Introduction

The book begins by laying out a story about the impact of the presidential race on the congressional races in 2016. At the center of this story lie two unanticipated developments that characterized the 2016 election. The first of these was the unusual centrality of sexism and gender stereotypes to the presidential race in 2016. In a society that appears, by some measures, to have taken strides toward greater gender equality, what happened in Congressional campaigns when “retrograde” views on gender unexpectedly emerged in the competition for the presidency? The second unexpected occurrence was the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, and the subsequent assumption that he would lose the presidential contest to Hillary Clinton. What impact did this development have on Congressional campaigns? Congressional candidates in the 2016 election found themselves in a fairly novel situation generated by the presidential race: gender issues became central to the presidential campaign, and, in turn, to the entire election process.

Agency Problems in Political Campaigns: Media Buying and Consulting

Advertising expenditures in congressional campaigns are made not directly by campaigns themselves but indirectly though intermediary firms. Using a new dataset of revenues and costs of these firms, we study the markups that these firms charge candidates. We find that markups are higher for inexperienced candidates relative to experienced candidates, and PACs relative to candidates. We also find significant differences across the major parties: firms working for Republicans charge higher prices, exert less effort, and induce less responsiveness in their clients’ advertising expenditures to electoral circumstances than do their Democratic counterparts. We connect this observation to the distribution of ideology among individual consulting firm employees, arguing that these higher rents incentivize consultants to work against their intrinsic ideological motivations. The internal organization of firms reflects an attempt to mitigate this conflict of interest; firms are composed of ideologically homogeneous employees, and are more likely to work for ideologically proximate clients.

Changing Federal Deputy Campaigns

This chapter explores how congressional campaigning changed for PRI candidates from the hegemonic to democratic era. Under hegemonic conditions, PRI candidates had huge resource advantages, and enjoyed the benefits of weak opposition parties and strong party identification. Under these circumstances, one should expect that the candidates for the hegemonic party would campaign as little as possible: that is, they would shirk. However, the agents sent down from the national party headquarters monitored their campaigning performance and obligated them to remake and strengthen the ties between local leaders and the national party. Once competition drove up uncertainty, PRI congressional candidates worked hard to win their election even though they could not hope for a second term. Despite their resource restraints, they campaign actively, while the national party headquarters has taken over national media appeals and strategies on programmatic promises. Governors were and continue to be important components in congressional campaigns, as they are able to support their co-partisan candidates.

Forecasting Congressional Elections Using Facebook Data

ABSTRACTFacebook constantly tracks the growth of each congressional candidate’s fan base and the number of people engaging with candidates online. These Facebook metrics comprise a rich dataset that theoretically may capture the effectiveness of campaigns in building participatory support as well as their potential to mobilize support. When added to electoral fundamentals similar to those used in national-election forecasting, can Facebook data be used to develop a reliable model for predicting vote-percentage outcomes of individual congressional contests? The results of an exploratory investigation reveal that fan participation and mobilization metrics tracked by Facebook produced surprisingly accurate election predictions in the 2012 US Senate races studied. The question remains, however, whether these results are a “flash in the 2012 pan” or an indication that using Facebook statistics to measure campaign effectiveness is a new tool that scholars can use to forecast the outcome of congressional campaigns.