Assessing Electoral Competition: A Look at the Influences of Partisan Voter Index Scores and Election Margins on the Home Styles of U.S. Representatives.

This paper is a portion of a dissertation, exploring if and how political competition impacts the home styles of several U.S. House members in different electoral contexts. To begin to assess this large question, this qualitative paper will examine franked materials collected from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives to compare behaviors of subjects who have earned above and below 60 percent of the vote in general elections. The entire sample represents districts whose underlying Partisan Voter Index (PVI) Scores should indicate a safe principal partisan advantage for members of their political party; yet, only one subject has consistently enjoyed election returns over 60 percent. Another subject has never broken 60 percent of the vote, while a third subject has fluctuated above and below this threshold. This paper finds suggestive evidence that the tenor of the franked material produced doesn't fluctuate in the context of perceived competition in an approaching election or following a competitive election, thus suggesting that this medium is essentially not influenced by political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]