Electoral Vulnerability and Presidential Support in the House of Representatives

Abstract

This article investigates whether electoral vulnerability affects how a member of Congress behaves on presidential support votes. It argues that electorally vulnerable members of the House will be more responsive to their constituents’ views about the president. As a result, vulnerable members of Congress can be critical to the success or failure of the president’s legislative efforts. I investigate presidential support scores from 1993 to 2016 and find that electoral vulnerability conditions how members of Congress vote when the president takes a position on a bill. Even in today’s highly polarized and highly partisan Congress, the combination of electoral vulnerability and the president’s standing in members’ constituencies can cause members to cross party lines on presidential support votes.

Veto Threat Bargaining with a Bicameral Congress

“…8. Hickey (2019) identifies electoral pressures in the constituencies that work to drive copartisans away from the president's position. 9.…”

Who Sponsors the President's Program in the Opposition's House?

“…What about members from districts where the president did well in the last election? Past analyses linking presidential electoral performance to presidential influence (Edwards 1978; Hickey 2018; Roscoe 2003) lead us to suspect that these members may be especially well represented among program sponsors. As with tenure and legislative effectiveness, we can divide members into quartiles based on the president's district vote share (Jacobson 2018) and tabulate the number of bills sponsored by members belonging to each.…”