Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Invisible Coattails: Presidential Approval and Gubernatorial Elections, 1994–2014

Invisible Coattails: Presidential Approval and Gubernatorial Elections, 1994–2014 AbstractHoping to insulate their contests from national politics, thirty-six states hold their gubernatorial elections in national midterm election years. Many scholars have assessed whether presidential evaluations nevertheless have an effect on these races, though findings have varied. We offer a new approach to examining this question, relying on underutilized state-level presidential approval data preceding 143 gubernatorial races across six national midterm election cycles. Accounting for the effects of state ideology, gubernatorial approval, campaign spending, state economic performance, and incumbency, we report that presidential approval has a positive and significant effect on the performance of the presidential party in gubernatorial races. The substantive effects are modest, though still potentially meaningful. In the primary specification, an additional six points of presidential approval is associated with about one additional point of gubernatorial vote share. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Forum de Gruyter

Invisible Coattails: Presidential Approval and Gubernatorial Elections, 1994–2014

The Forum , Volume 16 (2): 19 – Jul 26, 2018

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/invisible-coattails-presidential-approval-and-gubernatorial-elections-heAJWFpw0d

References (51)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
ISSN
1540-8884
eISSN
1540-8884
DOI
10.1515/for-2018-0013
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractHoping to insulate their contests from national politics, thirty-six states hold their gubernatorial elections in national midterm election years. Many scholars have assessed whether presidential evaluations nevertheless have an effect on these races, though findings have varied. We offer a new approach to examining this question, relying on underutilized state-level presidential approval data preceding 143 gubernatorial races across six national midterm election cycles. Accounting for the effects of state ideology, gubernatorial approval, campaign spending, state economic performance, and incumbency, we report that presidential approval has a positive and significant effect on the performance of the presidential party in gubernatorial races. The substantive effects are modest, though still potentially meaningful. In the primary specification, an additional six points of presidential approval is associated with about one additional point of gubernatorial vote share.

Journal

The Forumde Gruyter

Published: Jul 26, 2018

There are no references for this article.