Suchergebnisse

There are two distinct views on how candidate (or party) issue strategies influence mass evaluations. One is the view underlying the classic spatial model that the proximity between the voter's own issue positions and the positions taken by the candidates drives the evaluation. The other view is directionally motivated. In the directional model voters are seen as having only diffuse preferences for one side or the other on an issue, with voter support and opposition stimulated by a candidate taking a strong stand in favor of a particular side. Researchers have long recognized that electorates are heterogeneous. We consider a model in which each of these two different views of issue-based voting is correct for a part of the electorate. We find that candidates trying to optimize support in this heterogeneous environment will generally adopt more extreme positions than those implied by proximity theory and more central positions than those implied by directional theory.

In Reactionary Republicanism, Bryan Gervais and Irwin Morris develop the most sophisticated analysis to date for gauging the Tea Party's impact upon the U.S. House of Representatives. They show how the relationship between Trump and the Tea Party has important implications for the trajectory of his administration and conclude with a discussion of these implications and their connection to the future of the Republican Party.

AbstractIn the summer of 2010, 52 Republican members of the US House of Representatives joined the newly formed Tea Party Caucus, bringing the first institutional voice to the Tea Party movement. To understand both thepolicyorientations of the organized Tea Party (in its caucus manifestation) and the institutional strength of the caucus's membership, we assess the extent to which caucus members are distinctive from their fellow Republicans in the US House of Representatives. Our results suggest that membership in the caucus is primarily driven by ideology and economics. Specifically, we find that Tea Party Caucus members are Republicans who are ideologically oriented toward limited government and lower taxes and who hail from particularly prosperous congressional districts. We find no evidence that Tea Party Caucus members serve safer districts or have greater seniority or institutional stature than their Republican colleagues who are not members of the caucus. These findings, we believe, speak not only to the nature and orientations of the Tea Party Caucus, but to the wider Tea Party movement itself.

Research on presidential greatness has a long history in the study of the American presidency. A prominent aspect of this literature is the study of presidential ratings generated from surveys of both experts and average Americans. A considerable body of research suggests that a relatively small number of factors—such as time in office, intellectual brilliance, and whether a president was assassinated—explain a great deal of the variation in the ratings. However, this list of variables includes no indicators of policy performance. We propose two such measures—one focusing on economic outcomes and one focusing on the outcomes of military conflict—and provide rationales for the hypothesized relationships between these measures of policy performance and presidential ratings. We find evidence of a substantial relationship between economic policy success and presidential ratings. However, there is no evidence of a relationship between foreign policy success and presidential ratings.

Theories involving coattails, surge and decline, presidential popularity, and the economy ascribe little importance to presidential efforts to influence congressional elections. Since such efforts do occur, we ask: What happens when a president campaigns for fellow partisans? We examined President George W. Bush's decisions to campaign for certain House candidates in 2002, and we assessed the effect of his visits on Republicans' electoral successes. Both the competitiveness of a race and the president's electoral self‐interest increased the likelihood of a visit on behalf of a candidate. Neither party loyalty nor presidential support in Congress had an effect. We conclude that presidential campaign visits significantly enhance candidates' electoral prospects.