Adam R Brown

Publications

• Party, Performance, and Strategic Politicians: The Dynamics of Elections for Senator and Governor in 2006
  • With Gary C. Jacobson. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 8 (winter): 384-409.
  • Data: When you unzip the files, you will find Stata datasets and do files. Data on Senators is forthcoming. Data on governors (zip).
  • Abstract: In this article, we analyze a unique set of state-level monthly survey data covering the eighteen months preceding the 2006 election to estimate (1) the relative effects of national and local conditions on the strength of challenges to incumbent senators and governors and (2) the effects of these challenges on incumbent popularity and, ultimately, vote shares. The analysis confirms several of the basic components of the theory that the strategic behavior of candidates and campaign contributors amplifies the effects of local and national conditions on election results, thereby enhancing electoral accountability. But it also uncovers a striking difference between the two offices. Even taking the strongly pro-Democratic national climate into account, the election context had a strong tendency to reduce the approval ratings of Senators, while it had an equally strong tendency to increase the approval ratings of governors. We speculate as to what might account for this difference.

Talks and Conference Papers

• What Money Can't Buy: Self-Financed Candidates in Gubernatorial Elections (PDF )
  • Paper presented at the ninth annual Conference on State Politics and Policy, held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, May 22-23, 2009.
  • Abstract: Critics are quick to accuse wealthy gubernatorial candidates of attempting to "buy" elections. But although wealthy gubernatorial candidates sometimes win, their electoral success does not necessarily imply that voters can be bought. To the contrary, I present evidence that self-financed campaign spending has a far weaker marginal effect on electoral results than externally-financed campaign spending. For every Corzine, there’s a DeVos—who spent record amounts in his 2006 attempt to unseat Michigan's incumbent governor, only to lose by an embarrassingly wide margin. Money can't buy the governor's mansion. This empirical finding presents a theoretical puzzle—why would externally financed spending trump self-finance? The solution lies in strategic incentives facing would-be campaign donors. A candidate's ability to raise funds serves as a crucial indicator of her electoral viability. When it comes to influencing voters, a candidate’s ability to raise money matters far more than her ability to spend it.
• Does Challenger Quality Matter? Candidates and Donors in the 2006 Gubernatorial Elections (PDF )
  • Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in Boston, Massachusetts, August 28-31, 2008.
  • Abstract: In a recent paper I showed that potential challengers and their financial backers behaved strategically when deciding whether to challenge incumbent governors in 2006; governors who appeared vulnerable in late 2006 attracted the most experienced, best-funded challengers. In this paper, I ask whether challenger strength even matters by examining two outcomes of interest: Changes in the incumbent's popularity over the course of the campaign, and the incumbent's performance on election day. Challenger strength turns out to matter only weakly, with a stronger effect on election results than on incumbent popularity. This difference suggests that if challenger strength matters, it does so partly because inexperienced challengers do not provide voters with a real choice on election day—experienced challengers are not necessarily better campaigners than inexperienced ones.
• Partisanship, Blame, and Divided Federalism: How Voters Assess Gubernatorial Responsibility for the State Economy (PDF )
  • Paper presented at the 8th annual State Policy and Politics Conference , held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 30-31, 2008.
  • Abstract: Elections are thought to provide a means for voters to hold politicians responsible for their behavior in office. But in the United States, voters directly elect dozens of politicians: Presidents, members of Congress, governors, legislators, mayors, and so on. How do voters decide which politician to blame for which policy outcomes? In some policy areas, one particular office may have a clear "functional responsibility," making blame easy to assign. But in many policy areas—economic development in particular—responsibility is shared. I argue that partisanship plays a crucial role in shaping voter allocations of blame, particularly in policy areas where functional responsibility is shared. I find support for this argument in analyses of both the 1982 and 2006 gubernatorial elections. Particularly under "divided federalism" (i.e., when the governor and the president belong to different parties), voter partisanship influences how voters perceive the state's economy and whether voters hold the governor responsible for the state's economic health.
• Party, Performance, and Strategic Politicians: The Dynamics of Elections for Senator and Governor in 2006 (PDF )
  • With Gary C. Jacobson. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, August 30-September 2, 2007.
  • Abstract: This paper analyzes a unique set of state-level monthly survey data covering the eighteen months preceding the 2006 election to estimate (1) the effects of national and local conditions on the strength of challenges to incumbent senators and governors and (2) the effects of these challenges on changes in state electorates’ ratings of officeholders and their share of votes on election day. The analysis confirms several of the basic components of the theory that the strategic behavior of candidates and campaign contributors amplify the effects of local and national conditions on election results, thereby enhancing electoral accountability. But it also uncovers a striking difference between the two offices: Even taking the strongly pro-Democratic national climate into account, the election context had a strong tendency to reduce the approval ratings of Senators, while it had an equally strong tendency to increase the approval ratings of governors. We speculate as to what might account for this difference.
• Gubernatorial Approval and Strategic Entry in the 2006 Elections (PDF )
  • Paper presented at the 65th annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 12-15, 2007.
  • Abstract: Previous work has shown that candidate quality and strategic donors mediate Congressional election results, but this insight has had little treatment in the literature on gubernatorial approval and elections. Rather than examine challengers and donors, most studies have attributed gubernatorial election outcomes entirely to voter behavior, which has the misleading implication that the variables driving election results also determine gubernatorial job approval ratings. This paper presents a new model of gubernatorial elections, paying special attention to how potential challengers in 2006 responded strategically to January's gubernatorial approval ratings.

Working Papers

• Gubernatorial Elections Reconsidered: Challengers, Donors, and Governors in the 2006 Campaign. 2009; in progress.
  • Abstract: Within the Congressional literature it is now widely accepted that potential candidates and their financial backers act strategically when deciding whether to challenge an incumbent. Nevertheless, analysts have presented conflicting evidence as to whether this dynamic operates in the context of U.S. gubernatorial elections, with the most detailed study concluding that "the decision to run for governor is poorly structured" (Leal 2006, 97). Using a variety of specifications, however, I find evidence of widespread strategic behavior in 2006. Governors who showed early signs of vulnerability attracted politically experienced, well-funded challengers. The governor’s approval rating in late 2005, particularly as measured among opposition respondents, provides the best indicator of vulnerability. The inconsistent findings in previous research appear to be an outgrowth of methodological decisions, at least in part.
• The Vice Presidential Home State Advantage. 2008; in progress.
  • Tentative abstract: In a brief research note, I use a more rigorous methodology to reevaluate an old question: Can vice presidential candidates deliver their home state's vote? Previous work has suggested that the vice president's home state advantage is much weaker than the president's. By contrast, I find that both effects have roughly the same magnitude. If one of the two major parties has a candidate from a particular state on its ticket, either as president or vice president, expect that state to give roughly 3 or 4 percentage points more to that party than it otherwise would.
• The Nested Game of Direct Democracy. 2006; under revision.
  • Abstract: In states that allow popular initiatives, legislative bargaining takes the form of a nested game; although individual legislators are responsible only to their districts, the legislature as a whole is responsible to the entire electorate. As such, legislators must tend both to their district's median voter (to ensure their reelection) and to the statewide median voter (to prevent an unattractive initiative). Therefore, initiatives increase responsiveness to the statewide median, possibly at the expense of each district's median. To avoid methodological difficulties discovered in previous analyses, this paper uses a new measurement of responsiveness, one based on survey measurements of policy satisfaction. I find that initiative institutions can boost policy satisfaction considerably; unexpectedly, however, I also find that actual use of initiatives appears to undermine policy satisfaction.
• Institutions, Issues, and Split-Ticket Voting. 2005; under revision.
  • Abstract: Many scholars assume that political issues fall along a single left-right dimension. But if we relax this assumption, what can we learn about split-ticket voting and, therefore, partisan loyalty? Given the institutional constraints that hinder establishment of major third parties in America (see Cox 1997), voters concerned with more than one issue area ought to be the weakest partisans.