The Impact of Policy Voting on the Electoral Fortunes of Senate Incumbents

Abstract

STUDENTS of congressional politics have long recognized the importance of studying the complex, multifaceted business of electing Congress. Most research on congressional elections has focused on House races, but scholarly attention to Senate elections has been increasing primarily because of the 1978 Center for Political Studies National Election Study (CPS/NES) which contained for the first time a variety of questions on voting for Senate candidates. Several researchers using this data have attempted to explain basic differences between House and Senate election outcomes (Mann and Wolfinger 1980; Abramowitz 1980; Hinckley 1980a, 1981). One study, however, has shown that the conclusions drawn from these studies are questionable because the 1978 CPS study did not include a representative sample of voters. Westlye (1983) found voters in states with extremely competitive Senate races to be overrepresented in the 1978 survey. More importantly, he demonstrated that many incumbent senators, like their counterparts in the House, face relatively weak challenges for their seats on election day. In fact, many Senate races, like House contests, are uncompetitive and many challengers go largely unnoticed by voters. In view of these findings, the obvious question becomes why some incumbent senators are more vulnerable than others? Our major contention is that the policy positions of the incumbent relative to the positions held by his or her constituents have a bearing on electoral marginality.