Thinking Arizona
Facts to Inform the Public Discourse
Competitive Districts Swing Republican
November 3, 2010
Three outlying districts in the southern and western parts of the state swung sharply to the right yesterday to give Republicans probable supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature.
The three districts proved yesterday they were indeed among the more competitive in the state, to the chagrin of Democrats and the joy of Republicans. All had tilted to the Democratic side in the first four elections of this 10-year redistricting cycle. But yesterday they became part of the Republicans’ 2010 landslide.
The result gave the state’s nine competitive districts a distinctly Republican complexion. In 2008, the 27 legislative seats that represent the nine districts were nearly equally divided, 14-13 in favor of the Republicans. Yesterday they broke 22-5, with the Republicans picking up three seats in the Senate and likely five in the House.
Even with no changes in the makeup of the state’s 21 safe districts, the GOP successes in the competitive districts give it supermajorities of 21-9 in the Senate and 40-20 in the House. A two-thirds majority is veto-proof. Short of overcoming an unlikely veto by a Republican governor, the added votes make it easier to find the necessary votes for whatever legislation.
The big changes came in these swing districts:
District 23. Independents now outnumber either major party in the rapidly growing area centered on Pinal County. Republican Steve Smith defeated incumbent Sen. Rebecca Rios, the assistant minority leader, while Rep. Frank Pratt and fellow Republican John Fillmore unseated Rep. Barbara McGuire.
District 24. Republican Don Shooter, former chairman of the Yuma Tea Party, ousted Sen. Amanda Aguirre in the district that covers the southwestern part of the state. Conservative Democratic Rep. Lynne Pancrazi survived.
District 25. Two incumbent Democrats also fell in the district that curly-cues around Tucson from Gila Bend through most of Santa Cruz and Cochise counties. Republican Gail Griffin dumped Sen. Manny Alvarez while Rep. David Stevens and fellow Republican Peggy Judd topped Rep. Patricia Fleming.
Republicans also gained House seats in District 5, where longtime Democratic stalwart Jack Brown had termed out; in District 20, where Rep. Rae Waters narrowly gave up the seat she had broken through to win in 2008; and in District 26, where Rep. Nancy Young Wright was trailing in a close three-way race. The final outcome awaits the counting of early ballots that were hand-delivered to the polls.
Democrats managed no breakthroughs this time around. In Phoenix’s District 10, which has featured close races in the past and has the closest voter registration differential in the state, the Republicans won handily.
Phoenix Swing Districts
The district neighborhoods on both sides of Interstate 17 from Northern Avenue on the south to Bell Road on the north provide a political potpourri. Although Republicans gained a bit in voter registration prior to the general election, they and the Democrats match each other virtually voter per voter. Their parity makes the district’s equally numerous independents the all-important x factor.
The district has been home to what over the course of the last three elections was the hottest legislative duel in the state. Republican Doug Quelland won the first of his races with Democrat Jackie Thrasher, lost the second, then came back to win the third. All were by narrow margins. [State’s Most Competitive: Legislative District 10]
The drama though did not repeat in 2010. Quelland was ousted in the primary, and Thrasher finished a poor third behind Reps. Kimberly Yee and James Weiers.
Nonetheless, the existence of any semblance of competitiveness will come as a surprise to those in other parts of the state who think of Phoenix solely as a bastion of Republicanism. Yes, its suburban areas are staunchly conservative. But its urban core is liberal. And then there are the neighborhoods that fall in between.
District 10 tops off a group of four contiguous districts – a group that also includes Districts 11, 17 and 20 – that not only loop through the middle of metropolitan Phoenix but also are caught in the middle, about the closest thing Arizona has to swing districts that could vote either way.
Competitive districts
They are among just nine of the state’s 30 legislative districts that might be considered competitive, using even the most expansive of criteria. All a district has to do to make the list is to have had a minimum of one winner from each party since the current boundaries were provisionally established for the 2002 election and slightly modified for 2004 and thereafter. That’s a minimum of one victory out of 12 races, as each district has filled three seats (one senator and two representatives) in the four elections held during the time period in question.
No doubt some will argue that this is hardly a sufficient standard for competitive. But then one has to consider the comparison. In the remaining districts, representing more than two-thirds of the Legislature, a hotly contested race in a general election a la Quelland and Thrasher wouldn’t even be possible. All the races in all of those other 21 districts have been swept in the past four elections by one party or the other, usually by very large margins. [Your District Results: Last Four Elections]
The results confirm that much of what the Independent Redistricting Commission expected to occur, in some ways even intended to occur, did in fact come to pass. The commission, which was created by statewide proposition in 2000 as a new approach to the redistricting process, set out to achieve a number of objectives. But it found that all other considerations, competition included, were trumped by the requirements of the U.S. Voting Rights Act that protect the interests of minority voters.
The headline here is not news per se. The degree of competitiveness, or lack thereof, has been a point of a dispute since the boundaries were drawn. A legal challenge to the commission’s effort bounced around the court system for much of the decade before finally being put to rest in 2008 by the Arizona Supreme Court.
Against this backdrop, what’s interesting is that there has been as much competition as there has. It remains less than some desired, but turns out to be more than expected.
The commission thought, based on the work of its expert advisers and staff, that three or four of the legislative districts would be “competitive.” But whereas the commission had to rely upon statistical projections based on history and could not have envisioned the changes that would occur over the course of the decade, we can now evaluate the outcome based on real results. Doing that, one can make the argument presented here that nine districts have exercised some measure of independence.
The analysis of these results is the subject of this first edition of ThinkingArizona. It is intended to be an impartial and non-partisan rendition of the facts, which should be equally informative to Republicans, Democrats and to others.
The election on November 2 will be the last of five – 2002 through 2010 – using the current configuration of legislative districts. Based on the first four of those elections, certain patterns are evident.
The “Certains”
Steve Lynn, chairman of the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission for nearly the past ten years, argues that elections are ultimately decided by the candidates, their ideas, the campaigns they run, the money they have available, and by the public mood.
That may be, but it also helps a lot to be in a district in which one’s friends outnumber the foes. The bigger the gap, the better. It is common practice across the country to draw up some districts with so many Republicans as to virtually guarantee election for their candidates, while simultaneously drawing other districts so as to guarantee election for Democrats. In these cases the makeup of a district’s boundaries is, like it or not, more important than the candidates or the issues. And the last four elections prove the same holds true for Arizona.
The Republicans monopolize 13 of the state’s legislative districts. Eight of these are located exclusively in Maricopa County, two others are heavily Maricopa, and three are located in outlying counties. In all but one of the districts, voter registration favors the Republicans by margins of 11 percentage points or higher. Election results reflect that, with races that are often walkovers – if there is any race at all.
Democrats, conversely, have been granted a stranglehold on eight districts. Four of these also are located in Maricopa, three in Pima, and one is a combination of counties in the northern part of the state. In these districts, voter registration favors the Democrats by a minimum of 18 percentage points. And again, election results reflect that. The Republicans don’t always field candidates in these races and when they do, they often have been soundly beaten. [All Districts Not Created Equal]
The resulting 13-8 advantage in the Senate gives the Republicans all but one of their current six-vote majority (18-12) in that chamber. The 26-16 margin in the House (the 13-8 advantage is doubled because each district has two representatives) provides all of the Republicans’ current 10-vote majority (35 to 25) in that chamber.
The “Less Than Certains”
That leaves the nine competitive districts, where the results aren’t quite so certain. Very few districts are created equally but these come closer than most. The differential in voter registration is, as one would expect, right in the middle. In all but one case the registration differential between the two parties is 9 percentage points or less. [Victories Correlate to Voter Registration]
Some have closer margins than others. And they all have their tilts. For instance, the Jackie Thrasher victory in 2006 was the only one the Democrats have managed in District 10. Five of the districts lean to the Republican side; four to the Democrats. Overall, the Republicans won 59 of the legislative races in these districts from 2002 to 2008; the Democrats 49.
But it was even closer in 2008. The two parties divided the seats pretty much right down the middle. Republicans took five seats in the Senate to the Democrats’ four. They split the House seats, nine to nine.
Growth in Independents
This competitiveness has been presaged by changes in voter registration. The gap between Republican and Democratic registration has narrowed, down from 5.6 percentage points in 2002 to 3.8 for this year’s primary election. The latest figures show Republicans with 36.1 percent of the state and Democrats with 32.3 percent. Perhaps even more importantly, the ranks of independents have grown at more than double the pace of either party. Today they constitute 30.7 percent of voters, up from 22 percent in 2002. The state is now divided virtually in thirds.
The growth of independents will continue, predicts Steve Lynn, the redistricting chairman who himself is registered as an independent. He foresees their number will overtake the Democrats in a year and the Republicans in two years.
Some see the trend being driven by voters who, more than opting out of a party, are opting out of the entire process. Those who do participate but don’t want to be identified with either party are seen by some as fickle. On the plus side, Ann Wallack, the chairperson of the Maricopa County Democratic Party, calls them the “persuadables.” They are having an effect.
The increase in independents, coupled in some cases with more-than-usual population growth and/or demographic changes, has narrowed the gap between the two parties in a number of districts. In 2004, only one district in the state had a differential between Republicans and Democrats of 5 percentage points or less. That number has risen to five. A total of nine now have differences under 10 percentage points. [Voter Registration Differs by District]
To be precise, there are only two exceptions to the pattern. District 12, taking in the western suburbs of Phoenix, is one of those districts with a low differential. In fact, its margin of 3.7 percentage points is one of the state’s closest. However, it is not counted as a swing district because it has not performed as one. The Republicans have managed thus far to sweep all the races there.
District 11, covering the area around Phoenix Mountain Park in northern Phoenix, has the opposite situation. The differential favoring Republicans by 12 percentage points seems too large for this to be a swing district, but nonetheless it has performed as one. Democrats have won two races there, making it by this standard a swing district.
Logical targets for adding seats
In that the nine swing districts produced at least one victory by each party, they are the logical targets for adding to the positions of either party in the Senate or House. One of the target districts is located primarily in Pima County, four are gerrymandered from a hodge-podge of outlying counties, and then there are the four contiguous districts curling through the middle of metropolitan Phoenix. [The Competitive Nine]
The Phoenix group of four look something like a reversed C. District 10 is at the top of the ɔ in northern Phoenix. It arcs to the east to link with District 11, which covers three sides of Phoenix Mountain Park as far south as Indian School Road. The southeast corner of District 11 links with the northern edge of District 17, which covers the southern part of Scottsdale and good portions of Tempe including Arizona State University. To the south of District 11 is District 20, which forms the bottom of the ɔ. It covers the rest of Tempe and a snippet of Chandler before extending west across Interstate 10 into the corner of Phoenix known as Ahwatukee.
Like the Border States torn between the North and South in Civil War days, the four districts are caught in a clamp, flanked on either side by districts that are loyal to strong and opposing views. Bordering the four districts inside the ɔ are the Democratic strongholds in the urban areas of south, central and western Phoenix. Bordering their other side, hovering all around the outside of the ɔ, are heavy concentrations of Republicans in the suburbs of Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, northern Scottsdale and northern-most Phoenix.
By comparison, the four districts in between are more conflicted. Voters who feel strongly one way face off against similar numbers who lean the other way. In this contested space, all the independents can swing the balance one way or the other.
If there were to be any shifts this fall, either plus or minus, in the Republican majorities in the Senate and the House, it stood to reason that the movement would come from one or more of the competitive districts. That’s what happened.
The safe districts went Republican or Democrat, whichever is their wont, by margins similar to the past four elections in this redistricting cycle. The competitive districts, even the ones that previously tilted Democratic, proved highly sensitive to the national change in mood that swung the country to the right.
– Richard Gilman
