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The Impact of District Magnitude on Campaign Fundraising
Abstract
The number of legislators elected in a single district influences many aspects of state legislative elections. However, there is a dearth of research on how district magnitude influences campaign fundraising. We theorize that the greater competition for funds in multimember districts results in candidates raising less money and encourages them to be more entrepreneurial in their fundraising efforts. Specifically, we expect multimember district candidates to raise contributions from more diverse sets of interests than candidates in single-member districts, raise more funds out of state, and create more unique financial constituencies. Using data on candidates for Maryland's House of Delegates in 2006 and 2010, we find support for our hypotheses.
... Evidencia más reciente muestra que en sistemas de RPLA también existe una ventaja de titularidad, aunque más débil a medida que aumenta la magnitud de distrito (Cox y Morgenstern, 1995). A diferencia de sistemas con distritos uninominales, en que los titulares tienden a utilizar su gasto de manera reactiva en aquellos distritos con menores márgenes de ventaja (Benoit y Marsh, 2003), cuando aumenta la magnitud del distrito, la proporción de votos necesaria para ganar un escaño disminuye y las contiendas se vuelven más competitivas (Cox y Thies, 2000;Curry et al., 2013). Cuando hay más candidatos, la barrera de entrada para ganar un escaño es menor y, por ende, los márgenes de victoria también son menores. ...
... Cuando hay más candidatos, la barrera de entrada para ganar un escaño es menor y, por ende, los márgenes de victoria también son menores. Por eso, las tasas de rotación en legislaturas con distritos plurinominales son más altas que en legislaturas con distritos uninominales (Curry et al., 2013). En sistemas plurinominales, el contexto y las estrategias difieren, ya que los candidatos compiten, además, contra sus compañeros de partido. ...
A partir de la evidencia que muestra que el gasto en campaña rinde más para los candidatos no incumbentes, en elecciones sin incumbentes en que candidatos que militan en partidos institucionalizados compiten contra candidatos de partidos emergentes e independientes el efecto del gasto debiera ser menor para los primeros, que gozan de más reconocimiento de nombre. Con datos de los 1278 candidatos a convencionales constituyentes que compitieron en Chile en 28 distritos de representación proporcional y lista abierta por 138 escaños de la convención constitucional en mayo de 2021, evaluamos dos hipótesis sobre los determinantes del éxito electoral. Reportamos un efecto positivo general del gasto, pero un mayor gasto tiene un efecto de interacción negativo en el éxito electoral de las candidaturas de partidos institucionalizados de izquierda y de derecha. El gasto en campaña rindió más en candidaturas de partidos y grupos emergentes que en las de partidos institucionalizados.
... Third, campaign spending has different effects depending on the type of candidate (incumbent or challenger). Fourth, variations in campaign spending also depend on some characteristics of the electoral system (i.e., majority, proportional representation, mixed; Benoit & Marsh, 2003;Demirkaya et al., 2022;Johnson, 2013), the type of list (i.e., open or closed; Maddens et al., 2006), gender quotas (Gamboa & Morales, 2021;Smulders et al., 2019), and district size (Curry et al., 2013), among others. Fifth, campaign spending varies depending on whether the election is national or subnational (Jacob & Pollex, 2022). ...
In contrast to the extensive literature on the determinants of campaign spending and its effect on candidates’ electoral performance, comparatively less literature exists on the legal and sanctioning characteristics of political finance systems. Though some contributions have analyzed and compared the institutional designs of these financing systems, limited literature has empirically examined infractions and sanctions of electoral laws, categorized as either a crime or a misdemeanor, by the candidates. Limited knowledge exists about the political and sociodemographic profile of candidates who commit such offenses or misdemeanors, a gap this study addresses by empirically analyzing electoral law infractions. Using the case of Chile and an unpublished database of infractions of 38,246 candidates in the local elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016, as well as the legislative elections of 2009, 2013, and 2017, we present four conclusions. First, only about one-fifth of candidates commit such infractions. Second, such infractions are more common during first-tier elections, especially in deputy and senatorial elections. Third, the candidates most likely to commit such infractions are independent candidates who compete in regions remote from large urban centers, especially in rural areas. Fourth, the rise in infractions is linked to a new law that more strictly regulates candidates’ campaign spending. The study enhances our understanding of the efficacy of political finance systems and the enforcement of electoral sanctions.
... This implies that legislators play a relatively passive role and respond retroactively to the interests of their donors. Yet a growing body of scholarship in legislative shows that legislators use position taking as a fundraising strategy, which implies that donors are responsive to appeals by politicians (e.g., Benson and Limbocker 2023;Curry and Taylor 2013;Ensley 2009;Hamel and Miller 2019;Keena and Knight-Finley 2019;Rocca and Gordon 1999). ...
Since the 1970s, the financing of congressional elections has been dominated by a small network of wealthy donors who give to candidates across the country. Scholarship provides many insights into these donors and their influence, but less work has studied legislators and their mobilization of these donors. I exploit the design of the US Senate (where members serve six-year staggered terms) to investigate the fundraising effects of legislative behavior. Bringing together the literature on political behavior and legislative studies, I find that out-of-state donors flood senators with money during reelection, with the most money going to senators at risk of losing and those with higher legislative effectiveness scores. However, senators not facing reelection raise money from out-of-state donors through bill sponsorship. These results show that out-of-state donors respond to position taking by legislators, and implies that out-of-state donors reward legislators for the issues they prioritize through legislation.
... DM impacts campaign fundraising. In OLPR systems, when DM increases, candidates raise less money and need to broaden their base of funders (Curry, Herrnson, and Taylor 2013). DM also affects the behavior of voters (Lachat, Blais, and Lago 2015) and legislators (Taylor, Herrnson, and Curry 2018), with more strategic behavior opportunities for voters and candidates as the DM increases. ...
The impact of campaign spending, generally greater for challengers than for incumbents, is conditioned by electoral rules and incumbency—normally seen as a dichotomous condition. But when an electoral reform changes the composition of districts, a legislator is an incumbent only in the section of the new district. In Chile, the 60 open-list proportional representation 2-member districts used until 2013 were combined to create 28 open-list PR districts for the 2017 election, thus making some legislators enjoy a higher degree of incumbency. With data from 1430 candidates in the 2013 and 2017 legislative elections, we report a nonlinear positive effect of campaign spending on electoral success in all district magnitudes. Campaign spending has a higher impact as the number of open seats increases and a stronger effect for incumbents whose old districts comprise a larger share of the new districts. Campaign spending matters differently for challengers and incumbents given the moderating effect of district magnitude, the number of open seats and the percentage of incumbency.
... Where a party label is strong, the costs of winning a nomination is often high. Still, fundraising in national elections can be relatively easy for a major party candidate who is attracting contributions from party supporters who wish to influence a race (Curry et al., 2013). Yet not all candidates can rely on a strong party affiliation to raise money to attract voters (Samuels, 2001). ...
How do political parties in low-and high-cost institutional contexts respond to funding inequalities as a source of gender imbalance for those seeking elected office? We rely on a 'most similar' logic to answer this question and develop two categories of cost intensity comprised of three institutions-electoral system, candidate selection model and public funding. Our findings show that parties in both contexts see funding as a source of inequality, but that the obstacles women face are more salient to parties in a high-cost (Ghana) than a low-cost (Cabo Verde) context. Only in Ghana have parties adopted funding measures that directly target women.
... Other conceptualizations of campaign organization, such as campaign field offices, are difficult to track during the middle to late stages of a presidential primary due to the compressed calendar. For these reasons, fundraising is frequently used as a proxy for campaign organization and/or activities (Curry, Herrnson, and Taylor 2013;Hinckley and Green 1996). While candidates can raise money based on their success in primary elections (Aldrich 1980), there is less certainty that raising money helps candidates win. ...
In presidential primaries, Super Tuesday elections play a significant role in winnowing candidate fields and establishing nomination frontrunners. Despite their importance, scholars know little about why and how candidates win or lose the states comprising these events. This study explores which factors help explain candidate performance in Super Tuesday primaries between 2008 and 2016. Using pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, the results indicate three key drivers of Super Tuesday success: candidate viability, public attention, and media attention. These findings imply that presidential campaigns continue to be complex electoral events beyond the early primary states and suggest that underdog candidates can still win states under the right conditions. Future research should explore the interrelatedness of these three critical factors.
Little is known about how legislature size affects the political mobilization of societal interests. I propose that legislative downsizing events increase the cost of campaigns, and thereby spur additional lobbying by organized interests that corral monetary resources efficiently. I examine how numbers of organizations with registered lobbyists changed in response to legislative downsizing events in three states. Using synthetic control analyses, I find that downsizing did not affect organization totals in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, but that Illinois’ Cutback Amendment precipitated a 25-percent increase in organized interests. Further tests disconfirm that monetary-based interests were most likely to mobilize anew after the Amendment’s implementation. In general, these mixed findings imply that changes in legislature size alone are insufficient for affecting interest mobilization but that other kinds of legislative reforms, such as the transition from cumulative to plurality voting that accompanied Illinois’ downsizing, may affect mobilization rates.
In several U.S. states, legislative districts for the lower chamber are structured as multi‐member districts (MMD) electing two or more individuals. Ten states use MMDs, the most common form is a district that elects two candidates (employed in AZ, ND, NJ, SD). Sometimes, parties in these states field only strong one candidate in districts where they have a registration disadvantage, believing this “single shot” strategy improves the election odds. Our research casts doubt on this tactic. It finds that lone Democrats in a pooled sample of three states see a noted disadvantage by widening the electoral gap by 3.3 percentage points on average, meaning that parties are better off running two candidates regardless of their relative quality. However, this effect varies within states. Republicans do not experience a disadvantage, though fewer Democratic‐leaning states employ this election method. This research has practical implications for party strategy in MMD states.
How do Super PACs allocate their resources? The question is both timely and relevant, particularly as we reflect on the ten-year anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. Super PACs now outspend – sometimes by huge margins, as in the 2016 presidential election – all other groups’ independent expenditures including those of parties, unions, and 501(c) organizations. The issue is especially important in congressional politics, where Super PACs have an opportunity to shape the institution every two years through congressional elections. Utilizing outside spending data from the Center for Responsive Politics, we analyze four U.S. House election cycles since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling (2012–2018). The likelihood that Super PACs invest in a race is strongly determined by the electoral context, even after controlling for the legislative influence of the incumbent member of Congress.
This study demonstrates that district magnitude (the number of officials elected from an electoral district) affects the behavioral choices and policymaking contributions of legislators. We theorize that legislators elected from districts of larger magnitudes focus much of their efforts on relatively low-cost, high-visibility activities that allow for easy credit claiming, while their colleagues from lower magnitude districts focus more on relatively high-cost, low-visibility work required to move policy proposals through the legislative process. We test our hypotheses using data recording the legislative activities of members of the Maryland House of Delegates, which elects its member from districts of different magnitudes. The results, which are mostly supportive, have implications for the impact of institutional structures on representation and policymaking.
El libro realiza una exhaustiva revisión de literatura alrededor del tema de los distritos electorales desde una perspectiva comparada. Esta revisión de literatura en primera instancia se concentra en el debate que se ha construido sobre las fortalezas y debilidades en torno a los distritos uninominales, y concretamente, reflexiona en torno a la relación existente entre estos distritos y la construcción de capital social. En la segunda parte, el libro recolecta información sistemática sobre los tipos de sistemas electorales en Latinoamérica y en los países que pertenecen a la Organización para la Cooperación y desarrollo Económico (OCDE), así como de sus niveles de capital social y por medio de análisis de varianza identifica si existe una relación entre los tipos de distritos y el capital social. En la tercera parte a partir de una aproximación histórica se reconstruye analíticamente las distintas formas institucionales bajo las cuales se ha configurado el sistema electoral colombiano desde 1886 hasta la actualidad.
This study demonstrates that multimember districts (MMDs) complicate ballots, reduce voter information, and increase incentives for strategic voting in ways that reduce voter participation. Using data from three states that elect members of at least one legislative chamber from both single-member districts (SMDs) and MMDs, we test hypotheses about the impact on MMDs on ballot drop-off (selecting fewer candidates for an office than permissible) and roll-off (not voting in down-ballot races). We find support for both sets of hypotheses, with the strongest results related to ballot drop-off. The results have broad implications for voter participation, representation, and election administration in the many states and localities that use MMDs to elect public officials. © 2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa.
Popular elections are at the heart of representative democracy. Thus, understanding the laws and practices that govern such elections is essential to understanding modern democracy. In this book, Cox views electoral laws as posing a variety of coordination problems that political forces must solve. Coordination problems - and with them the necessity of negotiating withdrawals, strategic voting, and other species of strategic coordination - arise in all electoral systems. This book employs a unified game-theoretic model to study strategic coordination worldwide and that relies primarily on constituency-level rather than national aggregate data in testing theoretical propositions about the effects of electoral laws. This book also considers not just what happens when political forces succeed in solving the coordination problems inherent in the electoral system they face but also what happens when they fail.
It Takes a Candidate serves as the first systematic, nationwide empirical account of the manner in which gender affects political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Study, a national survey conducted on almost 3,800 'potential candidates', we find that women, even in the highest tiers of professional accomplishment, are substantially less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to seek elected office. Women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. They are less likely than men to think they are 'qualified' to run for office. And they are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for office in the future. This gender gap in political ambition persists across generations. Despite cultural evolution and society's changing attitudes toward women in politics, running for public office remains a much less attractive and feasible endeavor for women than men.
This book provides a framework for analyzing the impact of the separation of powers on party politics. Conventional political science wisdom assumes that democracy is impossible without political parties, because parties fulfil all the key functions of democratic governance. They nominate candidates, coordinate campaigns, aggregate interests, formulate and implement policy, and manage government power. When scholars first asserted the essential connection between parties and democracy, most of the world's democracies were parliamentary. Yet by the dawn of the twenty-first century, most democracies had directly elected presidents. David J. Samuels and Matthew S. Shugart provide a theoretical framework for analyzing variation in the relationships among presidents, parties, and prime ministers across the world's democracies, revealing the important ways that the separation of powers alters party organization and behavior - thereby changing the nature of democratic representation and accountability.
Campaign contributions are widely viewed as a corrupting influence but most scholarly research concludes that they have marginal impact on legislative behavior. Lynda W. Powell shows that contributions have considerable influence in some state legislatures but very little in others. Using a national survey of legislators, she develops an innovative measure of influence and delineates the factors that explain this great variation across the 99 U.S. state legislative chambers. Powell identifies the personal, institutional, and political factors that determine how much time a legislator devotes to personal fundraising and fundraising for the caucus. She shows that the extent of donors' legislative influence varies in ways corresponding to the same variations in the factors that determine fundraising time. She also confirms a link between fundraising and lobbying with evidence supporting the theory that contributors gain access to legislators based on donations, Powell's findings have important implications for the debate over the role of money in the legislative process.
Close competition for majority party control of the U.S. House of Representatives has transformed the congressional parties from legislative coalitions into partisan fundraising machines. With the need for ever increasing sums of money to fuel the ongoing campaign for majority control, both Republicans and Democrats have made large donations to the party and its candidates mandatory for members seeking advancement within party and congressional committee hierarchies. Eric S. Heberlig and Bruce A. Larson not only analyze this development, but also discuss its implications for American government and democracy. They address the consequences of selecting congressional leaders on the basis of their fundraising skills rather than their legislative capacity and the extent to which the battle for majority control leads Congress to prioritize short-term electoral gains over long-term governing and problem-solving.
Allowing legislators to pick the voters that make up their districts is a fundamental conflict of interest and central concern for the popular sovereignty of American elections. In The Realities of Redistricting, Jonathan Winburn examines the extent of this potential problem by focusing on both the incentives and the constraints facing state legislators during the redistricting process. Most research on redistricting tends to examine only the outcomes produced in terms of partisan gains or losses; however, we know much less about what constrains political mapmakers during the process. We know even less about whether constraints built into the process are enough to limit the partisan manipulation of both district boundaries and electoral outcomes. From the beginning stages of redistricting to the resulting outcomes on election day, this book analyzes the constraints and incentives that state legislators face. By examining the entire process, this book investigates who holds the power in the process and improves our understanding of the conditions under which redrawing district boundaries have a significant influence on partisan politics throughout the country. Specifically, reformers, who generally argue for commissions, may find that focusing on the rules rather than the actors is a better path to improving the process. The Realities of Redistricting is an interesting and informative read for anyone concerned with one of the most contentious processes in the American system.
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The research presented here is designed to answer some of the questions that remain regarding the impact of campaign expenditures on state legislative elections. Analysis of data from 12 states indicates that there is a significant relationship between campaign expenditures and the party vote in state house elections. The effect of expenditures conforms to the principle of diminishing marginal returns. The relationship, in several states, attains a level that make expenditures among the most important factors in state house races. Finally, the analysis uncovers both interstate and partisan differences in the importance of expenditures, a finding that opens up a whole new set of research questions. Because of low levels of voter information and interest, the lack of grassroots party organizations, the increased use of new and expensive campaign technology, and the increasing amount of money being spent to win legislative seats, it is reasonable to assume that campaign expenditures are an integral part of state legislative elections. Money buys access to voters. State legislative candidates who have money to spend are better able to affect the vote choice than are candidates for more visible offices (i.e., those that attract greater media attention) because they are not competing with conflicting information sources other than their opponent. The probable absence of free media time means that a candidate will get only the exposure that he or she pays for. Because voters are relatively poorly informed, they are unlikely to have as many predispositions in state legislative races as in more salient races, making it easier for candidates with money to influence their vote. The erosion of the political party as a voting cue and as an organization means that candidates have a better opportunity to reach more voters, but only if they have the finances to build
A survey of primary and general elections in the lower houses of 11 southern and border states (1968-1986) shows that there is a very high rate of renomination and reelection for those incumbents who run and that a substantial proportion are unopposed in the primary, the general election, or both. Those running in multimember free-for-all districts are more likely to have some opposition than those in single-member or multimember position districts. There has been an increase over the 20-year period in the proportion of incumbents who are unopposed in one or both elections. Although Republican incumbents are more likely than Democrats to have general election opposition, there has been a surprisingly large increase over time in the proportion of Republican incumbents reelected without opposition. This is a study of the success of incumbent representatives in southern and border state legislatures in winning renomination, winning reelection, and winning without opposition. It includes primaries and general elections in 11 states for which adequate primary data are available from the dataset compiled by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
Uncontested seats are far more common in U.S. state legislative elections than in U.S. House elections. But the incidence of uncontested seats varies across the states. In this paper, I attempt to explain that variance. Using pooled data on state legislative elections from 1992 to 1996, I test relationships suggested by the literature on uncontested seats in U.S. House elections. In addition, I also look at important differences among the state legislatures, such as level of professionalization, the competitiveness of the state's electoral system, the use of multimember districts, and the institution of term limits. I find that the value of a seat, measured either by professionalization level or member pay, and the competitiveness of the state's electoral system are powerful variables in explaining the incidence of uncontested seats across the states. Region also is important, with state legislatures in the South suffering a higher percentage of uncontested seats than state legislatures in the North.
From Kosovo to Kabul, the last decade witnessed growing interest in ?electoral engineering?. Reformers have sought to achieve either greater government accountability through majoritarian arrangements or wider parliamentary diversity through proportional formula. Underlying the normative debates are important claims about the impact and consequences of electoral reform for political representation and voting behavior. The study compares and evaluates two broad schools of thought, each offering contracting expectations. One popular approach claims that formal rules define electoral incentives facing parties, politicians and citizens. By changing these rules, rational choice institutionalism claims that we have the capacity to shape political behavior. Alternative cultural modernization theories differ in their emphasis on the primary motors driving human behavior, their expectations about the pace of change, and also their assumptions about the ability of formal institutional rules to alter, rather than adapt to, deeply embedded and habitual social norms and patterns of human behavior.
Although PACs attempt to influence the legislative process with contributions, this research finds little evidence that the contributions of 120 PACs affiliated with 10 organizations affected the voting patterns of the House members who served continuously from 1975 to 1982. In the few cases in which a relationship between contributions and a member's votes is established, the analysis indicates that contributions are a surrogate measure of a more important and larger package of support for the member from the interest groups. Two-stage least squares regression models are used to test the relationship between PAC contributions and a member's votes, controlling for the incumbent's ideology and party, and the political leaning of the district. Interviews with PAC officials supplement the statistical analysis.
This project uses mathematical logic and results from spatial models to explain how parties in a legislature elected under a multi-member district system will differ from those elected under single-member plurality, holding all else constant. Under most circumstances, parties elected under multi-member districts will be more ideologically diverse than those elected under single-member plurality, all else being equal. The above hypothesis is tested using interest group ratings for members of the Illinois General Assembly, a legislative body that has used both single-member and multi-member systems to elect its members. During the time when the Illinois House was elected by multi-member districts and the Senate was elected by single-member districts, parties in the House were consistently more ideologically diverse than their counterparts in the Senate. This difference disappears after the House adopts a single-member district system.
This important work constitutes a systematic, nationwide empirical account of the effects of gender on political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Study, a national survey of 3,800 “potential candidates” conducted by the authors, it relates these findings: --Women, even at the highest levels of professional accomplishment, are significantly less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to run for elective office. --Women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to consider themselves “qualified” to run for office. --Women are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for a future office. According to the authors, this gender gap in political ambition persists across generations, despite contemporary society's changing attitudes towards female candidates. While other treatments of gender in the electoral process focus on candidates and office holders, It Takes a Candidate makes a unique contribution to political studies by focusing on the earlier stages of the candidate emergence process and on how gender affects the decision to seek elective office.
Lobbying efforts and campaign contributions from coalitions to groups are used to explain representatives' voting decisions within the U.S. House Ways and Means and Agriculture Committees. Information about which groups worked together on two controversial issues and which representatives they lobbied was obtained through personal interviews and a mail survey of professional lobbyists. The analysis reveals that committee-level voting, particularly in the Ways and Means Committee, is best explained by the total number of lobbying contacts representatives received from groups on each side of the issue. Campaign contributiors proved somewhat useful for explaining groups' lobbying patterns; but it appears to be lobbying, not money, that shapes and reinforces representatives' policy decisions.
In this paper we take the analysis of the role of money in legislative elections one step beyond the extant literature by examining the factors that affect the impact of spending on the vote. We hypothesize that two sets of factors, contextual and conversion, condition money's effect on the vote. The analysis of data from 12 state house races finds some significant support for the notion that spending responds to the context and the characteristics of the race, findings which have important theoretical and practical implications.
This study uses empirical spatial theory to evaluate candidate and voter behavior in senate elections contested during the 1989 Chilean general election. The study evaluates whether senatorial candidates competing in dual member districts under Chilean d'Hondt locate near the periphery or interior of the electoral space. Spatial analyses demonstrate the Chilean senatorial electoral system is characterized by centrifugal forces. In particular, candidates of the right locate on the periphery of the space and face few incentives to pursue moderate electoral strategies. The study also characterizes bases of party and candidate support and the underlying dimensions of political competition. Spatial analysis reveals both change and continuity in the pre- and post-authoritarian electoral universes.
Abstract In this paper we use a novel research design that exploits unique features of multi-member districts to estimate and decompose the incumbency advantage in state legislative elections. Like some existing related studies we also use repeated observations on the same candidates to account for unobserved factors that remain constant across observations. Multi-member districts have the additional feature of co-partisans competing for multiple seats within the same district. This allows us to identify both the direct oce,holder benefits and the incumbent quality advantage over non-incumbent candidates from the same party. We find that the overall incumbency advantage is of similar magnitude as that found in previous studies. We attribute approximately half of this advantage to incumbents’ quality advantage over open seat candidates and the remainder to direct oce,holder benefits. However we also find some evidence that direct oce,holder benefits are larger in competitive districts than in safe districts and in states with relatively large legislative budgets per capita.
The lack of access to equal financial resources with male candidates has been viewed as a major contributing factor in women's inability to gain public office. Analysis of the campaign finance records for election to the U.S. House of Representatives from 1972 to 1982 shows that although on the average women nominees have never raised or spent as much as men, the size of their disparity is curvilinear over these years, and the correlation between gender and campaign financing is weak. Within candidate status groups (incumbents, challengers, and open races) and within the parties female nominees have not been consistently disadvantaged. Women candidates of both parties even have outdistanced their male counterparts on occasion. Data from the 1980 and 1982 elections also indicate that the structure of male and female fund raising is similar in their support from large contributors, political action committees, and the parties. Further, for women challengers, expenditures have a larger impact on votes than for male challengers. The financial problem for women candidates would appear not to lie at the general election stage of the process. Earlier stages, however, may account for women's relative absence from the elected political elite.
We study the extent to which PACs target the members and chairs of particular congressional committees, by estimating the effects of changes in a representative's committee and leadership assignments on changes in the pattern of PAC contributions received by the representative. We find strong evidence that ties exist between certain types of PACs and congressional committees. In addition, the analysis reveals interesting asymmetries in the propensity of PACs to add or drop members who change their committee assignments.
Most research on legislative decisionmaking has focused on legislatures with single-member district systems, but much less is known about legislatures with multiple-member district systems. This study compares a multiple-member legislative chamber, the Arizona House of Representatives, to a single-member system, the Arizona Senate. First, we examine the ideological preferences across the two chambers, and we find that the House system produces more ideological extremism than the Senate. Second, we test a model of legislative decisionmaking that employs constituency variables, legislator attributes and ideology. We find that constituency characteristics are significant in the Senate, but in the House ideology dominates. The combination of ideological extremism and its greater importance in decisionmaking in the House suggests powerful effects of the multiple-member district system.
Recent studies examining the role of money in state legislative campaigns focus on questions related to the amounts raised, the sources of the funds, and the effects of spending on election outcomes. Little attention, however, has been given to the possible impact of money on other aspects of the electoral process-namely candidacy decisions. Political practitioners often assert that money has an important influence when incumbents collect large campaign treasuries or “war chests” for the purpose of warding off potential challengers. While several studies address the validity of this proposition in the congressional setting, few have examined it closely in state legislative races. This study considers this possibility in an analysis of incumbent funding in primary and general elections in eight states. Findings indicate that incumbents often amass war chests and these sums negatively impact challenger emergence; however, this effect is partially mitigated by legislative professionalism. The dampening effect of campaign treasuries is found to be more potent in states having the least professional legislatures.
This research analyzes the strategies and behaviors of political action committees (PACs) and political parties with regard to campaign contributions to state legislative candidates. Utilizing data from three states-New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, we find that PACs contribute disproportionately to incumbents, with little regard to the expected competitiveness of the election. We also find evidence that PACs are somewhat more likely to fund members of the majority party. In contrast, we find that political party organizations exhibit a different strategy, and that this strategy varies according to the minority/majority status of the legislative party. Specifically, we find minority parties develop an "additive" strategy, one aimed at increasing their numbers in the legislature. Majority parties are more likely to develop a "protectionist" strategy, one which favors incumbents, especially vulnerable incumbents.
There are two contending accounts of cross-national variation in voter turnout rates. One emphasizes the role of institutions and electoral attributes, whereas the other stresses cultural and historical factors. The authors evaluate the merits of these two arguments. They first apply the model developed by R. W. Jackman to turnout rates during the 1980s, expanding the sample of industrial states to include three newer democracies with recent authoritarian histories: Greece, Portugal, and Spain. They then examine the potential impact of cultural variables on voter turnout rates. The authors conclude that the institutional argument outperforms the cultural account of conventional political participation.
Differences in voter turnout among industrial democracies are a function of political institutions and electoral law. Specifically, the presence of nationally competitive electoral districts provides incentives for parties and candidates to mobilize voters everywhere, thereby increasing turnout. Disproportionality in the translation of votes into legislative seats provides a disincentive to voting, which lowers turnout. Multipartyism assigns elections a less decisive role in government formation, depressing turnout. By generating more decisive governments, unicameralism provides a clearer link between elections and legislation, increasing turnout. Finally, mandatory voting laws produce a disincentive to not vote. Empirical analyses of average voter-turnout levels in the 1970s and 1960s across 19 democracies are consistent with these expectations, although Switzerland and the United States appear to be outliers. The results have major implications for the way we interpret national differences in voter-turnout rates.
Nearly thirty years of research on social choice has produced a large body of theoretical results. The underlying structure of the models that have generated these results is highly atomistic and institutionally sparse. While attention has been devoted to the mechanisms by which individual revealed preferences are aggregated into a social choice, rarely are other aspects of institutional arrangements treated endogenously. In this paper institutional properties are given more prominence. In particular, I focus on three aspects of organization: (1) a division-of-labor arrangement called a committee system: (2) a specialization-of-labor system called a jurisdictional arrangement; and (3) a monitoring mechanism by which a parent organization constrains the autonomy of its subunits called an amendment control rule. The conceptual language has a legislative flavor but, in fact, the concepts are broadly applicable to diverse organizational forms. The principal thrust of this paper is a demonstration of the ways institutional arrangements may conspire with the preferences of individuals to produce structure-induced equilibrium.
While contemporary political science (as, for example, in such subjects as political socialization, studies of public opinion, etc.) tends to emphasize the study of values and tastes (because of an assumption that political outcomes—like market outcomes—are determined by the amalgamation of individual preferences), the older tradition of political science emphasized the study of institutions. The line of research in political theory followed during the last generation has involved seeking an equilibrium of tastes; but it has revealed that such an equilibrium exists only rarely, if at all. The inference then is that prudence in research directs the science of politics toward the investigation of empirical regularities in institutions, which, though congealed tastes, are “unstable constants” amenable to scientific investigation.
Millions of American voters fail to complete their ballots each election year. These voters present a puzzle: After having incurred the costs of going to the polls, why do they choose not to vote on some of the items on the ballot? This paper considers voter rolloff between presidential and House races in an effort to understand the reasons why some voters abstain selectively. We consider this question by analyzing House rolloff based on aggregate data from the 1990s and national survey data from the 1980s. The results indicate that voters skip House contests not because they are lacking in education or members of minority groups, but rather because they do not have enough information to cast a vote. This finding offers new insight into how rolloff voters approach a ballot: They treat voting as if it were a test, picking out the questions that they can answer.
A key premise of partisan theories of congressional organization is that majority status confers substantial procedural advantages. in this article, Me take advantage of changes in party control of the House and Senate, such as that following the Republicans' historic victory in the midterm elections of 1994, to assess the value of majority status in terms of contributions from access-seeking political action committees (PACs). We estimate that majority status in the House was worth about $36,000 per member iii receipts from corporate and trade PACs circa 1994-even controlling for the usual factors cited in the literature as affecting members' ability to raise money (such as committee assigments and voting record). The value of majority status bt the Senate is even larger in absolute terms, although smaller in proportion to the total amount of money raised. Ou results show that majority status is a valuable asset, one worth considerable collective effort to attain.
This paper investigates how electoral laws affect the position-taking incentives of parties and candidates. It seeks to extend the finding presented in the classical "median voter theorem" to a wide class of electoral systems--or to show the limits of such extension. The factors examined are the district magnitude, the electoral formula, the number of votes each voter is allowed to cast, whether voters can cumulate their votes, and whether voters can "partially abstain." I suggest a crude division of electoral systems into those producing predominantly centripetal incentives and those producing predominantly centrifugal incentives. Among the factors found to produce centripetal incentives, at least in noncumulative systems, are the following: increases in the number of votes per voter; outlawry of "partial abstention"; and decreases in the district magnitude. In systems allowing the cumulation of votes, matters are a bit different.
Previous investigations of strategic voting equilibria in mass electorates have looked only at single-member districts. I shall investigate such equilibria in multimember districts operating under the single nontransferable vote system. What appear to be the most natural equilibria conform to the M + 1 rule, according to which strategic voting in M-seat districts produces exactly M + 1 vote-getting candidates in equilibrium, any others having their support totally undercut. This result provides the beginnings of a formal underpinning for Reed's recent extension of Duverger's Law to the Japanese case. The model also generates specific and empirically testable hypotheses concerning the exceptions to the M + 1 rule that one ought to expect in equilibrium. I test these hypotheses with Japanese data. Finally, the model also reveals a type of strategic voting that is specific to multimember districts. I use Japanese data again to explore the empirical importance of this kind of strategic voting.
We assess the conditions under which majority status generates benefits for incumbent legislators and how these benefits are distributed among members of the majority party. We argue that majority status is valuable only in procedurally partisan chambers, that is, when the majority party monopolizes chamber leadership positions and control of the legislative agenda. Contrary to the existing literature, which suggests that the rewards of majority status should accrue mainly to party leaders, we posit that these rewards should be distributed broadly among the majority party. To test our expectations we utilize ten recent transitions in the partisan control of state legislatures and data on campaign contributions. Our findings confirm our expectations. Majority status is valuable only in procedurally partisan chambers. Furthermore, the premium in campaign contributions enjoyed by the majority party is primarily distributed to backbenchers, though top party leaders also benefit. These results provide important insights into the distribution of power and influence in American state legislatures.
Political scientists often confront clustered data in their research, which can present problems for statistical inference by inducing downward bias in the standard errors of regression coefficients. Often in these situations researchers address the issue by estimating robust cluster standard errors (RCSE). Here I provide evidence within the context of linear regression that while the RCSE are nearly always better estimates of uncertainty than conventional standard errors (OLS SE) in clus- tered data, they are not a panacea for the problem. Through Monte Carlo simulation I demonstrate that the RCSE offer an improvement to the biased OLS SE under most conditions, but that bootstrap cluster standard errors (BCSE), which are constructed by resampling entire clusters of observations rather than individual observations, outperform both the OLS SE and RCSE. I conclude with four replications of recent work (two shown here) and offer recommendations to researchers.
Seat allocation formulas affect candidates' incentives to campaign on a personal rather than party reputation. Variables that enhance personal vote-seeking include: (1) lack of party leadership control over access to and rank on ballots, (2) degree to which candidates are elected on individual votes independent of co-partisans, and (3) whether voters cast a single intra-party vote instead of multiple votes or a party-level vote. District magnitude has the unusual feature that, as it increases, the value of a personal reputation rises if the electoral formula itself fosters personal vote-seeking, but falls if the electoral formula fosters party reputation-seeking.
Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order. This is precisely the objective of the present article.
Despite relatively favorable citizen attitudes, voter turnout in American national elections is far below the average of 80% of the eligible electorate that votes in other industrialized democracies. The American institutional setting—particularly the party system and the registration laws—severely inhibits voter turnout, and probably also accounts for the unusual degree to which education and other socioeconomic resources are directly linked to voting participation in the United States.
Using a combination of aggregate and comparative survey data, the present analysis suggests that in comparative perspective, turnout in the United States is advantaged about 5% by political attitudes, but disadvantaged 13% by the party system and institutional factors, and up to 14% by the registration laws. The experience of other democracies suggests that encouraging voter participation would contribute to channeling discontent through the electoral process. Even a significantly expanded American electorate would be more interested and involved in political activity than are present voters in most other democracies.
This paper investigates the nature of multicandidate electoral equilibria under three different classes of single-ballot-single-winner voting systems: (1) scoring rules (including the plurality rule, Borda's method of marks, and negative voting); (2) Condorcet completion procedures; and (3) multiple vote procedures (including approval voting). Some of the key findings of the paper are that (1) multicandidate equilibria under the plurality rule must be noncentrist (Theorem 1); (2) in an election held under any Condorcet procedure, candidates have a dominant strategy to adopt the median voter's position (Theorem 4); (3) there is a set of nontrivial voting methods for which equilibria routinely exist regardless of the dimensionality of the policy space; and (4) the plurality rule is alone among commonly discussed voting procedures in not having centrist multicandidate equilibria.