District Ideology Research Articles

Preaching to the Choir or Proselytizing to the Opposition: Examining the Use of Campaign Websites in State Legislative Elections

AbstractThe Internet has spawned a renewed hope for facilitating increased access to candidate information for voters. However, the nationalization and polarization of constituents have left many candidates averse to the risks of personalized campaigns, especially in subnational elections. Under what conditions are state candidates willing to establish a personalized web presence as opposed to relying on partisanship? This study introduces a novel dataset of campaign website presence for the 2018 and 2020 state legislative elections. During this time, approximately one-third of state legislative candidates opted to forgo a personalized campaign website. District-level constituent ideology was significantly correlated with the website use, even when controlling for district education, income, age, and race, and the candidate’s competitive position. District ideological homogeneity encouraged website use across both parties, while adversarial district ideology corresponded to low website use among Republicans. The results indicate that state legislative candidates, especially Republican candidates, are far more likely to preach to their partisan choir rather than incur the risks of proselytizing among their partisan opposition. The results reiterate the divergent responses of the political parties regarding partisan polarization and shed light on the impact of nationalization within state legislative campaigns.

The Role of Interest Groups and Group Interests on Gun Legislation in the U.S. House*

ObjectiveI examine the differential effects on legislative behavior of organized and unorganized subgroups related to gun policy.MethodsUsing various data sources on campaign contributions, voter characteristics, and legislative behaviors, I estimate logit models of the decision to co‐sponsor or vote for gun bills in the U.S. House of Representatives.ResultsBoth interest group contributions and the percentage of hunters in a district are independently predictive of legislative behavior, above and beyond district ideology and party affiliation. These findings are robust and substantively meaningful.ConclusionsThose involved in the politics surrounding gun policy should take into account the difference between the influence of organized interests like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the unorganized interests of voter subgroups.

Representation, neighboring districts, and party loyalty in the U.S. Congress

Legislative scholars often assume that legislators are motivated by concerns over re-election. This assumption implies that legislators are forward-looking and are motivated by a concern over what their re-election constituency will look like during their next electoral cycle. In this research, we show how the forward-looking nature of legislators motivates members of the U.S. House of Representatives to represent both their home district and their neighboring districts in their choices regarding when to support their own party. Using survey responses to the 2006, 2008, and 2010 Cooperative Congressional Elections Study to construct measures of Congressional District ideology, empirical analysis is strongly supportive of our claims. Legislators’ choices are strongly influenced both by the ideology of their home district and that of the districts that neighbor their home district. Thus, the electoral connection between citizens and representatives extends beyond a legislator’s own constituents to include the constituents in neighboring districts.

Measuring State and District Ideology with Spatial Realignment

We develop a new approach for modeling public sentiment by micro-level geographic region based on Bayesian hierarchical spatial modeling. Recent production of detailed geospatial political data means that modeling and measurement lag behind available information. The output of the models gives not only nuanced regional differences and relationships between states, but more robust state-level aggregations that update past research on measuring constituency opinion. We rely here on the spatial relationships among observations and units of measurement in order to extract measurements of ideology as geographically narrow as measured covariates. We present an application in which we measure state and district ideology in the United States in 2008.

Incumbent ideology, district ideology, and candidate entry in U.S. congressional elections, 1954–2008

This paper investigates the role of incumbent ideology on quality candidate entry in U.S. congressional elections. Looking at district ideology, the analysis shows that members of the House and Senate face different ideological incentives in terms of opponent quality. For officials from highly ideological districts, greater ideological extremity is advantageous as it discourages strong opponents. For members from cross pressured districts, however, greater extremity may increase the likelihood of facing a strong opponent. Although the magnitude of these findings vary by party, they illustrate that incumbents face diverging ideological motivations in terms of discouraging strong challengers based on the ideology of their district.

Candidate Reputations and Issue Agendas

How do campaigns decide what issues to emphasize for voters? According to most studies, campaigns rely on factors outside of their control—issue salience, party issue ownership, and district ideology. In this article, I argue that campaign messages are designed primarily based on the candidate. I examine the issue content of campaign advertisements from U.S. House and Senate campaigns from 2000 to 2004 and develop a measure that determines if candidates have developed a reputation on a particular issue. When candidates have developed such a reputation, their campaign is more likely to highlight that issue to voters than campaigns whose candidate has not developed such a reputation. This relationship is consistent across most issues and across two different measures of a campaign’s issue agenda.

Representation in Hybrid Regimes: Constituency and Party Influences on Legislative Voting in the Russian Duma 1996–1999

ObjectivesThe objectives of the study were to establish whether district ideology was reflected in legislator ideal points in the 1996–1999 Duma.MethodsI integrate for the first time individual‐level survey data on citizen attitudes to economic reform, the major dimension of political conflict in Russia in the 1990s, with individual legislator voting records from the 1996 to 1999 Duma. Using a Bayesian method, I estimate legislator ideal points as a function of individual and district characteristics and an individually specific random shock to assess the direct effect of district ideology and party membership.ResultsAccording to my results, legislators were responsive to district preferences on salient legislation such as final passage votes and key votes.ConclusionsThe findings have implications for the effects of a mixed electoral system, which was introduced in many young democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America. The broader conclusion of the study is that the electoral incentives in the single‐member district component of the election can encourage legislative responsiveness even in a “partial” democracy such as Russia.

Candidate positioning and responsiveness to constituent opinion in the U.S. House of Representatives

In this paper, I develop a survey-based measure of district ideology for the House of Representatives. I use this index to document and study ways in which patterns of candi- date positioning depart from perfect representation. These findings help distinguish between competing theories of candidate positioning. My findings present evidence against theories that attribute divergence to the preferences of voters and the locations of primary constituen- cies. My findings are potentially consistent with the policy-motivation and resource theories, which attribute divergence to the polarization of political elites.

Giving Order to Districts: Estimating Voter Distributions with National Election Returns

Correctly measuring district preferences is crucial for empirical research on legislative responsiveness and voting behavior. This article argues that the common practice of using presidential vote shares to measure congressional district ideology systematically produces incorrect estimates. I propose an alternative method that employs multiple election returns to estimate voters' ideological distributions within districts. I develop two estimation procedures—a least squared error model and a Bayesian model—and test each with simulations and empirical applications. The models are shown to outperform vote shares, and they are validated with direct measures of voter ideology and out-of-sample election predictions. Beyond estimating district ideology, these models provide valuable information on constituency heterogeneity—an important, but often immeasurable, quantity for research on representatives— strategic behavior.

Giving Order to Districts: Estimating Voter Distributions with National Election Returns

This article argues that the common practice of using presidential vote shares to measure congressional district ideology is logically flawed. I propose two alternative methods - a classical and Bayesian model - that employ multiple election returns to estimate voters' ideological distributions within districts. Simulations and empirical applications demonstrate that the proposed models outperform direct vote shares, and they externally validate estimates of district ideology. Moreover, by generating estimates of districts' variances, these models also provide information on constituency heterogeneity, a quality that is perhaps equally valuable for understanding representatives' strategic behavior.

Measuring Constituency Ideology in U.S. House Districts: A Top-Down Simulation Approach

One of the most intractable problems associated with studying representation in the U.S. House of Representatives involves the measurement of district-level constituency opinion. In measuring constituency opinion in House districts, scholars have relied on a number of alternative approaches, including the use of demographic variables, small-sample estimates of public opinion, presidential election results, referenda data, and “bottom-up” simulated opinion. In this article we develop an innovative “top-down” simulation of House district opinion that provides more reliable and valid measures of House district ideology. We model state-level ideology (as measured by Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993) as a function of various demographic and political variables found at both the state and House district levels, and then use the estimates from the state-level model to generate predicted ideology scores for each House district during the 1980s and 1990s. Our findings suggest that the top-down simulated measure is a valid indicator of House district ideology that can be used in a number of research venues.

Out of Step, Out of Office: Electoral Accountability and House Members' Voting

Does a typical House member need to worry about the electoral ramifications of his roll-call decisions? We investigate the relationship between incumbents' electoral performance and roll-call support for their party—controlling for district ideology, challenger quality, and campaign spending, among other factors—through a series of tests of the 1956–1996 elections. The tests produce three key findings indicating that members are indeed accountable for their legislative voting. First, in each election, an incumbent receives a lower vote share the more he supports his party. Second, this effect is comparable in size to that of other widely recognized electoral determinants. Third, a member's probability of retaining office decreases as he offers increased support for his party, and this relationship holds for not only marginal, but also safe members.