Party Competence In Midterm Elections

It is traditionally known that the President’s party will lose Congressional seats during a midterm election. There is no debate on whether or not this is true because of how often the pattern has repeated itself. Despite the fact that it seems like a non-issue because of how often this has occurred, many political scientists research the topic to learn more about the causes of this trend. Research into the topic shows that presidential popularity and the state of the economy are factors that determine the outcomes of midterm elections (Abramowitz, Cover, North and 1986, 563). The additional factor of party competence is another area that voters seem to consider (Abramowitz, Cover, North and 1986, 565). Research has found that midterm elections …show more content…
The traditional thought was that voters chose a candidate based on extensive research that they themselves compiled in order to make a quality choice. However, that does not seem to always be the case as human are rational actors, and as rational actors humans will weigh the costs and benefits of actively pursuing information about each candidate in order to vote (Popkin 1993, 17).The benefit of putting in the extra effort of gathering political knowledge sums up to be quite negligible. Because of the low returns that seeking out political information yields, people turn to heuristics to fill in their knowledge gaps (Popkin 1993, 19).When it comes to politics, constituents are likely to use various forms of information shortcuts in order to reach their decision. These shortcuts include opinion leaders, candidates’ perceived competence, demographic factors about the candidate and his supporters, and party identification are a mere fraction of the avenues that a voter can utilize to assess a candidate. Popkin’s (1993) chapter delves into the use of information shortcuts of voters and assures his audience that these shortcuts do not result in uninformed voters, even though they are acquiring their information as a by-product from their daily lives …show more content…
While voters use information shortcuts to choose candidates to vote for, parties use information shortcuts as well, in order to cater to the rational-based voter (Popkin 1993, 19). Parties use ideologies in order for voters to easily identify what makes the two parties distinct from one another (Popkin 1993, 24). Voters also use the past performance of parties in order to make judgments on how well the party will perform in the future. Traditionally political scientists believed that people’s party identification was static and did not vary much between elections (Popkin 1993, 25). However that is not completely the case because about 25% of the electorate changed parties within a 4 year period, which is what one study found when it surveyed a group of voters three separate times and asked them about their party identification (Popkin 1993,