Scott J. Basinger

Ambivalence, information, and electoral choice

Conventional wisdom views voter choice in House elections as preordained by party identification, incumbency, and perceptions of national conditions. In an analysis of voter behavior in House elections between 1990 and 2000, we find instead that voters are quite heterogeneous. Voters who hold ambivalent partisan attitudes, who typically constitute 30% of the electorate, reduce their reliance on party identification; this effect is entirely independent of the strength of identification. Individuals holding ambivalent partisan attitudes that both lack political knowledge and are presented with little campaign stimulus are more likely to engage in economic voting. Individuals holding ambivalent partisan attitudes that either are knowledgeable about politics or are presented with stimulating campaigns are more likely to engage in ideological voting. Thus, campaign competition and national partisan competition each play a role in assuring that ordinary voters may participate meaningfully in the political process.

Scandals and Congressional Elections in the Post-Watergate Era

Since Watergate, more than two hundred fifty members of the House of Representatives have been involved in various scandals. The author finds that roughly 40 percent of incumbents did not “survive” their scandal. Incumbents who stood for reelection lost 5 percent of the general election vote share, on average, but the electoral repercussions vary across types of scandals and could be magnified in the presence of a quality challenger.  A scandal-tainted incumbent defending his or her seat does not necessarily fare better than an untainted open-seat candidate, a finding that provides a justification for stronger ethics rules.

Stonewalling and Suspicion during Presidential Scandals

Scholars possess little theoretical understanding of how presidents behave during scandals. Existing presidential scholarship has focused on “offensive” communication, aimed at achieving legislative or policy goals, whereas the authors’ interest is in “defensive” communication. Using a game-theoretic signaling model of the president–media relationship, the authors identify conditions affecting White House stonewalling and media feeding frenzies. The president’s optimal behavior changes depending on circumstances, particularly the level of presidential involvement in the alleged misdeeds. The authors illustrate this with a case study of the Iran-Contra scandals and an empirical analysis of scandals from the Nixon through the Bush administrations.

Scandals and Ethics Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives

This article uses new data to assess the impact of the Office of Congressional Ethics, established in 2009, to investigate ethical misconduct by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. A comparison of the 6 years immediately before reform (2003–2008) and the 6 years immediately after reform (2009–2014) reveals that the number of scandals actually increased by 60% after reform. Although the number of members investigated for malfeasance increased by 220%, the number of members sanctioned remained constant. However well-intentioned the reforms, they failed to stem the tide of scandal because they did not modify members’ incentives. Ironically, the reforms may have contributed to public dissatisfaction with Congress by publicizing investigations of members of Congress.

The Changing Politics of Supreme Court Confirmations

Senate voting on Supreme Court nominees offers a window into macro-political continuity and change. Clashes over confirmations once were reserved for a handful of exceptional cases, but recently have become the norm. Party cohesion in the Senate has also experienced a recent, rapid increase. An analysis of votes on 43 Supreme Court nominees reveals that senators polarize in response to rising levels of average party loyalty. The analysis further reveals that a senator who individually is more loyal to his or her party will be more likely to adopt an extreme position on confirmation, even after controlling for the effects of rising aggregate partisanship. Once the partisan trend is taken into account, our analysis contradicts the conventional wisdom that Robert Bork’s nomination instituted a “regime change” with a lasting effect on Senate voting patterns.

Forecasting the Senate vote on the Supreme Court vacancy

This paper forecasts current senators’ votes on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the unlikely case that a vote actually takes place. The forecasts are necessarily conditional, awaiting measurement of the nominee’s characteristics. Nonetheless, a model that combines parameters estimated from existing data with values of some measurable characteristics of senators—particularly their party affiliations, party loyalty levels, and ideological positions—is sufficient to identify potential swing voters in the Senate. By accounting for a more nuanced and refined understanding of the confirmation process, our model reveals that if President Obama were to nominate almost any nominee (conservative or liberal) today, that nominee would be rejected if a vote was allowed to take place. So why nominate anyone at all? Obama’s hope for a successful confirmation must come from the stochastic component, that is, from outside the traditional decision-making calculus.