Measuring Constituent Policy Preferences in Congress, State Legislatures, and Cities

Tausanovitch, Chris; Warshaw, Christopher

doi:10.1017/s0022381613000042

Cited by 336 publications

(253 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…To account for district-level factors, I control for whether there was an incumbent running for reelection in the state legislator's congressional district, as well as the ideology of the state legislator's congressional district (Tausanovitch and Warshaw 2013). 19 I used Bonica's (2013b) data to calculate the average amount of money individuals raised as state legislators, as this and the results are identical.…”

Section: The Implications Of Party Fit For Candidate Emergencementioning

confidence: 99%

Ideological Moderates Won’t Run: How Party Fit Matters for Partisan Polarization in Congress

Thomsen

2014

The Journal of Politics

109

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Scholars have focused on elite-level and mass-level changes to explain partisan polarization in Congress. This article offers a candidate entry explanation for the persistence of polarization and the rise in asymmetric polarization. The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party-what I call Party Fit-influences the decision to run for office, and I suggest that partisan polarization in Congress has discouraged ideological moderates in the pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. I test this hypothesis with a survey of state legislators and with ideology estimates of state legislators who did and did not run for Congress from 2000 to 2010. I find that liberal Republican and conservative Democratic state legislators are less likely to run for Congress than those at the ideological poles, though this disparity is especially pronounced among Republicans. The findings provide an additional explanation for recent patterns of polarization in Congress. This article contributes to the polarization literature by offering a candidate entry explanation that highlights ideological variation in the types of candidates who run for Congress.The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party's ideological reputation-what I call Party Fit-influences the decision to run for office. A party's ideological reputation conveys information about the type of candidate that belongs in the party, and potential candidates draw on this reputation to determine if they can achieve their electoral and policy goals and to decide whether to run for office. The Party Fit hypothesis suggests that in the contemporary political context, partisan polarization in Congress has discouraged ideological moderates in the political pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. I test this hypothesis with survey data of the perceptions of state legislators (Maestas et al. 2006;Stone et al. 2004) article focuses on the self-selection mechanism. However, the argument does not preclude a role for parties, and it is likely that party recruitment also shapes perceptions of Party Fit. In addition, the theoretical expectations apply to both incumbent and non-incumbent candidates, but because replacement processes have been central to the rise in polarization, I focus on the latter, and more specifically, on non-incumbents who are well situated to run for Congress.There are many reasons to expect that potential candidates rely on the party's reputation to determine if they can achieve their electoral and policy goals (Fenno 1973; Mayhew 1974). 3 First, potential candidates draw on this reputation to estimate their likelihood of winning. Sniderman and Stiglitz (2012) show that candidates receive a reputational premium if they take a 3 Potential candidates can learn about the party's reputation through a variety of ways, such as polls, the media, and past candidates, but the ideological makeup of the party delegation is the best measure of the party's reputation. What is important is that this reputation provides diffe...

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Section: The Implications Of Party Fit For Candidate Emergencementioning

confidence: 99%

Ideological Moderates Won’t Run: How Party Fit Matters for Partisan Polarization in Congress

Thomsen

2014

The Journal of Politics

109

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“…9 My main independent variable used to predict the likelihood of issue-specific bill sponsorship is constituent ideology. This predictor is the multilevel regression with poststratification (MRP) mean estimates from Tausanovitch and Warshaw (2013 Figure 1 shows the correlation between legislators' ideology, using DW-NOMINATE ideal points (Poole and Rosenthal 1997), and the Tausanovitch and Warshaw (2013) mean MRP estimates of constituent ideology. I control for a vector of theoretically relevant covariates that have been found to impact Congressional behavior, including legislators' political parties and their ideologies measured using the DW-NOMINATE scores given the impact of party and ideology on behavior (Lawrence, Maltzman and Smith 2006).…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings on the connection between constituent preferences and legislative behavior have also been mixed. While some have found a high degree of responsiveness at various levels of government (Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993;Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995;Tausanovitch and Warshaw 2013), others have found little to no evidence of alignment between elites and constituents, suggesting that representatives are more extreme than their constituents (Bafumi and Herron 2010). Thus, the extent to which legislators' behavior is responsive to and corresponds with constituents remains unresolved.…”

Section: Constituent Preferences and Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, the findings on the degree of responsiveness of legislators to constituents has been mixed. Some have found responsiveness at the national (Page et al 1984;Shapiro 2011;Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995), state (Lax and Phillips 2009a), and even city levels of government (Tausanovitch and Warshaw 2013). Others, though, are less sanguine about elite responsiveness, contending that it is quite elusive.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I then test the expectations using the Tausanovitch and Warshaw (2013) multilevel regression with poststratification mean estimates of district-level constituent ideology to predict the types of bills introduced by legislators in the 109 th and 110 th U.S. House of Representatives. I find that legislators are mostly responsive to constituent ideological preferences, though only on select issues owned by their respective parties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring Responsiveness in the U.S. House of Representatives

Waggoner

2018

ARP

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Legislators are elected to be the voice of their constituents in government. Implicit in this electoral connection is the responsiveness of legislators to the preferences of constituents. Many past approaches only examine successful legislative behavior blessed by the majority party, not all legislative behavior, thereby limiting inference generalizability. I seek to overcome this limitation by considering bill sponsorship as an outlet in which all members are free to engage. Testing expectations on bill sponsorship in the 109th and 110th Congresses, I ﬁnd that legislators are responsive, though only on “safely-owned” issues. I compare these ﬁndings to roll call voting on the same issues in the same Congresses and ﬁnd a diﬀerent pattern, suggesting legislators leverage bill sponsorship diﬀerently than roll call voting as they signal legislative priorities.

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The effects of CEO activism: Partisan consumer behavior and its duration

Hou

Poliquin

2022

Strategic Management Journal

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Research Summary CEOs increasingly engage in activism on controversial social and political issues that do not directly affect their core business. Simultaneously, the general public is increasingly politically polarized. We examine how CEOs' support for gun control after two mass shootings differentially affected the behavior of liberal and conservative consumers and the persistence of these effects. Using mobile phone location data to measure store‐level visits, we find (a) consumer visits to stores decreased by 3%; (b) this decrease was asymmetric: visits in the most conservative counties decreased by about 5% but did not change in the most liberal counties; and (c) these effects dissipated within 10 weeks after activism. Our results highlight the strategic implications for executives pressured to take stances on controversial issues. Managerial Summary We study how consumers respond to CEO support for gun control, and how consumers' partisan views influence their behavior. Visits to the stores of several major retailers declined about 3% in the 4 weeks after their CEOs supported expanding background checks for gun purchases. In the most liberal counties, visits did not change following CEO support for gun control, while in the most conservative counties visits declined about 5%. Hence, the reaction of liberal consumers did not counteract the reaction of conservative consumers. We find, however, that these effects dissipated within 10 weeks; as a result, retailers whose CEOs supported gun control did not experience any long‐term, net decrease in sales despite the short‐term sales decrease in conservative counties.

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Measuring Constituent Policy Preferences in Congress, State Legislatures, and Cities

Cited by 336 publications

References 36 publications

Ideological Moderates Won’t Run: How Party Fit Matters for Partisan Polarization in Congress

Ideological Moderates Won’t Run: How Party Fit Matters for Partisan Polarization in Congress

Exploring Responsiveness in the U.S. House of Representatives

The effects of CEO activism: Partisan consumer behavior and its duration

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