‼️ New working paper ‼️
We find bipartisan appeals credibly signal policymaking intentions—on an issue-by-issue basis
We show how and why bipartisan lawmaking persists amid congressional conflict: progress often comes through issue-specific pathways rather than broad consensus between Ds and Rs
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My response to the NYT’s “moderate to win” argument: The data shows the strategy is tapped out. Being seen as moderate by voters doesn’t boost votes, replacing every progressive with moderates would net 0 seats, and the graveyard of defeated D incumbents if full of moderates, not progressives.
Just published at PNAS (@pnas.org): “Electing amateur politicians reduces cross-party collaboration”
We show that districts electing first-time members of the U.S. House experience substantial declines in bipartisan representation in the subsequent Congress.
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This project started in a machine learning seminar during my third year of grad school, and I am proud to see it finally out. I am grateful to the MANY people who provided feedback and helped with it along the way (8/8)
As a part of this project, I am committed to estimating and sharing WEB Scores for future congressional elections online for other researchers interested in campaign positioning (github.com/crcase/WEB-S...). WEB Scores for 2024 should be posted in the next few weeks (7/8)
I also find that these shifts are a function of incumbents changing both what issues they discuss and their positions on the issue areas they do discuss. Given candidates' campaign promises carry over to Congress, this result has important legislative consequences (6/8)
Using WEB Scores, I show that incumbents' positioning changes across election cycles in response to the emergence and positioning of their primary challengers. When using existing measures of campaign positioning, I do not find the same effect (5/8)
WEB Scores also increase the number of candidates with a positioning score. Of the 6,016 major-party, ballot-eligible candidates who ran for Congress in all states from 2018-2022, 4,509 of them have a WEB Score (75%), higher than the best existing measures (~65%) (4/8)
In the paper, I introduce Website Embedding (WEB) Strategic Positioning Scores. WEB Scores are estimated using candidates' campaign website issue positions (campaignview.org). Importantly, WEB Scores measure the candidates' actual positioning during the campaign (3/8)
However, existing measures of campaign positioning are not well-suited it answer it because (1) they are often based on perceptions of candidate positioning, not candidates' actual positioning, and (2) exclude large proportions of candidates who challenge incumbents (2/8)
My paper analyzes how congressional incumbents' positioning changes across elections in response to the emergence and positioning of a primary challenger. Given recent events and the current electoral environment, this question is especially salient (1/8)
Excited to announce my paper, Measuring Strategic Positioning in Congressional Elections, is officially accepted and online @thejop.bsky.social here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Quick thread on the paper below:
Reposted from @alexandersahn.bsky.social:
Data from CampaignView(campaignview.org) show that the only term that Democrats used in more than 1% of statements in campaign platforms (2018-2022) is *privilege*
💰 How should we measure early campaign fundraising?
▶️ @colinrcase.bsky.social & @rachelporter.bsky.social propose two distinct approaches: candidate-centred and election-centred early money. Explore their framework👇 www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView
📢 Thrilled to share our new article introducing CampaignView—a comprehensive open-source dataset of congressional candidate campaign bios and policy platforms (2018–2022). Paper + data here: campaignview.org & doi.org/10.7910/DVN/... 🧵1/4