Presidential coattails

Abstract

This article takes a closer look at how presidential elections affect the fragmentation of the legislative party system. It reviews the theory and conventional empirical modelling strategy; identifies some drawbacks to this strategy and suggests solutions; and then conducts an empirical investigation of the implications of this critique by combining replication data from Golder (2006) with new data on the key variables measuring the presidential coattails. Fortuitously, the literature’s findings about the shadow cast by presidential elections, usually known as the presidential coattails, are relatively robust. However, important differences emerge on the margins, such as regarding the effect of midterm elections. Moreover, this article demonstrates that subsequent presidential elections, like concurrent and preceding ones, cast shadows, too. It also demonstrates that the conventional modelling strategy underestimates the presidential coattails.