The Role of Ideology in State Legislative Elections

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12065
• Published date: 01 February 2015
• Author: Nathaniel A. Birkhead
• Date: 01 February 2015

NATHANIEL A. BIRKHEAD

Kansas State University

The Role of Ideology

in State Legislative Elections

In this article, I examine the effect of incumbent ideology on elections in 45 state

legislatures, showing that ideological extremists are more likely to be opposed in the

general election than are moderates and that extremists tend to do worse in challenged

elections than moderates do. I also explore the intervening role of legislative profession-

alism, f‌inding that in the majority of state legislatures moderation is rewarded,though in

the most professionalized legislatures, incumbents are actually rewarded for extremism.

These results show that despite the informational disadvantage of the electorate, the

ideology of state legislators is an important factor in elections.

Introduction

Elections are recognized as the mechanism for translating voter

preferences into government policy. Voters select a candidate based in

part on the nature of the candidate’s policy preferences, who represent

these views in government. Elections provide the opportunity for con-

stituents to reward or punish politicians for their issue positions. For this

to be effective, however, it requires that the electorate is able to monitor

their legislator’s policy actions. This is no trivial matter: voters know

relatively little about politics or their elected off‌icials (Campbell et al.

1960; Converse 1964; Miller and Stokes 1963) and thus would seem

ill-equipped to respond to the roll-call decisions of their elected off‌icials.

Nonetheless, we f‌ind that across a number of contexts, candidate

ideology plays a critical component to understanding electoral outcomes.

In US House general elections (Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart 2001;

Canes-Wrone, Brady, and Cogan 2002; Erikson and Wright 2009), US

House primary elections (Brady, Han, and Pope 2007) and US Senate

elections (Wright and Berkman 1986), candidate ideology is a signif‌icant

predictor of vote share. Each analysis shows the electorate responding to

the incumbent’s voting record by rewarding ideological moderation and

punishing ideological extremism. Thus, the electorate is not only able to

ascertain the ideological characteristics of an incumbent’s voting record,

but to act on this information on Election Day as well.

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LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 1, February 2015 55

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12065

© 2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

The electoral rewards for moderation do come at a cost, however.

Adopting ideologically extreme positions attracts monetary contribu-

tions (Cameron and Enelow 1992) and stimulates campaign activist

recruitment (Aldrich 1983). Moreover, incumbents that adopt ideologi-

cally extreme positions are less likely to be “primaried” and face a

party-organization supported primary challenger (Boatright 2013). Thus,

candidates have a number of incentives to support extreme positions in

their roll-call behavior.

Despite these incentives for extremism, given the primacy of

reelection in a candidate’s set of priorities (Mayhew 1974), empirical

evidence f‌inds that candidates adjust their roll-call behavior in the direc-

tion of the ideological middle in an attempt to appeal to the broadest base

possible (Ladewig 2010). While total convergence—both candidates jos-

tling for position on the median—is not observed, the robust f‌inding is

that candidates who occupy the ideological center tend to outperform

those who are more ideologically extreme, all else equal.

Extending this expectation to state-level elections is not straight-

forward, however. For candidates to be rewarded for their ideological

positioning, it assumes that voters monitor their representatives, which is

a dubious assumption. State legislators are very nearly anonymous to

many of their own constituents—with name recognition and recall strik-

ingly low (Songer 1984; Squire and Moncrief 2010). Moreover, media

coverage of individual legislators is quite rare (Cooper 2002; Squire and

Moncrief 2010), so monitoring roll-call behavior is even more diff‌icult

for state legislators than members of Congress. Thus, while we have

some reasons to expect incumbent ideology to play a role in their elec-

tions, the issue is far from clear at the state legislative level.

If legislators are not being held accountable for the ideological

tenor of their roll-call voting, they may use the leeway to pursue other

goals while in off‌ice. For example, theymay be interested in curr ying the

favor of party leaders, party activists, campaign donors, or any number of

other groups that encourage ideologically extreme voting. On the other

hand, there are very few reasons for a legislator to pursue a moderate

agenda if the electorate is not aware of the moderation. Thus, the elec-

torate’s blind eye could avail a legislator to pursue the litany of rewards

for extremism.

The level of professionalization in the state legislatures adds an

additional wrinkle in the relationship between incumbent ideology and

electoral outcomes. On one hand, the resources afforded to off‌ice holders

in professionalized legislatures tend to bolster the incumbent’s reelection

chances (Berry, Berkman, and Schneiderman 2000; Carey, Niemi, and

Powell 2000) and reduce their vulnerability from one election to the next,

56 Nathaniel A. Birkhead