Position-Taking and Electoral Accountability in the U.S. House of Representatives

• Date: 01 June 2006
• DOI: 10.1177/106591290605900211
• Author: Jamie L. Carson,Gregory L. Bovitz
• Published date: 01 June 2006
• Subject Matter: Articles

Students of legislative politics have long recognized that

members of the U.S. Congress are strategic when they

take public positions (e.g., when casting roll call votes

on the House or Senate floor). As legislators pursue reelec-

tion, the stances they take on issues can be political com-

modities in and of themselves. As Mayhew (1974a: 69-70)

and others have noted, however, it is difficult to find sys-

tematic evidence of legislators’ “position-taking” behavior

affecting election results. To what extent does roll call voting

affect congressional elections? The answer to this question

has important implications for issues of representation and

accountability. Indeed, if representative democracy is work-

ing, then we should observe constituents rewarding or pun-

ishing incumbents based on whether legislative decisions

reflect their interests.

Past studies exploring the relationship between roll calls

and election outcomes offer us some evidence suggesting

that patterns of behavior on certain key roll calls affect

incumbents’ electoral margins. Yet, to date we are left with-

out a comprehensive study that tells us whether individual

roll calls can be electorally consequential and lends insight

into the conditions under which position-taking has elec-

toral implications. This article takes a step toward filling

that void through a large-scale investigation of the relation-

ship between roll calls and election results. In particular, we

examine the electoral effects of key roll call votes since the

1970s to arrive at new generalizations regarding how and

when position-taking affects electoral fortunes.

Our results demonstrate that, after controlling for the

usual factors, a wide range of roll calls has significant effects

on incumbents’ electoral margins. We also find that the

extent to which a particular roll call is controversial, salient,

and a catalyst for intra-party disagreement affects whether it

has observable electoral implications. In sum, our findings

address long-standing questions regarding how and when

legislators are rewarded or punished at the polls for their

position-taking behavior in Congress.

The organization of the article is as follows. After briefly

reviewing previous literature that links position-taking

behavior with electoral outcomes, we offer a theory of how

individual roll calls can affect incumbents’ electoral fortunes.

Next, we formulate and conduct an empirical test of the elec-

toral effects of roll call voting in the House. Building on these

findings, we then examine why some roll calls, and not

others, have observable electoral effects. We conclude with a

discussion of the principal implications of our results.

DEFINING THE SCOPE OF CURRENT EVIDENCE

Mayhew (1974a) views members of Congress as single-

minded seekers of reelection and, in turn, draws general

conclusions about expected legislative behavior. According

to his theory, legislators employ some combination of three

fundamental activities in their attempt to garner electoral

support: advertising, credit claiming, and position-taking.

While the electoral effects of advertising (see, e.g., Mayhew

1974b; Cover and Brumberg 1982) and credit claiming (see,

e.g., Alvarez and Saving 1997; Sellers 1997) have been

widely explored in the literature, much less attention has

been given to the electoral consequences of position-taking

in Congress (but see Stokes and Miller 1962).

Since the 1970s, the effects of legislative position-taking

have generally been analyzed in terms of floor roll call

297

Position-Taking and Electoral Accountability

in the U.S. House of Representatives

GREGORY L. BOVITZ, BOVITZ RESEARCH GROUP, CALIFORNIA

JAMIE L. CARSON, THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

While past research has offered some initial evidence linking patterns of position-taking behavior with incum-

bents’ electoral fortunes, we are left without a comprehensive study that informs us whether individual roll-

call votes can be electorally consequential and lends insight into the conditions under which position-taking

on roll calls may yield electoral implications. This article takes a step toward filling that void by examining the

electoral implications of hundreds of House roll calls since the early 1970s. We find that, after controlling for

the usual factors, a wide range of individual roll-call decisions have significant effects on incumbents’ electoral

margins. We also find that the extent to which a particular roll call is controversial, salient, and a catalyst for

intra-party disagreement affects whether it has electoral implications. In sum, our analysis addresses long-

standing questions regarding how and when legislators are rewarded or punished at the polls for their behav-

ior in Congress.

NOTE: Authors’ names are listed alphabetically. We thank Gary Jacobson

for furnishing us with the electoral data and we thank Keith Poole

and Dave Rohde for sharing their respective roll call datasets. We

appreciate the helpful comments by David Canon, Jamie Druck-

man, Chuck Finocchiaro, Patricia Hurley, Jeff Jenkins, Tim

Nokken, Bruce Oppenheimer, Bill Reed, Reggie Sheehan, and the

anonymous reviewers. We especially thank Dave Rohde and the

Political Institutions and Public Choice Program for supporting

this research agenda.

Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (June 2006): pp. 297-312

voting behavior.1Moreover, research examining the rela-

tionship between legislative behavior and election outcomes

offers a puzzle to students of congressional elections. On the

one hand, anecdotal and survey evidence reveal that legisla-

tors believe the positions they express through roll call votes

impact their electoral fortunes (see, e.g., Matthews and

Stimson 1975; Kingdon 1989; Arnold 1990). Yet, some

recent literature finds little to no evidence of legislative

behavior affecting elections, suggesting that legislators may

not need to worry about the potential electoral effects of

position-taking (see, e.g., Bianco, Spence, and Wilkerson

1996; Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart 2001; Gaines and

Nokken 2001). If this is true, why might legislators be con-

cerned about the potential electoral effects of their behavior?

Fiorina (1974) offers one potential answer to this ques-

tion in the context of his analysis of representatives and

their constituencies. In seeking to understand how unin-

formed voters might hold their elected representatives

responsible for their behavior, Fiorina asserts:

What counts is the potential damage of a vote. Even if

only one in a hundred realize that potential, that may be

the vote that ends a political life. Granted, the over-

whelming bulk of Congressmen are reelected. But, by the

same token, never does a congressional election pass

without leaving one or more Representatives and/or Sen-

ators consigned to political oblivion. There is always an

example or two of a misstep that wiped out a political

career. The costs of defeat are so enormous that the prob-

ability of defeat pales by comparison. Choosing discre-

tion over valor, the representative votes as if the proba-

bility of his action becoming a campaign issue is unity.

Moreover, Mayhew (1974a), Jacobson (1987), Kingdon

(1989), and Arnold (1990) all emphasize that incumbents

are extremely sensitive to the potential electoral implica-

tions of their votes and, as a result, behave strategically

when announcing a position on a roll call vote.2

To date, the literature investigating the relationship

between position-taking and election outcomes generally

falls under one of two alternative empirical approaches. The

first approach focuses on how aggregate voting records affect

electoral outcomes. These analyses typically examine differ-

ences between legislators and their constituents by either

exploring ideological extremeness on all roll calls or dis-

tinctiveness as measured by a more limited, subset of roll

calls (such as those on which ADA scores are based). Gen-

erally, the more legislators’ roll calls depart from constituent

ideology, the more their vote margins in subsequent elec-

tions are expected to diminish. The second approach exam-

ining the relationship between position-taking and electoral

results focuses on the electoral effects of a single roll call

vote or a particular subset of votes in Congress. These stud-

ies explore whether the positions legislators take on indi-

vidual roll calls significantly affect the size of the vote

margin by which they are reelected (or defeated).

In connection with the former approach, Canes-Wrone,

Brady, and Cogan (2002) find that incumbents receive

smaller electoral margins on average the more they vote in

support of their party across aggregate roll calls. Erikson

and Wright (2000) identify numerous conditions under

which legislators are rewarded or punished in terms of ide-

ological extremeness of their aggregate roll call records.

Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart (2001) discover that

candidates’ vote share is inversely related to support for

their political party.

Unlike studies based on aggregate voting patterns or

behavior, other research has focused on the electoral effects

of a single vote or certain types of votes. Jacobson (1993),

for example, offers a compelling case study of deficit reduc-

tion legislation in 1990. His principal argument is that elec-

toral circumstances shape the positions taken by House

members—and vice versa. Those legislators in a position to

absorb the electoral costs associated with supporting the

1990 deficit reduction bill could vote for it while those

members who would suffer at the polls as a result had to

vote against it (Jacobson 1993: 376). The prediction, then,

is that House members who supported the deficit reduction

package should not incur any serious electoral damage

despite its tax hikes and cuts in popular spending. Indeed,

Jacobson’s analysis estimates the impact of roll call votes

regarding deficit reduction on the incumbent’s share of the

two-party vote in the 1990 House elections and shows that

supporting Bush’s budget deal only hurt those incumbents

in vulnerable districts.

While research to date has provided us with some

insights into the effects of legislative behavior on election

outcomes, in some ways the two approaches described

above can only give us a limited understanding of how roll

call voting impacts election returns. In particular, studies

that rely on aggregate measures of legislative behavior are

unable to distinguish the electoral relevance of one vote

from another. Since all or a broad subset of votes are con-

sidered together, we do not have the opportunity to deter-

mine which specific votes, if any, are having a significant

effect on an incumbent’s electoral margin. Analyses in the

second approach, examining the electoral implications of

one or a small set of roll call votes, are valuable case studies

but they do not allow for broader generalizations. Without

examining a much larger subset of roll calls that legislators

298 POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY

1While Mayhew (1974a) describes other activities beyond roll call

voting in his discussion of legislative position-taking (e.g., floor addresses,

speeches, television appearances, press releases), we focus solely on the

effects of position-taking behavior in the context of House roll calls.

2Representatives who occasionally express roll call positions that are

“out of touch” with their constituents will not necessarily be removed from

office. As a result of comfortable electoral margins, incumbents typically

have leeway that allows them to take some controversial positions. In any

case, because so few incumbents are defeated from one election to the next,

we cannot expect to find any large-scale evidence of roll call behavior

impacting electoral wins vs. losses. When position-taking does underlie

winning vs. losing, it presumably involves a “lagged” effect. As electoral

margins narrow as a result of a pattern of “wrong” positions, experienced

challengers are more likely to emerge (Carson 2005), which gradually

translates into even narrower margins and eventually seat turnover.