IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v34y2004i02p211-227_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Candidate Positioning in US Congressional Elections

Author

Listed:
  • BURDEN, BARRY C.

Abstract

Theory suggests that three factors – the importance of ideology to primary voters, costly movement due to candidate reputations and lack of competition – all contribute to candidate divergence in US congressional elections. These predictions are analysed with new data from a 2000 mail survey that asked congressional candidates to place themselves on a left–right ideological scale. The data reveal that candidates often diverge, but that the degree of candidate polarization is variable and may be explained by factors in the theory. Candidates with firm public reputations, those who face weak general election competition, and those who experience stiff primary competition are all more likely to deviate from the median voter's position. Perhaps more importantly, the locations that candidates adopt have clear effects on their vote shares.

Suggested Citation

  • Burden, Barry C., 2004. "Candidate Positioning in US Congressional Elections," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(2), pages 211-227, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:34:y:2004:i:02:p:211-227_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S000712340400002X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Fabian Gouret & Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2011. "An empirical analysis of valence in electoral competition," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 309-340, July.
    2. Anthony Bertelli & Lilliard Richardson, 2008. "Ideological extremism and electoral design. Multimember versus single member districts," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 347-368, October.
    3. Christian R. Grose & Keesha M. Middlemass, 2010. "Listen to What I Say, Not How I Vote: Congressional Support for the President in Washington and at Home," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(1), pages 143-167, March.
    4. Robert E. Hogan, 2008. "Policy Responsiveness and Incumbent Reelection in State Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 858-873, October.
    5. Cintolesi, Andrea, 2022. "Political polarization and primary elections," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 596-617.
    6. Andreottola, Giovanni, 2021. "Signaling valence in primary elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-32.
    7. Ching-Hsing Wang, 2022. "The Effect of Political Donation on Election Outcomes: Evidence from Taiwan Legislative Elections," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, March.
    8. Walter J. Stone & Elizabeth N. Simas, 2010. "Candidate Valence and Ideological Positions in U.S. House Elections," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(2), pages 371-388, April.
    9. Paul Redmond, 2017. "Incumbent-challenger and open-seat elections in a spatial model of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 79-97, January.
    10. Danielle Joesten Martin, 2022. "Ideological and partisan biases in ratings of candidate quality in U.S. House elections," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(3), pages 622-634, May.
    11. Jordan Kujala, 2020. "Donors, Primary Elections, and Polarization in the United States," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 587-602, July.
    12. Fabian Gouret, 2021. "Empirical foundation of valence using Aldrich–McKelvey scaling," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 25(3), pages 177-226, September.
    13. Scott LaCombe, 2024. "Institutional design and the stability of responsiveness in the American states," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 105(4), pages 1205-1223, July.
    14. Douglas D. Roscoe & Shannon Jenkins, 2021. "Amateur hour: The dominance of purposive benefits among local political party chairs," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1602-1614, July.
    15. Schönenberger, Felix, 2023. "Strategic Policy Responsiveness to Opponent Platforms: Evidence From U.S. House Incumbents Running Against Moderate or Extremist Challengers," MPRA Paper 120160, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Christopher Williams & Jae-Jae Spoon, 2015. "Differentiated party response: The effect of Euroskeptic public opinion on party positions," European Union Politics, , vol. 16(2), pages 176-193, June.
    17. Michael Ensley, 2009. "Individual campaign contributions and candidate ideology," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 138(1), pages 221-238, January.
    18. Michael K Miller, 2011. "Seizing the mantle of change: Modeling candidate quality as effectiveness instead of valence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(1), pages 52-68, January.
    19. Vishal P. Baloria & Kenneth J. Klassen, 2018. "Supporting Tax Policy Change Through Accounting Discretion: Evidence from the 2012 Elections," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4893-4914, October.
    20. Livio Di Lonardo, 2017. "Valence uncertainty and the nature of the candidate pool in elections," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 327-350, April.
    21. Sandra Destradi, 2015. "Reluctant Powers: A Concept-Building Approach and an Application to the Case of Germany," RSCAS Working Papers 2015/46, European University Institute.
    22. Giovanni Andreottola, 2020. "Signaling Valence in Primary Elections," CSEF Working Papers 559, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    23. Georgia Kernell, 2016. "Strategic party heterogeneity," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(3), pages 408-430, July.

    More about this item

    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:cup:bjposi:v:34:y:2004:i:02:p:211-227_00. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    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.