Principled Moderation: Understanding Parties’ Support of Moderate Candidates

Abstract

Recent scholarship has argued that parties strategically support more moderate, and thus more electable, candidates. Using interviews with party elites and new data on the party support and the ideology of primary candidates for the US Senate, I show that parties do support moderate candidates. However, using evidence from districts with different levels of competitiveness and over time, I find that support of moderate candidates appears not to be strategic. Rather, party support of moderate candidates appears to be the result of the ideological preferences of party leadership rather a strategic effort to win elections.

Interest Group Activists and the Polarization of State Legislatures

“…While IGA donors may be polarizing agents, actors affiliated with party establishments are expected to be moderating influences (Hassell ; La Raja and Schaffner ). However, I find that party insiders —individual donors affiliated with state party committees such as the Montana State Republican Party and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (Hassell )—have no consistent relationship with legislative behavior.…”

“…Consistent with theories that emphasize the role of parties, groups, and activists in the nomination process (Bawn et al 2012;Hassell 2016), i find that the effect of iga contributions is mostly concentrated in primary elections. interest group activists While iga donors may be polarizing agents, actors affiliated with party establishments are expected to be moderating influences (Hassell 2018;La raja and schaffner 2015). However, i find that party insiders-individual donors affiliated with state party committees such as the Montana state republican Party and the democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (Hassell 2016)-have no consistent relationship with legislative behavior.…”

The Party's Primary Preferences: Race, Gender, and Party Support of Congressional Primary Candidates

“…Recent scholarship, however, has suggested that parties are not pragmatic in their support of candidates in the primary and are better thought of as a network of policy‐demanding groups who tend to coordinate around candidates who are salient within their network in part because of the need to support a candidate who will champion their policy goals and in part because of the ease of coordination on a well‐known entity within the network (Bawn et al. ; Hassell ; Koger, Masket, and Noel ; Masket ).…”

“…Recent research has also suggested that local leaders from both parties do not view minority candidates as electorally viable as white candidates (although that may be mitigated in certain minority‐majority districts (Doherty, Dowling, and Miller forthcoming)). Perceived general election viability is a critical component of party leaders' rationale for support of a congressional candidate in the primary (Hassell ).…”

“…On one hand, some evidence suggests support for a theory that parties may discriminate by gender and race, whether intentional or unintentional. Women and minorities are largely outside the “white old boys” club of the party elite decision makers and may not be the salient candidate on which party elites choose to coordinate (Hassell ). Indeed, research has shown that Latino candidates are less connected to national party networks and more reliant on local networks of support isolated from the party (Ocampo and Ray ).…”