Gerald C. Wright

Contextual Models of Electoral Behavior: The Southern Wallace Vote

Many studies have sought to investigate contextual influences on individual electoral behavior using aggregate data. The shortcomings of this approach are discussed, focusing on the relationship between black concentration and southern white support for George Wallace for president in 1968. Through combining aggregate and individual-level data and comparing a series of models, black concentration is found to increase white support for Wallace. Intraregional differences in the relationship between white support for Wallace and local black concentration are equalized when contextual influences at the state level are brought into the analysis. Black concentration contextual effects are independent of those of urbanization, education, or residence in Wallaces home state of Alabama. Relative primary group support for Wallace and relative issue proximity to Wallace are then shown to be the intervening variables linking contextual characteristics and electoral choice.

Teams without Uniforms: The Nonpartisan Ballot in State and Local Elections

The use of a nonpartisan ballot was one of the many Progressive reforms introduced around the turn of the century that is still heavily used today. The intent of the change to a nonpartisan format was, and still is, to remove party cues from a voters decision, thereby causing the voter to seek out other information about a candidate. This study seeks to examine the effects of nonpartisan elections on patterns of voter decisionmaking. We examine the structure of electoral choice in partisan and nonpartisan elections at the state and local levels using paired comparisons and interrupted time series. Using precinct and district level voting data, we compare mayoral races in the sister cities of Champaign and Urbana (IL) and state legislative elections in Nebraska and Kansas. In addition, we examine the city of Asheville (NC) during its change from partisan to nonpartisan elections in the early 1990s and state legislative elections in Minnesota during its change from nonpartisan to partisan contests in the early 1970s. The analysis of these cases helps us to understand the effects of removing party identification from the ballot. We find that nonpartisanship depresses turnout and that in nonpartisan contests voters rely less on party and more on incumbency in their voting decisions. The nonpartisan ballot “works,” but how one evaluates the results depends on ones view of the electorate and the purpose of elections.

The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures

American legislative studies in recent years have been occupied to a large degree with the question of the effects of political parties on the policy behavior of elected legislators, with most of the research focusing on the U.S. Congress. We undertake a comparative analysis of state legislatures for a window into the character and extent of partys effects. Specifically, we compare the impact of party on the partisan polarization and dimensionality of campaign issue stances and roll call voting in the Kansas Senate and the largely comparable, though nonpartisan, Nebraska Unicameral. This comparison offers us a nice quasi-experiment to assess the impact of party by establishing a baseline condition in Nebraska for what happens when party is absent. We argue that party lends order to conflict, producing the ideological low-dimensional space that is a trademark of American politics. Where parties are not active in the legislature—Nebraska is our test case—the clear structure found in partisan politics disappears. This works to sever the connection between voters and their elected representatives and, with it, the likelihood of electoral accountability that is essential for the health of liberal democracy.

Policy Voting in the U.S. Senate: Who Is Represented?

This study develops new state-level measures of mass and party elite ideology to assess senatorial responsiveness to different constituencies. The ideological preferences of two groups-independent identifiers and senators state party elites-prove important in accounting for senatorial Conservative Coalition scores (1981-84), while the preferences of state partisans have no direct effect on roll-call voting. The often noted ideological differences between same-state senators from different parties are explained by the differing values of their respective state party elites. Challengers, in contrast to incumbents, are unresponsive to independents; their campaign issue stances are consistent with the more extreme values of their state party elites. As a result Senate elections tend to be contests between relatively moderate incumbents and ideologically extreme challengers. Popular understanding and academic theory agree that a fundamental feature of modern democratic government is the representation of constituency interests by elected legislators. Studies of representation examine how constituency opinion is related to legislative attitudes and behavior and what conditions promote or inhibit this central relationship. In the theoretical and empirical work on legislative elections, a growing number of studies deals with the role of issues and policy in explaining Senate elections. This work assumes that elections are the chief mechanism for achieving accountability and for insuring legislative responsiveness to constituency preferences. Several features of the contemporary U.S. context shape the potential for legislative responsiveness to constituents. Our electoral rules-single-member district elections, the direct primary, and the Australian ballot-enhance legislative responsiveness to voters rather than to party or the president, as does the decline in partisanship among voters and within Congress. Split-ticket voting is at such levels that while many seats are safe for specific incumbents, fewer and fewer can be considered safe for the parties. Of course the institutional changes in Congress-decentralized power, increased perquisites of office with

Candidates' Policy Positions and Voting in U. S. Congressional Elections

Previous research and common wisdom holds that issues are not significant in congressional elections. This paper uses the 1966 NBC survey of candidates for the House of Representatives and the SRC national election survey to examine the electoral impact of policy positions of candidates. The importance of candidates policy positions is affirmed. Party defection is higher when voters are closer to the opposition candidate. The importance of incumbency decreases and the importance of issues increases in elections with larger ideological distances between candidates. The effects of relative issue proximity to the candidates, although less than the influence of partisanship and incumbency, are nevertheless sufficiently large that constituency issue preferences should be a major consideration for rational vote-seeking candidates for Congress.

Political Scientists' Evaluations of Sixty-three Journals

Professional journals are central in our professional lives. They are a primary means of communicating new ideas and research findings to other political scientists, and hence help record, however haltingly, our collective progress in understanding the political world. In a business where ones academic contribution is frequently taken as a tally of publications, the journals also function as an important instrument of professional advancement. Counts of vitae entries, however, seem to be generally weighted by judgements of quality; but the quality assessed quite often appears to be of the journal in which an article appears rather than the quality of the specific article. It is interesting therefore, and perhaps prudent to consider how the community of political scientists evaluate the journals in which we publish. This short note presents some data on this question.

Constituency Response To Congressional Behavior: the Impact of the House Judiciary Committee Impeachment Votes

T HE EVENTS of Watergate and Richard Nixons unprecedented resignation from the presidency in the face of impeachment constitutes one of the true high points in American political drama. With the media now attending current but less explosive events, and with Nixon cloistered in San Clemente working on his memoirs, political scientists and historians are beginning to assess some of the less apparent theoretical and practical consequences of these tumultuous events. Studies have already shown, for example, that Watergate significantly tarnished childrens previously benign images of political authorities, and we can be fairly certain that exposure of Nixons strategems has accelerated the rise in public political cynicism.1 Watergate also focused public attention on Congress through sustained media coverage of the Senate and House Committee hearings on the cover-up, dirty tricks, plumbers, and Nixons involvement with these and related events. This paper assesses one of the consequences of public exposure to the workings of Congress during this period: the electoral fate of members of the House Judiciary Committee after they were cast into national limelight during their deliberations and votes on impeachment. Never before has a committee of the House of Representatives received such national exposure. The intense media coverage of the hearings ought to have greatly increased constituency awareness of the Committee members and their positions on the nationally salient issue of impeachment. Our purpose here is to determine whether voters use such issue information about candidates when it is clearly available. That is, do the issue positions taken by candidates in this case proand anti-impeachment standssystematically influence House members reelection chances?2

A New Look at the Republican Advantage in Nonpartisan Elections

Conventional wisdom has long held that Republicans are advantaged when partisan labels are removed from the ballot. However, in this article, the authors argue that the advantage gained from nonpartisan elections favors the minority party because the low-cost partisan cue is hidden from voters who otherwise would be inclined to support majority party candidates. The authors test this hypothesis using aggregate-level data from state legislative races in nonpartisan Nebraska and partisan Kansas, mayoral races in nonpartisan Phoenix and partisan Tucson, and California statewide races including the nonpartisan contest for superintendent of public instruction. Findings indicate that nonpartisan elections have partisan consequences but that the effect is in favor of the minority party rather than the Republican Party.

The Macro Sort of the State Electorates

Individual-level studies of partisan and ideological change find that individuals generally adjust their ideological preferences to match their partisan affiliation. In examining this process among the state electorates, we find that contrary to these studies, states have adjusted their partisanship to match their ideology. In addition, we use a measure of state elite ideology to show that state parties have a role in the character of the partisan sort of the states. These results are consistent with political explanations of party strategy and rational mass responses for the character of macro-political change in the states over the last half century.

Elections and State Party Polarization

This article examines the effect of ideological polarization in state party systems on the broad contours of state electoral outcomes. Measuring ideological polarization using CBS / New York Times surveys combined over the period from 1976 to 1988, we find that increased ideological polarization among state party coalitions has a significant dampening effect on split-ticket voting, party defection, vote swing, and electoral volatility. Our comparison of state party systems suggests that the general decline of party in structuring electoral outcomes has not been uniform across the states, and that the ideological distinctiveness of state partisans has a systematic impact on state elections.