Reexamining the Effects of Electoral Competition on Negative Advertising

Prior research suggests that campaigns become more negative when the election environment becomes more competitive. Much of this research suffers from data and design limitations. I replicate and extend prior analyses using a much larger number of cases. Using advertising data drawn from 374 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns contested from 2000 through 2018, I find evidence that electoral competition encourages candidates to engage in more negative advertising campaigns and that incumbency status conditions these effects. Incumbents of both parties use more negative messaging strategies as competition increases. The effects of competition among challengers and open seat candidates is mixed. These results add to what we know about campaign advertising behavior and suggest that researchers should take care to avoid ignoring important contextual factors that underlie candidates’ strategic choices.

Examining the “Referendum Theory” in Taiwan’s Local Elections

This paper analyzes the extent to which the performances of local and national governments can shape local election outcomes. Specifically, we use various waves of survey data from Taiwan’s Elections and Democratization Studies (TEDS) to explore whether a person’s assessments of local and central government performances affect his/her vote for the incumbent party candidate. Our empirical findings partially verify the so-called “referendum theory” and can be summarized as follows: First, voters who hold a positive assessment of the performance of local government are more likely to vote for an incumbent who seeks reelection, but this is not necessarily the case for an incumbent party candidate in an open-seat contest. Second, Taiwan’s local elections cannot be regarded as referenda on the central government because the central government approval rating does not consistently affect vote choices across different types/levels of local elections.

The Soul of Empathy

After I buckle my seatbelt and open a book, waiting for the captain to announce our departure, a flight attendant walks down the aisle and, to my surprise, plops down into the open seat next to me. “I'm flying home,” she explains. “Sometimes my route doesn't take me back, so the airline flies me on the next available flight.” A few minutes later, our actual flight attendant approaches and asks if we'd like anything to drink. When he returns with my order, I say, absently, “Thank you.” But when my seatmate's order comes, she looks the flight attendant in the eye, smiles, and says, “Thank you so much.” Maybe they know each other, I think. But as the flight progresses, it becomes obvious that they are no more acquainted than she and I.

Do Voters Prefer Women Judges? Deconstructing the Competitive Advantage in State Supreme Court Elections

Although many people believe that women are disadvantaged by the electoral process, recent research shows women generally do at least as well as men when they run for office. We investigate the gender dynamics of state supreme court elections. We find evidence that women do enjoy an electoral advantage when they run for judicial office. However, unlike previous work, we find that this advantage is highly contingent on the electoral context. Using an original dataset of competitive judicial elections from 1998 to 2014, we find that women only have a significant vote share advantage when they run as a challenger against a sitting incumbent. The advantage does not apply to women as incumbents or in open seat elections. These findings raise important questions about the interplay of institutional barriers and election aversion for the advancement of women in electoral judicial politics.

Democratic incumbent resilience in the post-1980 Senate

In the period since the Reagan revolution that disrupted decades of Democratic control of the United States Senate, Democratic senators have proved remarkably resilient when running for reelection. Over the past 600 Senate elections since 1980, Republican incumbents have been defeated at more than twice the rate of Democrats, but won open seat elections at a significantly higher rate. This partisan disparity also appears in incumbent vote share, and is statistically and substantively robust to a range of model specifications accounting for existing theories. A series of explanations drawn from existing research explored in this paper fail to explain this trend, suggesting the need for future research targeting partisan differences in perceptions of parties in Senate campaigns.

Small Donors in Congressional Elections

Candidates raise substantial sums of money to compete in federal elections. Scholars and election observers are concerned by potential corruption related to the reliance on donors who make significant contributions. One reform effort to counterbalance large donors is encouraging small donor participation. Still, some worry that ideologically extreme candidates are best able to raise small donations. We analyze internal U.S. Federal Elections Commission data to examine small donor giving in the 2006 through 2010 U.S. House elections. We find small donors may expand the scope of participation, in that the supply of small donors is unrelated to income and that all types of candidates—incumbents, their challengers, and open seat candidates—are equally adept at attracting small donors. Candidates in the most competitive races raise the most in small contributions. We temper reformers’ enthusiasm, finding that ideologically extreme incumbents tend to raise more money from small donors.

Public Attention and Head-to-Head Campaign Fundraising: An Examination of U.S. Senate Elections

Does public attention to political candidates impact fundraising margins in U.S. Senate elections? Applying a novel conceptualization of public attention, we examine U.S. Senate elections from 2004 through 2014 and find that increases in relative public attention relate to increases in head-to-head fundraising margins in open seat races. We conclude by asking whether or not all attention to candidates is "good" attention. Evidence from the 2006 Allen/Webb election suggests that all attention is not "good" attention. This race demonstrates that candidates can supply attention-grabbing action that increases relative public attention while stimulating exceptional losses in relative fundraising margins. Further research must clearly theorize conditions under which supplying public attention-grabbing behavior may damage political campaigns.