It’s Nothing Personal: The Decline of the Incumbency Advantage in US House Elections

Jacobson, Gary C.

doi:10.1086/681670

Cited by 187 publications

(194 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

176

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our results therefore not only offer support for Jacobson's (2015) argument but also suggest that his theoretical argument is applicable to congressional elections across a large swath of American history. It is important to note, however, that there is an important difference between the time period we examine and modern elections.…”

Section: Nationalized Electionssupporting

confidence: 74%

“…As discussed earlier, greater nationalization of elections should weaken the effect of candidate-specific attributes at the polls (see Jacobson 2015). The party ballot era is a particularly fertile period in which to test this proposition because splitticket voting, which Jacobson identifies as a key theoretical mechanism that led to denationalized elections in the midtwentieth century, rarely occurred when the party ballot was in use (Rusk 1970).…”

Section: Nationalized Electionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Indeed, two key determinants of congressional election outcomes-the emergence of quality challengers (Jacobson 1989) and the electoral returns to incumbency (Cox and Katz 1996;Gelman and King 1990;Jacobson 2015)-have been studied extensively throughout 1. Recent evidence suggests that nineteenth-century party organizations recognized the value in recruiting experienced or high-quality candidates as much as possible given the perception that a substantial number of races were winnable as reflected by measures such as previous incumbent vote share or presidential vote in the district (Carson and Roberts 2013).…”

Section: Role Of Candidates In Nineteenth-century Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The fact that the parties typically recruited experienced candidates to run in what were perceived to be the most winnable races (as reflected by presidential vote in the district) indicates to us that they valued the presence of high-quality candidates on the ballot. Jacobson (2015) argues that the rise of candidate-centered elections in the mid-twentieth century was a consequence of the "denationalization" of congressional elections. Jacobson points to "diminishing levels of party loyalty in the electorate" and the "decoupling of congressional and presidential elections" as the driving forces of these developments (861).…”

Section: Seementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Congressional Candidates in the Era of Party Ballots

Carson¹,

Sievert²

2017

The Journal of Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Our article investigates the role of congressional candidates during the era of party ballots in nineteenth-century congressional elections. We examine how these candidates contributed to the overall quality of the party ballot and the means by which nationalization of elections served to mitigate candidate attributes. In our analysis, we take advantage of two unique features of elections during this era. First, election timing was quite variable before 1872, as many House races were not held concurrently with presidential elections. Second, House candidates' position on the ballot varied depending on whether a presidential or gubernatorial race was also being contested at the same time. To investigate these factors, we examine House elections prior to the adoption of the Australian ballot and find strong evidence of candidate effects during this period. Our findings raise important implications about candidate influence and electoral accountability in a more party-centered era.S tudents of congressional politics generally agree that the adoption of the secret ballot in the late nineteenth century was instrumental in the rise of candidatecentered politics. With the elimination of the party ballot that had been in use for several decades, voters could more easily reward or punish individual elected officials or split their ticket since all candidates were listed on the same ballot (Katz and Sala 1996;Rusk 1970). Nevertheless, recent evidence suggests that the quality of individual candidates affected elections in earlier eras (Carson and Hood 2014; Carson and Roberts 2013). When coupled with growing evidence of an electoral connection in the nineteenth century (Bianco, Spence, and Wilkerson 1996;Carson and Engstrom 2005;Carson and Jenkins 2011;Finocchiaro and Jenkins 2016;Rogowski and Gibson 2015), these phenomena raise a variety of implications for existing accounts of electoral politics across time.Our article examines the role of congressional candidates in the era of party ballots. We investigate how congressional candidates contributed to the overall quality of the party ballot and how the nationalization of elections affected the role of candidate attributes. First, the collective nature of the party ballot meant that both parties and candidates had an interest in constructing the best party ticket they could (Carson and Roberts 2013). As such, congressional candidates who could help attract voters or even mobilize supporters had the potential to produce positive electoral returns for the party even if voters were not voting for them directly. Second, both nonuniform election dates and midterm elections should condition the influence of national politics on congressional elections. In effect, the quality of individual congressional candidates should matter significantly more in these cases since voters were not simply making a choice based on which presidential candidate was at the top of the ticket. To examine each of these factors more systematically, we analyze House elections from five decades of the nin...

show abstract

Section: Nationalized Electionssupporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Nationalized Electionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Role Of Candidates In Nineteenth-century Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Seementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Congressional Candidates in the Era of Party Ballots

Carson¹,

Sievert²

2017

The Journal of Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Because both our measures (described below) make intra-year comparisons for each district, we do not include years following congressional re-districting. 3 Measuring nationalization Jacobson (2015) measures the nationalization of elections using the correlation between the district-level two-party vote-share for both congressional and presidential races. Here, we use a different measure that is more readily available for the entire time-period: the variance in the districtlevel two-party vote swing.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for a scale invariant relationship between the incumbency advantage and the nationalization of US House elections 1866–2014

LeVeck

Nail

2016

Research & Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In a recent article, Jacobson examines the rise and fall of the incumbency advantage from 1952 to 2014. He shows that the incumbency advantage over this period rose as elections became more localized, and has fallen in recent decades as elections have become more nationalized. In this research note, we examine whether a similar relationship holds when we extend the time-series back to the end of the Civil War. Consistent with earlier work, we find that the scale of the incumbency advantage was much smaller in the period prior to 1952-approximately ranging between 0 and 4 points. However, despite this difference in scale, there remains a very similar negative correlation between the nationalization of elections and the incumbency advantage. We therefore speculate that the nationalization of elections diminishes the relative size of the incumbency advantage, but the overall size of that advantage may also be shaped by other factors, such as technology, institutional reforms, or changes in the media landscape.

show abstract

Rethinking the Strategic Woman Candidate

Baer

2020

The Unforeseen Impacts of the 2018 US Midterms

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It’s Nothing Personal: The Decline of the Incumbency Advantage in US House Elections

Cited by 187 publications

References 26 publications

Congressional Candidates in the Era of Party Ballots

Congressional Candidates in the Era of Party Ballots

Evidence for a scale invariant relationship between the incumbency advantage and the nationalization of US House elections 1866–2014

Rethinking the Strategic Woman Candidate

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About