Substantive Black Political Representation: Evidence from Matching Estimates in the United States House of Representatives

Abstract

I seek to determine whether race is a factor in how black representatives vote in the United States House of Representatives; if so, this suggests electing more black representatives may improve the economic and political position of blacks if policy positions taken by black representatives on bills that fail to pass would provide tangible positive impacts to members of the black community if passed. Confounding the impact of legislator race, districts represented by blacks on average are quite different than those represented by whites. While past research on this topic uses linear regression techniques with undesirable properties, I improve on past research using matching techniques with more desirable properties. Utilizing a combination of Mahalanobis and propensity score matching, within-caliper matching, and exact matching using data from the 100th–113th Congress, I show black representatives are more likely to vote in agreement with the majority of the Congressional Black Caucus on all votes and on Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Americans for Democratic Action, and Congressional Quarterly key votes, indicating a substantive racial impact on roll-call voting.