Crossing the District Line: Border Mismatch and Targeted Redistribution

Abstract

Electoral district borders regularly cross the borders of local governments. At the same time, legislatures allocate resources using transfers to local governments. Political parties may try to target these transfers in order to win elections, but can only do so imperfectly because of border mismatch. This border mismatch creates inequality: otherwise similar local governments receive different transfers depending on the district map. To show this, I incorporate border mismatch into a model of political competition and test the predictions using data on transfers from U.S. states to counties. The results demonstrate a novel link between redistricting and voter welfare.