Election Proximity and Senatorial Roll Call Voting

Thomas, Mariam

doi:10.2307/2111213

Cited by 90 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Amacher and Boyes, 1978;Thomas, 1985;Glazer and Robbins, 1985;Levitt, 1996;Bernhard and Sala, 2006). Rather than focusing on senators' choices on specific policy Our analysis is also related to a large body of work that studies political obstacles to reforms.…”

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confidence: 99%

Guns and Votes

Bouton

Conconi

Pino

et al. 2014

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Why are U.S. congressmen reluctant to support gun control regulations, despite the fact that most Americans are in favor of them? We argue that re-election motives can lead politicians to take a pro-gun stance against the interests of an apathetic majority of the electorate, but in line with the interests of an intense minority. We develop a model of gun control choices in which incumbent politicians are both office and policy motivated, and voters differ in the direction and intensity of their preferences. We derive conditions under which politicians support gun control early in their terms, but oppose them when they approach re-election. We test the predictions of the model by analyzing votes on gun-related legislation in the U.S. Senate, in which one third of the members are up for re-election every two years. We find that senators are more likely to vote pro gun when they are close to facing re-election, a result which holds comparing both across and within legislators. Only Democratic senators "flip flop'' on gun control, and only if the group of pro-gun voters in their constituency is of intermediate size.

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confidence: 99%

Guns and Votes

Bouton

Conconi

Pino

et al. 2014

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“…Some senators become more responsive to their constituency preferences while others still keep voting along party lines. Consistent with Thomas's (1985) finding that strategic shifts in the last period of the term occurred among only a third of senators, the effect of the remaining time to reelection that shapes the incentive to move toward a more moderate position is not the same for all incumbent senators. Some senators become congruent with constituent preferences in legislative voting in the last congress of their terms, whereas others seek preferred policies and stick to partisan preferences.…”

Section: Senator's Extent Of Ideological Congruencementioning

confidence: 65%

“…His findings suggest that the remaining time to reelection functions to change legislative positions. Similarly, previous work examining the change of the linkage between senators and their constituencies over time finds that a senator's voting behavior shifts to a more moderate direction at the end of their terms (Elling 1982;Ahuja 1994;Wright and Berkman 1986;Thomas 1985).…”

Section: Constituent Preferences Reelection Approximation and Legismentioning

confidence: 76%

“…If the senator is able to enhance her electoral prospects by taking the positions that keep step with constituents when making legislative decisions in the Senate, then she will attempt to strategically shift her ideological stance in the last congress in an attempt to ensure reelection. In particular, senators feeling electoral insecurity can be tempted to strategically shift their ideological positions closer to the median point of constituents at the end of their terms in order to make their voting records more attractive to their constituents (Elling 1982;Thomas 1985;Wright and Berkman 1986;Bernstein, Wright, and Berkman 1988;Bernstein 1991;DeBacker 2012). In light of this electoral perspective, an upcoming reelection can induce the senator to adjust her ideological position closer to the median point of her constituency as reelection approaches, making it possible to observe the last-period effect in the last two years of the term.…”

Section: Constituent Preferences Reelection Approximation and Legismentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Senator�s Strategic Use of Time in Representation

Choi¹

2017

JPPG

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Abstract:Remaining time to reelection serves as a constraint and an opportunity for senators to adapt constituency preferences for their legislative decision making. The relatively long length of terms may allow senators to change their ideological positions over the course of their terms. Given long terms of six-years, senators may be able to seek first to vote in favor of party discipline and personal policy motivation and then to take a strategy to keep step with constituency preferences as their reelections approach. This study finds that the long length of the term serves as an opportunity for senators to seek to achieve their preferred policy and maximize the chances of reelection.

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“…The Democrats, however, were made up of two quite distinct parties, that shared little more than a common name and party leadership. The case of the Democrats is widely recognized in political science literature [12,13], yielding even CQA to break down democratic votes into Southerners and Northerners. The data set does not follow this tradition: Southern and Northern Democrats alike are coded as Democrats and Democrats only.…”

Section: Voting Data Considerations Regarding Missing Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shaking the trees: Abilities and Capabilities of Regression and Decision Trees for Political Science

Waldhauser

Hochreiter

2017

ITM Web Conf.

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Abstract. When committing to quantitative political science, a researcher has a wealth of methods to choose from. In this paper we compare the established method of analyzing roll call data using W-NOMINATE scores to a data-driven supervised machine learning method: Regression and Decision Trees (RDTs). To do this, we defined two scenarios, one pertaining to an analytical goal, the other being aimed at predicting unknown voting behavior. The suitability of both methods is measured in the dimensions of consistency, tolerance towards misspecification, prediction quality and overall variability. We find that RDTs are at least as suitable as the established method, at lower computational expense and are more forgiving with respect to misspecification.

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Election Proximity and Senatorial Roll Call Voting

Cited by 90 publications

References 6 publications

Guns and Votes

Guns and Votes

The Senator�s Strategic Use of Time in Representation

Shaking the trees: Abilities and Capabilities of Regression and Decision Trees for Political Science

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