Compact majority-minority districts almost never exist

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that for a uniformly distributed population, majority-minority districts with a significant population share almost always have very low compactness, challenging assumptions about district design.

Contribution

It provides a probabilistic analysis showing the near impossibility of creating compact majority-minority districts in a uniform population model.

Findings

Majority-minority districts tend to have low compactness scores.

High probability of non-existence of compact majority-minority districts.

Supports the idea that demographic constraints limit district compactness.

Abstract

For a uniformly distributed population, we show that with high probability, any majority-minority voting district containing a fraction of the population necessarily exhibits a tiny Polsby-Popper score.