Keywords
Midterm elections, u.s. house of representatives, economy
Abstract
This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of midterm U.S. House elections using a multi-level research design. At the aggregate-level, multiple regression analysis is used to examine the variables that affect seat loss for the president’s party. This integrates, updates and extends the extant literature of the topic, and offers a means of explaining and predicting seat losses by the president’s party in the U.S. House. To further probe the findings at the aggregatelevel, the thesis develops a pooled cross-sectional model of individual-level vote choice in midterm U.S. House elections using data from the American National Election Studies (1982- 2002) and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study for the 2006 and 2010 midterm elections. Findings suggest that variables measuring the performance of the economy and realignment of the South toward the Republican Party affect seat loss at the aggregate level. However, at the individual level, economic evaluations exerted little influence on vote choice, above and beyond party identification, although perceptions of the national economy did appear to influence vote choice in the 2006 and 2010 elections. Future research might incorporate the strategic politician thesis into the explanatory scheme and move the analysis to elections for other political offices, such as U.S. Senate elections as well as state legislative and gubernatorial elections.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2013
Semester
Summer
Advisor
Knuckey, Jonathan
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
College
College of Sciences
Department
Political Science
Degree Program
Political Science; American and Comparative Politics
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0004883
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004883
Language
English
Release Date
August 2013
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Access Status
Masters Thesis (Open Access)
Subjects
Dissertations, Academic -- Sciences, Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic
STARS Citation
Macdonald, David, "The President's Party At The Midterm: An Aggregate And Individual-level Analysis Of Seat Loss And Vote Choice In U.S. House Elections" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2655.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2655