Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in US Elections

Abstract

Political observers, campaign experts, and academics alike argue bitterly over whether it is more important for a party to capture ideologically moderate swing voters or to encourage turnout among hardcore partisans. The behavioral literature in American politics suggests that voters are not informed enough, and are too partisan, to be swing voters, while the institutional literature suggests that moderate candidates tend to perform better. We speak to this debate by examining the link between the ideology of congressional candidates and the turnout of their parties’ bases in US House races, 2006–2014. Combining a regression discontinuity design in close primary races with survey and administrative data on individual voter turnout, we find that extremist nominees—as measured by the mix of campaign contributions they receive—suffer electorally, largely because theydecreasetheir party’s share of turnout in the general election, skewing the electorate towards their opponent’s party. The results help show how the behavioral and institutional literatures can be connected. For our sample of elections, turnout appears to be the dominant force in determining election outcomes, but it advantages ideologically moderate candidates because extremists appear to activate the opposing party’s base more than their own.

Political activism and polarization

“…Also, see Groseclose (2001) for a similar trade-off between divergent platforms and valence advantage. 13 Hall and Thompson (2018) find empirical evidence for the counter-mobilization effect operating via vote shares. Specifically, they find evidence for a decrease in vote shares of extreme candidates in the general elections, and an increase in the vote shares when a moderate candidate wins the primaries.…”

Principled Moderation: Understanding Parties’ Support of Moderate Candidates

“…Although these measures do not provide particularly good estimates of individual donor ideology within parties (Hill and Huber ), they do provide good estimates of candidate ideological placement that correlate to political behavior once in office (Bonica ). Moreover, ideology is more than just roll‐call votes and may incorporate a wide range of factors such as which issues a candidate will prioritize (see Hall and Thompson [] for more details).…”

Motivational underpinnings of support for radical political leaders

“…Studies conducted in the context of US elections show that radical candidates can diminish the electoral chances of their party, as they achieved significantly worse results than moderates (Abramowitz, 2019). One of the potential mechanisms explaining this effect was that they motivated higher turnout of the opposing party's base (Hall & Thompson, 2018). These studies would suggest that the effects of radical ideas on political engagement could be more nuanced and indeed moderated by initial opinions on the cause.…”