It has long been noted that electing members of the U.S. House of Representatives in single-member, mutually exclusive districts often leads to discrepancies between the partisanship of the electorate and the party distribution in the House. There has been a spirited debate in the literature about the extent to which this is due to demographic clustering or intentional gerrymandering. This study presents direct tests of both of these potential causes using a simulation-based approach that improves upon similar studies in the past. We find that while there is a significant amount of demographic clustering, redistricting procedures account for a much greater portion of the partisan bias in the House. Furthermore, our results indicate that, in the 113th Congress (2013–15), Republicans were overrepresented in the House by about 16 seats, of which only a few can be attributed to demographic clustering.
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