Partisan Strategy and Support in State Legislative Elections: The Case of Illinois

In: American politics research, Volume 33, Issue 3, p. 376-403

Abstract

Using state-level data from Illinois General Assembly elections, I test the implications of a formal model of electoral competition where political parties present voters with platforms of ideological locations and levels of partisan support for their candidates. Consistent with the model, I find that candidate policy positions and parties' campaign contributions are responsive to district partisan predisposition, even when controlling for the policy preferences of the district's median voter and other conventional determinants of candidate ideology and funding. Also consistent with the theory, uncontested elections occur more often in politically lopsided districts than in districts where there are more even levels of partisan competition, and there is an inverse relationship between candidate policy extremity and campaign contributions. These results support a theory of activist programmatic parties in the electoral arena and highlight the need for further scholarship on the role of parties in the electorate and their connections with parties in the legislature.