Hans J. G. Hassell

Party Control of Party Primaries: Party Influence in Nominations for the US Senate

Scholarship on primary election outcomes has largely ignored the ability of political parties to shape outcomes and influence the decisions of candidates to compete for the party’s nomination. Only recently have theories of parties as networks of policy demanders suggested that parties influence the candidate nomination process. Previous attempts to document party control of primaries, however, have only tested these theories on small or unrepresentative samples of primary races or have looked at general election results after the party’s nominee has already been selected. Using a simple and easily understood measure of party support, I show that candidates who are less connected to the party are less likely to win and also less likely to remain a candidate in the primary. I find that parties not only are effective in helping candidates win but also are influential in excluding certain electoral options from being presented to primary voters.

When to Attack The Trajectory of Congressional Campaign Negativity

While the study of the use of negative campaign tactics has been a prolific topic of scholarship, previous studies have been limited in their ability to test the dynamics of negativity over the course of the campaign because their analysis of content from political campaigns is either static in nature or limited in its scope. Although we know that the closeness of the race, the status of the candidate as an incumbent or a challenger, and other characteristics affect the volume of negativity over the entire campaign, we know little about how these factors affect when candidates choose to go negative. Using a unique data set of over 1,400 emails sent out by campaigns from a random sample of congressional districts in 2012, we examine negativity over the course of the campaign. We find that the dynamics of negativity vary by whether there is an incumbent in the race.

Public and Partisan Opinions of the Speaker of the House

Using polling data from 1982 to 2009, I develop a model of public opinion toward the Speaker of the House. I show that, in addition to economic and institutional factors, the speakers ideology and events associated with the speakers responsibilities in office affect the publics opinion toward this congressional leader. I also examine the partisan differences in the formation of public opinions about the speaker. I find that minority party partisans are more likely to have negative evaluations of the speaker when the speaker has more ideologically extreme views which lead to higher levels of polarization. In addition, members of different parties weigh economic and institutional factors differently in their evaluations of the speaker.

Representational Inconsistency: Presentation of Self and Explanations of Washington Activity in Campaign Mail and Franked Mail

Studies of representation have focused primarily on the correlation between legislators’ voting records and their constituents’ preferences; however, accountability inevitably includes representatives’ explanations of their legislative actions. Unlike previous research that has examined consistency within a single form of communication, this study systematically examines legislators’ consistency in the explanations they give across different means of communication. Contrary to arguments that members of Congress do not vary their explanations or presentational styles, we find that incumbents present themselves to constituents differently through different methods of communication. Using the 2006 Campaign Communication Survey, a random survey of registered voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania who were asked to send in all campaign mail received during three weeks in 2006, we compare the content of campaign mail and franked mail incumbents send to constituents. Even though the mediums of communication are similar and the timing of franked mail suggests its use as a campaign tool, we find incumbents use these different tools to present themselves to their constituents in different ways. As such, we argue that fully understanding a member of Congresss representational style requires an examination of a wide range of congressional activities.