The Impact of Incumbent Scandals on Senate Elections, 1972–2016

Nicholas Chad Long
Additional contact information
Nicholas Chad Long: Department of Political Science, Global Studies, Environmental Science and Policy, School of Behavioral and Social Sciences, St. Edward’s University, Austin, TX 78704, USA

Social Sciences, 2019, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: In recent decades, a growing body of literature focused on the effects of scandals on congressional elections. The studies concluded that scandals decrease candidates’ vote totals, and that certain types of scandals have a more deleterious effect than others. Virtually all of these studies focus on House elections. The obvious differences between the two chambers calls into question the applicability of these findings for Senate elections. This study examines the impact that incumbent scandals had on senatorial elections from 1972 to 2016. Scandals are categorized based on the nature of the transgression in order to determine if the type of scandal made a difference. The results reveal that senators seeking reelection while confronting a scandal suffered a 4% decrease in the popular vote. Scandals involving political misdeeds, financial improprieties, and controversial statements hurt incumbents the most. Scandals also attracted challengers who spent more money against the incumbents.

Keywords: Congress; campaigns and elections; political candidates; voting behavior; scandals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/4/114/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/4/114/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:8:y:2019:i:4:p:114-:d:220262

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().