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Campaign Strategy and Party Loyalty: The Electoral Relevance of Candidate Decision-Making in the 1964 Congressional Elections*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Robert A. Schoenbebger
Robert A. Schoenbebger*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

The analyst of campaign strategy in American elections is usually confronted by the apparent impossibility of demonstrating that campaign behavior actually matters. Although candidates possess numerous options in strategy and tactics, it is clear that incumbent members of the majority party (commonly joint phenomena) usually win and opposition candidates of the minority party usually lose. Lewis Froman has even argued that “ … the behavior of the candidates during the campaign is one of the least influential factors in determining electoral outcomes.

The effects, if any, of campaign behavior are the residue to be examined after the partisan distribution of the electorate, the nature of the times, the power of incumbency and any number of variables beyond the ready control of the candidates themselves have been employed to explain or predict the popular vote distribution. The perceived general ineffectiveness of candidate strategy and tactics is usually explained by the low public saliency of the typical election contest, in which most voters are unlikely to be aware even of the names of the candidates, much less their policy positions or, presumably, any other of their behaviors.

But this circumstance may change when “ordinary” election contests are connected to contests of much higher saliency, especially that for the Presidency. It is at this time, at least, when the strategic decisions and behaviors of certain classes of candidates may attract the attention of voters otherwise preoccupied with that more dramatic battle for power.

Type
Research Notes
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 515 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1969

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Russell Slade, who collected the data upon which this article is based, and to Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes for their comments on an earlier draft.

References

1 Cf. Bullitt, Stimson, “Because no one knows what works in a campaign, money is spent beyond the point of diminishing returns… No one dares to omit any approach. Every cartridge must be fired because among the multitude of blanks one may be a bullet,” in To Be A Politician (Garden City, N.Y., 1961), p. 72 Google Scholar; Cnudde, Charles F., “… political scientists know little about how the campaign affects the vote, or in fact whether it influences it at all,” in a book review in this Review, 62 (1968) p. 1365 Google Scholar; Kingdon, John W., “Right or wrong, most candidates believe that campaigns affect election outcomes,” in Candidates For Office: Beliefs and Strategies, (New York, 1968) p. 109 Google Scholar. There is, however, some evidence that party organizations may, by their efforts, affect the vote. See, e.g., Cutright, Phillips and Rossi, Peter, “Grass Roots Politicians and the Vote,” American Sociological Review, 23 (1958), 171–179 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katz, Daniel and Eldersveld, Samuel J., “The Impact of Local Party Activity Upon the Electorate,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 25 (1961), 1–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crotty, William J., “The Party Organization and its Activities,” in Crotty, (ed.), Approaches To The Study of Party Organizations (Boston, 1968), pp. 247–306, esp. pp. 277–286 Google Scholar.

2 See Jones, Charles O., “The Role of the Campaign in Congressional Politics,” in Jennings, M. Kent and Ziegler, L Harmon (eds.), The Electoral Process (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), pp. 21–41, esp. pp. 23–24Google Scholar; Cummings, Milton C., Congressmen and the Electorate (Washington, 1966), passim Google Scholar.

3 Lewis A. Froman, Jr., “A Realistic Approach to Campaign Strategies and Tactics,” in Jennings and Zeigler, op. cit., pp. 1–20, at p. 4. See also, Charles O. Jones, “The Role of the Campaign …,” in ibid, pp. 33–34. Cf. Froman, , Congressmen And Their Constituencies (Chicago, 1963), pp. 50–59 Google Scholar.

4 Miller, Warren and Stokes, Donald E., “Constituency Influence in Congress,” this Review (1963), 45–56 Google Scholar; Stokes, and Miller, , “Party Government and the Saliency of Congress,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (1962), 531–546 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 E.g., in 1965, the House Democratic caucus stripped John Bell Williams and Albert Watson of their committee seniority because they openly supported the candidacy of the Republican Presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater. In 1969, John Rarick received the same punishment (from an unusual second caucus) for endorsing the third party candidacy of George Wallace.

6 His personal motives may in fact vary but are here assumed to be exclusively fear of defeat.

7 Among those who publicly refused their support—at the very least—were such Congressional party colleagues as Senators Scott, Javits and Keating and Congressmen Lindsay, Tupper, Fulton and Halpern.

8 These hypotheses also permit, simultaneously, a test of the existence and direction of the coattails effect. In the absence of survey data one can only infer, as I do here, that it is a Presidential rather than a Congressional Coattail effect that is involved. See Miller, Warren E., “Presidential Coattails: A Study in Political Myth and Methodology,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 19 (Winter, 1955–1956), 353–368 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 The endorsement, published in the New York Times, June 17, 1964, was signed by 54 Republican Congressmen, 49 of whom were candidates for reelection. It read, in part, “We are convinced that the nomination of … Barry Goldwater … will result in substantial increases in Republican membership in both Houses of Congress.”

10 Since the redistricting of seats between 1960 and 1962 (and the abnormality of the 1960 presidential election) prevents the use of changes of the presidential vote to measure the forces distinctive to 1964, the presidential measure entered in the correlation reflects traditional levels of party strength in the several districts as well as the influence of Goldwater's candidacy and other circumstances specific to 1964. Such an extraneous traditional component tends to reduce any non-vanishing correlation below the level which would be obtained were it possible to correlate changes of the congressional vote with changes of the presidential vote.

11 Representative Sylvio Conte (Mass. 1) is excluded from this analysis, since he gained both Republican and Democratic nominations and received 100% of the 2-party vote in his district. Conte was one of those who repudiated Goldwater's nomination, but his inclusion would add spurious strength to the second hypothesis, since his vote could not be other than independent of Goldwater's.

12 See Key, V. O. Jr., Politics Parties and Pressure Groups (New York, 4th edition, 1958), p. 609n, 691–695 Google Scholar; Campbell, Angus and Miller, Warren, “The Motivational Basis of Straight and Split Ticket Voting,” this Review, 60 (1957), 293–312 Google Scholar. See also Walker, Jack L., “Ballot Forms and Voter Fatigue,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 10 (1966), 448–463 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 The “power of incumbency” thesis has never been better demonstrated. Only one Republican Congressmen, Bruce Alger (Texas 5), trailed Goldwater.

14 Calculations for Congressmen Clausen and Clawson (Calif 1 and 23) are based on the results of Special Elections in 1963.

15 Whereas strategic difference explains systematic differences on Party Column ballots, the same operation accounts in gross terms for differences on Office Bloc tickets. Here, the mean slippage for signers and non-signers was +9.7% and +17.9%, respectively, and mean vote-change was —4.4% and —2.2%. The original hypothesis thus holds, but only between groups and without explaining internal variation among signers.

16 Although 55% is commonly employed as the border between marginality and safety, in 1964 relative safety for incumbent Republicans existed on the positive side of 60% rather than 55%.

17 It is possible to suggest that the differences found between signers and non-signers arise from the fact that 1964 was a bad year for conservatives, which signers tended to be and Goldwater was. It is necessary to point out that such a hypothesis will not account for the lack of correlation between the Goldwater vote and the changes of support for non-signers, unless they are all uniformly unconservative (while signers are of varying degrees of conservatism, a strange notion). As it happens, the conservatism of signers—or of all Congressmen is unrelated to the change of their support between 1962 and 1964. Employing Congressmens' scores on a measure combining Congressional Quarterly's Conservative Coalition and Federal Role Indexes, the correlation coefficient between relative conservatism in roll-call voting behavior and change of support is —0.08 among signers, —0.11 among non-signers and —0.20 among all Congressmen.

18 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, 1957), p. 30 Google Scholar.

19 See, e.g., The Committee on Political Parties, American Political Science Association, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” this Review, 44 (1950, Supplement), pp. 21, 47, 48, 53, and 61 Google Scholar; Burns, James M., The Deadlock of Democracy, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963)Google Scholar. The broader assumptions underlying and the prospective consequences of the recommended reforms are discussed critically in Turner, Julius, “Responsible Parties: A Dissent from the Floor,” this Review, 45 (1951), 143–152 Google Scholar; Austin Ranney, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Commentary,” in ibid, 488–499. See also, Ranney, Austin and Kendall, Willmoore, Democracy and the American Party System, (New York, 1956), pp. 527–533 Google Scholar; and Polsby, Nelson W. and Wildavsky, Aaron, Presidential Elections (New York, Second Edition, 1968), pp. 218–228, 250–268 Google Scholar.

20 Stokes, Donald E., “Some Dynamic Elements of Contests for the Presidency,” this Review, 60 (1966), pp. 19–28, esp. pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

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