How do voters react to politicians who switch parties? Using the 2014 gubernatorial election in the swing state of Florida as a case study M. V. (Trey) Hood III and Seth C. McKee find that despite his positioning of himself as a moderate, when the state’s former Republican Governor Charlie Crist chose to run as a Democrat, most voters saw the switch as politically opportunistic rather than principled. This view then translated into a much lower likelihood that people would vote for the former Republican

Hood III, M.V. (Trey)

McKee, Seth C.

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/02/02/floridas-2014-gubernatorial-election-shows-how-switching-parties-can-be-the-electoral-kiss-of-death-for-candidates/Florida’s 2014 gubernatorial election shows how switchingparties can be the electoral kiss of death for candidates.How do voters react to politicians who switch parties? Using the 2014 gubernatorial election in theswing state of Florida as a case study M. V. (Trey) Hood III  and Seth C. McKee find that despite hispositioning of himself as a moderate, when the state’s former Republican Governor Charlie Cristchose to run as a Democrat, most voters saw the switch as politically opportunistic rather thanprincipled. This view then translated into a much lower likelihood that people would vote for theformer Republican.Switching parties in the lead up to a vote can be electorally fatal, something that former FloridaGovernor Charlie Crist discovered in 2014 when he ran for his old job against now RepublicanGovernor Rick Scott. While Florida is typically grouped as a ‘Southern’ state, many would questionthis given that one has to go back to the 1940 US Census to find a time when a majority of residentswere actually born there (with most non-natives hailing from outside of Dixie, or Latin America).Not only is Florida unique for its remarkably diverse electorate; sometimes referred to as amicrocosm of the nation because of its demographics, it has also been a perennial presidentialbattleground since President George H. W. Bush narrowly carried the state while losing his bid for reelection toDemocrat Bill Clinton in 1992. One of the reasons for Florida’s status as a swing state is that Democrats andRepublicans tend to offset each other while a large share of independent voters typically determine the victor. In statelegislative and congressional politics the GOP is dominant, but in high-profile statewide elections (e.g., US Senateand Governor) and particularly for president, victory margins often rest on a razor. In the debacle of 2000, RepublicanGeorge W. Bush bested his Democratic opponent Al Gore by a mere 537 votes! In 2012, President Obama defeatedRepublican Mitt Romney by less than 1 percentage point.Florida’s electoral politics are an important influence on our recent research, where we investigated an intriguingmatchup in the Sunshine State: the 2014 gubernatorial contest pitting the incumbent Republican Rick Scott againstDemocrat Charlie Crist. There are several storylines that made this race worthy of examination. First, Charlie Cristwas Rick Scott’s Republican predecessor in the governor’s mansion – serving from 2006 to 2010. Second, Cristpassed up certain reelection in 2010 for a shot at an open US Senate seat but when it was evident that former statehouse speaker Marco Rubio would prevail in the GOP primary, Crist switched to “no party affiliation” and still endedup losing to Rubio in the general election. Meanwhile, the multimillionaire and unabashed political amateur Rick Scottbucked the GOP establishment, dropped about $70 million of his own fortune on the race, avoided all mediaencounters (save for the debates), and in the 2010 Republican tsunami barely won the open gubernatorial seat.From the moment he assumed office, Governor Scott has had an approval rating more unfavorable than favorableprimarily because he has governed from the right end of the political spectrum, rankling median Florida voters. Bycomparison, in his tenure as a public official, Charlie Crist always tried to position himself in line with the popularmiddle of the Florida electorate. Perhaps sensing a gradual shift among the electorate in the Democratic direction,and knowing firsthand that running as an independent in a two-party system usually ends in resounding defeat, abouta month after the 2012 presidential election, Crist announced that he was switching to the Democratic Party. As anycasual observer of Florida politics could surmise, it appeared that Crist was readying himself for a run at his old post,especially since Governor Scott was highly unpopular but intended to seek reelection. Thus, the 2014 race posed theFlorida voter with an interesting dilemma: behind door number 1 was the unpopular governor and door number 2contained the opportunistic challenger. Given these undesirable options, who would prevail?Relying on an index that we adopted from a previous study on party switching, we devised a principled-opportunism(P-O) scale to determine how Crist’s party switch affected voter preferences in the 2014 gubernatorial election. Basedon a summation of scored responses involving four questions regarding Crist, the P-O scale ranges from a low of -8to a high of +8, with the low end designating the opinion that Crist’s party switch was done purely out of principlewhereas the high end indicating the switch was a purely opportunistic decision done to further political ambition.Figure 1 presents the distribution of the P-O scale for our survey of registered Florida voters in the 2014 election.From the figure it is evident that a large number of respondents viewed Crist as more of an opportunist than apolitician nobly realigning himself with the party advancing his core principles. Figure 1 – Principled-Opportunism Scale Distribution In Figure 2, we go a step further by displaying a bar graph of where respondents placed Crist on the P-O scale (-8 to-2 = principled, -1 to 1 = mixed, and 2 to 8 = opportunist) based on their party affiliation. Not surprisingly, almost 2 outof 3 Republicans (65 percent) placed Crist’s switch in the opportunist range, whereas a clear plurality ofindependents (47 percent) did the same. Most Democrats (46 percent) viewed the switch as a mixture of principledand opportunistic behavior, but even so, more than 1 out of 5 (21 percent) thought Crist converted mainly out ofpolitical calculation. We follow up in Figure 3 with a bar graph of vote choice according to party affiliation and theplacement of Crist on the P-O scale. Among Democrats, support for Crist declines from over 96 percent in theprincipled category to 60 percent for those who viewed Crist’s switch as opportunistic. Within the small portion ofRepublicans who thought the switch was a principled maneuver (4 percent, see Figure 2), 82 percent backed Crist,whereas fewer than 7 percent of GOP identifiers supported Crist if they viewed his switch as opportunistic. Mostindependents stuck with Crist if they perceived his move to the Democratic Party as principled (88 percent) or mixed(58 percent), but their support drops off a cliff (to 14 percent) if he is viewed as opportunistic. Figure 2- Crist Placement on P-O Scale by Party Affiliation  Note: Entries are weighted column percentagesFigure 3 – Vote for Crist by P-O Scale and Party AffiliationNote: Entries respresent the weighted percentage in each category voting for Crist Finally, we performed a multivariate analysis of vote choice in the 2014 Florida gubernatorial election in order togauge the influence of Crist’s party switch once we control for numerous confounding factors. We estimated votechoice, controlling for party identification, ideology, race/ethnicity, education, income, gender, age, interest in thecampaign, and favorability toward Scott and Crist. The principled-opportunism scale was the variable of interest. Evenafter controlling for the aforementioned factors, the P-O scale registered a large effect on vote choice. The P-O scalevariable was negative and statistically significant: respondents who viewed Crist’s switch as an act of politicalopportunism were much less likely to vote for him. Setting the other controls in the model at their observed values,Figure 4 plots the likelihood of voting for Crist from the most principled score (-8) to the most opportunistic (+8).Moving across the scale from most principled to most opportunistic, the probability of voting for Crist drops from .65 to.40. Figure 4 – Vote for Crist by Principled-Opportunism ScaleWhen all the votes had been counted, Governor Scott narrowly beat back former Governor Crist’s challenge, with50.6 percent to 49.4 percent of the two-party vote. It was another nail-biter in the state of Florida. As scholars whostudy party switching know, the decision to convert is generally an electorally costly action, though it typically doesn’tend in defeat. In 2014 the Florida voter truly had to make a choice between the lesser of two evils, and it seemsincontrovertible that Crist’s party switch was an instance in which such an action proved the electoral kiss of death.This article is based on the paper, ‘Sunshine State dilemma: Voting for the 2014 governor of Florida’ in ElectoralStudies.Featured image: Former Florida Governor, Charlie Crist, Credit: Andres LaBrada Photographer (Flickr, CC-BY-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting.            Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor theLondon School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1PdHYkP_________________________________ About the authorsM.V. (Trey) Hood III – University of GeorgiaM.V. Hood III is a professor of political science at the University of Georgia where he conductsresearch in American politics and policy.  Seth C. McKee – Texas Tech UniversitySeth C. McKee is an associate professor of political science at Texas Tech University. His primaryarea of research focuses on American electoral politics and especially party system change in theAmerican South. He has published research on such topics as political participation, vote choice,redistricting, party switching, and strategic voting behavior. McKee is the author of RepublicanAscendancy in Southern US House Elections (Westview Press 2010), and more recently the editor ofJigsaw Puzzle Politics in the Sunshine State (University Press of Florida 2015).CC BY-NC 3.0 2015 LSE USAPP

Florida’s 2014 gubernatorial election shows how switchingparties can be the electoral kiss of death for candidates

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