The Personal is Political: Reconsidering the Impact of Scandals on Congressional Incumbents

Abstract

While a number of studies reveal that incumbent members of the House of Representatives are adversely affected by scandal, rarely do these studies analyze a scandal’s impact both on election outcomes and the decision to run for reelection. Studies of retirements in particular, moreover, rarely analyze separately the effects of private (i.e., sex and other moral scandals) and public (i.e., corruption and procedural) scandals or consider media coverage of the scandal. This research proposes that members of Congress involved in private and public scandals will be more likely to retire and win a smaller percentage of the vote than members not involved in a scandal, that private scandals will be more impactful than public scandals, and that the higher level of media coverage further harms an incumbent’s congressional career. Also explored is whether the consequences of sex and other scandals were greater for accused members in the 115th Congress than in past Congresses because of heighted awareness and attention to sexual assault in the workplace since the 2016 presidential election and subsequent #MeToo campaign. From data collected over 10 Congresses (106th–115th Congresses) and elections (2000 through 2018), the results show that incumbents who are involved in a sex scandal or other private scandal are substantially more likely to retire than members not involved in a scandal but that public scandals do not matter. In addition, both sex scandals and corruption scandals reduce the incumbent’s vote share in the general election but that sex scandals matter slightly more. Higher media coverage affects both the decision to retire and the share of the vote. There is no evidence of a more pronounced direct effect of sex scandals on retirement decisions in the 115th Congress and scandals more generally on the share of the vote in the 2018 elections.