Continuity and Change in House Elections Edited by David W. Brady, John F. Cogan, and Morris P. Fiorina. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. 297p. $55.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Extract

For years, congressional elections were ignored or treated as fairly straightforward and predictable. The Democrats controlled the House. Incumbents nearly always won. Voters chose the candidate who would deliver the local goods. The magnitude of the Republican victory in the 1994 midterms set politicians, journalists, and scholars on a search to find an explanation that would place the election in the proper context. Was 1994 an outlier or the beginning of a new era? This volume places the 1990s in the context of the past 40 years of House elections and provides a solid foundation for gauging whether 1994 was the culmination of long-term trends or a dramatic break with the past.