Flashcards
Congressional elections
Cards in this deck (9)
- 1Elections and voting;Congressional elections.
- 2Until the passage of the 17th amendment the senate was indirectly elected – appointed by state legislatures, now both Houses are directly elected. Congressional Elections occur every 2 years, members of HOR serve a 2-year term while Senators serve a 6-year term (with 1/3rd of senators are up for re-election every 2 years). So every 2 reasons the whole of HOR and 1/3 of Senate are re-elected. They are held the Tuesday after the first Monday of November. (2008-2012, they coincide with Presidential election). Elections in the years between presidential elections are called mid-term elections as they fall midway through the president's 4 year term of office.CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS: Elections held every two years for the whole of the HOR and 1/3rd of Senate.
MID-TERM ELECTIONS: The elections for the whole HOR and 1/3 of Senate that occur midway through the president's 4-year term of office. - 3Constitutional requirements; the constitution has certain requirements. AGE- Representative= 25y/o. Senator= 30y/o. CITIZENSHIP- Representative= US citizen for at least 7 years. Senator= US citizen for at least 9 years old. RESIDENCY- Representative=Resident of the state they report. Senator= Resident of state they represent.CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: A geographical division of state from which a member of the House of Representatives is elected. Congressional District within a state are denoted by numbers; thus a House member represents e.g. the 32rd district of California/10th district of New York.
LOCALITY RULE: A state law that requires members of the House of Representatives to be resident not just within the state but also within the congressional district they represent. - 4Nomination process: Someone wishing to gain access to Congress needs to win the nomination of one/two major parties. 3rd-party candidates rarely win seats in Congress. Securing the nomination may mean running in congressional primary- winner automatically becomes that party's candidate in the general election. Congressional primaries are held in the months before Nov. election (between May and September). Sometimes even an incumbent senator/representative may be challenged for the nomination in the upcoming election and therefore have to contest a primary- however defeat is really unlikely. In the elections between 1982-2012 only 8 were defeated in primaries.Dem. Joe Lieberman (independent) of Connecticut in 2006 and Republican Lisa Murkowski (as a write in candidate) of Alaska in 2010- managed to get re-elected despite their defeat in the primary. In 2010, Rep. Bob Bennett of Utah was denied a place on the Rep. Primary by his State Party Convention. 2012 Rep Richard Lugar was defeated. During the 30-y period, 62 incumbent House members were defeated in primaries (13-2012).
- 5Trends in congressional elections; 4 trends; 1) Coattails effects; It occurs when a strong candidate for a party at the top of the ticket (for president, mid-term election, state governor) can help other party candidate to get elected at the same time. E.g. Reagan in 1980, Reps gained 33 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate when 9 incumbent Dem Senators were defeated, or 2008 Obama gained 21 seats in House and 8 in Senate.There's also been a reverse Coattail effects e.g. in 2000 with Bush when he lost 1 seat in the House and 4 in Senate. Gary Jacobson (09) studies congressional elections and found president's usually get more done in Congress the more seats their party holds in the House and Senate. Also, members of Congress who've been elected w/President's help are likely to support the president's than the others due to 'gratitude or shared fate'. Also, partisan sweep in both presidential and congressional races sends a message to all politicians in Washington- even members from the opposition party who survive will be wary of falling foul.
- 62) Split-ticket voting; Occurs when someone votes for the candidate of different political party offices at the same election e.g. Rep President but Dem member of Congress. There's evidence that voters think in terms of divided government e.g. 1996 Rep admitted that Bob Dole would lose so appealed to voters to re-elect Rep-controlled Congress. Split-splitting often results in state supporting a presidential candidate from one party but senatorial candidate from another party. In 2012 this occurred in 6 states3) Strongish support for incumbents ;
there have been high re-election rates in the past two decades, especially in the house. In 2012 350 house members were re-elected out of the 390 who sought it. 21 senators were re-elected out of the 23 who sought it. In the four elections between 1998 and 2004 re-election rates for the house was 95%. However in the elections between 2006 and 2012 145 incumbents were defeated. However, re-election rates in the senate had remained high during this period with only 10 incumbents defeated between 2008 and 2012. - 74) Fewer competitive races in House elections – a competitive seat is one that was one by the incumbent by less than 10 percentage points. Between 1992 and 2004 there were less competitive seats (dropped by 80). This meant by 2004 404 out of 435 seats were safe seats. There was a small drop in safe seats around 2010 but by 2012 they had increased. This could be due to the drawing of congressional district boundaries to create safe seats.VOTING BEHAVIOUR IN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS:
Local issues – voters in congressional elections cast ballots upon local issues. For example in Texas policies to stop illegal immigration is a deciding factor, whereas in Florida policies to stop drug smuggling is important.
Record of incumbent - voters will carefully look at what the incumbent has done for them and their controversial decisions. E.g. republican Wayne Gilchrest and democrat Albert Wynn were defeated in 2008 due to their controversial decision in 2002 to authorise Bush’s troops in Iraq. - 8President's party tends to lose: usually lose seats in both houses (2002 is the only year in the last 50 where the president's party gained seats in both houses). The first reason for this is that if the president has a coattail effect two years before, the candidates will do less well without his name on the ticket. The second reason is that voters use midterms to express disapproval with the president’s previous 2 years in office. E.g. in 2010 many unhappy with Obama therefore democrats lost 63 seats in the house and 6 seats in the senate.Congressional elections, 2010:
The loss of seats in the house in 2010 was the worst performance since 1922 when republicans lost 75 house seats. Their performance in the senate could have been worse had the republican not picked ‘accident prone’ Tea Party candidates who lost seats due to ill-judged remarks.
Exit polls suggested democrats were;
• 6 points down amongst white voters.
• 7 points down amongst men.
• 8 points down amongst women.
• 9 points down amongst 18-29 year olds.
• 10 points down amongst Catholics.
• 14 points down amongst self-identified independent voters. - 9—
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- A-Level Politics-3c Representative Processes in the USA Flashcards on Congressional elections, created by vesara on 12/06/2016.
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