Fusion and Electoral Performance in New York Congressional Elections

• Author: Benjamin R. Kantack
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1065912916689823
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912916689823

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(2) 291 –300

© 2017 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912916689823

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Article

In the United States, minor political parties are generally

confined to peripheral roles in electoral politics.

Institutional barriers of the American electoral system

favor the established two-party duopoly, often making it

prohibitively difficult for minor parties to field viable

candidates (Herrnson and Green 2002). Related to and

compounding this obstacle is the phenomenon of strate-

gic voting, whereby voters who most prefer minor-party

candidates nevertheless cast their ballots for major-party

alternatives out of the fear that voting sincerely would

waste their vote and potentially even spoil the election

(Cox 1994; McKelvey and Ordeshook 1972)—a fear

often purposely stoked by the major parties themselves

(Fisher 2004).

Despite this general trend of electoral futility for minor

parties, several US states maintain active and influential

multiparty political cultures through fusion, a system in

which minor parties can formally endorse major-party

candidates. These “cross-endorsed” candidates’ names

appear multiple times on the ballot—once as a Democrat

or Republican, and once for each minor party that

endorsed them.1 Because all votes for a particular candi-

date are aggregated to determine the winner, voters can

express affinity for a minor party without wasting their

vote on a nonviable candidate. By spurring major parties

to vie for cross-endorsements they perceive as electorally

advantageous, fusion allows minor parties to influence

the nomination processes of major parties, to parlay their

endorsements into legislative outcomes, and to hold

elected officials accountable to their particular policy

interests (Cantor and Mason 2003; Curtis 2009).

Although major-party candidates in states that allow

fusion regularly labor to secure minor-party cross-

endorsements (Chamberlain 2012; Kaseman 2008),

whether and how much fused ballot lines contribute to

candidates’ chances of victory have yet to be systemati-

cally studied. Proponents of fusion laws argue that per-

mitting minor parties to cross-endorse major-party

candidates increases voter choice (Cantor and Mason

2003), and empirical work suggests that fused ballot lines

do in fact attract new voters to candidates, rather than

merely redistributing existing supporters (Michelson and

Susin 2004), but political scientists have not yet ascer-

tained the electoral value of cross-endorsements to major-

party candidates.

This study leverages 62 years of US House of

Representatives elections in New York (where fusion is

commonplace) to test whether and how the presence of

fused ballot lines affects candidates’ electoral prospects. I

find that fused ballot lines featuring qualified minor par-

ties (i.e., minor parties granted automatic ballot access as

689823PRQXXX10.1177/1065912916689823Political Research QuarterlyKantack

research-article2017

1University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA

Corresponding Author:

Benjamin R. Kantack, Department of Political Science, University

of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 420 David Kinley Hall, 1407 West

Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Email: kantack2@illinois.edu

Fusion and Electoral Performance

in New York Congressional Elections

Benjamin R. Kantack1

Abstract

Minor parties in American politics often struggle to gain support due to the phenomenon of strategic voting, as

they rarely field viable candidates. However, in several US states, fusion (a process by which multiple parties may

nominate the same candidate) averts this obstacle by allowing minor parties to cross-endorse major-party candidates.

Although major parties are known to perceive these fused ballot lines as electorally advantageous, their value in

terms of additional votes for fusing candidates has not yet been systematically studied. Focusing on US House of

Representatives elections in New York (where fusion is prevalent) between 1952 and 2014, I demonstrate that, under

certain conditions, fusing with minor parties improves major-party candidates’ electoral performance by substantial—

and, occasionally, electorally decisive—amounts.

Keywords

Congressional elections, fusion, minor parties, New York