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Swing Time: Assessing Causes for Shifts in Congressional Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Ronald B. Rapoport
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Extract

Most research on voting behaviour and elections has focused on cross-sectional analysis of particular elections. This technique is very useful in telling us about the influences on individual voter decision making. Less commonly research has focused on short-term electoral change, and has tried to explain specific election results with respect to one another, or in relation to long-term trends.

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Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 222 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Converse, Philip, ‘The Concept of a Normal Vote’ in Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip, Miller, Warren, and Stokes, Donald, Elections and the Political Order (New York: John Wiley, 1966), pp. 9–39.Google Scholar

2 Stokes, Donald, ‘Some Dynamic Elements of Contests for the Presidency’, American Political Science Review, LX (1966), 19–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See, for example, Arcelus, F. and Meltzer, A. H., ‘The Effect of Aggregate Economic Variables on Congressional Elections’, American Political Science Review, LXIX (1975), 1232–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fiorina, Morris, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Kramer, Gerald, ‘Short Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Be haviour’, American Political Science Review, LXXV (1981), 131–43.Google Scholar

4 See Tufte, Edward, Political Control of the Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

5 Kernell, Samuel, ‘Presidential Popularity and Negative Voting’, American Political Science Review, LXXI (1977), 44–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Miller, Warren, Miller, Arthur and Schneider, Edward, American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952–1978 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

7 Actually this source provides turn-out figures for only a five-fold breakdown of party identification (combining weak identifers and independent leaners). Data on turn-out for all seven partisan categories was provided through personal communication from University of Michigan Institute of Social Research staff, to whom I am grateful.

8 Katosh, John and Traugott, Michael, ‘The Consequences of Validated and Self-Reported Voting Measures in Studies of Electoral Participation’ (unpublished paper, 1980).Google Scholar

9 Katosh, and Traugott, , ‘The Consequences of Validated and Self-Reported Voting Measures in Studies of Electoral Participation’, p. 18.Google Scholar

10 Our estimates for vote are the same as those reported from Center for Political Studies biennial surveys by Miller et al., except for our exclusion of apoliticals, who constituted an average of less than 0·05 per cent of the voting electorate over the period. In no case do our results differ from theirs by more than 0·2 per cent. On average they differ by only 0·05 per cent. (Rounding error also contributed to the discrepancy.) The turn-out rates used here include only those voters who actually reported which party they voted for. As a result of this factor, the CPS survey on which our statistics are based, do deviate from actual election results.

11 Campbell, Angus, ‘Surge and Decline: A Study of Electoral Change’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XXIX (1960), 397–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 If we subtract the effect of party identification for the year (1972) that it went opposite to the total sample shift, and do the same for defection in 1978, the average impact of party is reduced to 0·7 per cent for the 1966–78 period, and the effect for defection over the same period is reduced to 3·1 per cent.

13 See Miller, , Miller, and Schneider, , American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952–1978Google Scholar, for overtime data on these changes.

14 Cover, Albert and Mayhew, David, ‘Congressional Dynamics and the Decline of Competitive Congressional Election’ in Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce J., eds, Congress Reconsidered, 2nd edn (Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1981), p. 70.Google Scholar

15 Cover, and Mayhew, , ‘Congressional Dynamics and the Decline of Competitive Congressional Elections’, p. 75.Google Scholar

16 Witt, E., ‘A Model Election?’ Public Opinion, V (1983), 46–9.Google Scholar