Democratic Incumbents and the 1984 Presidential Election: A Case Study

Abstract

This article examines the advantages a single Democratic incumbent utilized to win reelection in 1984 despite an overwhelming victory by Ronald Reagan at the top of the ticket in the congressional district. The incumbent won reelection because of two types of ticket splitting: Republican-inclined voters who voted for Republican candidates for president and U.S. Senate and split to vote for the Democratic incumbent for Congress, and Democratic voters who supported Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate and Congress but split to vote for Ronald Reagan for president. Ticket splitting was found to be associated with basic political orientation-weak Republican and independent voters split in favor of the Democratic incumbent and were far less likely to vote a straight ticket for either party. Support for the Democratic incumbent was explained in nonideological terms and was based upon high recognition and favorability, constituent service, voting record, and personal familiarity. For the Republican challenger, who never achieved a high level of recognition (despite significant campaign expenditure), support came almost solely from the most partisan Republican members of the electorate and was based simply upon the party affiliation of the Republican challenger. In 1984, despite one of the most one-sided presidential elections in American history, the Republicans gained only fourteen seats in the House of Representatives and lost two seats in the Senate. Almost all Democratic congressional incumbents who ran for reelection in 1984 won. The focus of this research is on the reelection of one Democratic incumbent congressman and provides an opportunity to examine at the micro level the advantages that one Democratic incumbent utilized in 1984 to win reelection. The willingness of a significant number of KURT C. SCHLICHTING is Associate Professor of Sociology at Fairfield University. The author wishes to thank the Fairfield University Research Committee for support. Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 53:83-97 ? 1989 by the Amerncan Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press / 0033-362X/88/0053-01/$2.50 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.64 on Sat, 03 Sep 2016 04:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 84 Kurt C. Schlichting voters to split their ticket proved decisive. The Democratic incumbent won reelection to Congress with 53% of the votes cast while Walter Mondale, the Democratic presidential candidate, received 36%. The likelihood of ticket splitting was found to be directly correlated with the strength of political affiliation and the high level of recognition and positive evaluation of the incumbent by almost all segments of the electorate. The incumbent congressman was also able to take advantage of the fact that a significant portion of the electorate had decided in favor of the incumbent before September 1984. Since the 1950s a great deal of attention has been focused on the voting behavior of the American electorate, but the emphasis has been on voting in presidential elections. A recent major study of congressional elections by Goldenberg and Traugott (1984:6) points out the predominantly presidential focus of virtually all large studies of elections until 1978. It is not until 1978 that the National Election Study (NES) conducted by the University of Michigan substituted congressional districts for counties as primary sampling units and began to include questions specific to the congressional elections. The major limitation of the NES, the primary source for survey data on congressional elections, is that few interviews are conducted in any one congressional district. The Goldenberg and Traugott analysis focuses on types of congressional races: open seats, incumbent seats, incumbent-sure winners, incumbent-vulnerables, and not on any one congressional district. The authors analyze 86 contested races among the 108 congressional districts in the NES sample (1984). The survey data is drawn from the 1978 NES and consists of 1,843 interviews, an average of 21 interviews per district in the contested districts (N = 86). The present study examines survey data from a single congressional district for the 1984 presidential election. The congressional district analyzed is located in a large midwestern state and consists of urban, suburban, and rural areas. Its other demographic characteristics mirror those of the state as a whole. The congressional district is one which was identified by both parties as marginal (vulnerable in Goldenberg and Traugott terminology) in 1984. The incumbent Democrat faced a strong challenge from a well-financed Republican. The Republican challenger spent over $450,000, while the incumbent's campaign expenditures exceeded $555,000.