Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train: The Causes and Consequences of Congressional Infamy
-
Justin Buchler
Legislators like Michele Bachmann and Alan Grayson become nationally infamous for their provocative behavior, yet there is little scholarly attention to such infamy. This paper examines the predictors of congressional infamy, along with its electoral consequences. First, infamy is measured through the frequency with which internet users conduct searches of legislators’ names, paired with epithets attacking their intelligence or sanity. Then, ideological extremism and party leadership positions are shown to be the best statistical predictors. The electoral consequences of infamy follow: infamous legislators raise more money than their lower-profile colleagues, but their infamy also helps their challengers to raise money. In the case of House Republicans, there appears to be an additional and direct negative effect of infamy on vote shares. The fundraising effect is larger in Senate elections, but there is no evidence of direct electoral cost for infamous senatorial candidates.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Historical Analogies, Military Surges, (and Economic Crises): Who Should be Consulted?
- It's the Financial Crisis, Stupid! How Framing and Competency Signals Altered the Economic Vote in the US and Germany
- Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train: The Causes and Consequences of Congressional Infamy
- Unhyphenated Americans in the 2010 U.S. House Election
- Candidate Obama and the Dilemmas of Political Time
- Obama to Blame? African American Surge Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in Florida
- The Behavioral Political Economy of Budget Deficits: How Starve the Beast Policies Feed the Machine
- Publius and Proofiness: Is Using Sampling with the Census for Apportioning Representatives Constitutional?
- Testing Obama's Withdrawal Timeline Hypothesis in Afghanistan
- The Practicing Politics Working Group of the American Political Science Association: Bridging the Policy-Research Divide from the Practitioner's Point of View
- Response to Quirk's "Polarized Populism: Masses, Elites, and Partisan Conflict"
- Review
- A House Dividing: Understanding Polarization
- Review of Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Historical Analogies, Military Surges, (and Economic Crises): Who Should be Consulted?
- It's the Financial Crisis, Stupid! How Framing and Competency Signals Altered the Economic Vote in the US and Germany
- Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train: The Causes and Consequences of Congressional Infamy
- Unhyphenated Americans in the 2010 U.S. House Election
- Candidate Obama and the Dilemmas of Political Time
- Obama to Blame? African American Surge Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in Florida
- The Behavioral Political Economy of Budget Deficits: How Starve the Beast Policies Feed the Machine
- Publius and Proofiness: Is Using Sampling with the Census for Apportioning Representatives Constitutional?
- Testing Obama's Withdrawal Timeline Hypothesis in Afghanistan
- The Practicing Politics Working Group of the American Political Science Association: Bridging the Policy-Research Divide from the Practitioner's Point of View
- Response to Quirk's "Polarized Populism: Masses, Elites, and Partisan Conflict"
- Review
- A House Dividing: Understanding Polarization
- Review of Treaty Politics and the Rise of Executive Agreements: International Commitments in a System of Shared Powers
