Party, Electoral Vulnerability, and Earmarks in the U.S. House of Representatives

District Complexity and the Personal Vote

“…Democrats, as the majority party, also received a larger number of earmarks. Both coefficients on measures of electoral vulnerability are also in the expected direction, although consistent with previous research (Engstrom and Vanberg ; Lazarus ), the relationship is only statistically significant for House Democrats. Holding all else constant, Democrats who barely won reelection received an additional four earmarked projects than their copartisans who were safely reelected…”

“…Some members may work harder than others to convince the Appropriation committee of the project's merit. Appropriations committees may also have stronger incentives to deny pork to some members, such as vulnerable members of the minority party (Lazarus ). Interestingly, because district complexity negatively correlates with district marginality, minority members who represent complex districts may actually fare better than their vulnerable copartisans.…”

“…Democrat Margin is the margin for Democratic incumbents and Republican Margin is the margin for Republican incumbents. I expect that Democrats were able to use their majority status to direct more pork to their electorally vulnerable members (Engstrom and Vanberg ; Lazarus ). Although the share of presidential vote won by either Obama or McCain in 2008 also proxies the marginality of the district, including the closeness of the presidential race in the regression models introduced significant multicollinearity given the strong relationship between the district vote in the presidential election and the incumbent's margin of victory.…”

“…As the majority party during this time period, I expect that Democrats will be able to direct more pork to their districts. Party Leader is coded 1 for the Speaker, majority/minority leader, whip and conference/caucus chairs, and 0 otherwise (Lazarus ). Committee Chair and Ranking Member are coded 1 for the chair and ranking member of all standing committees.…”

“…For one, Republicans facing a tight reelection battle may be less inclined to earmark federal dollars back to their districts for fear of sending the mixed signal that they are big‐spending conservatives. Lazarus (), however, finds that the relationship between vulnerability and earmarks exists for both Republican and Democratic majorities. A second and more likely explanation is that the majority party has less incentive to deny pork to minority members representing complex districts because these incumbents tend to look safe on the surface, winning with a larger margin of victory.…”