IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1602.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Presidential and Congressional Vote-share Equations

Author

Abstract

Three vote-share equations are estimated and analyzed in this paper, one for presidential elections, one for on-term House elections, and one for mid-term House elections. The sample period is 1916-2006. Considering the three equations together allows one to test whether the same economic variables affect each and to examine various serial correlation and coattail possibilities. The resulting three equation model can then be analyzed dynamically, which is done in Section 4. The main conclusions are briefly: 1) There is strong evidence that the economy affects all three vote shares and in remarkably similar ways. 2) There is no evidence of any presidential coattail effects on the on-term House elections. The presidential vote share and the on-term House vote share are highly positively correlated, but this is because they are affected by some of the same variables. 3) There is positive serial correlation in the House vote in that the previous mid-term House vote share positively affects the on-term House vote share and the previous on-term House vote share positively affects the mid-term House vote share. 4) The presidential vote share has a negative effect on the next mid-term House vote share. The most likely explanation for this is a balance argument, where voters are reluctant to let one party become too dominant. Ruled out as possible explanations for this fourth result is any reversal of a coattail effect, since there is no evidence of an effect in the first place, and a regression to the mean, since the positive serial correlation in the House vote implies no such regression. Also, it is not simply voting against the party in the White House, because the presidential variable is a vote share variable not a 0,1 incumbency variable.

Suggested Citation

  • Ray C. Fair, 2007. "Presidential and Congressional Vote-share Equations," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1602, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
  • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d16/d1602.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fair, Ray C, 1978. "The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(2), pages 159-173, May.
    2. D. R. Kiewiet & M. Udell, 1998. "Twenty‐five Years after Kramer: An Assessment of Economic Retrospective Voting based upon Improved Estimates of Income and Unemployment," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(3), pages 219-248, November.
    3. Alesina, Alberto & Rosenthal, Howard, 1989. "Partisan Cycles in Congressional Elections and the Macroeconomy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 373-398, June.
    4. Tufte, Edward R., 1975. "Determinants of the Outcomes of Midterm Congressional Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(3), pages 812-826, September.
    5. Grier, Kevin B & McGarrity, Joseph P, 2002. "Presidential Party, Incumbency, and the Effects of Economic Fluctuations on House Elections, 1916-1996," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 110(1-2), pages 143-162, January.
    6. Stigler, George J, 1973. "General Economic Conditions and National Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 160-167, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christopher Duquette & Franklin Mixon & Richard Cebula, 2013. "The Impact of Legislative Tenure and Seniority on General Election Success: Econometric Evidence from U.S. House Races," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 41(2), pages 161-172, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ray C. Fair, 2009. "Presidential and Congressional Vote‐Share Equations," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 55-72, January.
    2. Ray Fair, 2007. "Presidential and Congressional Vote-Share Equations," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2389, Yale School of Management, revised 18 Mar 2007.
    3. Ali T. Akarca & Aysit Tansel, 2003. "Economic Performance and Political Outcomes: An Analysis of The 1995 Turkish Parliamentary Election Results," Working Papers 0321, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2003.
    4. Hibbs, Douglas A., 2010. "The 2010 Midterm Election for the US House of Representatives," MPRA Paper 25918, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2016. "Voting and Popularity," CREMA Working Paper Series 2016-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    6. Morris P. Fiorina, 1991. "Elections and the Economy in the 1980s: Short- and Long-Term Effects," NBER Chapters, in: Politics and Economics in the Eighties, pages 17-40, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ray Fair, 2007. "Presidential and Congressional Vote-Share Equations," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2389, Yale School of Management, revised 18 Mar 2007.
    8. Ali Akarca & Aysit Tansel, 2006. "Economic Performance and Political Outcomes: An Analysis of the Turkish Parliamentary and Local Election Results Between 1950 and 2004," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 77-105, October.
    9. W. Mark Crain & Thomas H. Deaton & Robert D. Tollison, 1978. "Macroeconomic Determinants of the Vote in Presidential Elections," Public Finance Review, , vol. 6(4), pages 427-438, October.
    10. Akarca, Ali T. & Tansel, Aysit, 2007. "Social and Economic Determinants of Turkish Voter Choice in the 1995 Parliamentary Election," IZA Discussion Papers 2881, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Amanat ALI* & Eatzaz AHMAD** & BILAWAL***, 2019. "SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEPRIVATIONS AND VOTERS’ PREFERENCES: A District Level Analysis," Pakistan Journal of Applied Economics, Applied Economics Research Centre, vol. 29(2), pages 181-199.
    12. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    13. Jason Matthew DeBacker, 2015. "Flip‐Flopping: Ideological Adjustment Costs In The United States Senate," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 108-128, January.
    14. Boryana Dimitrova, 2000. "An Empirical Model of Voting Behavior in the Bulgarian Parliamentary Elections of 1994," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 44(2), pages 71-77, October.
    15. Sinha, Pankaj & Srinivas, Sandeep & Paul, Anik & Chaudhari, Gunjan, 2016. "Forecasting 2016 US Presidential Elections Using Factor Analysis and Regression Model," MPRA Paper 74618, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 Oct 2016.
    16. William D. Nordhaus, 1989. "Alternative Approaches to the Political Business Cycle," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 20(2), pages 1-68.
    17. Paola Assael & Felipe Larraín, 1994. "El Ciclo Político-económico: Teoría, Evidencia y Extensión para una Economía Abierta," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 31(92), pages 87-114.
    18. Gikas A. Hardouvelis & Dimitrios D. Thomakos, 2007. "Consumer Confidence and Elections," Working Paper series 42_07, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    19. Fabio Milani, 2010. "Political Business Cycles In The New Keynesian Model," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(4), pages 896-915, October.
    20. Findley, T. Scott, 2015. "Hyperbolic memory discounting and the political business cycle," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 345-359.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Vote-share equations; Coattail effects;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1602. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Brittany Ladd (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cowleus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.