Electoral rewards for political grandstanding

Abstract

Many assumed that legislators send political messages or even grandstand in expectation of gaining electoral rewards. However, largely due to a lack of proper data and measurements, this assumption has not been tested. Publicized committee hearings provide a unique environment to consistently observe changes in legislators' speech patterns and test this assumption. Using House committee hearing transcripts from 1997 to 2016 and Grandstanding Scores-which capture the intensity of political messages conveyed in members' statements in hearings-I find that an increase in a member's messaging efforts in a given Congress leads to increased vote share in the following election. This suggests that legislators' grandstanding remarks, often regarded as cheap talk, can be an effective electoral strategy. Additional findings suggest that PAC donors respond differently to members' grandstanding behavior. Specifically, while voters react to members' grandstanding positively but are ignorant about their legislative effectiveness, PAC donors are unmoved by members' grandstanding behaviors and reward members' effective law-making activities instead. These asymmetric reactions from voters and donors may provide members with a twisted incentive to appeal to voters merely by making impressive, political speeches while legislating in favor of organized interests, which raises concerns about how representative democracy works.