"How Poverty Racializes Competition for City Council Seats"
Abstract
A growing body of literature has focused on the institutional and
electoral factors that lead to improved representation of minorities
on city councils. These studies, however, often employ OLS
regression, a methodology that can result in out-of-bounds predictions
for council membership. We employ a statistical model that produces
sensible results, in part by accounting for the zero-sum nature of
descriptive representation on city councils. Applying this model to a
recent study which argues that turnout increases representation for
minority groups (Hajnal and Trounstine 2005) we find little connection
between higher levels of voter turnout and greater descriptive
representation of minority groups. We find, instead, that poverty
provides an explanation, with higher numbers of black poor,
especially, leading to higher black and white representation at the
expense of Latinos. We conclude by arguing that the demographic
features that activate racial politics deserve greater attention in
studies of city council representation.