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Studying Congressional and Gubernatorial Campaigns Alvarez, R. Michael Uploaded 00-00-0000 Keywords campaigns congressional elections public opinionpolling National Election Studies Abstract This paper was presented at the recent NES Congressional Elections Research and Development Conference. I argue that the NES ought to redesign the congressional election survey so that campaigns can be studied in more depth. I provide four empirical examples from my recent research which demonstrate some of the directions the NES can take. I conclude with a series of proposals for changes to the NES survey instrument, new questions which could be included in the NES congressional election studies, and discussion about the integration of contextual data with the NES survey data.

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Congressional Campaign Contributions, District Service and Electoral Outcomes in the United States: Statistical Tests of a Formal Game Model with Nonlinear Dynamics Mebane, Walter R. Uploaded 07-22-1997 Keywords congressional elections campaign contributions campaign finance district service intergovernmental transfers formal model game theory Cournot-Nash equilibrium Nash equilibrium differential equations dynamical system nonlinear dynamics Hopf bifurcation normal form Whitney embedding theorem divergence theorem Liouville's theorem multivariate normal distribution maximum likelihood Wald test stability asymptotic stability Abstract Using a two-stage game model of congressional campaigns, the second stage being a system of ordinary differential equations, I argue that candidates, political parties and financial contributors interact strategically in American congressional elections in a way that is inherently nonlinear. Congressional races in which the incumbent faces a challenge are generated by dynamical systems that have Hopf bifurcations: a small change in the challenger's quality or in the type of district service can change a stable incumbent advantage into an oscillating race in which the incumbent's chances are uncertain. The normal form equations for such a system inspire a statistical model that can recover qualitative features of the dynamics from cross-sectional data. I estimate and test the model using data from the 1984 and 1986 election periods for political action committee campaign contributions, intergovernmental transfers and general election vote shares.

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Coordinating Voting in American Presidential and House Elections Mebane, Walter R. Uploaded 07-21-1997 Keywords coordinating voting moderating voting probabilistic voting spatial voting retrospective voting presidential elections congressional elections split-ticket voting pivotal voter theorem beta distribution multinomial logit maximum likelihood Abstract I describe and estimate a probabilistic voting model designed to test whether individuals' votes for President and for the House of Representatives are coordinated with respect to two cutpoints on a single spatial dimension, in the way that Alesina and Rosenthal's pivotal voter theorem suggests they should be. In my model the cutpoints are random variables about which each individual has a subjective probability distribution. Each person's probabilistic coordinating voting behavior occurs relative to the cutpoints' expected values under the distribution. The model implements the idea the pattern of coordination depends on an individual's evaluation of the economy. The economic bias in the coordinating pattern implies that voters punish a Democratic President for success in improving the economy. The economically successful Democratic President can avoid losses only if the voters who rate the economy as having improved also believe that the policy position of the Democratic party has shifted to the right.

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A Markov Switching Model of Congressional Partisan Regimes Jones, Bryan Kim, Chang-Jin Startz, Richard Uploaded 07-18-2005 Keywords Markov switching electoral realignment critical elections partisan regimes Congressional elections Abstract Studies of development and change in partisan fortunes in the US emphasize epochs of partisan stability, separated by critical events or turning points. Yet to date we have no estimates of legislative regimes as they relate to electoral realignments. In this paper we study partisan balances in the US Congress using the method of Markov switching. Our estimates for the House of Representatives are based on election changes from 1854, roughly the date of the establishment of the modern incarnation of the two-party system, to the present. For the Senate, we estimate partisan balance from 1914, the date of popular election of Senators. We use this method to estimate an underlying unobserved state parameter, ‘partisan regime’. Basically a partisan regime denotes a built-in congressional electoral advantage that persists through time, and that changes in a disjoint and episodic fashion. The method allows the direct estimation of critical transition points between Republican and Democratic partisan coalitions. Republican regimes characterized House elections during three periods: 1860 through 1872, 1894 through 1906, and 1918 through 1928. A three-state estimate for the House suggested the emergence of a third state in 1994. For the Senate, the two-state model does not fit adequately. We estimate a three-state model in which a Republican regime dominated from 1914 through 1928; a Democratic regime characterized the period 1930-1934, and a Democratic-leaning regime characterized the period 1938 to the present (1936 is a transition year). Combined with existing historical evidence, our analysis isolates four critical congressional elections: 1874; 1894; 1930; and 1994.

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The 2011 Debt Ceiling Crisis and the 2012 House Elections: A Research Design Monogan, Jamie Uploaded 11-06-2012 Keywords registration causal inference coarsened exact matching congressional elections Abstract On August 1, 2011, the House of Representatives voted to raise the federal debt ceiling as well as to make cuts in discretionary spending. Although this vote allowed the federal government to avoid default, raising the debt ceiling was unpopular with the public and the vote cut across party lines. This paper proposes a research design for evaluating the effect of a House member's vote on the debt ceiling on two outcomes: the member's ability to retain his or her seat through the 2012 general election, and the incumbent's share of the two-party vote for members who face a general election competitor.

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Estimating incumbency advantage and its variation, as an example of a before/after study Gelman, Andrew Huang, Zaiying Uploaded 02-07-2003 Keywords Bayesian inference before-after study Congressional elections Gibbs Abstract Incumbency advantage is one of the most studied features in American legislative elections. In this paper, we construct and implement an estimate that allows incumbency advantage to vary between individual incumbents. This model predicts that open-seat elections will be less variable than those with incumbents running, an observed empirical pattern that is not explained by previous models. We apply our method to the U.S. House of Representatives in the twentieth century: our estimate of the overall pattern of incumbency advantage over time is similar to previous estimates (although slightly lower), and we also find a pattern of increasing variation. In addition to the application to incumbency advantage, our approach represents a new method, using multilevel modeling, for estimating effects in before/after studies.

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Coordination, Moderation and Institutional Balancing in American House Elections at Midterm Mebane, Walter R. Sekhon, Jasjeet Uploaded 09-02-1999 Keywords congressional elections rational expectations voter equilibrium midterm cycle stochastic choice model turnout Abstract Individuals' turnout decisions and vote choices for the House of Representatives have been coordinated in recent midterm election years, with each eligible voter (each elector) using a strategy that features policy moderation. Coordination is defined as a rational expectations equilibrium among electors, in which each elector has both common knowledge and private information about the election outcome. Stochastic choice models estimated using individual-level data from the American National Election Study Post-Election Surveys of years 1978-1998 support coordination, but a model in which electors act non-strategically to moderate policy has very similar behavioral implications and also works well. The empirical coordinating model satisfies the fixed point condition that defines the common knowledge expectation electors have about the election outcome in the equilibrium of the theoretical model. Both the coordinating and non-strategic models are capable of generating a midterm cycle in which the President's party usually loses vote share at midterm. Both models correctly flag 1998 as an exception to that pattern: the Republican party had policy positions that were too conservative for most electors. Moderation at midterm has usually been based on electors' expectations that the House will dominate the President in determining post-election policy.

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Coordination, Moderation and Institutional Balancing in American House Elections at Midterm Mebane, Walter R. Wand, Jonathan Uploaded 09-02-1999 Keywords campaign finance itemized contributions congressional elections generalized linear mixed model Monte Carlo EM random effects conditional compound Poisson process Abstract We use Federal Election Commission itemized contributions data from 1984 to estimate a model of campaign contributions in U.S. House elections. The model is a dynamic system of conditional compound Poisson processes in which there are contributions from both individuals and political action committees (PACs). The model includes random effects to allow for unobserved heterogeneity among districts and candidates. The dynamic effects measure how contributions to one candidate react to contributions to other candidates, as well as how contributions from individuals interact with contributions from PACs. We test the hypothesis that some candidates received higher contributions because of PAC endorsements. We also test whether national expectations about presidential election outcomes affect contributions to House candidates, as predicted by a policy moderating model. We use a Monte Carlo EM algorithm to optimize the likelihood of the model in specifications that include more than one random effect.

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Rational Expectations Coordinating Voting in American Presidential and House Elections Mebane, Walter R. Uploaded 07-08-1998 Keywords coordinating voting probabilistic voting spatial voting retrospective voting policy moderation presidential elections congressional elections ticket splitting rational expectations voter equilibrium Bayesian-Nash equilibrium generalized extreme value model nonparametric Monte Carlo integration maximum likelihood Abstract I define a probabilistic model of individuals' presidential-year vote choices for President and for the House of Representatives in which there is a coordinating (Bayesian Nash) equilibrium among voters based on rational expectations each voter has about the election outcomes. I estimate the model using data from the six American National Election Study Pre-/Post-Election Surveys of years 1976--1996. The coordinating model passes a variety of tests, including a test against a majoritarian model in which there is rational ticket splitting but no coordination. The results give strong individual-level support to Alesina and Rosenthal's theory that voters balance institutions in order to moderate policy. The estimates describe vote choices that strongly emphasize the presidential candidates. I also find that a voter who says economic conditions have improved puts more weight on a discrepancy between the voter's ideal point and government policy with a Democratic President than on a discrepancy of the same size with a Republican President.