One Vote Out of Step? The Effects of Salient Roll Call Votes in the 2010 Election

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between controversial roll call votes and support for Democratic incumbents in the 2010 midterm elections. Consistent with previous analyses, we find that supporters of health care reform paid a significant price at the polls. We go beyond these analyses by identifying a mechanism for this apparent effect: constituents perceived incumbents who supported health care reform as more ideologically distant (in this case, more liberal), which in turn was associated with lower support for those incumbents. Our analyses show that this perceived ideological difference mediates most of the apparent impact of support for health care reform on both individual-level vote choice and aggregate-level vote share. We conclude by simulating counterfactuals that suggest health care reform may have cost Democrats their House majority.

Pascal's Wager: Health Insurance Exchanges, Obamacare, and the Republican Dilemma

“…Running against Obamacare proved to be a successful strategy for the Republican Party in 2010, contributing to a major shift to the right across the country during the November elections (Nyhan et al 2012). Republicans made extraordinary gains and reclaimed a majority in the US House of Representatives while significantly narrowing the Democrats' margin in the Senate.…”

Using Bayesian Aldrich‐McKelvey Scaling to Study Citizens' Ideological Preferences and Perceptions

“…First, survey research shows that citizens have a better grasp of their representatives' roll call vote behavior than commonly assumed (Ansolabehere and Jones, 2010), especially on salient roll call votes (Nyhan et al, 2012). Second, moderate congressional candidates outperform extreme ones at the ballot box, ceteris paribus (Ansolabehere, Snyder and Stewart, 2001;Bonica, 2014).…”

Motivating Cooperation and Compliance with Authority

“…House and Senate incumbents enjoy very successful re-election rates, but they may worry that their districts would not remain so safe if they start compromising with an opponent that the majority of their constituents do not like or trust. Lawmakers watching the 2010 midterm election returns saw Democrats in marginal districts who supported the highly contentious and polarizing Affordable Care Act perform systematically worse at the ballot box than those Democrats who voted against the measure (Nyhan, McGhee, Sides, Masket, & Greene, 2012 ). Those whom the White House had targeted as possible Republican votes, such as Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, were also targeted by the Tea Party in polarizing, contentious town hall meetings in advance of the health care vote.…”