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The president's party normally loses seats in the House of Representatives during US midterm elections. While many studies have examined the causes of seat loss, one area often mentioned by media pundits but not examined in midterm elections is the role of presidential agendas. In this paper, I examine whether legislative success is costly for the president's party during midterm elections. I find passing a larger number of legislative items and passing a larger percentage of the president's agenda costs the president's party seats in the midterm election. However, the president's party only suffers this penalty when the president's party also controls Congress. The president's party is not punished for legislative success when the president serves under divided government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The group-centered theory of party development provides a new theoretical framework for understanding early party development. Specifically, it provides a logical framework to understand why early state legislators were motivated to engage in partisan gerrymandering during a period without national organizations. I use Pennsylvania as a case study to determine if partisanship influenced the creation of congressional district maps in 1802, 1812, and 1822. Using county-level congressional election returns and state legislative journals, I provide evidence of strategic partisan gerrymandering by the Democratic-Republicans during each apportionment year. I also show that the Federalist minority in Pennsylvania knew the national political impact of the process and attempted to influence congressional maps for their own partisan advantage. Lastly, I demonstrate how multi-member districts were the Democratic-Republicans' weapon of choice to engage in partisan gerrymandering throughout the period. These results highlight the connection between state legislatures and congressional party politics during the first party era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in elite-level polarization and the changing partisan nature of elections to the U.S. House led scholars to posit that candidate characteristics are minor considerations in determining these election outcomes. However, it is not clear if these trends extend to the U.S. Senate or if candidate considerations have lost the relatively minor predictive power they exhibited during the 2010s, particularly as partisanship continued to rise as a predictor of election outcomes. Using historical data on elections to the U.S. House and Senate from 1900 to the recent 2022 midterm elections, we test whether the incumbency advantage and candidate quality differentials are still salient predictors of congressional elections. We find that the incumbency advantage largely disappeared as a salient component of election outcomes for both chambers as partisanship increasingly shapes these outcomes. By contrast, we find that candidate quality differentials, while waning, still can play a considerable role in shaping congressional election outcomes, particularly in the Senate. We conclude by showing that the declining emergence of quality candidates may have played a pivotal role during the 2022 election cycle by costing Republicans control of the U.S. Senate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past experience in elective office has always been the best predictor of congressional candidate success in elections. These "quality" candidates come into elections with experience fundraising, name recognition, and general knowledge about how to run a successful campaign. Yet, recent congressional elections have seen an increase in the electoral success of inexperienced candidates. As past experience in office may no longer be valued as it once was, how are these experienced candidates marketing themselves to voters? Are they still leaning into their past experience in elected office or are they more likely to emphasize other occupations and experiences? We expect candidates brand themselves, emphasizing different experiences, based on the type of election they are in and who they are running against. In order to test these expectations, this paper examines all available biography pages of experienced candidates who ran in congressional primaries in 2022. We find clear partisan differences in what candidates past occupational backgrounds they highlight. We find mixed evidence that decisions about what occupations to emphasize vary based on electoral dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the months leading up to the 2022 midterms, Republicans believed a variety of factors were working in their favor including inflation and overall state of the economy, redistricting, and Biden's low levels of public approval. After the electoral dust settled, Republicans won a narrow majority in the House, but actually lost a seat in the Senate. Why did Republicans fail to fully capitalize on the specific midterm conditions that historically have favored the out-party? This paper examines the results of the 2022 primary and general elections, identifies electoral trends and themes, and considers the implications of the results in terms of prior congressional election research. Based on aggregate election data and survey-based evidence, it appears that former President Trump's enduring shadow over the midterms and the Supreme Court's decision in the Dobbs case hindered the Republicans' ability to win a larger share of seats in Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We examine how congressional candidates use social media such as Twitter (X) to promote a political brand and connect with voters during campaigns. Methods: Using a mixed‐method, interdisciplinary approach, we first conduct a brand analysis using 22 candidates from 11 open‐seat races in 2020. We develop and test several hypotheses using our races from 2020 and the subsequent contests in these districts in 2022, as well as the universe of tweets from all congressional candidates from the 2020 and 2022 general election campaigns (n = 789,411). Results: We find the three prominent themes present in our brand analysis—the adoption of gender roles, the mimicking of Trump, and expressions of populism—persist when we examine the Twitter posts from congressional candidates in 2020 and 2022. Male and female candidates behave differently on Twitter as do Republicans and Democrats. Most Republican candidates, regardless of gender, mimic the Trump brand rife with populist themes. Conclusion: We integrate research from political science and communication studies to gain a better understanding of how congressional candidates present their political brand to voters. We raise new questions scholars from the social sciences must consider while studying these phenomena in a fast‐evolving political and social media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does candidate ideology affect donors' contribution decisions in U.S. House elections? Studies of donor motivations have struggled with confounding of candidate, donor, and district characteristics in observational data and the difficulty of assessing trade-offs in surveys. We investigate how these factors affect contribution decisions using experimental vignettes administered to 7,000 verified midterm donors. While ideological congruence influences donors' likelihood of contributing to a candidate, district competitiveness and opponent extremity are equally important. Moreover, the response to ideology is asymmetric and heterogeneous: donors penalize more moderate candidates five times more heavily than more extreme candidates, with the most extreme donors exhibiting the greatest preference for candidates even more extreme than themselves. Republicans also exhibit a greater relative preference for extremism than Democrats, although partisan differences are smaller than differences by donor extremism. Our findings suggest that strategic considerations matter, and donors incentivize candidate extremism even more than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections, contests that were widely expected to produce a sizable defeat for Democratic candidates for largely economic reasons. Based on a representative national probability sample of voters interviewed in both 2020 and 2022, individuals who changed their vote from one party's congressional candidate to another party's candidate did not do so in response to the salience of inflation or declining economic conditions. Instead, we find strong evidence that views on abortion were central to shifting votes in the midterm elections. Americans who favored (opposed) legal abortions were more likely to shift from voting for Republican (Democratic) candidates in 2020 to Democratic (Republican) candidates in 2022. Since a larger number of Americans supported than opposed legal abortions, the combination of these shifts ultimately improved the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates. New voters were especially likely to weigh abortion views heavily in their vote-shifting calculus. Likewise, those respondents whose confidence in the US Supreme Court declined from 2020 to 2022 were more likely to shift from voting for Republican to Democratic congressional candidates. We provide direct empirical evidence that changes in support for the Supreme Court, a nonpartisan branch of the federal government, are implicated in partisan voting behavior in another branch of government. We explore the implications of these findings for prevalent assumptions about how economic conditions influence voting, as well as for the relationship between the judiciary and electoral politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: A shift of Latino voters to Republican Party candidates has been observed in recent years. Past research on presidential elections supports the idea that borderlands counties vote differently than other counties in borderlands states and tend to favor Democratic Party candidates. This study explores congressional voting patterns in the Texas borderlands. Methods: Using county‐level data for Texas counties in 2010 and 2022, this study examines Republican congressional voting as a function of (1) borderlands cultural and economic context, (2) economic conditions, (3) social contact, and (4) religious adherence. We contribute to existing scholarship by proposing that there are three district border subregions. Results: Overall, this study finds increased levels of support for Republican congressional candidates in the borderlands region. However, when subregions are compared, those counties with economic linkages to Mexico and rural Tejano counties are more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates in 2010 and 2022. The West Texas borderlands region, however, is no longer distinctive from other Texas counties in terms of voting patterns in 2022. Conclusion: Voters in the predominantly Latino Texas borderlands are increasingly voting for Republican congressional candidates suggesting a change in partisan attachment. The effects of foreign‐born arrivals and rising economic optimism in the borderlands may lead to more voting for Republican candidates. However, current economic realities and linkages as well as past social and political marginalization may continue to make borderlands voters distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]