Adam R Brown

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• 2013. "Does Money Buy Votes? The Case of Self-Financed Gubernatorial Candidates, 1998-2008." Download from Political Behavior (gated).
  • In Political Behavior 35 (March): 21-41. Portions were presented at the 2010 State Politics and Policy Conference and at the 2009 meeting of the American Political Science Association. These conference papers can be downloaded below.
  • Supplemental appendix: Click to download the article's supplemental online appendix .
  • Abstract: Because campaign spending correlates strongly with election results, observers of American politics frequently lament that money seems to buy votes. However, the apparent effect of spending on votes is severely inflated by omitted variable bias: The best candidates also happen to be the best fundraisers. Acting strategically, campaign donors direct their funds toward the "best" candidates--who would be more likely to win even in a moneyless world. These donor behaviors spuriously amplify the correlation between spending and votes. As evidence for this argument, I show that (non-strategic) self-financed spending has no statistical effect on election results, whereas (strategic) externally-financed spending does
• 2012. "The Item Veto's Sting." Download from SPPQ (gated).
  • Iin State Politics and Policy Quarterly 12 (June): 183-203. An earlier draft was presented at the 2011 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. It can be downloaded below.
  • Online veto game simulator: To replicate this article's simulations with parameters of your choice, visit the veto bargaining simulator.
  • Abstract: Despite lofty expectations from the item veto's proponents (and fears from its opponents), formal models have suggested that the item veto is unlikely to have much effect beyond what a full veto could render. However, I show that different findings obtain when item vetoes are appreciated more fully as a dimensionality-reducing institution. I begin by developing a package veto model in a generalized multidimensional space. I then show how introducing the item veto changes the outcome by forcing veto bargaining into what is essentially a unidimensional space. As a result, executives with an item veto or other dimensionality-reducing institution (such as a single subject rule) can be far more powerful in legislative bargaining than executives who lack these tools, other things being equal. I use simulations to demonstrate the model's main implications.
• 2011. "Twitter: The Electoral Connection?" Download from SSCR (gated).
  • With David S. Lassen. In The Social Science Computer Review 29 (4): 419-436. An earlier draft was presented at the 2010 Midwest Political Science Association Conference and is available for download below.
  • Abstract: The rapid rise of Twitter and other social media tools has enticed many members of Congress to personally use these services. Such waves of technological adoption are comparatively rare in Congressional history, leaving us with little knowledge about why some members of Congress adopt new technologies while others do not. We find that Twitter adoption and use are relatively difficult to predict. Members are more likely to use Twitter if they belong to the minority party, if their party leaders urge them to, if they are young, or if they serve in the Senate. Surprisingly, we find that electoral vulnerability has little or no effect on Twitter adoption or use.
• 2011. "Losing to Nobody? Nevada's 'None of these Candidates' Ballot Reform." Download from SSJ (gated).
  • In The Social Science Journal 48 (June): 364-370.
  • Abstract: Since 1975, Nevada voters have had the option of voting for "none of these candidates" in all statewide elections—a reform that one-third of the American states have since considered copying. It remains unclear, however, what effects this reform has had. By testing several arguments made by proponents and opponents of this reform, I find, first, that voters who actually choose "none of these" are motivated by a mixture of ignorance and protest; second, that most voters who choose "none" would probably have left parts of their ballot blank in the absence of the "none" option; and third, that "none" does not drain votes from third-party candidates, as some have feared.
• 2011. "Wikipedia as a Data Source for Political Scientists? Accuracy and Completeness of Coverage." Find it at the journal's website (gated), or just download the article here .
  • In PS: Political Science and Politics 44 (April): 339-343.
  • Abstract: In only nine years, Wikipedia has risen from obscurity to become the dominant information source for an entire generation. Any visitor can edit any page on Wikipedia, however, a model that does little to create confidence in its accuracy. I review thousands of Wikipedia articles about candidates, elections, and officeholders to assess both the accuracy and the thoroughness of Wikipedia's coverage. I find that Wikipedia is almost always accurate when a relevant article happens to exist, but errors of omission are extremely frequent. These errors of omission follow a predictable pattern; Wikipedia's political coverage is often very good for recent or prominent topics, but lacking on older or more obscure topics.
• 2010. "Are Governors Responsible for the State Economy? Partisanship, Blame, and Divided Federalism." Download from JOP (gated) or the less-polished manuscript as submitted .
  • In The Journal of Politics 72 (July): 605-615.
  • Abstract: In the United States, voters directly elect dozens of politicians: Presidents, governors, legislators, mayors, and so on. How do voters decide which politician to blame for which policy outcomes? Previous research on gubernatorial approval has suggested that voters divide policy blame between governors and the president based on each office's "functional responsibilities"—requiring that responsibilities are clearcut, which is seldom true. Using data from four surveys, I show that voters actually divide responsibility for economic conditions in a partisan manner, preferring to blame officials from the opposing party when problems arise.
• 2008. "Party, Performance, and Strategic Politicians: The Dynamics of Elections for Senator and Governor in 2006." Download (gated).
  • With Gary C. Jacobson. In State Politics and Policy Quarterly 8 (winter): 384-409.
  • Data: When you unzip the files, you will find Stata datasets and do files for the portions of the article dealing with governors. 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

• 2013. "Voters Don't Care about Incumbency" 
  • Paper presented at the 71st annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 10-13, 2013.
  • Abstract: We have long known that US House incumbents enjoy profound electoral advantages. However, existing research has not asked whether individual voters actually prefer incumbents over newcomers, other things being equal. Instead, existing research has focused on showing that other things aren't equal, by emphasizing the structural advantages that incumbents enjoy. Contrary to the many speculations on the subject by political scientists and by pundits, I present experimental results showing that voters apparently are not concerned with incumbency status at all.
• 2013. "Why do Legislators Miss Votes?" 
  • With Jay Goodliffe. Paper presented at the 71st annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 10-13, 2013.
  • Abstract: A state legislator's main job is to vote on legislation, yet legislators routinely miss votes. By studying absenteeism exclusively in the Congressional context, existing studies have produced useful but partial explanations. By shifting our focus to American state legislatures, we are able to assess additional dimensions of legislative absenteeism. Our analysis includes data on 3,089,089 individual votes cast by 4,667 legislators from 64 American states. Analyzing this data produces insights that build on and sometimes conflict with Congressional research. In particular, we find that state legislators tend to avoid participating in close or major votes, contrary to what Congressional studies have found. We also find that state-to-state variations in legislative professionalism—in particular, legislator salary—affect absenteeism, with increasing professionalism leading to less absenteeism.
• 2012. "Do Voters Care about Incumbency?" 
  • Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in New Orleans, Lousiana, August 29-September 2, 2012.
  • Abstract: We have long known that US House incumbents enjoy profound electoral advantages. However, existing research has not asked whether individual voters actually prefer incumbents over newcomers, other things being equal. Instead, existing research has focused on showing that other things aren't equal, by emphasizing the structural advantages that incumbents enjoy. I present experimental evidence showing that voters prefer incumbents even when the structural advantages are held constant. I supplement this experimental evidence with observational data showing that the incumbency advantage is greater in California, where incumbency status appears on the ballot, than in Florida, where it does not appear on the ballot.
• 2011. "Why do County Parties Have Platforms? Brand Differentiation in the States" 
  • Paper presented at the 11th annual Conference on State Politics and Policy, held at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 3-4, 2011.
  • Abstract: At the national level, written party platforms serve to define each party's distinct "brand" reputation. I seek to explain why some county Republican and Democratic party organizations draft their own platforms rather than rely on these national platforms. Although the major national parties draft platforms to differentiate themselves from one another, I find that local parties draft platforms to differentiate themselves from the national party organization whose name they share. As evidence, I find that local parties are more likely to draft a separate platform (or create a county party website) if the national party's presidential candidates perform poorly in local elections. I also find that resources play a role; local parties are more likely to draft a platform if they have greater membership resources to draw on in doing so.
• 2011. "The Item Veto's Sting" 
  • Paper presented at the 69th annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, March 30-April 3, 2011.
  • Abstract: Despite lofty expectations from the item veto's proponents, formal models have generally shown that the item veto is unlikely to have much effect beyond what a full veto could render. However, different findings obtain when item vetoes are modeled as a dimensionality-reducing institution. I begin by developing a (full) veto bargaining model in a generalized multidimensional space. I then show how introducing the item veto changes the outcome by forcing veto bargaining into a unidimensional space. As a result, executives with an item veto or single subject rule are far more powerful in legislative bargaining than executives who lack these tools, other things being equal. I use simulations to demonstrate the model's main implications.
• 2011. "Can't Get on the News? Get on Twitter"
  • With David S. Lassen, who is the corresponding author. Paper presented at the 69th annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, March 30-April 3, 2011.
• 2010. "Self-Finance is Not Strategic: Data from the 1998-2008 Gubernatorial Elections" 
  • Paper presented at the 10th annual Conference on State Politics and Policy, held in Springfield, Illinois, June 3-5, 2010.
  • Abstract: Several studies have shown that campaign donors choose strategically which candidates to support. That is, if a potential donor's most preferred candidate has little chance of victory, that donor will probably give her money strategically to a less preferred but more viable candidate. I argue, however, that the theoretical logic supporting these findings applies only to traditional (external) campaign contributions, not to self-financed contributions. Candidates appear to pay little or no attention to the strategic context when deciding whether to contribute money to their own campaigns. Understanding this critical distinction between externally financed and self-financed contributions may help analysts better understand the effects of campaign spending on election results.
• 2010. "Twitter: The Electoral Connection" 
  • With David S. Lassen. Paper presented at the 68th annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 22-25, 2010.
  • Abstract: The rapid rise of popular online communication tools such as Twitter has enticed a large number of members of Congress to adopt these services themselves. Such waves of technological adoption are comparatively rare in Congressional history, leaving us with little knowledge about why some members of Congress adopt new technologies while others do not. We show that adoption rates are driven in part by political considerations, but also by demographic ones: Twitter use is more common among younger members, members of the minority party, and among Congressional leaders. We test this hypothesis with a model that incorporates a number of electoral vulnerability markers—including district profile, previous margin of victory, and candidate fundraising ability—to predict member usage of Twitter. Central to this project is an intriguing, novel data set we have compiled of over 30,000 Twitter posts, or "tweets," published by members of Congress.
• 2009. "Campaign Spending and Spurious Correlations: Why Self-Financed Gubernatorial Candidates Lose" 
  • Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, held in Toronto, Canada, September 3-6, 2009.
  • Abstract: A revised and updated take on "What Money Can't Buy," listed below. Critics are quick to accuse wealthy gubernatorial candidates of attempting to "buy" elections. But although self-financed 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. As such, the apparent correlation between campaign spending and votes is largely spurious.
• 2009. "What Money Can't Buy: Self-Financed Candidates in Gubernatorial Elections" 
  • 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.
• 2008. "Does Challenger Quality Matter? Candidates and Donors in the 2006 Gubernatorial Elections" 
  • 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.
• 2008. "Partisanship, Blame, and Divided Federalism: How Voters Assess Gubernatorial Responsibility for the State Economy" 
  • 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.
• 2007. "Party, Performance, and Strategic Politicians: The Dynamics of Elections for Senator and Governor in 2006" 
  • 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.
• 2007. "Gubernatorial Approval and Strategic Entry in the 2006 Elections" 
  • 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.

Dissertation

I earned my PhD from UCSD, as discussed here. My dissertation dealt with the roles that challengers and campaign donors play in U.S. gubernatorial elections. The best parts appear in the peer-reviewed articles listed above. But just for fun, here's a graphic I made with wordle showing roughly what I wrote about. (Click to enlarge.)