When to Risk It? Institutions, Ambitions, and the Decision to Run for the U.S. House

Abstract

T he health of any democratic system depends on political ambition to generate a steady supply of quality candidates for office. Because most models of candidate entry assume ambition rather than model it, previous research fails to understand its roots in individual and institutional characteristics. We develop a two-stage model of progressive behavior that distinguishes between the formation of ambition for higher office and the decision to enter a particular race. Using data from a survey of state legislators, we demonstrate that the intrinsic costs and benefits associated with running for and holding higher office shape ambitions but do not influence the decision to run. For progressively ambitious legislators, the second-stage decision is a strategic choice about when to run rather than whether to run. Our research highlights how institutional characteristics that foster progressive ambition also increase the likelihood that national or local political conditions will be translated into meaningful choices at the ballot box.

Ideological Moderates Won’t Run: How Party Fit Matters for Partisan Polarization in Congress

“…8 State legislators rated their chance of winning the party nomination if they ran for Congress in the foreseeable future. Following Maestas et al (2006), the response is scaled as a "pseudo-probability" that ranges from 0.01 to 0.99 (extremely unlikely to extremely likely). The second dependent variable concerns the non-electoral goals that Fenno (1973) highlighted, measured as state legislators' value of a seat in the U.S. House.…”

“…The second dependent variable concerns the non-electoral goals that Fenno (1973) highlighted, measured as state legislators' value of a seat in the U.S. House. As in Maestas et al (2006), the 6 The data are drawn from the 1998 wave of the Candidate Emergence Study. The specific states are not identified in the publicly available data.…”

“…The ability to achieve these electoral and policy goals has long been shown to matter in studies of political ambition (Black 1972;Rohde 1979;Schlesinger 1966), and Maestas et al (2006) find that state legislators' perceived chance of winning and their reported value of a…”

“…The Party Fit hypothesis suggests that in the contemporary political context, partisan polarization in Congress has discouraged ideological moderates in the political pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. I test this hypothesis with survey data of the perceptions of state legislators (Maestas et al 2006;Stone et al 2004) article focuses on the self-selection mechanism. However, the argument does not preclude a role for parties, and it is likely that party recruitment also shapes perceptions of Party Fit.…”

“…The Party Fit hypothesis suggests that in the contemporary political context, partisan polarization in Congress has discouraged ideological moderates in the political pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. I test this hypothesis with survey data of the perceptions of state legislators (Maestas et al 2006;Stone et al 2004) and with ideology estimates of state legislators who did and did not run for Congress from 2000 to 2010 (Bonica 2013b). I find that liberal Republican and conservative Democratic state legislators are less likely to run for Congress than those at the ideological poles, though this disparity is particularly pronounced on the Republican side.…”