Sarah A Treul
Biographic Data
| ID | 1534524 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah A Treul |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah A |
| FAMILY NAME | Treul |
| SIGNATURE | TREUL S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8528-1988 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 154 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Issue Attention in Congressional Primary Elections
Prominent theories of campaign issue strategy provide three main perspectives candidates can adopt when deciding what issues to discuss: (1) issues voters view their party as “owning”, (2) “trespassing” onto issues that the other party owns, and (3) addressing timely and salient issues (e.g., “wave riding”). This paper examines candidate issue messaging strategies in congressional primary campaigns. By isolating party‐owned issues and issue tresp…
Legislative Effectiveness, Progressive Ambition, and Electoral Success
Are effective state lawmakers more likely than ineffective ones to be elected to Congress? We draw on a new dataset of state legislative effectiveness scores from 1993 to 2018 to examine the relationship between lawmaker effectiveness and the decision to run for, and ultimately be elected to, the U.S. House of Representatives. We find that more effective state lawmakers are more likely to enter Congress than ineffective lawmakers. This pattern is…
Prior Experience and State Legislative Effectiveness
How do the prior experiences of lawmakers shape their performance in office? Representatives who have held prior elected office or professional backgrounds in relevant fields—specifically law, government, or politics—seem to have an advantage in winning elections. It is unclear whether those experiences help them become more effective legislators. Using a variety of data sources, we assess whether lawmakers with relevant prior experiences are mor…
Evaluating (in)experience in congressional elections
From the 1980s to the mid‐2010s, nearly three‐quarters of members newly elected to the US House of Representatives had previous elected experience; however, only half of the freshmen elected from 2016 to 2020 held prior office. In this article, we investigate emergence‐ and success‐driven explanations for the declining proportion of experienced officeholders entering Congress. In our analyses, we find that the advantages traditionally afforded to…
The Selling of Experience in the 2022 Congressional Elections
Past experience in elective office has always been the best predictor of congressional candidate success in elections. These "quality" candidates come into elections with experience fundraising, name recognition, and general knowledge about how to run a successful campaign. Yet, recent congressional elections have seen an increase in the electoral success of inexperienced candidates. As past experience in office may no longer be valued as it once…
Changing the Dialogue: Descriptive Candidacies and Position Taking in Campaigns for the US House of Representatives
Although the benefits of increasing descriptive diversity in Congress are well explored, less attention has been paid to the positive impacts of increasing descriptive diversity in elections. Employing a comprehensive collection of campaign platform text from nearly 5,000 campaign websites, we find that Democratic male and white candidates are significantly more likely to take up women's and Black-associated issues when a candidate who possesses …
Primary Barriers to Working Class Representation
How do working class candidates perform in primary elections? Working class candidates rarely emerge, but existing evidence suggests workers perform as well as white-collar candidates once on the ballot. However, this evidence comes from studies of general elections. It is unknown whether these findings extend to other types of elections like primaries, where candidates compete without the political and financial backing of a party. We collect an…
The Primary Path for Turning Legislative Effectiveness into Electoral Success
Effective lawmakers are the workhorses of the US Congress, yet we know little about the electoral payoffs of their efforts. Are effective lawmakers better at warding off challengers in the next election? Do they win at a greater rate? To answer these questions, we draw on original data on congressional primary elections from 1980 to 2016, allowing us to focus on elections that lack partisan cues and where voters tend to be highly knowledgeable ab…
The Electoral Consequences of Roll Call Voting: Health Care and the 2018 Election
Majority Party Agenda Setting: Picking Fights or Avoiding Them
In legislatures such as the U.S. House of Representatives, where the majority party controls the agenda, the frequency of observed partisan disagreement is partially a function of strategic agenda‐setting choices made by that party. Do majority party leaders use their agenda control to privilege bills that accentuate disagreements with the minority party? In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework focused on the costs and benefits associat…
Inexperienced or anti-establishment? Voter preferences for outsider congressional candidates
Do US voters prefer inexperienced candidates? Candidates who have never held elected office before have had greater success in recent presidential and congressional elections. However, it could be that voters prefer the type of anti-establishment rhetoric that such candidates use more than the lack of experience itself. We conduct a 2x2 factorial experiment that manipulates a fictitious congressional candidate’s experience and rhetoric toward the…
Reevaluating the Substantive Representation of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Americans: A Multiverse Analysis
Social scientists are facing a crisis of confidence in quantitative results. Multiverse analysis provides concerned scholars a tool for verifying the robustness of findings. This article introduces political scientists to multiverse analysis through an application. It identifies how differing approaches to data processing led to divergent conclusions about the representation of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) Americans in Congress in a 2015 Jour…
Running as a Woman? Candidate Presentation in the 2018 Midterms
The record high number of women who ran for the U.S. Congress during the midterm elections led many journalists to proclaim 2018 as another “Year of the Woman.” Although not every female candidate was successful, this large number of women running for office provides the opportunity to advance our understanding of the ways in which women present themselves to their voters. Using the “Biography” pages of more than 1,500 2018 congressional campaign…
Ideological Primary Competition and Congressional Behavior
Primary challenges on an incumbent's more extreme flank have become increasingly common in congressional elections. We explore the consequences on the legislative behavior of successful incumbents following these types of challenges. We propose that the effect of extreme ideological primary challenges is conditioned on whether the member belongs to the majority or the minority party. We test our expectations on primary elections from 2000 to 2012…
The Symbolic and Substantive Representation of LGB Americans in the US House
As public opinion in the United States has shifted on questions of gay rights in the last decade, some members of Congress have likewise adjusted their behavior to address issues of concern to their lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) constituents. We argue that the number of LGB constituents in a district affects the representatives' behavior. Although the size of the LGB population positively affects the substantive representation members provide …
Assessing strategic voting in the 2008 US presidential primaries: The role of electoral context, institutional rules, and negative votes
Competitive primaries and party division in congressional elections
Emotions, Oral Arguments, and Supreme Court Decision Making
Students of linguistics and psychology demonstrate that word choices people make convey information about their emotions and thereby their intentions. Focusing on theory from these related fields we test whether the emotional content of Supreme Court justices' questions and comments made during oral arguments allow us to predict the decisions they make. Using aggregate data from all arguments between 1979 and 2008 and individual-level data from 2…
Ambition and Party Loyalty in the U.S. Senate
This article examines the role progressive ambition plays in the U.S. Senate. I analyze the effect ambition has on party loyalty in the upper chamber. The theoretical argument is that senators with ambition for higher office are more loyal to the party than their colleagues who never make a bid for higher office because of their need to appeal to the party base to secure the party's nomination. I posit the following hypothesis to test this theory…
Emotions, Oral Arguments, and Supreme Court Decision Making
Students of linguistics and psychology demonstrate that word choices people make convey information about their emotions and thereby their intentions. Focusing on theory from these related fields we test whether the emotional content of Supreme Court justices' questions and comments made during oral arguments allow us to predict the decisions they make. Using aggregate data from all arguments between 1979 and 2008 and individual-level data from 2…
The Primary Path for Turning Legislative Effectiveness into Electoral Success
Effective lawmakers are the workhorses of the US Congress, yet we know little about the electoral payoffs of their efforts. Are effective lawmakers better at warding off challengers in the next election? Do they win at a greater rate? To answer these questions, we draw on original data on congressional primary elections from 1980 to 2016, allowing us to focus on elections that lack partisan cues and where voters tend to be highly knowledgeable ab…
The Symbolic and Substantive Representation of LGB Americans in the US House
As public opinion in the United States has shifted on questions of gay rights in the last decade, some members of Congress have likewise adjusted their behavior to address issues of concern to their lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) constituents. We argue that the number of LGB constituents in a district affects the representatives' behavior. Although the size of the LGB population positively affects the substantive representation members provide …
Evaluating (in)experience in congressional elections
From the 1980s to the mid‐2010s, nearly three‐quarters of members newly elected to the US House of Representatives had previous elected experience; however, only half of the freshmen elected from 2016 to 2020 held prior office. In this article, we investigate emergence‐ and success‐driven explanations for the declining proportion of experienced officeholders entering Congress. In our analyses, we find that the advantages traditionally afforded to…
Ambition and Party Loyalty in the U.S. Senate
This article examines the role progressive ambition plays in the U.S. Senate. I analyze the effect ambition has on party loyalty in the upper chamber. The theoretical argument is that senators with ambition for higher office are more loyal to the party than their colleagues who never make a bid for higher office because of their need to appeal to the party base to secure the party's nomination. I posit the following hypothesis to test this theory…
Running as a Woman? Candidate Presentation in the 2018 Midterms
The record high number of women who ran for the U.S. Congress during the midterm elections led many journalists to proclaim 2018 as another “Year of the Woman.” Although not every female candidate was successful, this large number of women running for office provides the opportunity to advance our understanding of the ways in which women present themselves to their voters. Using the “Biography” pages of more than 1,500 2018 congressional campaign…
Competitive primaries and party division in congressional elections
The Electoral Consequences of Roll Call Voting: Health Care and the 2018 Election
Inexperienced or anti-establishment? Voter preferences for outsider congressional candidates
Do US voters prefer inexperienced candidates? Candidates who have never held elected office before have had greater success in recent presidential and congressional elections. However, it could be that voters prefer the type of anti-establishment rhetoric that such candidates use more than the lack of experience itself. We conduct a 2x2 factorial experiment that manipulates a fictitious congressional candidate’s experience and rhetoric toward the…
Reevaluating the Substantive Representation of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Americans: A Multiverse Analysis
Social scientists are facing a crisis of confidence in quantitative results. Multiverse analysis provides concerned scholars a tool for verifying the robustness of findings. This article introduces political scientists to multiverse analysis through an application. It identifies how differing approaches to data processing led to divergent conclusions about the representation of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) Americans in Congress in a 2015 Jour…
Ideological Primary Competition and Congressional Behavior
Primary challenges on an incumbent's more extreme flank have become increasingly common in congressional elections. We explore the consequences on the legislative behavior of successful incumbents following these types of challenges. We propose that the effect of extreme ideological primary challenges is conditioned on whether the member belongs to the majority or the minority party. We test our expectations on primary elections from 2000 to 2012…
Assessing strategic voting in the 2008 US presidential primaries: The role of electoral context, institutional rules, and negative votes
Primary Barriers to Working Class Representation
How do working class candidates perform in primary elections? Working class candidates rarely emerge, but existing evidence suggests workers perform as well as white-collar candidates once on the ballot. However, this evidence comes from studies of general elections. It is unknown whether these findings extend to other types of elections like primaries, where candidates compete without the political and financial backing of a party. We collect an…
Changing the Dialogue: Descriptive Candidacies and Position Taking in Campaigns for the US House of Representatives
Although the benefits of increasing descriptive diversity in Congress are well explored, less attention has been paid to the positive impacts of increasing descriptive diversity in elections. Employing a comprehensive collection of campaign platform text from nearly 5,000 campaign websites, we find that Democratic male and white candidates are significantly more likely to take up women's and Black-associated issues when a candidate who possesses …
Majority Party Agenda Setting: Picking Fights or Avoiding Them
In legislatures such as the U.S. House of Representatives, where the majority party controls the agenda, the frequency of observed partisan disagreement is partially a function of strategic agenda‐setting choices made by that party. Do majority party leaders use their agenda control to privilege bills that accentuate disagreements with the minority party? In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework focused on the costs and benefits associat…
Ambition and Party Loyalty in the U.S. Senate
This article examines the role progressive ambition plays in the U.S. Senate. I analyze the effect ambition has on party loyalty in the upper chamber. The theoretical argument is that senators with ambition for higher office are more loyal to the party than their colleagues who never make a bid for higher office because of their need to appeal to the party base to secure the party's nomination. I posit the following hypothesis to test this theory…
Emotions, Oral Arguments, and Supreme Court Decision Making
Students of linguistics and psychology demonstrate that word choices people make convey information about their emotions and thereby their intentions. Focusing on theory from these related fields we test whether the emotional content of Supreme Court justices' questions and comments made during oral arguments allow us to predict the decisions they make. Using aggregate data from all arguments between 1979 and 2008 and individual-level data from 2…
Assessing strategic voting in the 2008 US presidential primaries: The role of electoral context, institutional rules, and negative votes
Competitive primaries and party division in congressional elections
The Symbolic and Substantive Representation of LGB Americans in the US House
As public opinion in the United States has shifted on questions of gay rights in the last decade, some members of Congress have likewise adjusted their behavior to address issues of concern to their lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) constituents. We argue that the number of LGB constituents in a district affects the representatives' behavior. Although the size of the LGB population positively affects the substantive representation members provide …
Ideological Primary Competition and Congressional Behavior
Primary challenges on an incumbent's more extreme flank have become increasingly common in congressional elections. We explore the consequences on the legislative behavior of successful incumbents following these types of challenges. We propose that the effect of extreme ideological primary challenges is conditioned on whether the member belongs to the majority or the minority party. We test our expectations on primary elections from 2000 to 2012…
Running as a Woman? Candidate Presentation in the 2018 Midterms
The record high number of women who ran for the U.S. Congress during the midterm elections led many journalists to proclaim 2018 as another “Year of the Woman.” Although not every female candidate was successful, this large number of women running for office provides the opportunity to advance our understanding of the ways in which women present themselves to their voters. Using the “Biography” pages of more than 1,500 2018 congressional campaign…
Inexperienced or anti-establishment? Voter preferences for outsider congressional candidates
Do US voters prefer inexperienced candidates? Candidates who have never held elected office before have had greater success in recent presidential and congressional elections. However, it could be that voters prefer the type of anti-establishment rhetoric that such candidates use more than the lack of experience itself. We conduct a 2x2 factorial experiment that manipulates a fictitious congressional candidate’s experience and rhetoric toward the…
Reevaluating the Substantive Representation of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Americans: A Multiverse Analysis
Social scientists are facing a crisis of confidence in quantitative results. Multiverse analysis provides concerned scholars a tool for verifying the robustness of findings. This article introduces political scientists to multiverse analysis through an application. It identifies how differing approaches to data processing led to divergent conclusions about the representation of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) Americans in Congress in a 2015 Jour…
The Primary Path for Turning Legislative Effectiveness into Electoral Success
Effective lawmakers are the workhorses of the US Congress, yet we know little about the electoral payoffs of their efforts. Are effective lawmakers better at warding off challengers in the next election? Do they win at a greater rate? To answer these questions, we draw on original data on congressional primary elections from 1980 to 2016, allowing us to focus on elections that lack partisan cues and where voters tend to be highly knowledgeable ab…
The Electoral Consequences of Roll Call Voting: Health Care and the 2018 Election
Majority Party Agenda Setting: Picking Fights or Avoiding Them
In legislatures such as the U.S. House of Representatives, where the majority party controls the agenda, the frequency of observed partisan disagreement is partially a function of strategic agenda‐setting choices made by that party. Do majority party leaders use their agenda control to privilege bills that accentuate disagreements with the minority party? In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework focused on the costs and benefits associat…
Primary Barriers to Working Class Representation
How do working class candidates perform in primary elections? Working class candidates rarely emerge, but existing evidence suggests workers perform as well as white-collar candidates once on the ballot. However, this evidence comes from studies of general elections. It is unknown whether these findings extend to other types of elections like primaries, where candidates compete without the political and financial backing of a party. We collect an…
The Selling of Experience in the 2022 Congressional Elections
Past experience in elective office has always been the best predictor of congressional candidate success in elections. These "quality" candidates come into elections with experience fundraising, name recognition, and general knowledge about how to run a successful campaign. Yet, recent congressional elections have seen an increase in the electoral success of inexperienced candidates. As past experience in office may no longer be valued as it once…
Changing the Dialogue: Descriptive Candidacies and Position Taking in Campaigns for the US House of Representatives
Although the benefits of increasing descriptive diversity in Congress are well explored, less attention has been paid to the positive impacts of increasing descriptive diversity in elections. Employing a comprehensive collection of campaign platform text from nearly 5,000 campaign websites, we find that Democratic male and white candidates are significantly more likely to take up women's and Black-associated issues when a candidate who possesses …
Prior Experience and State Legislative Effectiveness
How do the prior experiences of lawmakers shape their performance in office? Representatives who have held prior elected office or professional backgrounds in relevant fields—specifically law, government, or politics—seem to have an advantage in winning elections. It is unclear whether those experiences help them become more effective legislators. Using a variety of data sources, we assess whether lawmakers with relevant prior experiences are mor…
Evaluating (in)experience in congressional elections
From the 1980s to the mid‐2010s, nearly three‐quarters of members newly elected to the US House of Representatives had previous elected experience; however, only half of the freshmen elected from 2016 to 2020 held prior office. In this article, we investigate emergence‐ and success‐driven explanations for the declining proportion of experienced officeholders entering Congress. In our analyses, we find that the advantages traditionally afforded to…
Issue Attention in Congressional Primary Elections
Prominent theories of campaign issue strategy provide three main perspectives candidates can adopt when deciding what issues to discuss: (1) issues voters view their party as “owning”, (2) “trespassing” onto issues that the other party owns, and (3) addressing timely and salient issues (e.g., “wave riding”). This paper examines candidate issue messaging strategies in congressional primary campaigns. By isolating party‐owned issues and issue tresp…
Legislative Effectiveness, Progressive Ambition, and Electoral Success
Are effective state lawmakers more likely than ineffective ones to be elected to Congress? We draw on a new dataset of state legislative effectiveness scores from 1993 to 2018 to examine the relationship between lawmaker effectiveness and the decision to run for, and ultimately be elected to, the U.S. House of Representatives. We find that more effective state lawmakers are more likely to enter Congress than ineffective lawmakers. This pattern is…
Electoral Systems and Political Participation (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Economics (8 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (7 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (7 works) · Public Administration (7 works) · Voting (7 works)