Electoral Margin Research Articles

Electoral Margins, Constituency Influence, and Policy Moderation: a Critical Assessment

Electoral Margins, Constituency Influence, and Policy Moderation: a Critical Assessment

The Electoral Impact of Congressional Roll Call Voting

This paper presents evidence that candidate issue positions have a measurable impact on elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. For eight election years, electoral margins of Northern incumbent congressional candidates were examined to test the proposition that “moderates” within each party are better vote getters than those whose roll call records reflect their party's ideological extreme. The effects of roll call positions on election results were estimated by examining the relationships between roll call “extremism” and vote margins with district presidential voting held constant as a control for normal constituency voting habits. Although no strong support was found for the proposition that Democratic Representatives lose electoral support when they take extremely liberal roll call positions, a clear pattern emerged for Republicans: the Republican Congressmen who are the best vote getters tend to be the relative moderates and liberals who avoid the extreme conservative end of the political spectrum. An analysis of survey data suggests that the small group of voters whose electoral decisions are influenced by their Republican Congressman's roll call performance are found within the ranks of a select group who are both free of strong partisan motivations and highly politically informed.

The Philippines: Tradition and Change

The political year 1969 in the Philippines was marked by continuity and change, tradition and innovation. On November 11, Filipinos held their seventh presidential and congressional elections after World War 11 or since the eve of regaining independence from the Amricans twentythree years earlier. Like every national or local election in the past, last year's political event took place as scheduled in the Constitution. Some 80% of all registered voters participated, a high turnout for a presidential election but not for a local one. Thus, unlike most developing nations of the world, the Filipino electorate-which has grown from 1.6 million in 1946 to some 8 millions in 1969-has regularly chosen and unmade its national and local leaders. Despite patent flaws in the electoral process, and in the quality of elected leaders-perhaps, not too different from the experience in some of the older democracies-Filipinos take justifiable pride in their brand of political democracy and resent the often distorted and prejudiced reporting by foreign journalists. President Ferdinand E. Marcos, of the Nacionalista Party (NP), was elected to a second four-year term (1969-73), breaking a political tradition as old as the Republic. He garnered 5,017,343 votes against the 3,043,122 votes of his Liberal Party (LP) opponent, Senator Sergio Osmenfa, Jr. Marcos won in all ten regions, again a unique accomplishment, and even bested Osmenfa narrowly in his home province of Cebu. The 52-year-old Marcos obtained about 60% of the votes cast, which is higher than all electoral margins except those of the charismatic Magsaysay and the pre-eminent Manuel L. Quezon, first President of the Philippine Commonwealth (193544). The Marcos reelection resumes the eight-year alternation in power between the LP and the NP which was interrupted when Marcos, a Liberal turned Nacionalista, defeated President Macapagal in 1961, ending the LP hegemony after only four years. Thus, while Marcos' reelection departs from tradition, the continuance of NP rule which it has made possible conforms with the see-saw pattern of the post-war Filipino two-party system. Also in keeping with evolving tradition, the vanquished Liberals managed to secure enough popular backing to sustain their hope of eventually recovering from their defeat, rallying disaffected majority leaders and alienated citizens for a return to Malacaniang. It is this realistic chance of recouping lost public favor and political power, among other factors, that makes the outs persevere within the constitutional framework and that promotes

Electoral Margins and Voting Behavior in the House of Representatives: The Case of the Eighty-Sixth and Eighty-Seventh Congresses

SEVERAL STUDIES OF roll call voting behavior in the House of Representatives have focused on relationships between electoral margins and party voting and/or policy choice. Lewis A. Froman in a study of the first session of the Eighty-seventh Congress investigated the hypothesis that congressmen of both parties from marginal constituencies (those in which competition between the two parties is very close) are more likely to oppose party majorities than those whose electoral status is more safe.' Froman also explored the possibility that congressmen of both parties from marginal constituencies are more moderate in their policy stands in House roll call voting than those from constituencies with a stronger preference for one party over the other.2 Duncan MacRae, Jr. has similarly concerned himself with the proposition that congressmen from marginal constituencies reflect constituency characteristics in their voting behavior to a greater extent than those from other constituencies.3 Warren Miller and Donald Stokes have inquired into the possibility that electoral margins may be related to tendencies of congressmen to vote either on the basis of their own attitudes or on their perceptions of constituents' attitudes.4 Finally, Samuel P. Huntington has suggested that policy moderation in roll call voting is inversely related to the intensity of partisan competition in congressional districts-that, in effect, marginal constituencies produce more extreme

A Comparison of Constituency Influences in the Upper and Lower Chambers of a State Legislature

T IS GENERALLY CONCEDED that the voting behavior of legislators is affected by both party and constituency influences. Some legislators identify themselves chiefly with their party, while others perceive their role as one of representing constituency interests.1 Many inquiries have been made into the relative merits of Burkean representation, accountability to constituency, and party responsibility, but few studies have bothered to investigate the actual extent of insurgency, constituency influences, and party voting in legislative bodies.2 The only published article to date which has examined the effect of constituency influences on party cohesion in the voting behavior of state legislators, is a study of the Massachusetts House of Representatives by Duncan MacRae, Jr.3 Working with roll-call votes on legislation which appeared to reflect socio-economic differences, MacRae found that legislators representing districts typical of those which generally elected members of their party on a home-owner occupancy index tended to display greater party loyalty than legislators elected by districts atypical of their party. MacRae also found that representatives whose previous election margins were narrow tended to cross party lines more often than representatives elected by wide margins. The study summarized by this paper produced similar findings regarding the 1957 session of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, but, perhaps more significantly, found the patterns which described legislative voting behavior in the lower chambers in both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to be inappropriate for describing voting behavior in the Pennsylvania State Senate. Variations in the voting behavior of members of the upper and lower chambers of a legislature should not confound readers of the American classics. The Federalist Papers discuss the probable behavior of members of the separate chambers and in so doing inadvertently suggest certain hypotheses capable of verification. These hypotheses will be examined later.