Brian Frederick

Are Female House Members Still More Liberal in a Polarized Era? The Conditional Nature of the Relationship Between Descriptive and Substantive Representation

Some past studies looking at the voting behavior of women in Congress have shown that they tend to be more liberal than their male colleagues and are more likely to support issues of importance to women. Yet many of these analyses were conducted prior to the entrance of a number of conservative women into the U.S. House over the past few election cycles. Focusing on roll-call voting data over 13 Congresses, this study demonstrates that women in the House are more divided along partisan and ideological lines than at any point over the past two decades, even more ideologically distant than their male colleagues. It presents evidence that over the entirety of this period after controlling for other relevant factors, the effect of gender on roll-call ideology was stronger for Republican women than for Democratic women. However, in the 108th and 109th Congresses they were virtually ideologically indistinguishable from their male Republican colleagues. A similar pattern has materialized when the analysis is strictly limited to votes on womens issues.

Conditions for Competition in Low-Information Judicial Elections: The Case of Intermediate Appellate Court Elections

Although much work has examined the conditions for competition and incumbent defeat in high-visibility elections, scholars have conducted little research on these conditions for less visible offices. We look at one particular type of low-information election: those to state intermediate appellate courts (IAC). Using a comprehensive data set of all IAC elections involving incumbents from 2000 to 2007, we estimate models of challenger entry and incumbent success once challenged. Our results comport, in some cases, and diverge, in others, with the findings of studies of more visible judicial and legislative offices.

Voter Rolloff in a Low-Information Context Evidence From Intermediate Appellate Court Elections

Hall notes that ballot rolloff in supreme court races is substantial but not random. Various institutional, election-specific, state, and district-level contextual forces lead rolloff to increase in some cases and decrease in others. However, it is not clear that Halls findings apply to lower-level judicial elections because of the low-information environment in which those elections occur. Analyzing rolloff in 755 intermediate appellate court (IAC) elections from 2000 to 2007, we, with a few deviations, replicate Halls study. The findings indicate that in many ways the variables that affect rolloff in supreme court elections are similar to those in IAC races although some differences do exist.

Paying the Price for a Seat on the Bench: Campaign Spending in Contested State Intermediate Appellate Court Elections

The subject of judicial elections has garnered an increasing amount of attention by scholars over the past decade. Campaign spending in judicial elections has occupied a central focus of this research, but most of this scholarship has examined campaign finance at the state supreme court level. Our study departs from that tradition by examining what factors predict campaign expenditures in 172 contested state intermediate appellate court (IAC) races from 2000–06. The results indicate that the characteristics of the race, institutional factors, and the context of the campaign all influence how much money is spent in IAC elections. Although similar in some respects to state legislative and supreme court elections, notable differences exist as well.

Gender Turnover and Roll Call Voting in the US Senate

Most studies looking at the roll call voting behavior of female legislators have investigated this phenomenon at the state legislative level and for the US House of Representatives. Very little research has looked at the impact of gender on the policy records of US senators. With the number of female senators continuing to increase it is now possible to undertake such an analysis. This study examines the influence of gender in predicting the roll call voting behavior of US senators across several recent congresses. To unearth gender effects, it employs a longitudinal design based on turnover in the Senate, which holds constituency constant while allowing gender and party to vary. The results indicate that male and female senators representing the same state compile very similar voting records on the basic left/right policy dimension. However, when votes on issues of concern to women are examined, female senators tend to be more supportive than the male senators they replaced, and male senators tend to be less supportive than the female senators they replaced.

Gender and Patterns of Roll Call Voting in the U.S. Senate

Previous studies of gender and representation at the state legislative level and in the U.S. House of Representatives have shown that women tend to be more liberal than their male colleagues and are more likely to support womens issues. Because of the limited presence of women in the body over the years, there is scant empirical evidence to confirm whether this pattern is present in the U.S. Senate. Sound theoretical basis indicates that the institutional rules of the Senate, the Senates individualistic culture, the Senates six-year election timetable, and the national profile of U.S. senators may create conditions that allow gender differences in roll call voting to be more easily detected than is possible in more rigidly structured institutions such as the U.S. House. This study employs a longitudinal design that pools roll call voting data from the 103rd Congress through the 110th Congress to determine whether female senators compile substantively different policy records than their male colleagues. The results indicate that gender does systematically influence roll call voting patterns in the Senate. However, it is largely a function of female Republicans voting in a less conservative fashion than male Republicans on the basic left-right policy space and on a smaller set of issues of importance to women.

Perceptions of candidate spouses in the 2012 presidential election: the role of gender, race, religion, and partisanship

ABSTRACT The wives, and more recently, the husbands, of presidential candidates have taken on vital roles in campaigns, acting as surrogates for their partners, mobilizing voters, fundraising, and making high-profile speeches as well as appeals to targeted groups of voters. Despite their importance, presidential candidate spouses represent an under-investigated set of political actors. This project draws on American National Election Study data to analyze public perceptions of the 2012 presidential candidate spouses, Michelle Obama and Ann Romney, and explore how these perceptions compare to attitudes about previous presidential candidate spouses going back to 1992. Since these two spouses represent historic firsts, with Michelle Obama the first Black presidential candidate spouse and Ann Romney the first Mormon presidential candidate spouse, our analysis pays particular attention to the role of gender, race, and religion in public evaluations of these two women. This study also explores how and why candidate spouses are able to remain quite popular even in today’s highly partisan environment. Our results provide insights into key areas of stability and change in the public’s views and expectations for would-be first ladies.

Constituency Population and Representation in the U.S. House

The U.S. House of Representatives has remained frozen at 435 members for almost a century. House members on average represent more than 640,000 citizens, which is expected to continue to rise if the body remains constituted of close to 435 members. One assertion put forward by critics of this rise is that it leads to a less intimate relationship between the representative and the constituent. Yet there has not been empirical substantiation that the increase in constituency population size has interfered with the representational linkage in the House. This study employs a series of multivariate models using survey data from the American National Election Study to test whether citizens in more heavily populated House districts have less access to their representatives and are less likely to approve of their performance. Findings indicate that increases in House district population size reduce the accessibility and approval of U.S. House members.

The People's Perspective on the Size of the People's House

T he quality of representation the citizenry receives from its political leaders is central to evaluating the character of any democratic institution. Moreover, the number of elected members that comprise an institution can be vital in determining whether citizens have access to and can influence the decisions of their representatives ~Dahl and Tufte 1973!. The United States House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 members for almost a century. This durability of this alignment is astonishing; in its first century of existence, the U.S. House experienced a virtually uninterrupted string of decennial increases in its membership. Despite the magnitude of the effects of this stasis on representation, political scientists have not extensively examined this subject ~Squire and Hamm 2005!.1 While the House has remained constant in size for nearly 100 years, the nation’s population has grown by more than 200% over this duration. Members of the House on average represent more than 600,000 citizens; a figure that increases with population growth as long as the size of the body remains constant. This development has sparked a debate among some observers about whether it is time to increase the size of the House of Representatives. On one side of the debate are the proponents of an enlargement in the membership of the House as a means to improve the quality of representation citizens receive ~Glassman 1990; Jacoby 2005; Kromkowski and Kromkowski 1991, 1992; Lijphart 2000; Lucas and McDonald 2000; Yates 1992!. Primarily, these advocates claim that failure to adjust the size of the House consistent with U.S. population growth has created congressional districts that are too heavily populated for House members to adequately represent their constituents in the areas of policy and service responsiveness. They also contend that boosting the membership of the House would provide additional opportunities to elect women and minorities to the body. Furthermore, they suggest that taking this step would prevent states growing at a rate less than the national average from losing seats in subsequent rounds of reapportionment. Shifting migration patterns have cost many states in the Northeast and Midwest representation in the House over the course of the last half century. While one essay lists a total of 25 reasons to increase the size of the U.S. House ~Kromkowski and Kromkowski 1991!, the preceding justifications are emphasized as particularly important by advocates of this cause. On any question of institutional design there is an imperative to balance the need to provide representation against operational efficiency ~Buchanan and Tullock 1962; Polsby 1968; Shepsle 1988; Willoughby 1934!. Any legislative body must be responsive to multiple interests in society, but it must also operate in an efficient manner so it can carry out its policy making responsibilities. Opponents argue that while enlarging the House might have benefits for representation, doing so would disrupt legislative operations in the chamber. This more unwieldy legislative environment would undermine communication and deliberation among members and make building coalitions in the House a more onerous task ~Evans and Oleszek 2000; Overby 1992!. Detractors also cite other concerns, including increased costs and lack of existing infrastructure needed to accommodate an addition of members and staff. There has been recent legislative action to adjust the size of the House in the 110th Congress. On April 19, 2007, members of the House approved a twoseat increase in the size of the institution to provide a voting member for the residents of the District of Columbia. This proposal marked the first time since Alaska and Hawaii entered the Union that Congress has seriously debated an upward adjustment in the size of the nation’s lower legislative body. However, on September 18, 2007, the bill died at the hands of a Senate filibuster ~Sheridan 2007!. Despite the potential consequences for representation when a national legislative body remains constant in size during a period of extended population expansion, there has been little consideration of public opinion on this issue. Do U.S. citizens approve of the current size of the House, even if it means a diminished capacity for representation? Public attitudes toward numerous aspects of American political institutions are limited in scope, although some issues, such as term limits for members of Congress, have been polled extensively. Institutional size is a domain that has received scant attention from survey researchers. Moreover, there has been a complete absence of survey data probing attitudes about the size of the U.S. House and the average number of constituents per congressional district. This article fills this void by presenting the responses to questions on these topics from a national survey administered by Knowledge Networks of 1,020 Americans.

An Introduction to American Presidential Candidate Spouses

This chapter underscores the role of presidential candidate spouses as important and unique political actors and as national role models. It highlights the theme that a careful examination of public opinion toward candidate spouses also provides a window into Americans’ gendered expectations for the presidency. This chapter details the book’s original contributions to the public opinion literature on presidential candidate spouses, and provides an overview of the book’s organization and methods. This chapter outlines the scope of the study, which explores public evaluations of presidential candidate spouses across three decades, from the 1988 presidential election through the 2016 presidential election, and discusses the major sources of public opinion data including the American National Election Studies as well as the Roper Center for Public Opinion. It identifies significant factors shaping attitudes toward candidate spouses and advances multiple theoretical frameworks including an introduction of the concept of new traditionalism.