Time-dependent legislative behavior and election outcomes

Abstract

Previous studies find that legislators who adopt a partisan voting record are penalized come election time. To date, these studies examine the electoral effects of aggregate legislative behavior. While useful for identifying macro-level relationships, this approach discards valuable information about the timing of elite partisanship that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between legislative behavior and election outcomes. After all, studies find that recent elite behavior tends to factor more prominently in voters’ decision calculus. We offer a model that more explicitly accounts for the timing of elite partisanship, and we test it using US House elections data from 1956 to 2004. Even when accounting for aggregate party voting, we find that electoral success is significantly dependent on the temporal patterns of members’ party loyalty as elections approach. We attribute this, in part, to voters paying disproportionate attention to legislative activity around elections.