A Political Canary: An Empirical Study of the Correlation Between Hatch Act Complaints and How the Electoral College Votes

Abstract

The American public witnesses hundreds, if not thousands, of Hatch Act violations—an administrative law designed to keep partisan politics out of Government—each year. This study aims to determine whether there is a correlation between the number of Hatch Act complaints reported in the fiscal year leading up to a Presidential election and how divisive the political landscape is during that Presidential election. In this study, political divisiveness was defined as how close the winning Presidential candidate was to receiving fifty percent of the electoral college. To test the theory that an increase in Hatch Act complaints leads to a closer Presidential election, the study researched forty years of Hatch Act records and developed a prediction model using multiple regression. The results of this regression model showed that a negative correlation existed between the percent change in Hatch Act complaints during the fiscal year leading up to a Presidential election and the margin by which a Presidential candidate won the election. The regression model created in this study accurately predicted the electoral college results for eight of the past ten Presidential elections; predicting both the 2016 and the 2020 elections within one electoral vote (p ≤ 0.05). These results verify the need for increased funding for enforcement of Hatch Act violations during the years leading up to a Presidential election.