Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: From 1949 to 1975 senators made repeated efforts to adopt majority rule in the Senate, and failed each time. Why dido senators vote against majority rule in the Senate? This paper explains senators' preferences toward cloture rule reform from 1949 to 1975. We use innovative scaling methods to analyze a unique dataset of senators' choices related to cloture reform.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The incumbent senator’s ideological vulnerability tends to cause the emergence of the quality challenger. The quality challenger is characterized as strategic: she is more likely to enter the contest when her prospects for winning the election are most favorable. _x000d__x000d_This study asserts that the probability that the quality challenger enters the Senate election is dependent on the ideological congruence of the incumbent senator. The most fundamental aspect to discern the incumbent’s vulnerability is how acutely she has advanced constituency’s interests in terms of ideological representation on roll call votes. The ideological deviation of the incumbent senator from the ideological preference of constituency produces a favorable condition that enhances the challenger’s prospects for winning the election, facilitating the emergence of the quality challenger. _x000d__x000d_Using Senate elections where the incumbent senator runs for reelection from 1962 to 2006, this study reveals the relationship between the ideological distance of the incumbent senator and her probability of facing the quality challenger, shedding light on the conditional nature illustrating the strategic emergence of the quality challenger in Senate elections.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Do non-policy valence advantages that incumbent members of Congress possess affect spatial position-taking? Are legislators who deliver substantial amounts of federal largesse more likely to diverge from their constituency medians? Are legislators who are perceived as more competent than their opponents more likely to diverge from the preferences of their constituents? I argue and empirically demonstrate that valence advantages such as the distribution of “pork” projects and legislator competence allow incumbent legislators to deviate from the policy preferences of their constituents (in some instances). Formal valence theories of position-taking are examined in this paper, and I argue for an expansive definition of valence advantages that includes both valence policies and non-policy valence characteristics. I show that valence advantages sometimes cause legislators to converge to their constituents’ preferences and to sometimes diverge. I test the expectations of valence theories of congressional position-taking by examining an example of a valence issue (distributive policy) and a valence characteristic (an incumbent’s perceived competence relative to his or her challenger). These empirical tests are conducted with original data on senators’ divergence from their states’ median voters during the 104th-107th Congresses (1995-2002). One key contribution of this paper is the creation of ideal point estimates of legislators and constituency medians on a common scale using Bayesian MCMC ideal point estimation techniques (similar to the popular NOMINATE scores, though unlike NOMINATE, these scores include measures of constituents and senators). The findings are that valence theories of position-taking are demonstrated when examining incumbent divergence from the constituency median. In sum, senators with no valence advantage diverge from their constituents; senators with small valence advantages move closer to their constituents; and senators with large valence advantages are able to deviate far off of their constituents’ preferences. The implications of these results are that senators who deliver very large amounts of federal outlays to a state or senators perceived as very competent relative to their campaign challengers are able to vote closer to their own personal preferences than to their constituents’ preferences.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, we seek to understand how senators and negotiate the conflict between parties and interest groups on votes that groups choose to score. Our preliminary results suggest that many of the observed majority party rolls occur on votes th

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Congress scholars have produced a number of statistical procedures to estimate the preferences of legislators in roll call voting. In order to test current theoretical models of spatial voting, however, it is also necessary to obtain proper estimates of the location of the proposal and of the status quo. In this paper we extend recent research on ideal point estimation to provide a plausible location for the proposal and the status quo in roll call data. We show that there is often sufficient information to significantly narrow the area where the proposal and the status quo reside. We exemplify our modeling strategy through the use of simulations and roll call data from the 107th U.S. Senate.