Cornell University

Public Economics Workshop: Zhiyang Zhu

Tuesday, November 1, 2022 11:15am to 12:45pm

Zhiyang Zhu, Cornell University, PhD Student

Partisan Gerrymandering and Political Geography

Abstract: As Gerrymandering in the United States become much more precise and sophisticated in the past few decades, researchers in recent years have attempted to produce measuring statistics, such as Efficiency Gap, to help the courts and judges to discover illegal partisan gerrymandering in an accurate and timely fashion. This study is designed to use a simulation-based approach to evaluate two of those measurements: Efficiency Gap and Mean-Median. To test if those measurements can really achieve what they set to do. The results so far show that for the efficiency gap, the threshold its creator proposed is too arbitrary and inefficient. It failed to consider some very important factors such as voter distribution. For the Mean-Median, the results are less conclusive, but still there are signs that voter distribution and other geographical factors could influence the final scores.