Early campaign economic perceptions can help to predict the national verdict on Election Day

It is well known that elections are determined by certain fundamental variables: internal factors that reflect voters’ long-term political predispositions and external factors that are unique to each campaign. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien examine how one external factor, the state of the economy, compares to how voters’ internal factors evolve over the final 200 days of presidential campaigns. They find that while noneconomic factors dominate at the outset of the campaign, the economic component increases in salience as Election Day draws nearer and offers greater electoral predictability overall

Equilibria in Campaign Spending Games: Theory and Data

This paper presents a formal game-theoretic model to explain the simultaneity problem that has made it difficult to obtain unbiased estimates of the effects of both incumbent and challenger spending in U.S. House elections. The model predicts a particular form of correlation between the expected closeness of the race and the level of spending by both candidates, which implies that the simultaneity problem should not be present in close races, and should be progressively more severe in range of safe races that are empirically observed. This is confirmed by comparing simple OLS regression of races that are expected to be close with races that are expected not to be close, using House incumbent races spanning two decades. The theory also implies that inclusion of a variable controlling for total spending should successfully produce reliable estimates using OLS. This is confirmed

The Spending Game: Money, Votes, and Incumbency in Congressional Elections

This paper takes a game-theoretic approach to the analysis of the spending-votes relationship in Congressional elections to reinvestigate the surprisingly weak effects of incumbent spending measured in previous studies. Rather than focusing narrowly on the impact of spending on electoral outcomes, we attempt to take account of the reciprocal effect of (anticipated) closeness on spending using several statistical approaches. We also offer improvements in the specification and measurement of the vote equation, by using a better measure of district party strength adjusted for year-effects, and by including a variable that measures the heat of the campaign in terms of total spending by the incumbents and challengers. The latter measure partially corrects for the simultaneously determined (and highly positively correlated) levels of incumbent and challenger spending. A more rigorous multiequation simultaneous equations model, identified by uncorrelated errors, provides even more leverage for sorting out the effects of incumbent and challenger spending on votes. That analysis indicates (in a complete turnaround from findings reported elsewhere) that incumbent spending effects are highly significant and of a magnitude that is, if anything, greater than challenger spending effects. The paper concludes by using a game theoretic model to estimate the effect of anticipated closeness on spending and to estimate differences in campaign financing costs between incumbents and challengers

Forecasting House Seats from General Congressional Polls

According to the frequent polling on the generic ballot for Congress, the Democrats hold a large advantage leading up to the vote on November 7. But does this Democratic edge mean that the Democrats will win a majority of House seats? Doubts are often expressed about the accuracy of the generic ballot polls. And even if the polls are correct in indicating a majority of votes going to Democratic candidates, further doubts are expressed about whether the Democrats' vote margin will be sufficient to win the most seats. This paper is intended to provide some guidance for translating the results of generic congressional polls into the election outcome

National polls and district information point to a 10 seat GOP midterm swing in the House to 244 seats

This midterm cycle, much commentary has been focused on Senate races, given that the Republican Party looks very likely to hold and increase its seats in the House of Representatives. But how many House seats should the GOP expect to win? With a week to go, Joseph Bafumi, Robert S. Erikson, and Christopher Wlezien give an updated House forecast. They write that a combination of the GOP’s incumbency advantage, their domination of state legislatures (and thus, redistricting) since 2010, and U.S. internal migration, mean that the Republican Party are likely to win about 244 seats on November 4th

Forecasting House Seats from General Congressional Polls

According to the frequent polling on the generic ballot for Congress, the Democrats hold a large advantage leading up to the vote on November 7. But does this Democratic edge mean that the Democrats will win a majority of House seats? Doubts are often expressed about the accuracy of the generic ballot polls. And even if the polls are correct in indicating a majority of votes going to Democratic candidates, further doubts are expressed about whether the Democrats' vote margin will be sufficient to win the most seats. This paper is intended to provide some guidance for translating the results of generic congressional polls into the election outcome

A Gubernatorial Helping Hand? How Governors Affect Presidential Elections

It is commonly argued in the media that a presidential candidate will be helped in a state by having a governor of the same party in office. However, there is little research to support this claim. To address this question we use a regression discontinuity design. The basic idea behind this is that in very close elections the party of the governor is decided essentially by a coin flip. Focusing on these very close elections therefore allows us to estimate the causal effect of gubernatorial party control. We show that a presidential candidate is not helped, but in fact hurt, by having a governor from the same party. On average, winning the governors election leads to a 23 percentage point reduction in a states presidential vote share in the following election. Using a similar methodology, we also show that voters punish the presidential party when voting for governor in midterm years. Having established these relationships, we explore why this is the case. One possible explanation is a variation of the ideological balancing argument, whereby voters choices for one office are conditional on which party holds office at a different level

The Spending Game: Money, Votes, and Incumbency in Congressional Elections

This paper takes a game-theoretic approach to the analysis of the spending-votes relationship in Congressional elections to reinvestigate the surprisingly weak effects of incumbent spending measured in previous studies. Rather than focusing narrowly on the impact of spending on electoral outcomes, we attempt to take account of the reciprocal effect of (anticipated) closeness on spending using several statistical approaches. We also offer improvements in the specification and measurement of the vote equation, by using a better measure of district party strength adjusted for year-effects, and by including a variable that measures the heat of the campaign in terms of total spending by the incumbents and challengers. The latter measure partially corrects for the simultaneously determined (and highly positively correlated) levels of incumbent and challenger spending. A more rigorous multiequation simultaneous equations model, identified by uncorrelated errors, provides even more leverage for sorting out the effects of incumbent and challenger spending on votes. That analysis indicates (in a complete turnaround from findings reported elsewhere) that incumbent spending effects are highly significant and of a magnitude that is, if anything, greater than challenger spending effects. The paper concludes by using a game theoretic model to estimate the effect of anticipated closeness on spending and to estimate differences in campaign financing costs between incumbents and challengers