Retiring Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh, retired Virgina Republican Tom Davis, and the center-right newsweekly The Economist (via Yglesias) have all recently cited gerrymandering of House districts as a major cause of partisanship and dysfunction in Washington. It’s DC conventional wisdom at this point.

In reality, however, the evidence for the claim is weak. As I’ve pointed out before, the Senate has polarized almost as much as the House in recent years even though state boundaries cannot be gerrymandered. In addition, the most sophisticated political science study on the issue “find[s] very little evidence for such a link.” Don’t believe the hype.