Considerable debate exists over the impact of redistricting on the partisan composition of the U.S. Congress. I address this debate by turning to an era of congressional redistricting that has received little systematic attention—the politics of gerrymandering in the 19th century. Using statewide-, county-, and ward-level electoral data from 1870 to 1900, I show that when a single party controlled the districting process, they used districting to systematically engineer a favorable partisan bias. These partisan biases affected the partisan composition of state congressional delegations and at times even helped determine party control of the House of Representatives.
American Disproportionality: A Historical Analysis of Partisan Bias in Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives