The President's Influence on Congressional Candidate Evaluations

Abstract

Contemporary congressional elections can be fairly described as not only nationalized, but also increasingly president-centric. While the implications of nationalization for both candidates' electoral prospects and voter decision-making have been explored in recent studies, we know comparatively less about how the nationalized electoral environment influences candidate evaluations. Understanding how voters assess congressional candidates is important because electoral phenomena like the incumbency advantage depend on voters making distinctions between candidates or elected officials from the same party. Our primary objective in this paper is to assess the role of presidential politics in the nationalization of candidate evaluations. If the president plays an important role in the nationalization of congressional elections, a voter's assessment of a congressional candidate will be highly dependent upon her attitudes toward the president. We test this dynamic with both cross-sectional and panel survey data.