POLSCI 318 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Franking, Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Congress and the President
9.16.16 Lecture Notes – Determinants of Elections
Most important determinant is incumbency
o Raise more money
▪ Negative advertisements
• Individuals become more informed about policy though
o Well-known, name recognition
o Essentially get government subsidized advertising
▪ Franking privilege – free postal service to mail to their constituents
▪ Media attention
o More experienced campaign organizations and infrastructure
o Voting records/other information about members’ performances (can be an advantage or a
disadvantage)
2014 – 96% House reelection, and Senate 82%
o 2016 – Incumbents in the aggregate
▪ Professor predicts that reelection rates will be 85%
Regional affects
o Regional balance of power historically shifting
o 2016 election – concentration of Democratic voters in urban areas
o Rational choice strategies suggest that you don’t want to win races by massive margins so
that you can spread out your supporters in other districts
▪ Utilitarian nature
▪ Democrats are thus wasting their votes in very safe Democratic districts
o State legislatures had Republican majorities after the 2010 Census which led them to
redistrict the country to the Republican advantage
▪ Effects of redistricting is still felt – Democratic candidates will find it harder
▪ Obama won by 96 electoral votes, but only took % of America’s districts
o 2016 – Republicans will not lose the House
Resources
o Money
▪ Parties have been training their candidates in fundraising
▪ Provide money from PACs
▪ Overall, party leaders have become so much more involved
▪ Find information my candidate’s fundraising
▪ Challengers’ money tends to go farther silver lining challenger
• For every dollar that challengers spend, they get more votes than the dollar
that an incumbent spends
• Incumbent can easily hit a ceiling, given incumbent advantage
• If the challenger is spending a lot of advertising spots, etc., they might have a
chance
o Candidate quality
▪ Personal skill/brand
▪ Messaging
▪ Campaign organization, which goes hand in hand with fundraising
▪ Aptitude for campaign advertising (emerging new markets, like social media)
▪ One of the systematic ways of measuring candidate quality, is whether the
candidate has held prior office positions (attorney general for a state, state
legislature, etc.)
o Shifting demographics
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