The Role of Candidate Emergence in Explaining Republican Success in Southern House Elections.

Since 1994, Republicans have matched their success in presidential politics in the South by winning and maintaining a majority of the Southern congressional seats. One theory suggests that prior to the 1990s the paradox of Republican success in presidential elections and holdover Democratic success in congressional elections was, in part, the result of an advantage in the size and quality of the Democratic candidate pool. The theory argues that Republicans had no viable alternative to defeat Democratic candidates in open seat congressional elections, much less in elections to challenge incumbents. Recent research has shown that Republicans largely negated this advantage in the 1990s. This paper argues that alongside partisan realignment and redistricting favorable to Republicans (among other factors), changing patterns of candidate emergence contributed to the Republican?s success in winning and maintaining a majority of Southern congressional seats at the end of the 20th and into the 21st Century. This paper introduces measures of candidate emergence to the prevailing models used to explain the rise of Republican strength in Southern House elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]