What’s a losing party to do? The calculus of contesting state legislative elections

Thomas Carsey () and William Berry ()

Public Choice, 2014, vol. 160, issue 1, 273 pages

Abstract: Existing theories of contesting elections typically treat all potential challengers as identical while under-playing the importance of political parties and primary contests. We offer a theory addressing these issues based on how the various actors in the process define and evaluate the probability of winning an election and the value of the office being contested. We test our theory by estimating a model predicting which of three responses a party that loses a legislative race makes in the next cycle: nominating the same candidate, nominating a new candidate, or nominating no one. We find substantial empirical support for our theory. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: State legislatures; Elections; Strategic candidates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-013-0079-5

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