Republicans prefer to serve in the Senate over the House: for them, it represents the ultimate realistic office.

The vast majority of the members of both houses of Congress tend to win reelection when they stand. But what about retirement? While House Republicans tend to retire at higher rates than their Democratic counterparts, this does not hold for the Senate. Theodore J. Masthay and L. Marvin Overby find that Republican and Democratic Senators retire at very similar rates, likely because they face a less arduous campaign schedule compared to those in the House, the power that the Senate gives them, and the extreme seniority of the office

R&R: Retirements from and Retentions in the Popularly-Elected Senate

While there has been a good bit of scholarly attention paid to career dynamics in—including retirements from—the U. S. House of Representatives, relatively less attention has been paid to the Senate. The few studies of career decisions in the upper chamber (e.g., Bernstein and Wolak 2002; Masthay and Overby 2017) have focused on the more or less modern Senate. In this study, we extend the time series back to the early 1900s, taking in the entire century of the popularly elected Senate. In doing so, we increase our analytical leverage to explore dynamics in the frequency, ratio (compared to electoral defeats), and direction (i.e., progressive ambition or retirement from public life) of voluntary departures from the upper chamber. We are particularly interested in the ability of the parties to retain Senate seats opened up by voluntary departures and focus our multivariate analysis on that question. Among our most noteworthy findings are 1) that the partisan differential in retirements so obvious in the House (with Republicans outpacing Democrats in voluntary departures) is absent not only in the modern Senate but over the entire history of the elected chamber, and 2) that the GOP is systemically better at retaining open seats in the upper chamber, a finding consistent with other work on party asymmetries

Another reason Democrats will have difficulty retaking the US Senate this fall: Republicans' historical advantage in holding open seats

This fall, the Democrats face a challenging US Senate map, defending 25 seats to the GOP's nine. For some on the left, one ray of hope has been the retirement of four Republican Senators, leading to open seat contests. In new research, Hanna K. Brant, L. Marvin Overby, and Theodore J. Masthay suggest that this optimism may be misplaced. Studying nearly a century of Senate elections, and accounting for a number of other factors, they find that Republicans have a roughly ten percent advantage over Democrats in winning open Senate seat races

John McCain's passing reminds us that death has always been an important part of life in the US Senate

This past weekend saw the death of John McCain, who had held his Arizona US Senate seat for more than three decades. Hanna K. Brant, L. Marvin Overby, and Theodore J. Masthay write that since 1919, more than 135 Senators have died whilst in office. They write that, though the frequency of these deaths has fallen dramatically since the 1960s, the passing of senior party members like John McCain can often have important implications for how power is wielded in the Senate

Observations and foreign policy implications of the 2022 American midterm elections

President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party defied strong political headwinds and expectations in the midterm elections to retain control of the Senate and lose the House of Representatives only narrowly. The results indicate that the US might be past peak Trumpism and that the bipartisan consensus on competition with China will be preserved despite divided government in the next two years.Published versio

Accounting for “Racism”: Responses to Political Predicaments in Two States

How do people explain their behavior in socially unacceptable political situations? Exploring this question will give us insight into how the public responds to and frames collective decisions regarding controversial topics. We analyze accounts of the outcomes of racially sensitive statewide referenda in two states to understand the public responses to such political predicaments. Distinguishing four broad categories of these accounts—denials, justifications, excuses, and confessions—we find some clear-cut differences in their use between proponents and opponents of the ballot measures. These results have implications for political thought and dialogue regarding politically-sensitive issues and other heated policy issues. We also discuss how the different account dynamics in these two cases presaged subsequent political developments in these states, which might provide insights into why some such cases continue to be fiercely contested while others fade from public debate