The Power of an Hour: Effects of Candidate Time Expenditure in State Legislative Elections

Using survey data from more than 500 legislative candidates in 17 states during the 2008 election, I examine whether state house candidates who devote more time to their campaign win a larger share of the major‐party vote. Consistent with previous work studying campaign spending in state legislative elections, I find a positive and significant association between campaign time and vote percentage for challengers—but not incumbents—in incumbent‐contested elections.     

Primary Elections and Candidate Ideology: Out of Step with the Primary Electorate?

This article draws on a new dataset of House primary‐ and general‐election outcomes (1956–98) to examine the relationship between primary elections and candidate ideology. We show that, like presidential candidates, congressional candidates face a strategic‐positioning dilemma: should they align themselves with their general‐ or primary‐election constituencies? Relative to general‐election voters, primary voters favor more ideologically extreme candidates. We show that congressional candidates handle the dilemma by positioning themselves closer to the primary electorate. This article thus supports the idea that primaries pull candidates away from median district preferences.     

Campaign War Chests and Challenger Quality in Senate Elections

This article presents the first comprehensive analysis of the role of war chests in U.S. Senate elections. Using data on races from 1980 to 2000, I demonstrate the effect of an incumbent senator's war chest on a campaign. War chests do not deter strong general‐election challengers and have an insubstantial or insignificant effect on primary elections, challenger spending, and other electoral variables. Also, war chests are not raised in anticipation of a tough electoral battle but are instead the result of money left over from the previous campaign.     

Parties and Electoral Performance in the Market for Political Consultants

We investigate whether the hiring relationships of candidates and political consulting firms better resembles the predictions of the “adversarial” or “allied” models of consultant‐party interaction. We find that the highest‐quality consultants are not allocated to the most competitive races, consultant‐candidate relationships persist even as candidates' electoral prospects change, and firms who work for challengers face a higher risk of market exit than firms working for incumbents. The market focuses entirely on win‐loss records and ignores the information on consultant performance available in candidates' vote shares. These findings depict a market driven by individual candidate, rather than aggregate party, goals.     

When Are Local Incumbents Held Accountable for Government Performance? Evidence from US School Districts

Do voters hold local officials accountable for government performance? Using over a decade of panel data on school district elections and academic achievement in California, I causally identify the effect of test score changes on school board incumbent re‐election rates and show that incumbents are more likely to win re‐election when test scores improve in their districts—but only in presidential election years. This effect disappears in midterm and off‐years, indicating that election timing might facilitate local government accountability.     

Campaigns and the Selection of Policy-Seeking Representatives

Can voters learn meaningful information about candidates from their electoral campaigns? As with job market hiring, voters, like employers, cannot know the productivity of candidates, especially challengers, when they elect them. The real productivity of representatives only reveals itself after the election. We explore if the information revealed during the “hiring process” is a good signal of the legislative effort of elected representatives. In the incomplete information environment of election campaigns, candidates should turn to credible signals to indicate their “type” to voters. Campaigns—and campaigning—are means by which candidates can, in principle, signal their motivations to voters. Is a candidate’s behavior on the campaign trail informative about his or her behavior and effort as a legislator? Does it, for example, reveal whether a candidate will be more hard working and legislatively active? Using evidence from the European Parliament, we show that campaign activity prior to the election is not related to policy-seeking behavior in the legislature post-election. The finding also holds in two national-level settings and across a variety of measures of legislative effort. Those who campaign harder do seem more likely to win the election, but campaign effort seems to provide a poor guide to what the winner does once elected.     

Is Incumbency Advantage Gendered?

Do incumbents have an electoral advantage and if so, do these advantages differ across gender? In this study, I estimate the electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents in 10 Canadian federal elections, across 3059 ridings, from 1990 to 2021. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare men and women who have very narrowly won or lost elections on three different indicators: propensity to run again, probability of winning the next election, and vote share. I find that women incumbents are just as likely to run again in subsequent elections as men incumbents. However, women who lose an election appear to be more likely to quit politics compared to men who lose an election. I do not find clear incumbency effects for probability of winning at the next election and vote share.     

The Electoral Consequences of Party Switching by Incumbent Members of Congress, 1947–2000

What are the electoral consequences of switching parties for incumbent members of Congress? Do incumbents who switch fare better or worse after their switch? Aldrich (1995) and Aldrich and Bianco (1992) present a model of party affiliation for all candidates. We empirically extend this model for incumbent legislators who have switched parties. Specifically, we look at the universe of incumbent representatives who have run for Congress under more than one party label since World War II. We find that the primary and general election vote shares for party switchers are not as high after the switch as before. Additionally, we learn that party switching causes the primaries in the switcher's party and in the the opposing party (the switcher's “old” party) to become more competitive in the short run. Over the long run, however, primaries in the switcher's new party are less competitive than those in the old party before the switch.     

Sources of Competition in State Legislative Primary Elections

Primaries are an important but understudied component of American elections. In this article, I examine competition in state legislative primaries across 25 states during the 1994 and 1996 election cycles. My findings indicate that competition varies greatly and is affected by a number of factors on the state and district levels. The presence of an incumbent reduces competition, but strong district support for a party leads to greater competition in that party's primaries. Population size and social diversity do little to affect competition, but urbanism and unified party control have a positive impact. Further, legislative professionalism is associated with greater competition, particularly in open‐seat races. Overall, the results have important implications for theories about the conditions that enhance or inhibit competition across different types of elections.     

Special Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives: A General Election Barometer?

Vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives are filled using special elections. These elections occur off the usual American electoral cycle, and their results are routinely portrayed by the American mass media as indications of what to expect in the next general election. We examined the predictive power of special elections results with respect to the general election outcomes for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1900 to 2008. We found that special elections that yield a change in partisan control do have predictive power regarding general election results.     

Desirability and effects of campaign spending limits

This paper measures the influence of campaign spending on incumbent and challenger votes in Canadian federal elections. The goal is to assess the influence of spending ceilings on political competition and on voter welfare. It is found that in the 1984 and 1988 Canadian federal elections challengers could increase their voteshare by spending but that incumbents could not. These results are used in a simulation to show that if ceilings were lowered, incumbent voteshare would rise. On this evidence it is argued that spending ceilings may tilt the playing field in favour of incumbents and reduce political competition.     

The Emergence of Career Politicians in Post‐Communist Democracies: Poland and the Czech Republic

Abstract: Despite party system fluidity and high rates of electoral volatility in the first decade after the transition to democracy in Poland and the Czech Republic, career politicians are emerging. Using data on all parliamentary candidates in the last election before the fall of communism and in all elections since then, we show that, in both countries, parliamentary carryover rates have risen substantially, a growing number of incumbents are seeking reelection, and an increasing proportion of candidates for legislative office have competed in previous parliamentary elections. Moreover, we demonstrate that prior political experience has a persistent and positive effect on winning office. We argue that the rise of career politicians facilitates the consolidation and effectiveness of these new democracies.     

After the Election

We are close to the point where an election is a choice in the literal sense of the word. The election to local Soviets that just took place is a notable example of this. Voters in multi-candidate constituencies were provided the opportunity to choose a single deputy from among several candidates. And they were not the only ones; indeed, in the remaining constituencies, too, one candidate was selected from among several nominees. This lent additional energy to the electoral campaign, and increased its social and political weight.     

Evidence of a Local Incumbency Advantage

Incumbents are highly likely to win reelection at all levels of government, but scholars continue to debate the extent to which serving in office has a causal effect on winning. For city council elections it is unclear whether or not we should predict a causal effect at all. City councilors may not regularly seek reelection, and any apparent advantage could be entirely attributable to preexisting qualities rather than incumbency. This article uses a regression discontinuity design to provide evidence that city council incumbents are more likely to run and win their next elections because they served a term in office.     

The Role of Ideology in State Legislative Elections

In this article, I examine the effect of incumbent ideology on elections in 45 state legislatures, showing that ideological extremists are more likely to be opposed in the general election than are moderates and that extremists tend to do worse in challenged elections than moderates do. I also explore the intervening role of legislative professionalism, finding that in the majority of state legislatures moderation is rewarded, though in the most professionalized legislatures, incumbents are actually rewarded for extremism. These results show that despite the informational disadvantage of the electorate, the ideology of state legislators is an important factor in elections.     

Electronic Grassroots: Does Online Campaigning Work?

This research explores the implications of the growing use of the Internet to campaign and win elections in the United States. After exploring the historic assumptions and motivations behind the use of the Internet to campaign, the authors use election data from the 2006 midterm congressional elections and webpage ranking data from the leading web-based ranking service to assess the impact of Internet campaigning. The findings indicate that web presence is a significant predictor of the total votes candidates garnered in the 2006 congressional elections, even when controlling for variables such as funding, incumbency and experience. Further, the findings also suggest that, generally, Democrats had a stronger web presence than Republicans and this increased presence contributed to their success in the election. This research suggests that potential candidates need to be particularly concerned about the success of their websites and their popularity within the Internet community when running for office.     

Progressive Reform and the Decline of Democratic Accountability: The Popular Election of State Supreme Court Judges, 1850-1920

This essay probes the relationship among different kinds of political cultures, the conduct of judicial elections, and the extent of dissent on the state supreme courts of California, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas from 1850 to 1920. The introduction at the turn of the twentieth century of Progressive election reforms—most notably the secret ballot, the direct party primary, and the nonpartisan ballot—reduced levels of turnout in judicial contests and increased roll-off from major statewide political to judicial elections. These reforms made judicial elections the tail on the electoral kite and denied the public its best means of regulating judicial policy making. Yet these changes in the electorate's behavior were seemingly unrelated to variations in the rate of dissent in these four state courts, whose judges apparently viewed popular partisan election as more a potential than a real threat to their independence.     

The Effects of Election Proximity on Participatory Shirking: The Staggered‐Term Chamber as a Laboratory

This study discusses a downside of electoral pressure. As elections approach, legislators reduce their effort in legislative activities, albeit while increasing their efficiency. To show this, we propose a new, natural experimental design exploiting staggered legislative election calendars to identify the effect of approaching elections. Two‐way natural blocking improves the balance of pretreatments and an instrumental variable approach addresses noncompliance by retirees. Our analysis of the Japanese House of Councillors demonstrates that legislators up for election show up in the chamber less often than those not facing election; however, when they do show up and speak, they tend to speak longer.     

The Election of African American State Legislators in the Modern South

This study is the most comprehensive analysis of the election of black state legislators in the American South. We start with the election of Leroy Johnson to the Georgia Senate in 1962, the first African American to win a state legislative seat in the modern South. We also document the election of all subsequent African Americans who were the first to enter their southern state legislative chambers. Next, we assess the factors influencing the election of southern black state legislators from the 1970s through 2015. Because of notable long-term changes to the southern electorate and alterations in the racial composition of legislative districts, there has been substantial variation in the likelihood of electing black lawmakers. Our final analysis highlights the undeniable reality and broader significance that the increasing share of southern African American state legislators has occurred at the same time that Republican representation has grown at a greater rate.     

Turnout and Party Registration among Criminal Offenders in the 2008 General Election

This paper estimates the voter registration, turnout, and party registration in the 2008 general election for men with felony convictions in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, and North Carolina. The findings indicate that turnout among felons is much lower than previous research has shown. Ex‐felon turnout in 2008 varied by state, averaging 22.2 percent. People captured and convicted for their first offense after the election voted at similarly low rates. Also contrary to the expectations of previous literature, the ex‐felon population does not seem overwhelmingly Democratic. In North Carolina and Florida, two states for which the data are available, party registration varies by race. Among registered black male ex‐felons, 71.7 percent in North Carolina and 84.2 percent in Florida are registered Democrats. Among whites, however, only 35.3 percent and 36.4 percent of ex‐felons are registered Democrats in North Carolina and Florida, respectively.