Presidential Coattails in Open-Seat Elections

Flemming, Gregory N.

doi:10.2307/440447

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…By contrast, in periods of unified government, the majority party in Congress has strong partisan incentives not to investigate the executive branch, for undermining their party's leader in the White House may damage their party's collective fortunes in the next electoral cycle (Campbell 1991;Flemming 1995;Jacobson 2004;Mondak and McCurley 1994). Moreover, this partisan incentive to quash would-be investigations is bolstered by the majority party's greater capacity to inhibit action than to stimulate it.…”

Section: Divided Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

Kriner

Schwartz

2008

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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This article explores the political determinants of congressional investigatory activity. Using Mayhew's list of high‐profile probes updated through 2006, we developed five measures of the frequency and intensity of investigative oversight. Contra Mayhew, we found that divided government spurs congressional investigatory activity. A shift from unified to divided government yields a five‐fold increase in the number of hearings held and quadruples their duration. Conditional party government models also offer explanatory leverage because homogeneous majorities are more likely to investigate the president in divided government and less likely to do so in unified government. This dynamic is strongest in the House, but analyses of the Senate also afford consistent, if muted, evidence of partisan agenda control.

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Section: Divided Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

Kriner

Schwartz

2008

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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“…The importance of properly accounting for these joint determinants when estimating a coattail effect is demonstrated by studies that produce substantially different estimates of coattail effects in the same context. For example, Mondak (1993) and Flemming (1995) Finally, Calvert and Ferejohn (1983) use an IV approach to estimate the effect of reported U.S. presidential vote choice on reported House vote choice. They isolate personal votes for the president by instrumenting for presidential vote choice with a measure constructed from…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploiting Friends-and-Neighbors to Estimate Coattail Effects

Meredith

2013

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Federalist democracies often hold concurrent elections for multiple offices. A potential consequence of simultaneously voting for multiple offices that vary with respect to scope and scale is that the personal appeal of candidates in a high-profile race may affect electoral outcomes in less salient races. In this paper I estimate the magnitude of such coattail effects from governors onto other concurrently elected statewide executive officers using a unique data set of county election returns for all statewide executive office elections in the United States from 1987 to 2010. I exploit the disproportionate support that candidates receive from geographically proximate voters, which is often referred to as the friends-and-neighbors vote, to isolate variation in the personal appeal of candidates. The point estimates from my preferred specifications show that a one-percentage-point increase in the personal vote received by a gubernatorial candidate increases their party's secretary of state and attorney general candidates vote shares by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points. In contrast, personal votes for a secretary of state or attorney general candidate have no effect on the performance of their party's gubernatorial candidate or other down-ballot candidates.

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“…Prior to the changes of the 1960s, open seats were likely to go to the party that the district supported at the presidential level, but a host of empirical findings show that in the new context, where national and district-level races have become detached, national conditions do not drive congressional election results on their own. Indeed, Flemming (1995) has quantified the degree of separation between presidential and congressional races, finding that presidential coattails proved decisive in only 13% of all open-seat races from 1972 to 1992. Thus, in the new context, open seats present parties with a new opportunity to gain seats (Bond, Fleisher, and Talbert 1997;Gaddie 1995Gaddie , 1997Gaddie and Mott 1998;Gaddie, Bullock, and Buchanan 1999).…”

Section: Open-seat Racesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Newman¹,

Ostrom²

2002

Legislative Studies Quarterly

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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.

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Presidential Coattails in Open-Seat Elections

Cited by 23 publications

References 9 publications

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

Exploiting Friends-and-Neighbors to Estimate Coattail Effects

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

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