All About Location: The Geographic Politics of District Office Placement

Field offices for Members of Congress allow staff to engage in casework and solve local problems. Office locations are forms of representation and a strategic political choice to harness voters. Utilizing archived websites to track the physical location of Members of the U.S. House’s district offices from 2012–2020, we explore whether redistricting and representative identity lead to changes in the location of district offices for newly elected House Members. Using geolocation at the zip code level, the results show that newly elected members were likely to move their district offices following redistricting, confirming alterations in geographic boundaries. Additionally, we uncover evidence that incoming women House Members strategically relocate their office locations to areas where they can support local constituents’ needs. The result for partisan identity is less straightforward as both parties strive to locate their offices in politically beneficial areas that are more racially diverse due to the changing demographic composition of the U.S. The results suggest that members shift district offices to accommodate new constituencies and strategically position their physical office locations.