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Title: Responsiveness and Election Proximity in the United States Senate

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2016

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Abstract: One of the most important questions in the study of democratic representation is whether elected ocials are responsive to the preferences of their constituents, and whether responsiveness varies across institutional conditions. However, previous work on this question has been hampered by the unavailability of time-varying data on public opinion in each constituency. In this paper, I use new estimates of public opinion in each state-year from 1950-2012 to examine whether Senators are responsive to changes in public opinion and whether their behavior shifts over the course of the electoral cycle. I find that Senators are modestly responsive to changes in public opinion. They are particularly responsive to public opinion in the last two years of their term. But the impact of public opinion on Senators' roll call behavior is still small relative to the impact of electoral selection. This analysis resolves earlier ambiguities in the literature on election proximity in the Senate, and opens up new research paths in the study of representation.

Url: http://chriswarshaw.com/papers/senate_representation_160524.pdf

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Authors: Warshaw, Christopher

Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

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