Term Limits and Electoral Competition: An Analysis of California Legislative Races

The Effect of State Legislative Term Limits on Voter Turnout

“…Electoral competition attracts citizens to the polls (Endersby, Galatas, and Rackaway 2002;Groffman, Collett and Griffin 1998;Timpone 1998), either because of a Downsian calculus shift and the higher probability of each vote influencing the outcome (Cox and Munger 1989;Downs 1957;Nicholson and Miller 1997;Patterson and Caldeira 1983) or because of the increased activity of political elites in the form of campaign expenditures and other such efforts (Brown, Powell, and Wilcox 1995;Cox and Munger 1989;Gilliam 1985;Hill and Leighley 1993;Rosenstone and Hansen 1993). 1 Indeed, early analyses found increased competition in the term-limited California state legislature, in particular, with more open seats, more candidates, and closer margins after term limits (Clucas 2004; but see the mixed results in Salka 2002) and increased competition in state and local races more generally (Basham 2001;Basham and Polhill 2005;Francis and Kenney 1997).…”