A Comparison of Voting for U.S. Senator and Representative in 1978

1980 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 633-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan I. Abramowitz
Keyword(s):  
Party Identification ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Ideological Voting

This article compares voting for U.S. senator and representative in 1978. Analysis of data from the Center for Political Studies 1978 Election Study reveals that incumbents were better known and more positively evaluated than challengers, but House incumbents enjoyed a much greater advantage than Senate incumbents. The invisibility of most House challengers was a serious obstacle to accountability in House elections. Senate challengers were much more visible to the electorate. In addition, ideology and party identification had a greater impact on evaluations of Senate candidates than on evaluations of House candidates. Evaluations of House incumbents appear to have been based largely on frequent positive contacts between voters and their representative. As a result, ideological voting was more prevalent in Senate elections than in House elections.

Ideological voting for radical right parties in Europe

Acta Politica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Ortiz Barquero ◽  
Antonia María Ruiz Jiménez ◽  
Manuel Tomás González-Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Party Systems ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Election Study ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Political Dissatisfaction ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
European Election ◽  
Ideological Voting

AbstractThe aim of this research is to examine to what extent the electoral support for radical right parties (RRPs) is driven by ‘policy voting’ and to compare this support with that of centre-right parties. Using the European Election Study 2019, we focus on six party systems: Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Our analyses reveal that party preferences for RRPs are better explained by policy considerations than by other alternative explanations (e.g. by ‘globalization losers’ or ‘protest voting’). Additionally, the results show that although preferences for both party families are mainly rooted in ‘policy voting’, notable differences emerge when looking at the role of specific policy dimensions. Overall, these findings suggest that the support for RRPs cannot be understood fundamentally as a mere reaction against economic pauperization or political dissatisfaction but instead as an ideological decision based on rational choice models.

Economic Expectations and Voting Behavior in United States House and Senate Elections

1981 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 436-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Kuklinski ◽  
Darrell M. West
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Economic Voting ◽  
United States Senate ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Economic Expectations

Past individual-level studies of economic voting (1) have incorrectly operationalized the model they employ by using past-oriented rather than future-oriented questions and (2) have failed to examine the level of economic voting in United States Senate elections. Using the 1978 National Election Study, we show that economic voting exists in Senate but not House elections, presumably due to the differences in electoral context. Even when economic voting occurs, however, there is no guarantee that the public will influence the direction of macroeconomic policy.

Party Activists, Campaign Resources and Candidate Position Taking: Theory, Tests and Applications

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
WOOJIN MOON
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Support ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Voting Decisions ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
Stage Estimation ◽  
Ideological Voting ◽  
Theoretical Results

Electoral competition is here specified as revolving around both candidate policy positions and non-policy issues.Two candidates spend their resources on non-policy issues to sway citizens' ideological voting decisions but they are constrained by their party activists who provide them with electoral resources. In this setting, a candidate with a resource advantage converges more towards the centre, but a candidate with a resource disadvantage diverges more from the centre. This asymmetry in two candidates' incentives to converge generates the result that the two candidates do not converge towards each other. To test these theoretical results, two-stage estimation is used in this article to solve the reciprocal relationship between policy moderation and campaign resources. This analysis produces strong empirical support for the model in the context of US Senate elections between 1974 and 2000.

The Effect of the Environment on Party Identification

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1391-1400 ◽  
Author(s):  
G J G Upton ◽  
S J Stray
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Election Study ◽  
The Impact

A major factor underlying a person's voting decision is that person's identification with one or other of the competing political parties. Respondents interviewed in the course of the British Election Study surveys of 1974 and 1979 indicated both their party identification and the strength of that affiliation. This paper is an examination of the impact of the local political environment on the strength of an individual's party identification.

In Search of Left/Right Beliefs in the Canadian Electorate

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald D. Lambert ◽  
James E. Curtis ◽  
Steven D. Brown ◽  
Barry J. Kay
Keyword(s):  
Rating Scale ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Criterion Group ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWe report on findings from alternative ways of assessing the meaning given to “left” and “right” by respondents in the 1984 National Election Study. Approximately 40 per cent of the sample supplied definitions of the concepts; in comparison, about 60 per cent stated their feelings toward left-wingers and right-wingers and described their political orientations using a seven-point left/right rating scale. Left signified socialism or communism for about one-half of those who supplied definitions, and dislike for left-wingers seemed to be associated with these conceptions of left. Right, which was much more highly regarded than left, signified conservatism for one-quarter of those who defined the term. We also factor analyzed respondents' self-ratings on the left/right scale along with their answers to 15 attitude statements. Left was weakly associated with support for labour's use of the strike weapon. In a criterion group of respondents who had completed university and who had ventured definitions of left and right, self-ratings correlated with factors tapping attitudes toward the military and toward economic disparity and social welfare. As expected, respondents' ratings of themselves on the left/right scale were more similar to their ratings of their preferred parties than to their ratings of other parties. The relationship between self-ratings and ratings of preferred parties generally varied directly with the strength of party identification. We conclude with some observations about the political utility of political labels such as left and right.

The Gender Gap Is a Race Gap: Women Voters in US Presidential Elections

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1135-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Junn ◽  
Natalie Masuoka
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
White Women ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
The United States ◽  
Election Study ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
American National Election Study

Scholarship on women voters in the United States has focused on the gender gap, showing that, since the 1980s, women are more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates than men. The persistence of the gender gap has nurtured the conclusion that women are Democrats. This article presents evidence upending that conventional wisdom. It analyzes data from the American National Election Study to demonstrate that white women are the only group of female voters who support Republican Party candidates for president. They have done so by a majority in all but 2 of the last 18 elections. The relevance of race for partisan choice among women voters is estimated with data collected in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and the significance of being white is identified after accounting for political party identification and other predictors.

Ideological Signaling and Incumbency Advantage

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Peskowitz
Keyword(s):  
Election Study ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Signaling Mechanism ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Cent Increase ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Signaling Components

This article develops a novel explanation for the incumbency advantage based on incumbents’ ability to signal positions that are ideologically distinct from those of their parties. Using voter-level data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and controlling for unobserved district heterogeneity, the study finds that voters in US House elections primarily use information about the ideology of candidates’ parties to infer the location of challengers, while they instead rely on information about the individual candidates’ ideologies to place incumbents. In higher-profile Senate elections, the difference between challengers and incumbents is trivial. Decomposing the incumbency advantage into valence and signaling components, the study finds that the signaling mechanism explains 14 per cent of the incumbency advantage in House elections, but only 5 per cent of the advantage in Senate contests. It also finds that a 50 per cent increase in party polarization increases the incumbency advantage by 3 percentage points.

The Recall of Past Partisanship: Feeble Memories or Frail Concepts?

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. H. MacDermid
Keyword(s):  
Party Identification ◽  
National Sample ◽  
National Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Identification Theory

AbstractIt has been suggested that recall questions are unreliable measures of change in party identification. Data reported in this article confirm that 50 per cent of respondents in the 1974-1980 Canadian National Election Study three-wave panel had inconsistent patterns of recall. This finding urges caution in analysis; more importantly, such inconsistency raises questions about how to interpret recall behaviour in the light of party identification theory. The available evidence and unclear theory seem to point toward the possibility that at least one-half of the national sample lacked a meaningful federal party identification.

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