Partisanship and Contested Election Cases in the House of Representatives, 1789-2002.

This paper identifies, tracks, and examines the 601 contested election cases in the House of Representatives from the 1st through 107th (1789-2002) Congresses. A chief goal of the paper is to assess the degree to which partisanship has been a significant factor in influencing contested election outcomes. The chief finding is that a sizeable majority of successful contests have favored the majority party; however, the overall impact of the contested election process, in terms of adding majority party seats, has been quite small on a per-Congress basis. The one exception to this latter finding was during the late-nineteenth century, when a significant increase in successful contests, and majority party additions, occurred. This was due, in large part, to the Republican Party’s strategic use of contested elections as a means of maintaining a presence in the former-Confederate South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]