NJ's Most Diverse Legislature Ever (But…)

by: the_promised_land

Wed Nov 09, 2011 at 10:01:53 AM EST

With the results from yesterday's legislative elections in, how will the new Legislature compare on reflecting New Jersey's population?

Next year's Legislature will be the most racially and ethnically diverse in New Jersey history. As a result of several key areas flagged during redistricting being met - such as Latino representation in the 36th in the person of Marlene Caride and Nellie Pou moving to the Senate in the 35th to replace John Girgenti (which in turn led to that district having two new African-American assembly members, Shavonda Sumter and Benjie Wimberly), 29 of the state's 120 legislative seats will be held by people of color starting January, a record. Latinos picked up two seats (including a Senate seat) to reach an all-time high of 10 seats, and African-Americans reversed a minor decline in seat numbers over the past several cycles to reach 17 seats, which ties the prior all-time high. Asian-Americans held steady at 2 seats. These numbers still, however, represent significantly lower shares of Latinos and Asian-Americans than the population as a whole.

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Democrats, in contrast, will have 28 of 72 seats occupied by people of color, or 39%, which is pretty close to the current statewide population total of 41% people of color. On the other hand, given that Democrats represent most of the communities of color in New Jersey, one would expect the numbers to be higher.

Let's look at the impact of the election on women. Of course, redistricting has less to say about the number of women in the Legislature than the racial and ethnic diversity of the Legislature since women, unlike people of color, are evenly distributed throughout the state. It was a status quo election as predicted, with 33 women in the Legislature before the election and 33 women in the Legislature after the election, or 27.5%.  That's down one from the all-time high of 34 four years ago, and keeps New Jersey at tied for twelfth in the percentage of women in the Legislature.

10 of 48 Republicans in the new Legislature will be women, or 21%; 23 of 72 Democrats will be, or 32%.

The seats in the Legislature need not mirror New Jersey's population perfectly every time around. But when some groups, such as women, Latinos, and Asian-Americans, are perpetually underrepresented cycle after cycle, we should ask why. For Latinos, the results are a not insignificant 25% jump and doubling of representation in the Senate - but the numbers are still much lower than the Latino share of the population overall (8% vs. 18%). This election actually resulted in roughly the same share of African-Americans in the Legislature as in the general population, an increase since before redistricting (14%). For Asian-Americans, numbers still lag (2% vs. 7%). And women remain represented at only about half the rate of the total population.

So we're doing better than we were before Tuesday. But we still have a long way to go.