Andrew Ballard | American University (original) (raw)

Drafts by Andrew Ballard

Party support is critical to winning congressional office. However, scholars disagree whether the... more Party support is critical to winning congressional office. However, scholars disagree whether the goals of parties in elections are pragmatic or ideological, and these goals have different implications for the legislative behavior of party-preferred candidates once in office. We join usually distinct perspectives to argue that parties emphasize different goals at different times. We examine links between party support in primary elections and subsequent behaviors of candidates in Congress. We find that candidates who received higher levels of party support during the primary election were more likely to focus their activities in Congress around partisan efforts. Further, party support of incoming legislators is linked to increased partisan behavior through replacement. However, we also find that these relationships are stronger for majority party candidates, suggesting that parties put a greater emphasis on winning majorities when in the minority but a greater emphasis on policy congruence when in the majority.

When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing leg... more When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing legislative outcomes? Here, we advance a theory of minority party capacity, arguing that minority parties can have influence when they are presented with the right opportunities, and are cohesive enough and motivated enough to take advantage. Drawing on data on every bill considered in the House of Representatives between-, and case examples of notable lawmaking efforts during this same period, we show that our theory helps predict which bills are considered on the House floor, which bills become law, and the substance of policymaking outcomes. Our findings have important implications for theories of congressional party power and our understanding of minority party influence on Capitol Hill.

How strategically do majority parties set the agenda in the House of Repre-sentatives? Scholars a... more How strategically do majority parties set the agenda in the House of Repre-sentatives? Scholars and observers alike expect to see contemporary House majority parties monopolize the floor agenda, strategically advance legislation that helps the party and its members achieve their goals, and minimize the influence of the minority party, especially in recent party polarized years. Drawing on data about every bill introduced in the House from-and every amendment offered on the House floor from-, we find only limited evidence of House majority parties setting the agenda to strategically advance the policy or electoral goals of the party and its members. While majority parties clearly have a lot of power to set the chamber agenda, they are also meaningfully constrained in their ability to utilize the agenda for strategic, partisan purposes. Date: June , .

The study of agenda control in Congress has largely been the study of negative agenda control, bu... more The study of agenda control in Congress has largely been the study of negative agenda control, but this is only a piece of the full picture of agenda control. I present an approach to analyze agenda control based on estimates of how members would have voted on bills that were killed before the oor (pre-oor bills). This allows me to investigate both positive and negative agenda control, and for a direct comparison between House and Senate. Contrary to recent research comparing the level of agenda control between the two chambers, but consistent with our institutional understanding , I nd higher levels of agenda control in the House than in the Senate. While I nd strong negative agenda control in both chambers, I nd strong positive agenda control in the House only.

While members of Congress need the party's brand to be effective, party and member interests some... more While members of Congress need the party's brand to be effective, party and member interests sometimes diverge. I present an account of policymaking that explains how parties react to these situations, attempting to extract " Yea " votes necessary to pass bills from members who want to vote " Nay, " : Public statements act as a signal of voting intention that helps hold members to their intended vote. Using a novel dataset of public statements made by members of Congress, I describe this process using recent salient health care bills: the Affordable Care Act and the America's Health Care Act. When parties convince reluctant members to vote with the party, those members are more likely to make a public statement in favor of the bill. Further, I show that these statements are precommitment devices to voting with the party, separating this purpose from credit claiming or otherwise explaining their decisions to their constituents.

Parties seek to hold their members accountable for their actions, but we know little of how this ... more Parties seek to hold their members accountable for their actions, but we know little of how this functions outside of voting behavior. We create a measure of how well each member's floor speeches fit with those of their party--speech fit--and compare it to a similar measure of voting fit in order to study how parties hold members accountable for both floor speeches and votes. Using evidence from the 97th-108th United States Congresses, we show that parties reward members whose speech behavior fits with the party by providing them more resources related to the party's electoral goals, and that parties reward members based on a similar measure of how well their voting behavior fits with that of the party with resources more related to electoral goals. We discuss implications for Congressional research and text research, where our approach has broad applications.

The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing h... more The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing has been thought of as a cause of political polarization. Party leaders face an immense tradeoff financing non-incumbent races when the party is out of power: while they care about gaining control of the House, they do not know how manageable a potential representative will be once elected. Leadership PAC (LPAC) contributions are a major mechanism of leadership control over the financing of congressional campaigns, with the hope of gaining influence over the future behavior of candidates. Using FEC contribution data from the 2006-2012 House elections, we study differences between contributions of the LPACs for leaders of both parties conditional on majority status. We find that both majority and minority party leaders make contributions to foster ideological homogeneity within the party and to win as many elections as possible. However, winning elections is more important for the minority than for the majority, and ideological homogeneity is stressed more when in the majority than when in the minority.

When House incumbents do lose primary elections, they lose disproportionately to quality challeng... more When House incumbents do lose primary elections, they lose disproportionately to quality challengers. So when are (quality) challengers more likely to oppose an incumbent in a primary? I show that challengers are more likely to oppose an incumbent when the incumbent is seen as vulnerable, but potential challengers rely more on vulnerability indicators about incumbents themselves than context-based factors. Challengers also tend to take a holistic view of incumbent vulnerability, rather than looking at specific indicators. Lastly, quality challengers are largely responsible for these trends, and they tend to push non-quality challengers away from running.

Many scholars argue that strong primary challenges contribute to party polarization by inducing M... more Many scholars argue that strong primary challenges contribute to party polarization by inducing Members of Congress to become more ideologically extreme. I demonstrate that our thinking about primary elections is incomplete, providing evidence that incumbents who are part of a homogeneous party and survive a difficult primary challenge do not become more extreme, and even move closer to the ideological center of their party as a result. I find this effect for Democrats, but not Republicans, between 1980 and 2010, and discuss how these findings can be explained by an extension of the theory of Conditional Party Government.

Papers by Andrew Ballard

Replication materials for the two studies in the main text and the one study in the online appendix

Legislative Studies Quarterly, 2020

We analyze the effects of President trump's endorsements on House and senate elections in 2018. P... more We analyze the effects of President trump's endorsements on House and senate elections in 2018. Previous work has argued that presidential endorsements are usually positive or, at worst, neutral for the recipient candidates. We find that President trump was more likely to endorse candidates with a higher pre-endorsement likelihood of winning and to endorse candidates in more competitive races, suggesting the president used endorsements strategically both to try and help republican candidates win and to boost his reputation for helping candidates win. However, while President trump's public endorsements provided a financial boost to endorsed candidates, they also increased donor support of opposing candidates and were ultimately detrimental to candidates' vote shares and likelihood of winning. this work provides evidence for potential backlash effects among opposition voters in response to presidential endorsement in a nationalized political environment and expands our understanding of the impact of presidential campaigning in congressional midterm elections. Mr. Trump has magic about him. This guy has magic coming out of his ears. He is an astonishing vote getter & campaigner.-Ben stein (tweeted by President donald trump) 1 Rather than endorse my campaign, I wish the president would endorse my position.

The Journal of Politics, 2016

How do citizens view economists, and how do they respond to consensus in the profession? We exami... more How do citizens view economists, and how do they respond to consensus in the profession? We examine the responsiveness of the American public to information regarding the distribution of opinion among economists on five economic policy issues. We also examine the extent and role of citizens’ trust in economists. We find that trust is tepid and find correspondingly small-to-moderate changes in public opinion when citizens are given information about expert opinion. Indeed, we provide evidence that responsiveness is larger when the consensus is attributed to a generic sample of people than when it is attributed to economists. We also find heterogeneity in responsiveness across issues, such that opinion change is smaller on symbolic policy issues than technical ones. Further, on the former, but not the latter, we find that citizens use judgments of trust in economists in a motivated fashion, to reinforce prior opinions.

PS: Political Science & Politics, 2016

ABSTRACTAlthough much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of televis... more ABSTRACTAlthough much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of television advertising alone, online advertising is an increasingly prominent part of political campaigning. Research on other online political communication—especially candidate websites, blogs, and social media—tends to conclude that these communications are aimed primarily at turning existing supporters into campaign donors, activists, and volunteers. Is a similar communication strategy found in online display ads—those ads placed adjacent to website content? In one of the first systematic analyses of the nature, content, and targets of online display advertising, we examined 840 unique online display ads from the 2012 presidential campaign. We show that the policy content, ad location, and interactive elements of the ads varied based on the audience, with persuasive appeals aimed at undecided or persuadable voters and engagement appeals aimed at existing supporters. Comparing ad content acr...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016

The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing has been thoug... more The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing has been thought of as a driver of political polarization. Party leaders face an immense tradeoff financing non-incumbent races when the party is out of power: while they care about gaining control of the House, they do not know how manageable a potential representative will be once elected. Leadership PAC (LPAC) contributions are a major mechanism of leadership control over the financing of congressional campaigns, with the hope of gaining influence over the future behavior of candidates. Using FEC contribution data from the 2006-2012 House elections and a new dataset that estimates candidate ideal points based on campaign finance donations the candidates received, we study differences between contributions of the LPACs of leaders and non-leaders of both parties, with distinction between when the party tries to regain or retain power. We find that the strength of ideologically extreme giving by party leaders is largely contingent on the electoral conditions of the election overall. Minority party leaders are generally incentivized to support more ideologically extreme candidates than when in the majority. We are directly interested in the impact of such donations on the propagation of ideologically extreme representatives, specifically how the weakening of tools of party leadership control over their members propels polarization.

American Political Science Review, 2021

When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing leg... more When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing legislative outcomes? We argue that the capacity of the minority party to exert legislative influence is a function of three factors: constraints on the majority party, which create opportunities for the minority party; minority party cohesion on the issue at hand; and sufficient motivation for the minority to engage in legislating rather than electioneering. Drawing on data on every bill considered in the House of Representatives between 1985 and 2006 and case examples of notable lawmaking efforts during the same period, we show that our theory helps predict which bills are considered on the House floor, which bills become law, and the substance of policy-making outcomes. Our findings have important implications for theories of congressional party power and our understanding of minority party influence on Capitol Hill.

Although much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of television adve... more Although much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of television advertising alone, online advertising is an increasingly prominent part of political campaigning. Research on other online political communication—especially candidate websites, blogs, and social media—tends to conclude that these communications are aimed primarily at turning existing supporters into campaign donors, activists, and volunteers. Is a similar communication strategy found in online display ads—those ads placed adjacent to web-site content? In one of the fi rst systematic analyses of the nature, content, and targets of online display advertising, we examined 840 unique online display ads from the 2012 presidential campaign. We show that the policy content, ad location, and interactive elements of the ads varied based on the audience, with persuasive appeals aimed at undecided or persuadable voters and engagement appeals aimed at existing supporters. Comparing ad content across candidates also found that each side focused on those issues for which the candidate had a strategic advantage. As a consequence, and in contrast to the conclusions of previous research that examines television advertising, we found minimal issue engagement in online advertising.

Given an increasing presence in the public sphere, what role do economic experts play in shaping ... more Given an increasing presence in the public sphere, what role do economic experts play in shaping public opinion on economic issues? In this paper, we examine the responsiveness of American public opinion on five economic policy issues to real information regarding the distribution of opinion on these issues among economists. We also examine the extent and role of trust in economists within the public. On average, we find meaningful changes in public opinion in the direction of expert consensus when citizens are given explicit information about expert opinion. However, we also find heterogeneity in citizen responsiveness across issues, such that aggregate opinion change is smaller on symbolic policy issues relative to technical ones. Further, on symbolic (but not technical) issues we find that citizens use judgments of the trustworthiness of economic experts in a motivated fashion, as a means of reinforcing prior opinions.

Party support is critical to winning congressional office. However, scholars disagree whether the... more Party support is critical to winning congressional office. However, scholars disagree whether the goals of parties in elections are pragmatic or ideological, and these goals have different implications for the legislative behavior of party-preferred candidates once in office. We join usually distinct perspectives to argue that parties emphasize different goals at different times. We examine links between party support in primary elections and subsequent behaviors of candidates in Congress. We find that candidates who received higher levels of party support during the primary election were more likely to focus their activities in Congress around partisan efforts. Further, party support of incoming legislators is linked to increased partisan behavior through replacement. However, we also find that these relationships are stronger for majority party candidates, suggesting that parties put a greater emphasis on winning majorities when in the minority but a greater emphasis on policy congruence when in the majority.

When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing leg... more When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing legislative outcomes? Here, we advance a theory of minority party capacity, arguing that minority parties can have influence when they are presented with the right opportunities, and are cohesive enough and motivated enough to take advantage. Drawing on data on every bill considered in the House of Representatives between-, and case examples of notable lawmaking efforts during this same period, we show that our theory helps predict which bills are considered on the House floor, which bills become law, and the substance of policymaking outcomes. Our findings have important implications for theories of congressional party power and our understanding of minority party influence on Capitol Hill.

How strategically do majority parties set the agenda in the House of Repre-sentatives? Scholars a... more How strategically do majority parties set the agenda in the House of Repre-sentatives? Scholars and observers alike expect to see contemporary House majority parties monopolize the floor agenda, strategically advance legislation that helps the party and its members achieve their goals, and minimize the influence of the minority party, especially in recent party polarized years. Drawing on data about every bill introduced in the House from-and every amendment offered on the House floor from-, we find only limited evidence of House majority parties setting the agenda to strategically advance the policy or electoral goals of the party and its members. While majority parties clearly have a lot of power to set the chamber agenda, they are also meaningfully constrained in their ability to utilize the agenda for strategic, partisan purposes. Date: June , .

The study of agenda control in Congress has largely been the study of negative agenda control, bu... more The study of agenda control in Congress has largely been the study of negative agenda control, but this is only a piece of the full picture of agenda control. I present an approach to analyze agenda control based on estimates of how members would have voted on bills that were killed before the oor (pre-oor bills). This allows me to investigate both positive and negative agenda control, and for a direct comparison between House and Senate. Contrary to recent research comparing the level of agenda control between the two chambers, but consistent with our institutional understanding , I nd higher levels of agenda control in the House than in the Senate. While I nd strong negative agenda control in both chambers, I nd strong positive agenda control in the House only.

While members of Congress need the party's brand to be effective, party and member interests some... more While members of Congress need the party's brand to be effective, party and member interests sometimes diverge. I present an account of policymaking that explains how parties react to these situations, attempting to extract " Yea " votes necessary to pass bills from members who want to vote " Nay, " : Public statements act as a signal of voting intention that helps hold members to their intended vote. Using a novel dataset of public statements made by members of Congress, I describe this process using recent salient health care bills: the Affordable Care Act and the America's Health Care Act. When parties convince reluctant members to vote with the party, those members are more likely to make a public statement in favor of the bill. Further, I show that these statements are precommitment devices to voting with the party, separating this purpose from credit claiming or otherwise explaining their decisions to their constituents.

Parties seek to hold their members accountable for their actions, but we know little of how this ... more Parties seek to hold their members accountable for their actions, but we know little of how this functions outside of voting behavior. We create a measure of how well each member's floor speeches fit with those of their party--speech fit--and compare it to a similar measure of voting fit in order to study how parties hold members accountable for both floor speeches and votes. Using evidence from the 97th-108th United States Congresses, we show that parties reward members whose speech behavior fits with the party by providing them more resources related to the party's electoral goals, and that parties reward members based on a similar measure of how well their voting behavior fits with that of the party with resources more related to electoral goals. We discuss implications for Congressional research and text research, where our approach has broad applications.

The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing h... more The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing has been thought of as a cause of political polarization. Party leaders face an immense tradeoff financing non-incumbent races when the party is out of power: while they care about gaining control of the House, they do not know how manageable a potential representative will be once elected. Leadership PAC (LPAC) contributions are a major mechanism of leadership control over the financing of congressional campaigns, with the hope of gaining influence over the future behavior of candidates. Using FEC contribution data from the 2006-2012 House elections, we study differences between contributions of the LPACs for leaders of both parties conditional on majority status. We find that both majority and minority party leaders make contributions to foster ideological homogeneity within the party and to win as many elections as possible. However, winning elections is more important for the minority than for the majority, and ideological homogeneity is stressed more when in the majority than when in the minority.

When House incumbents do lose primary elections, they lose disproportionately to quality challeng... more When House incumbents do lose primary elections, they lose disproportionately to quality challengers. So when are (quality) challengers more likely to oppose an incumbent in a primary? I show that challengers are more likely to oppose an incumbent when the incumbent is seen as vulnerable, but potential challengers rely more on vulnerability indicators about incumbents themselves than context-based factors. Challengers also tend to take a holistic view of incumbent vulnerability, rather than looking at specific indicators. Lastly, quality challengers are largely responsible for these trends, and they tend to push non-quality challengers away from running.

Many scholars argue that strong primary challenges contribute to party polarization by inducing M... more Many scholars argue that strong primary challenges contribute to party polarization by inducing Members of Congress to become more ideologically extreme. I demonstrate that our thinking about primary elections is incomplete, providing evidence that incumbents who are part of a homogeneous party and survive a difficult primary challenge do not become more extreme, and even move closer to the ideological center of their party as a result. I find this effect for Democrats, but not Republicans, between 1980 and 2010, and discuss how these findings can be explained by an extension of the theory of Conditional Party Government.

Replication materials for the two studies in the main text and the one study in the online appendix

Legislative Studies Quarterly, 2020

We analyze the effects of President trump's endorsements on House and senate elections in 2018. P... more We analyze the effects of President trump's endorsements on House and senate elections in 2018. Previous work has argued that presidential endorsements are usually positive or, at worst, neutral for the recipient candidates. We find that President trump was more likely to endorse candidates with a higher pre-endorsement likelihood of winning and to endorse candidates in more competitive races, suggesting the president used endorsements strategically both to try and help republican candidates win and to boost his reputation for helping candidates win. However, while President trump's public endorsements provided a financial boost to endorsed candidates, they also increased donor support of opposing candidates and were ultimately detrimental to candidates' vote shares and likelihood of winning. this work provides evidence for potential backlash effects among opposition voters in response to presidential endorsement in a nationalized political environment and expands our understanding of the impact of presidential campaigning in congressional midterm elections. Mr. Trump has magic about him. This guy has magic coming out of his ears. He is an astonishing vote getter & campaigner.-Ben stein (tweeted by President donald trump) 1 Rather than endorse my campaign, I wish the president would endorse my position.

The Journal of Politics, 2016

How do citizens view economists, and how do they respond to consensus in the profession? We exami... more How do citizens view economists, and how do they respond to consensus in the profession? We examine the responsiveness of the American public to information regarding the distribution of opinion among economists on five economic policy issues. We also examine the extent and role of citizens’ trust in economists. We find that trust is tepid and find correspondingly small-to-moderate changes in public opinion when citizens are given information about expert opinion. Indeed, we provide evidence that responsiveness is larger when the consensus is attributed to a generic sample of people than when it is attributed to economists. We also find heterogeneity in responsiveness across issues, such that opinion change is smaller on symbolic policy issues than technical ones. Further, on the former, but not the latter, we find that citizens use judgments of trust in economists in a motivated fashion, to reinforce prior opinions.

PS: Political Science & Politics, 2016

ABSTRACTAlthough much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of televis... more ABSTRACTAlthough much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of television advertising alone, online advertising is an increasingly prominent part of political campaigning. Research on other online political communication—especially candidate websites, blogs, and social media—tends to conclude that these communications are aimed primarily at turning existing supporters into campaign donors, activists, and volunteers. Is a similar communication strategy found in online display ads—those ads placed adjacent to website content? In one of the first systematic analyses of the nature, content, and targets of online display advertising, we examined 840 unique online display ads from the 2012 presidential campaign. We show that the policy content, ad location, and interactive elements of the ads varied based on the audience, with persuasive appeals aimed at undecided or persuadable voters and engagement appeals aimed at existing supporters. Comparing ad content acr...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016

The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing has been thoug... more The proliferation of external campaign financing at the expense of party financing has been thought of as a driver of political polarization. Party leaders face an immense tradeoff financing non-incumbent races when the party is out of power: while they care about gaining control of the House, they do not know how manageable a potential representative will be once elected. Leadership PAC (LPAC) contributions are a major mechanism of leadership control over the financing of congressional campaigns, with the hope of gaining influence over the future behavior of candidates. Using FEC contribution data from the 2006-2012 House elections and a new dataset that estimates candidate ideal points based on campaign finance donations the candidates received, we study differences between contributions of the LPACs of leaders and non-leaders of both parties, with distinction between when the party tries to regain or retain power. We find that the strength of ideologically extreme giving by party leaders is largely contingent on the electoral conditions of the election overall. Minority party leaders are generally incentivized to support more ideologically extreme candidates than when in the majority. We are directly interested in the impact of such donations on the propagation of ideologically extreme representatives, specifically how the weakening of tools of party leadership control over their members propels polarization.

American Political Science Review, 2021

When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing leg... more When, and under what circumstances, are congressional minority parties capable of influencing legislative outcomes? We argue that the capacity of the minority party to exert legislative influence is a function of three factors: constraints on the majority party, which create opportunities for the minority party; minority party cohesion on the issue at hand; and sufficient motivation for the minority to engage in legislating rather than electioneering. Drawing on data on every bill considered in the House of Representatives between 1985 and 2006 and case examples of notable lawmaking efforts during the same period, we show that our theory helps predict which bills are considered on the House floor, which bills become law, and the substance of policy-making outcomes. Our findings have important implications for theories of congressional party power and our understanding of minority party influence on Capitol Hill.

Although much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of television adve... more Although much of what we know about political advertising comes from the study of television advertising alone, online advertising is an increasingly prominent part of political campaigning. Research on other online political communication—especially candidate websites, blogs, and social media—tends to conclude that these communications are aimed primarily at turning existing supporters into campaign donors, activists, and volunteers. Is a similar communication strategy found in online display ads—those ads placed adjacent to web-site content? In one of the fi rst systematic analyses of the nature, content, and targets of online display advertising, we examined 840 unique online display ads from the 2012 presidential campaign. We show that the policy content, ad location, and interactive elements of the ads varied based on the audience, with persuasive appeals aimed at undecided or persuadable voters and engagement appeals aimed at existing supporters. Comparing ad content across candidates also found that each side focused on those issues for which the candidate had a strategic advantage. As a consequence, and in contrast to the conclusions of previous research that examines television advertising, we found minimal issue engagement in online advertising.

Given an increasing presence in the public sphere, what role do economic experts play in shaping ... more Given an increasing presence in the public sphere, what role do economic experts play in shaping public opinion on economic issues? In this paper, we examine the responsiveness of American public opinion on five economic policy issues to real information regarding the distribution of opinion on these issues among economists. We also examine the extent and role of trust in economists within the public. On average, we find meaningful changes in public opinion in the direction of expert consensus when citizens are given explicit information about expert opinion. However, we also find heterogeneity in citizen responsiveness across issues, such that aggregate opinion change is smaller on symbolic policy issues relative to technical ones. Further, on symbolic (but not technical) issues we find that citizens use judgments of the trustworthiness of economic experts in a motivated fashion, as a means of reinforcing prior opinions.