Party does not matter: Unified government and midterm elections

Holt, Jacob

doi:10.1111/ssqu.13112

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 41 publications

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“…The political ideologies of the parties in state legislatures (as well as those of the public) can impact the government's attitudes to the containment of the pandemic (Bilewicz and Soral, 2021 ; also, see Holt, 2022 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining vaccine hesitancy: A COVID‐19 study of the United States

2022

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Using recent data on the unvaccinated across U.S. states, this paper focuses on the determinants of vaccine hesitancy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that more prosperous states and states with more elderly and physicians have lower vaccine hesitancy. There was some evidence of the significance of race, but internet access and history of other contagious diseases failed to make a difference. States with centralized health systems and those with mask mandates generally had a lower percentage of unvaccinated populations. Finally, the presence of Democrats in state legislatures tended to result in lower vaccination hesitancies, ceteris paribus.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining vaccine hesitancy: A COVID‐19 study of the United States

2022

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Inflation in 2022 did not affect congressional voting, but abortion did

Mutz,

Mansfield

2024

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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This study examines voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections, contests that were widely expected to produce a sizable defeat for Democratic candidates for largely economic reasons. Based on a representative national probability sample of voters interviewed in both 2020 and 2022, individuals who changed their vote from one party's congressional candidate to another party’s candidate did not do so in response to the salience of inflation or declining economic conditions. Instead, we find strong evidence that views on abortion were central to shifting votes in the midterm elections. Americans who favored (opposed) legal abortions were more likely to shift from voting for Republican (Democratic) candidates in 2020 to Democratic (Republican) candidates in 2022. Since a larger number of Americans supported than opposed legal abortions, the combination of these shifts ultimately improved the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates. New voters were especially likely to weigh abortion views heavily in their vote-shifting calculus. Likewise, those respondents whose confidence in the US Supreme Court declined from 2020 to 2022 were more likely to shift from voting for Republican to Democratic congressional candidates. We provide direct empirical evidence that changes in support for the Supreme Court, a nonpartisan branch of the federal government, are implicated in partisan voting behavior in another branch of government. We explore the implications of these findings for prevalent assumptions about how economic conditions influence voting, as well as for the relationship between the judiciary and electoral politics.

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The Price of Legislative Success: The President's Legislative Agenda and Midterm Seat Loss

Holt

2024

American Politics Research

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The president’s party normally loses seats in the House of Representatives during US midterm elections. While many studies have examined the causes of seat loss, one area often mentioned by media pundits but not examined in midterm elections is the role of presidential agendas. In this paper, I examine whether legislative success is costly for the president’s party during midterm elections. I find passing a larger number of legislative items and passing a larger percentage of the president’s agenda costs the president’s party seats in the midterm election. However, the president’s party only suffers this penalty when the president’s party also controls Congress. The president’s party is not punished for legislative success when the president serves under divided government.

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Party does not matter: Unified government and midterm elections

Cited by 3 publications

References 41 publications

Explaining vaccine hesitancy: A COVID‐19 study of the United States

Explaining vaccine hesitancy: A COVID‐19 study of the United States

Inflation in 2022 did not affect congressional voting, but abortion did

The Price of Legislative Success: The President's Legislative Agenda and Midterm Seat Loss

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