The Case of the Missing Reciprocal Influence: Incumbent Reputation and the Vote

Demonstrating that what incumbents do brings them electoral reward has proven surprisingly frustrating. At the individual level, the best evidence for this hypothesis comes from studies which employ voters' subjective assessments of their incumbents' casework-related activities. Some schol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of politics 1996-11, Vol.58 (4), p.1198-1207
Main Author: Romero, David W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Candidates
Congressional elections
Identifiers
Incumbent
Incumbents
Legislators
Political Affiliation
Political parties
Political partisanship
Politics
Reputation
Research Notes
Social research
United States
Variable coefficients
Voter behavior
Voters
Voting
Voting Behavior
Wellbeing
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Summary:Demonstrating that what incumbents do brings them electoral reward has proven surprisingly frustrating. At the individual level, the best evidence for this hypothesis comes from studies which employ voters' subjective assessments of their incumbents' casework-related activities. Some scholars, however, claim these findings are due to rationalization effects: voters have favorable assessments of their incumbents because they intend to support them in the upcoming election. This is a valid criticism. However, these critics do not investigate whether voter assessments have a meaningful influence on incumbent affect once rationalization is considered. I ask this question. I discover that once rationalization is controlled, voter assessments of incumbent reputation indeed leave a significant and meaningful influence on the vote for the incumbent.
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.2307/2960157