Cognitive Efficiency and the Congressional Vote: The Psychology of Coattail Voting

Mondak, Jeffery J.; McCurley, Carl

doi:10.2307/448906

Cited by 13 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…3 One potential explanation for such behavior is that people generally dislike holding conflicting beliefs, such as simultaneously supporting Democratic and Republican candidates (Mondak and McCurley, 1994). As such, voters may prefer to cast down-ballot votes for candidates from the party of their preferred top-ballot candidate.…”

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploiting Friends-and-Neighbors to Estimate Coattail Effects

Meredith

2013

Am Polit Sci Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Federalist democracies often hold concurrent elections for multiple offices. A potential consequence of simultaneously voting for multiple offices that vary with respect to scope and scale is that the personal appeal of candidates in a high-profile race may affect electoral outcomes in less salient races. In this paper I estimate the magnitude of such coattail effects from governors onto other concurrently elected statewide executive officers using a unique data set of county election returns for all statewide executive office elections in the United States from 1987 to 2010. I exploit the disproportionate support that candidates receive from geographically proximate voters, which is often referred to as the friends-and-neighbors vote, to isolate variation in the personal appeal of candidates. The point estimates from my preferred specifications show that a one-percentage-point increase in the personal vote received by a gubernatorial candidate increases their party's secretary of state and attorney general candidates vote shares by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points. In contrast, personal votes for a secretary of state or attorney general candidate have no effect on the performance of their party's gubernatorial candidate or other down-ballot candidates.

show abstract

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploiting Friends-and-Neighbors to Estimate Coattail Effects

Meredith

2013

Am Polit Sci Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…By contrast, in periods of unified government, the majority party in Congress has strong partisan incentives not to investigate the executive branch, for undermining their party's leader in the White House may damage their party's collective fortunes in the next electoral cycle (Campbell 1991;Flemming 1995;Jacobson 2004;Mondak and McCurley 1994). Moreover, this partisan incentive to quash would-be investigations is bolstered by the majority party's greater capacity to inhibit action than to stimulate it.…”

Section: Divided Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

Kriner

Schwartz

2008

Legislative Studies Qtrly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the political determinants of congressional investigatory activity. Using Mayhew's list of high‐profile probes updated through 2006, we developed five measures of the frequency and intensity of investigative oversight. Contra Mayhew, we found that divided government spurs congressional investigatory activity. A shift from unified to divided government yields a five‐fold increase in the number of hearings held and quadruples their duration. Conditional party government models also offer explanatory leverage because homogeneous majorities are more likely to investigate the president in divided government and less likely to do so in unified government. This dynamic is strongest in the House, but analyses of the Senate also afford consistent, if muted, evidence of partisan agenda control.

show abstract

“…Mondak and McCurley (1994) find that to increase their cognitive efficiency voters employ their evaluations of presidential candidates in the US to decide which House candidate to support. They also argue, that an individual might be inclined to cast her vote to the same party in both elections simply because splitting the vote on the same election day might increase psychological costs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided government versus incumbency externality effect—Quasi-experimental evidence on multiple voting decisions

Ade

Freier

2013

European Economic Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper explores the interdependency of political institutions from the voter's perspective. Specifically, we are interested in: (1) Does the partisan identity of the mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election?; (2) Does this partisan identity influence the vote in ensuing higher level elections?; and (3) Do voters condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? We rely on a regression discontinuity design focusing on close election outcomes based on municipal level data for Germany. We find (1) that the party of the mayor can receive a bonus of 4-6 percentage points in vote share in the next town council election (depending on the timing of the local elections). (2) The mayor partisan identity does not affect federal or European election outcomes within the same municipality. And (3), we show that voters punish mayor candidates of parties that performed strongly in earlier council elections. Throughout the paper, we explore how the findings can be related to an incumbency externality effect and to the theory of voter preferences for divided government. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Code: H100, H110, H770.Keywords: regression discontinuity design, municipality data, local election results, divided government effect, incumbency externality effect.

show abstract

Cognitive Efficiency and the Congressional Vote: The Psychology of Coattail Voting

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Exploiting Friends-and-Neighbors to Estimate Coattail Effects

Exploiting Friends-and-Neighbors to Estimate Coattail Effects

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

Divided government versus incumbency externality effect—Quasi-experimental evidence on multiple voting decisions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About