Electoral Competition and Legislator Effectiveness
| Author | Michael Barber,Soren Schmidt |
| DOI | 10.1177/1532673X18760527 |
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2018
Article
American Politics Research
2019, Vol. 47(4) 683 –708
Electoral Competition
© The Author(s) 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X18760527
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18760527
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Effectiveness
Michael Barber1 and Soren Schmidt2
Abstract
How do legislators respond to electoral competition? We consider this
question by looking at the relationship between legislative productivity and
the competitiveness of legislators’ primary and general elections. Building on
Volden and Wiseman’s preliminary investigation of the electoral connection
to legislative productivity, we introduce to that analysis the critical and
often-overlooked distinction between primary and general election
competitiveness. Employing panel data of U.S. House members spanning
three decades (1979-2009), we find significant evidence of a positive
relationship between primary vote share and legislative effectiveness, much
of which is explained by having primary opposition at all. These results
have substantial implications for our understanding of both the electoral
connection and legislative behavior.
Keywords
congress, primary elections, legislator effectiveness
Congressmen are responsible for their own margins of victory or defeat; and
the constraints they face are defined largely in their individual districts.
—Thomas E. Mann (1978), Unsafe at Any Margin
1Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA
2Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Corresponding Author:
Michael Barber, Brigham Young University, 744 SWKT, Provo, UT 84602, USA.
Email: barber@byu.edu
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American Politics Research 47(4)
This is a speech I never expected to give.
—John Boehner, speaking after majority leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss
Introduction
In the 2016 elections, Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX08) came as close
to electoral defeat as he ever had.1 However, the challenge came from inside
his own party. Despite two decades of incumbency, a powerful position as
chair of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, and triple his usual
campaign spending, Representative Brady only narrowly defeated the anties-
tablishment opposition in the Republican primary, garnering just 53.4% of
the vote. Fortunately for Brady, his subsequent path to reelection was much
easier. His constituency, the Texas Eighth Congressional district, was one of
the most conservative in the nation, and he was completely unopposed in the
general election. In the adjacent Texas First Congressional District, fellow
Republican Representative Louie Gohmert, whose constituency was simi-
larly conservative, also had an easy time in the 2016 general election. He
routed the Democratic candidate, Shirley McKellar, by a margin of nearly 50
percentage points.2 Unlike Brady, however, Gohmert had a largely stress-free
experience in the primaries. Although he, too, faced opposition, the challenge
was dramatically weaker: He won the Republican nomination for his race
with 82% of the vote.
A great deal of the political science scholarship seeking to understand leg-
islator behavior looks first to the electoral connection for explanations (see,
for example, Fenno, 1978; Grimmer, 2013; Mayhew, 2004). This is entirely
appropriate; elections play a crucial role in mediating the principal–agent
relationship between citizen preferences and legislative action. However,
many empirical studies employing election results as a metric of district com-
petitiveness only employ vote shares from the general election (see, for
example, Dropp & Peskowitz, 2012; Shepsle, Van Houweling, Abrams, &
Hanson, 2009; Volden & Wiseman, 2014). Solely by that measure, the elec-
toral conditions facing Representative Brady and Representative Gohmert
were effectively equal, but their disparate experiences in the primary election
make it clear that such was certainly not the case. Consequently, if we wish
to expand our understanding of the electoral connections to legislator behav-
ior, it is critical that we also account for primary competition (for important
examples of this, see Boatright, 2013; Brady, Han, & Pope, 2007; Hill, 2015).
This article seeks to do so for one of the most important behavioral outcomes
in the study of Congress: legislative productivity.
Barber and Schmidt
685
Building on Volden and Wiseman’s (2014) preliminary exploration of the
relationship between general election competitiveness and productivity, we
introduce the variable of primary election competition and estimate its impact
on legislative effectiveness for members of the U.S. House of Representatives
over three decades (1979-2009). We find significant evidence of a positive
relationship between primary vote share and legislative effectiveness, much
of which is explained by having primary opposition at all. These results speak
to not only the electoral connection to legislative behavior, but also the inter-
playing dynamics of two-stage elections in the United States. We discuss the
implications of these findings and possible areas of future research.
Theoretical Framework
The study of the effects of congressional electoral competition on various
types of legislator behavior dates back over a half century, beginning with
MacRae (1952) postulating a causal relationship between competitiveness
and representation. The “marginality hypothesis,” as it came to be known,
posits that competitive districts make legislators more responsive to constitu-
ents’ preferences in an effort to minimize the risk of losing the next election
(Fiorina, 1973). There has been significant evidence in favor of the marginal-
ity hypothesis in a variety of legislator behaviors. For example, Canes-Wrone,
Brady, and Cogan (2002) note that the more that legislators’ roll call votes
align with party lines, the lower their subsequent vote share. This incentivizes
responsiveness among marginal legislators. Griffin’s (2006) research con-
firmed this result: Members of the House of Representatives facing addi-
tional electoral pressure do tend to be more responsive to constituent
preferences in their roll call votes. Beyond roll call voting, Fenno (1978) and,
more recently, Grimmer (2013) note that members of Congress consciously
develop a “home style”—a strategy for dealing with their constituents to gain
their trust—that varies widely by district and elected official. Furthermore,
Crisp, Kanthak, and Leijonhufvud (2004) found that legislators’ decisions
about which coalitions to form—as measured by bill cosponsorships—were
affected by electoral competition. These findings lend credence to the broader
notions that legislators alter their behavior in response to the competitiveness
of the elections that they face and that they also consider cultivating an image
of productivity to be an important part of that response.
In most of the abovementioned work, scholars are testing the relationship
between competition and legislator behavior with respect to the competitive-
ness of the general election constituency. A few other studies focus their atten-
tion to the primary electorate, often with mixed results. On one hand, Brady
et al. (2007) found that when forced to choose between the two, congressional
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American Politics Research 47(4)
candidates position themselves closer to the primary electorate. On the other
hand, Ansolabehere, Hirano, Hansen, and Snyder (2010) and Boatright (2013)
find weak or null ideological responses to primary elections. However, it is
possible that the centrifugal influence of primary elections is masked by the
centripetal, convergent pressure of general elections. As shown by Hill (2015),
the primary and general electorates are significantly divergent in almost every
contemporary congressional district, implying that they could be simultane-
ously pulling candidate behavior in opposite directions. In addition, Boatright
(2013) notes that primaries have consequences even without actual challenges
if “incumbents believe the rhetoric about primaries and change their behavior
in response to the threat of being challenged.” (p. 15).
In each of these cases, legislators consider how best to frame their positions,
behavior, and rhetoric to maximize their likelihood of being successful (either in
reelection, policymaking, or some other goal). However, legislators have limited
time and resources, and must make decisions about how to allocate them (Butler,
Karpowitz, & Pope, 2012). Two basic options are available to representatives
seeking reelection: legislative production and constituent service (Dropp &
Peskowitz, 2012). Legislators are known to build relationships with constituents
as a way of garnering votes and developing a particular “home style” (Fenno,
1978). This home style includes a variety of interactions—from answering con-
stituent mail, email, and phone calls to responding to casework and contacting
voters through newsletters, advertising, and franked communication. There has
been some evidence that legislators believe that constituent service is generally
the more efficient option for obtaining additional votes in a competitive election
(Butler et al., 2012; Dropp & Peskowitz, 2012).
On the contrary, legislators facing tough competition might intensify their
efforts to produce meaningful legislation to impress their district. In other
professions, employees facing impending layoffs...
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