Political Analysis Advance Access originally published online on July 23, 2009
Political Analysis 2009 17(4):418-434; doi:10.1093/pan/mpp013
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This article appears in the following Political Analysis issue: Special Issue: Natural Experiments in Political Science [View the issue table of contents]
Do Congressional Candidates Have Reverse Coattails? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design
Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511 e-mail: david.broockman{at}gmail.com
Although the presidential coattail effect has been an object of frequent study, the question of whether popular congressional candidates boost vote shares in return for their parties’ presidential candidates remains unexplored. This article investigates whether so-called "reverse coattails" exist using a regression discontinuity design with congressional district-level data from presidential elections between 1952 and 2004. Taking incumbency to be near-randomly distributed in cases where congressional candidates have just won or lost their previous elections, I find that the numerous substantial advantages of congressional incumbency have no effect on presidential returns for these incumbents’ parties. This null finding underscores my claim that the existing coattail literature deserves greater scrutiny. My results also prompt a rethinking of the nature of the advantages that incumbents bring to their campaigns and may help deepen our understanding of partisanship in the United States.
Authors' note: Thank you to Jon Krasno, Donald Green, and Alan Gerber for their encouragement and guidance with this project and to the anonymous reviewers who provided invaluable comments and suggestions.