Replication Data for: Race, Representation, and the Voting Rights Act

Despite wide scholarly interest in the Voting Rights Act, surprisingly little is known about how its specific provisions affected Black political representation. In this paper, we draw on theories of electoral accountability to evaluate the effect of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance provision, on the representation of Black interests in the 86th to 105th Congresses. We find that members of Congress who represented jurisdictions subject to the preclearance requirement were substantially more supportive of civil rights-related legislation than legislators who did not represent covered jurisdictions. Moreover, we report that the effects were stronger in more competitive districts, and when Black voters comprised larger portions of the electorate. This result is robust to a wide range of model specifications and empirical strategies, and persists over the entire time period under study. Our findings have especially important implications given the Supreme Court's recent decision in Shelby v. Holder.