The Effect of Contested Elections on Partisanship

(Posted on behalf of a student who wishes to remain unnamed on the Web)

Background

The rise in the number of gerrymandered districts in the United States corresponds to an increasing tendency toward extremism and partisanship in American politics. The two trends are particularly disconcerting because they empower each other, resulting in Congressional sessions that are both inefficient and arguably ineffective. Public frustration has led to calls for fairer districting and more bipartisanship in Congress. One suggestion for producing more moderate politicians is to establish fairer districts – districts in which there will not be a “safe seat” in an election and candidates must appeal to swing voters to achieve a victory.

While research on the benefits of such highly competitive elections has proven inconclusive, the idea is intuitively appealing. Garnering support for fairer districting, however, will require more than intuitive sense. Consequently, this project seeks to contribute to the evolving body of research on the effects of “highly contested” elections through the employment of social network analysis. It will focus on the House of Representatives, where districts shape the election and politicians are constantly considering the next election cycle.

Objective & Research Question

Do highly contested elections produce Representatives who are more or less partisan than their House colleagues?

Hypothesis

Because highly contested elections depend heavily on the choices of swing voters, it is hypothesized that Representatives from highly contested districts will want to “signal” that they not only share the ideological leanings of voters on both sides of the political spectrum but also support policies that produce outcomes all of their constituents desire. They will consequently form networks with stronger bonds across party lines than their “safe seat” peers.

Methodology

The project will start with an analysis of a two-mode network representing affiliations between Representatives during House sessions (one network per session). Nodes will be analyzed using degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and eigenvector centrality.

Network links between Representatives can demonstrate the “strength” of connections between Representatives by highlighting how frequently they support each other or interact at a policy level. Analysis on these networks will seek to determine whether bipartisan Representatives (“highly contested” Representatives) are actually at the center of the House network or act rather as links between dense, centralized party networks.

The majority of the analysis will be conducted through network comparisons, attempting to draw conclusions from the differences in patterns and network structures. For example, the project will seek to compare the ego network of a highly contested Representative to the ego network of a “safe seat” Representative with the hope that the process will provide insight into their structure, density, and affiliations. And, in the event that enough data can be collected, the project will also attempt to compare a House network during a congressional session in which there were more highly contested seats with a House network during a congressional session in which there were fewer.

Data

Data will be drawn from publically available information on Representatives themselves, House voting records, committee membership, and House bills (passed and unpassed).

Primary data will be collected for House networks, including: • Representatives’ connections through their voting records. • Representatives’ connections through the bills they sponsor – with whom and on what issues.

Attribute data will be collected for each Representative, including: • Gender • Party Affiliation (republican, democrat, other) • Election results (margin of victory) • Number of previous terms • Education • Age • Issues important to voting constituents during the election (jobs, healthcare, farm subsidies, etc) • Committee memberships

Limitations and other considerations

Data limitations –

Project will be conducted using only information that is publically accessible. House networks calculated through this project will therefore reflect nothing about the personal relationships between Representatives or any behind-the-scenes politicking that could very well indicate stronger bipartisanship than voting records and bill sponsorship could demonstrate.

Things to Consider –

It is going to be necessary to define “highly contested” in the context of elections so as to ensure that consistency is maintained in distinguishing highly contested Representatives over multiple House sessions. One way to define the phrase might be to establish a specific range of “margins of victory”; any Representatives who win their elections by a percentage of votes within the established margin will be considered a “highly contested” Representative. Additional questions include: What does “bipartisan” look like in a social network? Is it an equal number of connections among both parties or just stronger connections across party lines (in relative terms) than party peers? The project will also require clarifying how many Congressional sessions would be necessary for valid analysis.