Once the exclusive province of pundits and pollsters, the arena of election forecasting has been entered by political scientists in recent years (Rosenstone 1983;Rice 1985 Rice , 1986

Do the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties affect the poll standings of the presidential candidates they nominate? This study investigates whether these poll standings are bumped upwards following the party conventions. The convention bump is examined with Gallup and Harris time series data of presidential trial-heats throughout the course of seven campaigns from 1964 to 1988. We find that (1) with few exceptions, there is a convention bump;(2) the bump typically adds about 5 to 7 percentage points to the nominee's postoonvention poll standing; (3) the effects of conventions carry well into the general election campaign; (4) the first convention in the campaign sequence, held by the out-party, generates an additional but temporary increase in the nominee's support; and (5) convention bumps may be greater for harmonious conventions following divisive nomination contests.

The vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created significant cross-pressures for members of the U.S. House of Representatives. African-Americans and Latinos, two groups that are often in agreement, staked out different positions on this legislation, and President Clinton joined Republicans in supporting NAFTA over the opposition of organized labor, liberals, and the Democratic leadership. We explore the degree to which constituency, institutional, and dispositional forces worked at crosspurposes in shaping House members' roll-call behavior on this legislation. We find that votes on NAFTA were affected by members' ideological orientations, general presidential support, representation of a Western state, Latino and African-American constituency strength, urbanization, unemployment, electoral margin, and an interaction between Latino constituency strength and electoral margin. Surprisingly, we find only modest impacts of constituency union membership and the Perot vote on roll-call voting on NAFTA.Decision making on floor votes by members of the U.S. Congress has a storied place in the literature on legislative politics. The degree to which members of Congress are influenced in their vote choices by exogenous and endogenous factors is at the heart of representative democracy One of the key linkages in the functioning of a republic involves whether and how the legislature con-

Gary Jacobson (1987a, 1987b) has suggested that increased vote proportions for incumbent House candidates during the 1960s and 1970s have not resulted in greater electoral safety, primarily because of greater observed volatility in interelection vote swings occurring during the same era. Using data on House elections from 1824 to 1978, we find that both "marginal" and "safe" incumbents are much more vulnerable to electoral defeat during the 19th century than during the 20th century. This pattern seems to be explained by greater homogeneity of interelection vote swings during the 20th century. Overall, our results lend strong support to Jacobson's assertion that the meaning of electoral marginality varies substantially over time.

In this article, we add to the evolving literature examining the importance of religious orientation and political elite behavior. We use data on the religious affiliations of United States House of Representative members to test the influence of religion on military funding for the “War on Terror.” Our findings indicate that, even after controlling for traditional political factors, such as ideology and partisanship, representatives' religious backgrounds often played a role in support for this bill. Roman Catholics, African-American Protestants, and those of other religions and the non-religious were more strongly opposed to funding for military intervention than mainline Protestants, even after controlling for other factors. This article provides a further look at the influence of religion and suggests that factors outside the traditional political dynamics may also be important in examining elite behaviors.