Proximity voting in the 2010 U.S. House elections

Utilizing data that allows for the placement of both of the candidates running and voters on the same ideological scale, I model proximity voting in the 2010 House elections. I demonstrate that though the literature predominantly emphasizes partisanship and incumbency, relative distance from the candidates also plays a significant role in the voting decision. Additionally, I show that these proximity effects are conditional upon the type of candidate running and the individual's partisan attachment. In total, these results show that while the rates of partisan voting and incumbent victory are high in House elections, voters do consider ideological proximity and can punish candidates who take positions that are too far out of line.     

Polarization and correct voting in U.S. presidential elections

Although some political pundits have expressed concern that political polarization has a deleterious effect on voter behavior, others have argued that polarization may actually benefit voters by presenting citizens with clear choices between the two major parties. We take up this question by examining the effects of polarization on the quality of voter decision making in U.S. presidential elections. We find that ideological polarization among elites, along with ideological sorting and affective polarization among voters, all contribute to the probability of citizens’ voting correctly. Furthermore, affective polarization among the citizenry if anything strengthens, not weakens, the influence of political knowledge on voter decision-making. We conclude that to the extent that normative democratic theory supposes that people vote for candidates who share their interests, polarization has had a positive effect on voter decision-making quality, and thus democratic representation, in the United States.     

Issue and leader voting in U.S. presidential elections

The “Issues and Leaders” model shows that aggregate votes for President in U.S. elections from 1972 to 2012 can be accurately predicted from people's perceptions of the candidates' issue handling competence and leadership qualities. For the past five elections, the model's ex ante forecasts, calculated three to two months prior to Election Day, were competitive with those from the best of eight established political economy models. Model accuracy substantially improved closer to Election Day. The Election Eve forecasts missed the actual vote shares by, on average, little more than one percentage point and thus reduced the error of the Gallup pre-election poll by 30%. The model demonstrates that the direct influence of party identification on vote choice decreases over the course of the campaign, whereas issues gain importance. The model has decision-making implications in that it advises candidates to engage in agenda setting and to increase their perceived issue-handling and leadership competence.     

Issue Accountability in U.S. House Elections

Political Behavior - This paper analyzes the positions Members of Congress take on important aspects of public policy, voters’ preferences on those issues, and individual-level voting...     

Minor parties and strategic voting in recent U.S. presidential elections

I measure and explain strategic voting in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 U.S. presidential elections. Aggregate polling and election data from the 50 states and District of Columbia indicate whether a minor party candidate's support rose or fell between the final poll and Election Day. A negative vote-poll gap is evidence of classic strategic voting while a positive vote-poll gap is evidence of expressive strategic voting. Expressive voting was widespread in 1992 and 1996, but instrumental voting was dominant in 2000. In 2000 Ralph Nader lost support in most states, particularly those where the major party contest was competitive. In contrast, Ross Perot gained in most states due to expressive strategic voting facilitated by the noncompetitive national race. I also show that the vote-poll gap is a product of changes in voter turnout and, to a lesser extent, elite mobilization.     

Preemptive and reactive spending in U.S. House races

This paper examines the spending behavior of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Particular attention is paid to the timing of receipts and expenditures over the complete 2-year election cycle. Incumbents raise and spend large amounts of money very early in the race, and this preemptive spending may have a great impact on the selection of challengers and therefore on electoral outcomes. In addition, a model of reactive spending is tested for the general election period. Incumbents' expenditures are a function of the underlying partisan division in the district, the strength of the challenge, and candidates' feelings of vulnerability. Incumbents are strategic actors who attempt to maximize their chances of reelection. Early in the term, they spend preemptively in an effort to influence the selection of their challengers. Later in the term, they spend in reaction to the strength of their challengers' campaign. The role of money in congressional campaigns is neither simple nor direct. More attention needs to be given to the strategic uses of money in the period leading up to the general election campaign as well as to the dynamics of receipts and expenditures over an entire election cycle.     

Buying Negative Agenda Control in the U.S. House

We explore the foundations of the legislative party cartel, as theorized by Cox and McCubbins (1993, 2005) , to determine how majority‐party moderates who suffer net policy losses from the majority leadership's use of negative agenda control are kept from defecting from the cartel arrangement. First, we identify formally the group of majority‐party members who are net policy losers. We find that those members occupying the initial 30% of the space within the majority‐party blockout zone—that space closest to the floor median—are hurt on a pure policy basis by the cartel arrangement. Second, we find that members in this “30% zone” are rewarded disproportionately by majority‐party leaders (relative to members in other intervals on the same side of the floor median) via side payments in the form of campaign contributions. In addition, majority‐party members within the 30% zone receive side payments commensurate with their particular policy loss.     

Candidate Valence and Ideological Positions in U.S. House Elections

We examine the relationship between the valence qualities of candidates and the ideological positions they take in U.S. House elections based on a study of the 2006 midterm elections. Our design enables us to distinguish between campaign and character dimensions of candidate valence and to place candidates and districts on the same ideological scale. Incumbents with a personal‐character advantage are closer ideologically to their district preferences, while disadvantaged challengers take more extreme policy positions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, challengers can reap electoral rewards by taking more extreme positions relative to their districts. We explore a possible mechanism for this extremism effect by demonstrating that challengers closer to the extreme received greater financial contributions, which enhanced their chances of victory. Our results bear on theories of representation that include policy and valence, although the interactions between these two dimensions may be complex and counterintuitive.     

Big Data and U.S. Public Policy

This paper examines the growing recognition of the phenomenon called “Big Data” and the policy implications it poses. It is argued that a core policy issue is personal and organizational privacy. At the same time there is a belief that analysis of “Big Data” offers potentially to provide public sector policy makers with extensive new information that would inform policy at unprecedentedly detailed levels. Despite this potential to improve the policy‐making process data often contain individual identifiable information that would negatively impact American core values such as privacy. This makes the use of these data almost impossible. The paper recognizes that there may be a way to strip individual data from Big Data sets thereby making their analysis more policy useful. This approach is not at this time technically feasible but research is ongoing.     

On expressive voting: Evidence from the 1988 U.S. presidential election

People turn out to cast their votes simply because they want to ``cheer'' or ``boo'' their favored or unfavored candidates. This expressive voting behavior is in marked contrast to the instrumental voting behavior, i.e., people vote because they perceive voting as a means of achieving a particular election outcome. In this paper we report an econometric study on voting behavior that uses data from the 1988 American National Election Study. The results reveal that the ``cheering'' and ``booing'' effects are statistically significant, and that they exert substantial influence on bothturnout and voter choice. We also obtain evidence against theproposition that people turn out to vote because they considerthemselves to be potentially decisive with regard to the electionoutcome.     

Young adults' under-representation in elections to the U.S. House of Representatives

The U.S. House of Representatives has one of the oldest pools of politicians in the world today: the average member of the House is 58 years at the time of their election, which is about 20 years older than the average American. But why are younger adults scarce among these representatives? Here we trace the relative absence of youth in both the primary and general elections of 2020 using a supply and demand framework. Our study finds that (1) the average candidate is much older than the average citizen and (2) young candidates perform less well than older candidates in both primaries and general elections. These results suggest that youth are disadvantaged because the two main parties do not nominate enough younger adults as candidates for winnable and safe seats. Young adults also seem to be disadvantaged indirectly at the electoral stage because they lack electoral capital (experience in running for and holding office) and tend to suffer strongly from the incumbency advantage of their opponents. We infer from these findings that barring reforms to rules governing minimum candidate ages and term limits, the under-representation of youth in U.S. national-level politics will continue for the foreseeable future.     

Time series evidence on shirking in the U.S. House of Representatives

This paper presents time series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1990. The empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time. We find no evidence of economically significant last term effects on voting behavior, nor are there important effects of legislative tenure on voting patterns. The most significant deviations in voting behavior occur for congressmen who failed to win their reelection bid, suggesting that sizable deviations from previous policy positions may result in swift retribution by constituents in the district.     

Policy directions concerning racial discrimination in U.S. housing markets

Abstract

This paper presents a catalog of 34 different proposed research and direct action policies aimed at futhering the two basic goals of public antidiscrimination policies: (1) ending unequal treatment of households in housing transactions because of their race or ethnicity, and (2) counteracting existing racial residential segregation by promoting stable racial integration. These 34 proposals have been derived from the many papers in this volume, plus a few suggestions by the author.

Each proposal is evaluated against five specific criteria of desirability: potential effectiveness, government costs, private‐sector costs, ease of implementation, and political feasibility. A final overall evaluation of each is made, and all policies are divided into three priority categories: high, moderate, and low. Many recommended policies are synergistic. This whole effort should have very high overall priority in American social policy.     

Primacy Implementation of Environmental Policy in the U.S. States

Environmental regulation is frequently implemented through asystem that allows states to choose whether to assume primaryauthority, or "primacy," for implementation and enforcement.This study looks at what causes states to assume this authorityin two important areas of environmental policy: air and waterpollution. It finds that in each policy area, primacy assumptionis unrelated to the "greenness" of state environmental policygenerally and negatively related to indicators of policy innovationwithin that area. Rather than being driven by commitment tothe environment, primacy assumption appears to be driven predominatelyby other factors, which differ substantially across the airand water policy arenas. These findings call into question thewidely held view that primacy assumption is an indicator ofstate environmentalism and indicate that a more nuanced viewof what causes states to assume primacy is necessary to fullyunderstand the dynamics of intergovernmental policy implementation.     

Ideology and interests in congressional voting: The politics of abortion in the U.S. Senate

Many studies suggest that personal ideology accounts for much more of congressional voting behavior than does attention to the desires of the electorate. There are two main explanations given for this seemingly robust conclusion: 1) poor measures of constituency preferences compared to those for ideology or behavior, and 2) representatives “shirk” on an inattentive electorate. We argue that existing studies have been biased against the “interest” explanation by ignoring the structure of American Congressional elections, in particular the party primary process. Correcting for the party primary effect, we show, within the context of abortion politics, that constituency interests possess greater explanatory power than previous models would suggest.     

Exclusive Committee Assignments and Party Pressure in the U.S. House of Representatives

Most studies of committee agency in theU.S. House of Representatives consider theideological location of the committee’smedian with respect to some agent. Littlestudied, however, is the effect committeeagency may have on legislators seekingcommittee assignments. I show that whencommittees are agents to the party,legislators feel pressure to selectideological positions more proximate to theparty. They respond to this pressure byexhibiting voting behavior more similar tothe preferences of the party median. Committee assignments, then, are a means bywhich parties can influence the votingbehavior of their members.