Journal Articles
Title: Dynamic Estimation of Ideal Points for the U.S. Congress
Co-Author: Michael Peress
Journal: Public Choice
Abstract:
Theories of candidate positioning suggest that candidates will respond dynamically to their electoral environment. Because of the difficulty of obtaining “bridge votes”, most existing approaches for estimating the ideal points of members of Congress generate static ideal points or ideal points that move linearly over time. We propose an approach for dynamic ideal point estimation using Project Vote Smart’s National Political Awareness Test to construct bridge votes. We use our dynamic estimates to measure aggregate change, to measure individual-level change, and to study the institutional and structural factors that explain the changing positions of House candidates and members of Congress. We demonstrate that while the Republican Party has been selecting increasingly extreme candidates, Democratic incumbents have become more extreme while in office. We also find that the congruence between elected members of Congress and their constituents is mostly explained by the selection as opposed to the responsiveness of the candidate. Nonetheless, we find evidence of dynamic responsiveness of incumbents in specific circumstances. We find that competitiveness, midterm elections, and sharing the president’s party affiliation are associated with greater responsiveness. Conversely, retirement is not associated with a change in responsiveness. We find no evidence of responsiveness of challengers. Finally, we find that close elections draw challengers who are more in line with the district’s ideology.
Working Papers
Title: Mobilization or Moderation? Ideological and Partisan Identity in Congressional
Campaign Advertisements
Abstract:
The rise in affective polarization has reinvigorated the debate on whether
mobilization or persuasion is the most effective campaign strategy. The
literature on affective polarization tends to suggest the former, while election
literature suggests the latter. Campaign ads can serve as a signal of what type
of strategy candidates believe is the most effective in winning elections. In this
paper I use data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project and Wesleyan Media
Project during the 2000-2014 period to test how polarization influences the
usage of explicit ideological and partisan cues in House campaign ads. The
results suggest that candidates rarely reference explicit ideological or partisan
cues to begin with. When they do, usage of these cues is most likely to occur
in electorally safe districts. My results suggest that even in the age of highly
polarized electorates, candidates perceive it beneficial to avoid presenting
themselves as highly partisan and/or ideological in general elections.
Title: Do Voters Know Enough to Punish Out-of-Step Congressional Candidates?
Co-Author: Michael Peress
Conferences:
SPSA 2017 in New Orleans
Emory Political Economy Conference (2017)
Abstract:
Traditional democratic norms suggest that accountability in democracies requires voters to be able to accurately perceive the position of candidates for office. When asked to place congressional candidates on an ideological spectrum, voters show a surprisingly high level of both inaccuracy and variation in the policy positions of candidates. In this paper we investigate three theories of candidate placement to determine the possible sources for voter inaccuracy of candidate positions: the Assimilation and Contrast theory, the Partisan Cheerleading theory, and the Information theory. We develop an approach for placing candidates, voters, and the voters perceptions of the candidates on the same scale and develop an instrumental variables approach for distinguishing between the competing theories. We find evidence for Assimilation and Contrast among low knowledge voters and Cheerleading among high knowledge voters. We also find evidence that the actual position of the candidate has a detectable but small effect on voter’s perceptions of that candidate, limiting the extent to which House candidates are held individually accountable for the positions they take. Contrarily, we find evidence that voters cue off of the positions of the party’s other candidates, suggesting that candidates for a political party are held collectively accountable.
Conference Papers
Title: Affective Polarization in a Group Competition Framework
Conference: MPSA 2018 in Chicago, IL
Paper
Title: Delenda est Democrats/Republicans: Affective Polarization as Group Competition
Conference: MPSA 2018 in Chicago, IL
Paper | Data |Code
Title: Explaining Attack Advertisements Using a Group Competition Framework
Conference: SPSA 2018 in New Orleans, LA
Paper
Title: “Looking for a Fight? Conflict Avoidance and Responses to Uncivil Politics”
Conference: APSA 2016 in Philadelphia, PA
Paper | Appendix | Data: ANES ; Experiment | Code
Brandon Marshall 