@article{Christenson:2015c,
author = {Christenson, Dino P. and Todd Makse}, 
title = {Mass Preferences on Shared Representation and the Composition of Legislative Districts.},
volume = {43}, 
number = {3}, 
pages = {451-478}, 
year = {2015}, 
OPTdoi = {}, 
abstract ={Scholars of redistricting often discuss “communities of interest” as a guideline for drawing districts, but scholarship offers little guidance on how citizens construe communities and interests in the context of representation. In this article, we seek to better understand how citizens’ perceptions of people and  places  affect  preferences  regarding  representation.  Using  an  original survey  conducted  in  15  Massachusetts  communities,  we  explore  whether citizens  have  meaningful  preferences  about  the  communities  with  whom they share the same representative. To the extent they do, we test whether these preferences are driven by geographic considerations or other factors such as partisanship, race, and socioeconomic status. Our findings not only offer the opportunity to refine the concept of “communities of interest” to account for voter preferences but also more broadly speak to the literature on  the  increasingly  political  nature  of  residential  preferences  and  their 
impact on political attitudes, participation, and voting behavior..}, 
OPTURL = {}, 
OPTeprint = {}, 
journal = {American Politics Research} 
}