US Virginia governor race will be closely watched

Significance Taking place in a genuinely competitive two-party state, this race offers a rare guide to voter attitudes ahead of the midterm congressional elections in November 2022 as the candidates address issues that are playing out in national as well as state-level politics. Impacts The Republicans hope that a business executive turned novice politician who promises to create jobs can still win votes. The Democrats are betting that a post-pandemic faith in government to provide solutions will prevail over calls for lower taxes. Two other issues with local intensity but national resonance are the funding of local school systems and approaches to policing.

Allocating Unlimited Money: What Explains Super PAC Spending in Congressional Elections?

How do Super PACs allocate their resources? The question is both timely and relevant, particularly as we reflect on the ten-year anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. Super PACs now outspend – sometimes by huge margins, as in the 2016 presidential election – all other groups’ independent expenditures including those of parties, unions, and 501(c) organizations. The issue is especially important in congressional politics, where Super PACs have an opportunity to shape the institution every two years through congressional elections. Utilizing outside spending data from the Center for Responsive Politics, we analyze four U.S. House election cycles since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 Citizens United ruling (2012–2018). The likelihood that Super PACs invest in a race is strongly determined by the electoral context, even after controlling for the legislative influence of the incumbent member of Congress.

The Electoral Impact of Military Experience: Evidence From U.S. Senate Elections (1982–2016)

The belief that a military veteran candidate receives an electoral benefit at the polls based on a history of military service remains a widely held assumption in American politics. However, this assumption of a veteran electoral bonus has rarely been studied by scholars and the limited literature displays mixed results. This article presents the findings of a new study that addresses the mixed results in the literature and presents evidence that demonstrates that certain types of military veteran candidates do gain a veteran bonus in congressional elections. This advantage over nonveterans is conditioned by party, the type of race, and the nature of military service. By analyzing general election races for the United States Senate over 34 years (1982–2016), the study uncovers support for Democratic candidates with military service receiving an electoral bonus at the polls. This electoral bonus is most widely enjoyed by Democratic veterans in open Senate races and with experience in deployed warzones. The key findings suggest that previous conclusions in the literature with respect to establishing a veteran bonus in congressional elections should be reexamined to expand the time period of analysis, restructure the characterization of military experience beyond a binary variable, and include both House and Senate elections.

Inexperienced or anti-establishment? Voter preferences for outsider congressional candidates

Do US voters prefer inexperienced candidates? Candidates who have never held elected office before have had greater success in recent presidential and congressional elections. However, it could be that voters prefer the type of anti-establishment rhetoric that such candidates use more than the lack of experience itself. We conduct a 2x2 factorial experiment that manipulates a fictitious congressional candidate’s experience and rhetoric toward the political system. Results from a nationally representative Qualtrics sample and two follow-up studies from Mechanical Turk show that respondents evaluate the candidate more positively when he uses anti-establishment rhetoric instead of pro-establishment rhetoric. Though the findings are mixed, we find weak and inconsistent evidence that respondent prefer inexperienced candidates to experienced ones. The results suggest that outsider candidates receive an electoral boost by using anti-establishment messaging, but that candidates’ political résumés matter less to potential voters.

Ranked Choice Voting in Australia and America: Do Voters Follow Party Cues?

Ranked choice voting (RCV) is experiencing a surge of interest in the United States, highlighted by its 2018 use for Congressional elections in Maine, the first application of a ranked ballot for national-level elections in American history. A century ago, the same system was introduced in another federal, two-party continental-sized democracy: Australia. RCV’s utility as a solution to inter-party coordination problems helps to explain its appeal in both countries, underscoring the potential benefits of a comparative analytical approach. This article examines this history of adoption and then turns to a comparison of recent RCV elections in Maine with state elections in New South Wales and Queensland, the two Australian states which share the same form of RCV as that used in the United States. This comparison shows how candidate and party endorsements influence voters’ rankings and can, over time, promote reciprocal exchanges between parties and broader systemic support for RCV. Such cross-partisan support helps explain the stability of RCV in Australia, with implications for the system’s prospects in the United States.

Are You My Candidate? Gender, Undervoting, and Vote Choice in Same-Party Matchups

Partisanship is the dominant force that dictates American electoral behavior. Yet Americans often participate in elections in which either the partisanship of candidates is unknown or candidates from the same party compete, rendering the partisan cue meaningless. In this research, we examine how candidate demographics—specifically gender—relate to voter behavior and candidate selection in these contexts. Leveraging survey data from same-party matchups in congressional elections (resulting from “top-two primaries”), we examine the relationship between candidate gender and undervoting and vote choice. We find that in same-party matchups, women candidates are associated with lower levels of undervoting among women voters. Furthermore, we find that in mixed-gender contests, women voters from both parties and Democratic men are more likely to favor female candidates. The findings presented here have important implications for the literatures on gender and politics, electoral politics, partisanship, and the design of electoral institutions.

Voice and Balancing in US Congressional Elections

If the median voter wrote the Constitution, every Tuesday would be Election Day. Consider the case of the United States: Halfway into a presidential term, congressional elections allow the people to adjust the course of federal policy. Two complementary mechanisms describe how this opportunity is embraced by centrists: a direct mechanism, which strengthens the out-party in Congress to “balance” the president’s policy impact, and an indirect mechanism, by which midterm voting serves to “voice” dissatisfaction as a signal to the president. A model of repeated elections unites the two mechanisms: whereas midterm balancing reacts to the preceding presidential election, midterm voice anticipates the following one. Using micro and macro data for all House elections from 1956 through 2018, I show that balancing and voice work hand in hand: it is those voters with both policy incentives who contribute most to the notorious “midterm loss,” and particularly so under circumstances that make balancing more necessary and voice more promising. Yet although policy-oriented behavior typically restrains dominant parties, it may also cushion the fall of unpopular administrations. Centrists can be creative.