Explaining Seat Changes in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1950–98

Abstract

Recent U.S. House elections have challenged existing models of congressional elections, raising the question of whether or not processes thought to govern previous elections are still at work. Taking Marra and Ostrom's (1989) model of congressional elections as representative of extant theoretical perspectives and testing it against recent elections, we find that the model fails. We augment Marra and Ostrom's model with new insights, constructing a model that explains elections from 1950 to 1998. We find that, although presidential approval ratings and major political events continue to drive congressional elections, the distribution of open seats must also be taken into account.

Bill Clinton's Approval Ratings: The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

“…PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL AND PRESIDENT CLINTON Presidential approval ratings are the most frequently measured and best known political "fact" in the current American political environment (Ragsdale 1998), the "Dow Jones Index for Politics" (Brehm 1993: 6). Many consider these ratings a form of political capital and argue that the ratings affect various aspects of presidential strategies and political outcomes, including the president's legislative agenda, strategy, and success (e.g., Brace and Hinckley 1992;Kernell 1997;Rivers and Rose 1985) and his party's electoral success (Brody and Sigelman 1983;Newman and Ostrom 2002;Sigelman 1979;Simon, Ostrom, and Marra 1991). Although some dispute these claims (e.g., Edwards 1989), presidential approval ratings occupy a central place in discussions of American politics in the media, among political elites (e.g., Morris 1997;Woodward 1996), and among political scientists (e.g., Brace and Hinckley 1992;Brody 1991;Clarke and Stewart 1994;Hibbs 1987;MacKuen, Erikson, andStimson 1992, 1996;Mueller, 1973;Nadeau et al 1999;Norpoth 1996;Simon 1985, 1988).…”

Economic Voting Appeals in Congressional Campaigns

“…We might expect voters to blame or reward presidents for economic outcomes more than members of Congress (and thus that presidential ads would focus more on policy outcomes). Voters, however, view both Congress and the president as responsible for the state of the economy (Rudolph, 2003), and congressional elections appear as sensitive to economic outcomes as presidential elections (Newman & Ostrom, 2002;Tufte, 1975). Previous research, in other words, does not provide much prima facie evidence that presidential campaigns make vastly different types of economic appeals to those documented here.…”

“…One of the earliest, Tufte (1975), modeled the vote share for congressional candidates of the president's party as a function of the president's approval ratings and changes in personal income over the previous year. Following Tufte, a slew of models predicted congressional election outcomes relying on past economic conditions, not future expectations (e.g., Abramowitz & Segal, 1986;Newman & Ostrom, 2002). 2 The few studies that directly compare these different time horizons conclude that voters tend to utilize both prospective and retrospective evaluations of the economy (Miller & Wattenberg, 1985;Nadeau & Lewis-Beck, 2001).…”

The US mid‐term elections of 2002

“…Analysis by political scientists regarding the performance of the president's party at mid-term have tended to conclude that these elections are in some measure referendums on the president himself (Erickson, 1988;Campbell, 1997;Newman and Ostrom, 2002). Erickson in particular posited that the president is always penalised at mid-term.…”