The Iraq War, Partisanship, and Candidate Attributes: Explaining Variation in Partisan Swing in the 2006 U.S. House Elections

Drafting Support for War: Conscription and Mass Support for Warfare

“…This gives them a powerful self-interest reason to be wary of sending troops into harm's way; a finding borne out by previous empirical research. For example, local experiences with casualties predicted support in the early years of the Vietnam War: counties that experienced higher casualty rates featured lower support for the war (Gartner Segura, and Wilkening 1997), a finding that also replicates in the Iraq war (Grose and Oppenheimer 2007;Karol and Miguel 2007). Experimental research reinforces the negative relationship between social ties with the military and casualty sensitivity.…”

Scandals and Congressional Elections in the Post-Watergate Era

“…Hendry, Jackson, and Mondak (2008) identified twenty-five scandal-tainted incumbents who sought reelection in 2006 and estimated that involvement in a scandal subtracted 4.8 percent (±2.8 percent) from the incumbent's general election vote. Grose and Oppenheimer (2007) used Hotline's list of seventeen scandal-affected incumbents and estimated that scandalaffected Republican incumbents lost 4.0 percent (±3.2 percent) and scandal-affected Democratic incumbents lost 6.9 percent (±3.7 percent). 7 In each of these studies, however, only two of the scandal-tainted incumbents were Democrats, and the studies do not use the same Democrats!…”

Campaign Finance Transparency Affects Legislators’ Election Outcomes and Behavior

“…Legislative election outcomes are predictably influenced by district-level, campaignlevel, and candidate-level factors. Scholars regularly find associations between legislative election outcomes and the presence of quality challengers, levels of campaign opponent spending, and district features such as partisanship of the constituency (e.g., Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart 2001;Ban et al 2016;Grose and Oppenheimer 2007;Herrnson 2007;Jacobson 1989Jacobson , 2006Jacobson , 2012.…”

“…A legislator formerly viewed as trustworthy may face electoral consequences when new and negative information is shared with constituents. Personal or professional scandals undermine performance at the polls, even for long-serving incumbents (Jacobson and Dimock 1994;Grose and Oppenheimer 2007;Snyder and Hirano 2012). "Character valence," defined as the "bundle of qualities and skills that relate to character and job performance," is an important evaluative factor (Stone and Simas 2010, 373).…”