound one plurality-Black seat
[[link removed]];
the latter move faces continued litigation
[[link removed]].

Black representation, like that of other groups, also intersects with
our sharply polarized politics. Because voters of color tend to lean
Democratic — Black voters overwhelmingly so — concentrating voters
of color in one district can make surrounding seats more Republican.
As a result, recent redistricting conflicts have largely centered
on GOP attempts
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pack more Black voters
[[link removed]] in
majority-Black districts to make nearby seats redder
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Democrats’ efforts to unpack heavily Black districts
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add Democratic-leaning voters to surrounding districts.
Lublin’s research shows
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Black candidates (again usually Democrats) can regularly win seats
that are 40 to 50 percent Black, depending in part on the share of
white voters in the seat and how Republican-leaning they are. Lublin
cited Virginia’s 4th District in south-central Virginia as an
example of a seat with a Black population in the low 40s in which a
Black member (currently Democratic Rep. Jennifer McClellan) is
relatively certain to win because the seat is blue-leaning and Black
voters make up a majority of the Democratic primary electorate. By
comparison, the ongoing redistricting clash over whether Alabama will
draw
[[link removed]] a
second majority-Black seat reminded Lublin of older fights in the
South
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which mapmakers made bare-minimum changes to seats so that the seat
would remain challenging for a Black Democrat to win.

Today, roughly the same number of Black Democrats (28) represent seats
that are less than 40 percent Black as represent districts that are 40
percent or more Black (26). Now, 17 of those 28 seats are
majority-minority overall, and most of the 28 have a clear Democratic
lean. But on average, those districts’ populations are just 22
percent Black, which indicates that Black representatives are winning
more on multiracial or majority-white turf. Plus, a modern high of
four Black Republicans sit in the House, all of whom represent
majority-white districts.

“There’s this interesting interplay of partisanship and race,”
said Shah, the political scientist at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “Democrats win in Democratic majority places
and Republicans win in Republican majority places. And when candidates
of color are supported by their party in those places, they tend to do
well.” She emphasized that majority-minority districts remain
important, but that both parties’ efforts
[[link removed]] to
highlight and recruit candidates of color
[[link removed]] have
created chances to increase diversity in legislatures, whether on
Capitol Hill or in state capitals.

THERE ARE MORE MAJORITY- AND PLURALITY-LATINO DISTRICTS — AND
REPRESENTATIVES

While the original VRA focused mainly on expanding Black political
rights, the 1975 extension of the law expanded its rules to include
[[link removed]] “language
minorities,” including Latinos. At that point, only five Latino
representatives sat in Congress, all hailing from districts that were
at least 40 percent Latino. At that time, however, only about 5
percent of the nation’s population identified as Hispanic or Latino
[[link removed]],
a figure that had nearly quadrupled by 2020.

The relationship between majority-Latino districts and Latino
congresspeople is roughly where it was for Black Americans around 20
years ago. Only in the past few congresses has the number of Latino
members clearly risen above the number of majority-Latino districts.
As with majority-Black seats, the post-1990 redistricting period
following Thornburg v. Gingles also proved critical to Latinos, as
states more than doubled the number of majority-Latino seats,
increasing the number of Latino representatives. But unlike the
pattern for majority-Black seats, the number of majority-Latino seats
has steadily increased since then. A large part of this growth came in
California and Texas, as their already sizable Latino populations grew
by 42 percent and 72 percent, respectively, between the 2000 and 2020
censuses.

However, Latinos tend to make up a notably smaller share of the
citizen voting age population than the overall population. A large
share of Latinos are immigrants
[[link removed]],
so some aren’t citizens, and Latinos are also significantly younger
on average
[[link removed]] than
the non-Latino population. On top of this, turnout among Latinos has
historically been lower
[[link removed]] than
other racial groups. These forces can create large
disparities between who lives in a district and who decides its
elections
[[link removed]].
Take California’s 13th District: The overall Latino population share
was 65 percent in 2020 but the CVAP Latino share was just 51
percent, per Daily Kos Elections
[[link removed]].

Despite this, 33 of 40 majority-Latino districts are currently
represented by Latino members. “Now, part of it may be that even if
the non-citizen Latinos can't vote, it still means there's one fewer,
say, white person who could vote,” said Lublin, referring to the
requirement that districts have equal total populations regardless of
age or citizenship status. “But be that as it may, what it suggests
is that, if citizenship rates were 100 percent, Latinos would find it
easier to win.” In fact, only three Latinos represent the 10 seats
that are 40-to-50 percent Latino, which may be because the group’s
share of the CVAP is roughly 10 points lower than its overall share in
those seats.

When it comes to party affiliation, Latino representatives aren’t as
uniformly Democratic as Black members, in part because the group is
incredibly diverse and more electorally competitive. Latinos are not
a monolith
[[link removed]] (nor
are other groups of people of color, to be clear), and sometimes more
granular groupings — like national origin — reveal more
nuanced political leanings
[[link removed]].
For instance, Cuban Americans are notably GOP-leaning, while Mexican
Americans have a clear Democratic preference. As a result, about 3 in
10 Latino members of Congress are Republican, compared with less than
1 in 10 Black members.

But two-thirds of these members hail from majority-Latino seats, a far
greater share than among other minority groups. About one-third of all
Latinos live in a majority-Latino district, compared with only 11
percent of African Americans in majority-Black seats, so some of that
may be down to Latinos’ more sizable concentration in such
districts. The types of candidates who run matter, too. As Shah’s
research on state legislative races has found, Latino candidates tend
to be less likely to run in districts
[[link removed]] that
aren’t majority Latino, which largely siloes them in majority-Latino
seats and limits the possibility of winning elsewhere. Nonetheless,
that may be changing as the number of Latinos members elected from
congressional seats that are less 50 percent Latino has grown in the
past few cycles.

FEW MAJORITY DISTRICTS BUT MORE REPRESENTATION FOR AAPI AND INDIGENOUS
AMERICANS

The last two racial groups available in our data are enormously
diverse
[[link removed]] but
also comparatively small [[link removed]]. About 6
percent of the nation’s population is AAPI, while American Indians
and Alaska Natives make up about 1 percent3
[[link removed]] As
a result, there are only two majority AAPI seats in Congress — since
the 1970s, there have never been more than that — and no districts
where American Indians and/or Alaska Natives even form a plurality.
Still, both groups’ representation has grown over time.

With so few majority- and plurality-AAPI districts, the striking
increase in this group’s representation has largely come from
candidates winning in districts with small shares of AAPI
voters. Lublin’s research has found
[[link removed]] that
Asian candidates, specifically, win with a lower share of Asian
Americans in their district than Black and Latino candidates win with
theirs and that Asian candidates also tend to do better as districts
become more diverse overall. On average, the 16 AAPI members represent
seats that are 22 percent AAPI (11 of those seats are
majority-minority overall). 

Representation among individuals with American Indian or Alaska Native
backgrounds shot up
[[link removed]] with
the election of Democratic Reps. Sharice Davids of Kansas
[[link removed]] and Deb
Haaland of New Mexico
[[link removed]] in
20184
[[link removed]] followed
by GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell
[[link removed]] of
New Mexico in 2020 and Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of
Alaska's special election victory
[[link removed]] in
August 2022. Dating back to the 1970s, no congressional district’s
population has had more than a quarter identify as American Indian or
Alaska Native. Because of their small population, only a larger House
with more representatives and seats with smaller populations
[[link removed]] could
create the conditions where they might form even a plurality of the
population in states like Arizona, New Mexico or Oklahoma.

Redistricting fights over majority-minority districts aren’t going
away — indeed, two are currently ongoing
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Alabama and Louisiana — even if candidates of color are now winning
more on turf where their racial or ethnic group isn’t predominant.
We’re nowhere near settling the bigger questions surrounding race,
racial representation and the electoral power afforded to minority
voters, nor can we predict the trajectory of minority representation
in Congress. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that the
country will become even more diverse
[[link removed]],
which will influence every aspect of our politics, including
redistricting and representation.

_Additional contributions from Holly Fuong._

GEOFFREY SKELLEY is a senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight. 

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