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The electoral dominance of "quality" candidates—political insiders with a history of holding office—is well‐established. However, research on the recent rise in successful political neophytes is less studied. Despite longstanding trends in the predominance of experienced candidates in primary elections, nearly half of all quality candidates who ran in non‐incumbent races lost to a candidate without prior electoral experience in 2018. In this article, we investigate the success of political newcomers in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives by examining a topic often overlooked in the growing literature on primaries: campaign finance. We show that, from 2016 to 2020, political newcomers saw (1) greater success in future fundraising, and (2) an increased likelihood of primary election victory when they garnered more early contributions from outside their district. This contrasts with prior elections, where early money from inside a candidate's own congressional district served as the strongest predictor of future fundraising and electoral success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redistricting poses a potential harm to American voters in limiting choice and accountability at the polls. Although voters still retain their right to contact their representatives, research shows that the confusion created when redistricting divides ZIP codes confounds the constituent–representative link. We build on existing research that shows splitting ZIP codes across multiple congressional districts leads to harms in representation. Specifically, we examine the role of splitting ZIP codes on the recognition of the racial group membership of one's Congressional representative, a foundational component of the descriptive representation of racial minority voters via minority–majority districts in the United States. We find that citizens living in split ZIP codes are significantly less likely to know the race of their member of Congress. This occurs even when controlling for a host of factors including the race and partisanship of the constituent, the tenure of the member, and the amount of time a constituent has lived in their congressional district. Our work provides further evidence of the democratic harms experienced by American citizens living in ZIP codes that are split between multiple congressional districts. This work also points to the representational harms produced by poor district design on the representation of American voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial identification is a critical factor in understanding a multitude of important outcomes in many fields. However, inferring an individual's race from ecological data is prone to bias and error. This process was only recently improved via Bayesian improved surname geocoding (BISG). With surname and geographic-based demographic data, it is possible to more accurately estimate individual racial identification than ever before. However, the level of geography used in this process varies widely. Whereas some existing work makes use of geocoding to place individuals in precise census blocks, a substantial portion either skips geocoding altogether or relies on estimation using surname or county-level analyses. Presently, the trade-offs of such variation are unknown. In this letter, we quantify those trade-offs through a validation of BISG on Georgia's voter file using both geocoded and nongeocoded processes and introduce a new level of geography—ZIP codes—to this method. We find that when estimating the racial identification of White and Black voters, nongeocoded ZIP code-based estimates are acceptable alternatives. However, census blocks provide the most accurate estimations when imputing racial identification for Asian and Hispanic voters. Our results document the most efficient means to sequentially conduct BISG analysis to maximize racial identification estimation while simultaneously minimizing data missingness and bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]