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The Vanishing Marginals and Electoral Responsiveness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Stephen Ansolabehere ,
David Brady  and
Morris Fiorina
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Abstract

Nearly two decades ago researchers pointed out the sharp decline in marginal districts in elections for the US House of Representatives. That observation led to an outpouring of research describing the electoral changes, explaining their bases and speculating about their consequences for the larger political system. Recently Gary Jacobson has offered a major corrective to that line of research, arguing that ‘House incumbents are no safer now than they were in the 1950s; the marginals, properly defined, have not vanished; the swing ratio has diminished little, if at all; and competition for House seats held by incumbents has not declined’. While Jacobson advances an extremely provocative argument, there are complicating patterns in his evidence that support additional and/or different interpretations. We argue that the marginals, ‘properly defined’ have diminished, the swing ratio has declined, and party competition for House seats held by incumbents has lessened. While fears that the vanishing marginals phenomenon would lead to lower responsiveness on the part of ‘safe’ House incumbents have proved groundless, the collective composition of Congress does appear to be less responsive to changes in popular sentiments. Thus, the vanishing marginals have contributed to the occurrence of divided government in the United States and in all likelihood do have the effects on congressional leadership and policy-making that many analysts have claimed.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 21 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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9 To be precise, the data show a greater than 4 per cent increase in average vote percentages accompanied by a 1 per cent drop in the rate of defeat. Obviously, it is not logically necessary that an increase in average margin produce an equivalent increase in re-election rates, especially when the latter are already at the 93–4 per cent level. But Jacobson is correct in arguing that increased vote margins have real importance only to the extent that they correspond to some decrease in the likelihood of defeat. Ironically, in the elections that have taken place since publication of Jacobson's article, re-election rates have soared into the high 90s.

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12 This counter-trend is evident in Jacobson's Figure 1, and he remarks that ‘House members with very close elections were more vulnerable in the 1950s, but vulnerability diminished sharply as the vote margin increased: the frequency of defeats drops below 5 percent beyond the 57 percent margin’ (p. 130). The significance of this exception does not figure in later arguments, however.

13 Even a gross comparison of the 50–60 per cent categories supports this statement. In the 1950s the overall rate of defeat in this category was 13.9 per cent. In the 1970s it dropped to 11.8 per cent.

14 We emphasize that we are referring to rates of defeat, but as Mayhew documented long ago, there are also changes in the numbers of districts in various categories. There are now fewer districts in the range traditionally identified as marginal, and correspondingly many more in the ranges traditionally categorized as safe. Slightly higher defeat rates in the latter, more numerous, category balance the significantly lower rate of defeat in the former, less numerous, category.

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16 One methodological point deserves mention. Jacobson's Table 4 reports the inter-election swing in the Democratic candidate's vote in incumbent-contested districts, whereas our Table 2 contains the swing in the incumbent's vote in those districts. The two series are not identical because where a Republican wins in the first election of a pair, the incumbent swing will be the negative of the Democratic swing. Both series tell largely the same story – increased volatility, but the temporal increase in incumbent swing is smaller (2.8 per cent between the 1950s and 1970s, versus 3.7 per cent for the Democratic swing), and the mid-1960s jump is more pronounced (incumbent swings are larger in years of national tides than are Democratic swings). Given the focus on incumbent re-election rates in this discussion, the inter-election vote swing for incumbents would seem to be the more appropriate measure.

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18 Tables 1–3 calculated separately for freshmen and non-freshmen incumbents are available on request.

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23 Jacobson remarks that ‘The pattern for the 1950s indicates that new members were often swept into office by a partisan tide, then swept out again once it had receded’ (‘The Marginals Never Vanished’, p. 136).

24 Mann offers a scenario for a Republican capture of the House, but he offers it ‘not as a likely occurrence, but as a plausible one’ (see ‘Is the House Unresponsive to Political Change?’ p. 278).

25 Jacobson, , ‘The Marginals Never Vanished’, p. 128.Google Scholar

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29 The theoretical concept and statistical estimation of the swing ratio are treated at length in our paper, ‘And Still More on the Concept of Swing Ratios’ (Research Paper No. 990, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, 1991).

30 This extension of the time series is less innocent than it might appear at first glance, since there were relatively large seat swings in the late 1940s elections, and relatively small ones in the elections of the late 1980s. One of the referees has observed that if Jacobson had examined the longer period his argument might have been different. Nevertheless, even if we estimate swing ratios over the shorter period, all the differences reported below still appear, except with lower significance levels: the different measure of party vote is more consequential than extension of the data series.

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32 Separate coefficients for the two periods can be estimated within a single equation by using interaction terms. Define a dummy variable, D, that equals 0 between 1946 and 1964, and 1 between 1966 and 1990. Then estimate the following equation:

Dem Seat% = a1 + a2 D + b1 (Dem vote%) b2 D (Dem vote%)

The 1946–64 prediction is (a1 + b1 (Dem vote%)) and the 1966–90 prediction is ((a1 + a2) + (b1 + b2) (Dem vote%)). One can utilize a t-test to determine whether the swing ratio (b1, b1 + b2) differs between the two periods, and more generally an F-test will indicate whether the dual restrictions that a2 = 0 and b2 = 0 (the two periods are identical) result in a significant loss in explanatory power.

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36 Gelman and King adopt such a strategy in seeking to measure the incumbency advantage. See Gelman, Andrew and King, Gary, ‘Estimating Incumbency Advantage without Bias’, American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1990), 1142–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 These estimates are based on Table 6. If the regressions in Table 5 are used, Republican House majorities are also predicted in 1980 and 1990. The regressions in Table 6 have superior fits, so we utilize them here.

38 These tests are one-tailed tests of the hypothesis that the swing ratio is lower after 1964 than before. For the shorter time series utilized by Jacobson, the significance levels are 0.10 for pre-1964 against post-1964 incumbents, 0.10 for pre-1964 against post-1964 open seats and 0.01 for post-1964 incumbents against post-1964 open seats. The difference between pre-1964 incumbents and open seats remains non-significant.

39 After some recent elections partisan commentators have complained that redistricting and unequal turnout have deprived Republican candidates of their fair share of House seats. Possibly this is true, but there is a prior problem that is usually overlooked; namely, that Republicans do not get enough votes. They have not beaten the Democrats in the aggregate vote since 1952.

40 In a personal communication Thomas Mann has reminded us that one has to go hunting where the ducks are. Open seats constitute such a small proportion of all races that it is hard to see how a majority can be built by winning them. We agree, but we also cannot see how under present conditions a majority strategy can be based on defeating incumbents. The bottom line would seem to be that the Republicans have a long row to hoe.

41 Collie, Melissa, ‘Incumbency, Electoral Safety, and Turnover in the House of Representatives, 1952–1976’, American Political Science Review, 75 (1981), 119–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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