“The political economy of redistricting: voters, firms and donors” by Prof. Jeffrey F. Timmons (NYU Abu Dhabi), June 2, 17:00.

ニューヨーク大学アブダビ校のJeffrey F. Timmons准教授をお迎えし、“The political economy of redistricting: voters, firms and donors”と題して実証政治学ワークショップを開催します。どなたでもご参加いただけます。事前登録は不要です。ぜひご参加下さい。
We are very pleased to host Associate Professor Jeffrey F. Timmons (NYU Abu Dhabi) for a special talk with the title “The political economy of redistricting: voters, firms and donors”.  Pre-registration is not required. We look forward to your participation.

日時：2026年6月2日（火）17:00 pm – 18:40 pm
Date and Time: Tuesday, June 2, 2026, 17:00 pm – 18:40 pm

場所：3号館406
Venue：Room 406, Building 3, Waseda Campus, Waseda University

言語Language：英語English

要旨Abstract： 
This talk explains and expands on the concept of economic gerrymandering, introduced in Artes, Kaufman, Richter, and Timmons (2025). Whereas most prior research on the manipulation of electoral district boundaries, known as gerrymandering, has focused entirely on the strategic allocations of particular voters and social groups to particular districts, we provide a conceptual framework for broadening the study of gerrymandering to other potential objects/entities with political value. We then use simulations and outlier analysis with a sample of US states and two redistricting cycles (2012, 2022) to compare the potential allocation of seats, firms, and major political donors in US congressional districts to the actual allocations of seats, firms, and donors. Our results reveal four things: first, seat maximization regularly occurs in states controlled by Democrats, but is less common in Republican-controlled states; second, political parties frequently place big firms and big donors in congressional districts they expect to win (i.e., they gerrymander them) when given the opportunity during the decennial redistricting process; third, donors increasingly shift their donations towards the party that re-engineered their political geography, seemingly confirming both the instrumental nature of their donation strategy and the financial value to parties of having re-engineering these donors’ political geography; fourth, the pattern of gerrymandering of donors and change in donor behavior does not extend to places where non-partisan bodies control the redistricting process. In other words, political parties use redistricting to capture far more than voters, locking in financial relationships that bolster their political power.

Contact： 日野愛郎（早稲田大学） Airo Hino (Waseda University)  [email protected]