POLI 2051 Chapter : Notes From Chapter 11, April 17th 2012
Document Summary
April 17th, 2012: congressional elections in general: two important regularities: Why: they have a host of official resources. In order to achieve some national objective is hard because everything is localized. This is why we don"t like congress, but we reelect incumbents. In addition, our country is polarized: president"s party gains seats in a presidential election and loses seats in a midterm election: The average loss in a president"s first midterm is 16 seats. (this did not happen in fdr"s midterm because of the great depression, they picked up democratic seats. ) Surge and decline theory independent voters vote in presidential elections but not so much in congressional elections. Voters vote for president, but don"t vote 2 years later, and this is the group that gave the president his surge, so without them, decline is inevitable. Popular presidents can bring in a lot of congressmen, called riding in on the president"s coattails.
