Wayne P Steger
Biographic Data
| ID | 2288776 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wayne P Steger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wayne P |
| FAMILY NAME | Steger |
| SIGNATURE | STEGER W P |
| AFFILIATIONS | DePaul University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1802-142X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 178 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Forecasting the 2024 Republican Presidential Nomination
Donald Trump’s bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is unique in that no former president since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 has sought the nomination of their political party, nor has a candidate sought the nomination while facing multiple criminal indictments. With data from previous nomination cycles, we use presidential nominations from 1980 to 2020 to create a forecast for the 2024 Republican primaries. The variables in the equa…
Fundamentals Matter
Previous studies used pre-primary variables (e.g., endorsements, national polls, and fundraising) and momentum variables from the Iowa and New Hampshire contests to predict presidential nomination outcomes. Yet, races with no elite favorite and no clear frontrunner in polls, such as in the 2020 Democratic race, are more difficult to forecast. We replicate and extend two forecasting models from 1980 to 2016 used by Dowdle et al. (2016) to predict …
After Reagan
After Reagan is an engaging narrative account of the 1988 presidential election. While Pitney frames the election as a pivotal point between the politics of the post-World War II era and what has f
Conditional Arbiters
The 2016 Republican presidential nomination challenges arguments about political party insiders’ influence on the outcome. This article argues, first, that party insider influence is conditional on the participation, coalescence, and timing of party stakeholders behind a front-runner during the invisible primary, and second, that party insider influence has probably declined since the 2000 presidential election. Data on endorsements by elite elec…
Polls and Elections
This article uses forecasts of the contested vote in presidential primaries to assess competing hypotheses about political power in presidential nominations. Forecasts are estimated using information from the invisible primary and from the earliest nominating elections as a means of assessing which nominations were largely settled during the invisible primary consistent with Cohen et al. (2008) and which were influenced more by momentum during th…
Polls and Elections
This study compares the leading primary vote forecasts for a common set of candidates and nomination campaigns, updated through 2008. Pre‐primary and post–New Hampshire primary forecasts are estimated. Models that predicted well the primary vote from 1980 to 2000 produce substantial errors in prediction for the 2004 and 2008 presidential nominations. This suggests that the factors driving presidential nominations during the 1980s and 1990s are ch…
From the Primaries to the Polls
The Viability Primary
Public support before the primaries is the strongest predictor of presidential candidate attrition and of the aggregate primary vote. Yet little is known about the factors that drive candidate preferences before the primaries. This article examines pre-primary candidate support in national Gallup polls for open presidential nomination races from 1976 to 2004. The study finds that candidate background characteristics have marginal effects on mass …
Interparty Differences in Elite Support for Presidential Nomination Candidates
Studies of the 1970s and 1980s viewed the political party insiders as having little influence on the selection of the presidential nominees. Recent studies, however, find a significant effect for party elite endorsements in presidential nomination campaigns. This study presents a theory of elite influence in the postreform presidential nomination system and analyzes patterns of elite party endorsements to address questions of when and why elites …
Who Wins Nominations and Why
This article builds on previous forecasts of the presidential primary vote by incorporating elite party endorsements and estimates of candidate electability. Elite endorsements are significant predictors of both parties' primary vote, but cash reserves are significant only for Democrats while Gallup poll results are significant only for Republicans. The model updated by the New Hampshire primary results indicates that the primary affects both par…
Campaigns and Political Marketing in Political Science Context
Key Words: Campaignselectionsdemocracypolitical marketing
The President's Legislative Program
Do the president s legislative proposals embody the president's sincere preferences or strategic modifications intended to improve the chances of obtaining a particular outcome? Students of presidential agenda-setting typically assume a sincere preferences approach, while students of congressional agenda-setting have long accepted the possibility of strategic behavior. This essay first reviews this debate and presents arguments supporting a “stra…
The New Hampshire Effect in Presidential Nominations
The Character Factor
The New Hampshire Effect in Presidential Nominations
In order to demonstrate challenges to conventional wisdom (Aldrich 1980a, b; Bartels 1985 1988; Orren and Polsby 1987), this article develops several forecasting models of the presidential primary vote to compare to a baseline model of the aggregate primary vote (APV) that uses pre-primary and New Hampshire primary data. The models indicate that candidates’ Gallup poll position and cash reserves are significant positive predictors of a candidates…
Presidential Renomination Challenges in the 20th Century
This article develops an expected utility model to derive the circumstances in which candidates might consider challenging an incumbent president seeking renomination. Candidates are hypothesized to challenge incumbents who (1) succeed to the presidency from the vice presidency, or (2) seek renomination amid an intra‐party split. Historical evidence is used to identify the circumstances in which renomination challenges occur and the consequences …
A Quarter Century of News Coverage of Candidates in Presidential Nomination Campaigns
This paper analyzes network news coverage of presidential nomination candidates during the pre-primary and primaries seasons from 1975 to 2000. Using data from the Vanderbilt Television Archives, we find that the network news programs are giving less coverage to the candidates. The decline corresponds to the front-loaded primary schedule, which produces a presumptive nominee sooner and effectively ends coverage of the nomination campaign. We also…
Candidate Competition and Attrition in Presidential Primaries, 1912-2000
This article analyzes candidate competition and attrition in presidential primaries from 1912 to 2000. We use a modified market concentration index to measure the number of effective candidates entering presidential primaries and to calculate winnowing across presidential primaries. We test competing hypotheses about the increasing number of candidates entering primaries. We find that the number of effective candidates increased following the ref…
Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate-Centered Campaigns
This article assesses candidate competition in the pre- and post reform presidential primaries. It presents evidence that candidate competition initially expanded after the McGovern-Frazer reforms but subsequently declined. The proliferation of candidate-centered campaigns and front loading changed the competition in presidential nominating campaigns. Patterns of resource concentration limit the number of candidates who can compete effectively an…
Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate‐Centered Campaigns
This article assesses candidate competition in the pre‐ and post reform presidential primaries. It presents evidence that candidate competition initially expanded after the McGovern‐Frazer reforms but subsequently declined. The proliferation of candidate‐centered campaigns and front loading changed the competition in presidential nominating campaigns. Patterns of resource concentration limit the number of candidates who can compete effectively an…
The Occurrence and Consequences of Electoral Mandates in Historical Context
This study revisits the debate over electoral mandates by assessing the occurrence and consequences of landslide electoral victories since the 1860s. The study builds on Keeler's (1993) formulation of mandates in terms of the opportunities afforded by an election. Viewing elections as creating policy opportunities allows a more straightforward assessment of the relation between election outcomes and the legislative activity that follows. The idea…
Presidential Policy Initiation and the Politics of Agenda Control
This study examines whether and why presidents have greater success on legislation initiated bv their administrations compared with that proposed by others in government. I argue that presidents are more successful on legislation initiated by their administrations because agenda setting and policy initiation are sources of influence in the legislative process and because the administration can accommodate legislative preferences when it initiates…
The "Two Presidencies" in Future Research
The two presidencies literature ostensibly seeks to determine whether presidents exercise more power over foreign policy than over domestic policy. In a laudable effort to be rigorous, scholars have sought to answer the question by examining roll-call voting in Congress. Doing so, however, changes the question from the power of the president versus Congress to the success of the president in Congress. Because presidents act without the approval o…
Who Wins Nominations and Why
This article builds on previous forecasts of the presidential primary vote by incorporating elite party endorsements and estimates of candidate electability. Elite endorsements are significant predictors of both parties' primary vote, but cash reserves are significant only for Democrats while Gallup poll results are significant only for Republicans. The model updated by the New Hampshire primary results indicates that the primary affects both par…
Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate‐Centered Campaigns
This article assesses candidate competition in the pre‐ and post reform presidential primaries. It presents evidence that candidate competition initially expanded after the McGovern‐Frazer reforms but subsequently declined. The proliferation of candidate‐centered campaigns and front loading changed the competition in presidential nominating campaigns. Patterns of resource concentration limit the number of candidates who can compete effectively an…
The New Hampshire Effect in Presidential Nominations
In order to demonstrate challenges to conventional wisdom (Aldrich 1980a, b; Bartels 1985 1988; Orren and Polsby 1987), this article develops several forecasting models of the presidential primary vote to compare to a baseline model of the aggregate primary vote (APV) that uses pre-primary and New Hampshire primary data. The models indicate that candidates’ Gallup poll position and cash reserves are significant positive predictors of a candidates…
The Viability Primary
Public support before the primaries is the strongest predictor of presidential candidate attrition and of the aggregate primary vote. Yet little is known about the factors that drive candidate preferences before the primaries. This article examines pre-primary candidate support in national Gallup polls for open presidential nomination races from 1976 to 2004. The study finds that candidate background characteristics have marginal effects on mass …
Candidate Competition and Attrition in Presidential Primaries, 1912-2000
This article analyzes candidate competition and attrition in presidential primaries from 1912 to 2000. We use a modified market concentration index to measure the number of effective candidates entering presidential primaries and to calculate winnowing across presidential primaries. We test competing hypotheses about the increasing number of candidates entering primaries. We find that the number of effective candidates increased following the ref…
The "Two Presidencies" in Future Research
The two presidencies literature ostensibly seeks to determine whether presidents exercise more power over foreign policy than over domestic policy. In a laudable effort to be rigorous, scholars have sought to answer the question by examining roll-call voting in Congress. Doing so, however, changes the question from the power of the president versus Congress to the success of the president in Congress. Because presidents act without the approval o…
Polls and Elections
This article uses forecasts of the contested vote in presidential primaries to assess competing hypotheses about political power in presidential nominations. Forecasts are estimated using information from the invisible primary and from the earliest nominating elections as a means of assessing which nominations were largely settled during the invisible primary consistent with Cohen et al. (2008) and which were influenced more by momentum during th…
Presidential Policy Initiation and the Politics of Agenda Control
This study examines whether and why presidents have greater success on legislation initiated bv their administrations compared with that proposed by others in government. I argue that presidents are more successful on legislation initiated by their administrations because agenda setting and policy initiation are sources of influence in the legislative process and because the administration can accommodate legislative preferences when it initiates…
Interparty Differences in Elite Support for Presidential Nomination Candidates
Studies of the 1970s and 1980s viewed the political party insiders as having little influence on the selection of the presidential nominees. Recent studies, however, find a significant effect for party elite endorsements in presidential nomination campaigns. This study presents a theory of elite influence in the postreform presidential nomination system and analyzes patterns of elite party endorsements to address questions of when and why elites …
Presidential Renomination Challenges in the 20th Century
This article develops an expected utility model to derive the circumstances in which candidates might consider challenging an incumbent president seeking renomination. Candidates are hypothesized to challenge incumbents who (1) succeed to the presidency from the vice presidency, or (2) seek renomination amid an intra‐party split. Historical evidence is used to identify the circumstances in which renomination challenges occur and the consequences …
A Quarter Century of News Coverage of Candidates in Presidential Nomination Campaigns
This paper analyzes network news coverage of presidential nomination candidates during the pre-primary and primaries seasons from 1975 to 2000. Using data from the Vanderbilt Television Archives, we find that the network news programs are giving less coverage to the candidates. The decline corresponds to the front-loaded primary schedule, which produces a presumptive nominee sooner and effectively ends coverage of the nomination campaign. We also…
Conditional Arbiters
The 2016 Republican presidential nomination challenges arguments about political party insiders’ influence on the outcome. This article argues, first, that party insider influence is conditional on the participation, coalescence, and timing of party stakeholders behind a front-runner during the invisible primary, and second, that party insider influence has probably declined since the 2000 presidential election. Data on endorsements by elite elec…
Polls and Elections
This study compares the leading primary vote forecasts for a common set of candidates and nomination campaigns, updated through 2008. Pre‐primary and post–New Hampshire primary forecasts are estimated. Models that predicted well the primary vote from 1980 to 2000 produce substantial errors in prediction for the 2004 and 2008 presidential nominations. This suggests that the factors driving presidential nominations during the 1980s and 1990s are ch…
Campaigns and Political Marketing in Political Science Context
Key Words: Campaignselectionsdemocracypolitical marketing
The Occurrence and Consequences of Electoral Mandates in Historical Context
This study revisits the debate over electoral mandates by assessing the occurrence and consequences of landslide electoral victories since the 1860s. The study builds on Keeler's (1993) formulation of mandates in terms of the opportunities afforded by an election. Viewing elections as creating policy opportunities allows a more straightforward assessment of the relation between election outcomes and the legislative activity that follows. The idea…
The Character Factor
Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate-Centered Campaigns
This article assesses candidate competition in the pre- and post reform presidential primaries. It presents evidence that candidate competition initially expanded after the McGovern-Frazer reforms but subsequently declined. The proliferation of candidate-centered campaigns and front loading changed the competition in presidential nominating campaigns. Patterns of resource concentration limit the number of candidates who can compete effectively an…
The "Two Presidencies" in Future Research
The two presidencies literature ostensibly seeks to determine whether presidents exercise more power over foreign policy than over domestic policy. In a laudable effort to be rigorous, scholars have sought to answer the question by examining roll-call voting in Congress. Doing so, however, changes the question from the power of the president versus Congress to the success of the president in Congress. Because presidents act without the approval o…
Presidential Policy Initiation and the Politics of Agenda Control
This study examines whether and why presidents have greater success on legislation initiated bv their administrations compared with that proposed by others in government. I argue that presidents are more successful on legislation initiated by their administrations because agenda setting and policy initiation are sources of influence in the legislative process and because the administration can accommodate legislative preferences when it initiates…
Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate-Centered Campaigns
This article assesses candidate competition in the pre- and post reform presidential primaries. It presents evidence that candidate competition initially expanded after the McGovern-Frazer reforms but subsequently declined. The proliferation of candidate-centered campaigns and front loading changed the competition in presidential nominating campaigns. Patterns of resource concentration limit the number of candidates who can compete effectively an…
Do Primary Voters Draw from a Stacked Deck? Presidential Nominations in an Era of Candidate‐Centered Campaigns
This article assesses candidate competition in the pre‐ and post reform presidential primaries. It presents evidence that candidate competition initially expanded after the McGovern‐Frazer reforms but subsequently declined. The proliferation of candidate‐centered campaigns and front loading changed the competition in presidential nominating campaigns. Patterns of resource concentration limit the number of candidates who can compete effectively an…
The Occurrence and Consequences of Electoral Mandates in Historical Context
This study revisits the debate over electoral mandates by assessing the occurrence and consequences of landslide electoral victories since the 1860s. The study builds on Keeler's (1993) formulation of mandates in terms of the opportunities afforded by an election. Viewing elections as creating policy opportunities allows a more straightforward assessment of the relation between election outcomes and the legislative activity that follows. The idea…
A Quarter Century of News Coverage of Candidates in Presidential Nomination Campaigns
This paper analyzes network news coverage of presidential nomination candidates during the pre-primary and primaries seasons from 1975 to 2000. Using data from the Vanderbilt Television Archives, we find that the network news programs are giving less coverage to the candidates. The decline corresponds to the front-loaded primary schedule, which produces a presumptive nominee sooner and effectively ends coverage of the nomination campaign. We also…
Candidate Competition and Attrition in Presidential Primaries, 1912-2000
This article analyzes candidate competition and attrition in presidential primaries from 1912 to 2000. We use a modified market concentration index to measure the number of effective candidates entering presidential primaries and to calculate winnowing across presidential primaries. We test competing hypotheses about the increasing number of candidates entering primaries. We find that the number of effective candidates increased following the ref…
Presidential Renomination Challenges in the 20th Century
This article develops an expected utility model to derive the circumstances in which candidates might consider challenging an incumbent president seeking renomination. Candidates are hypothesized to challenge incumbents who (1) succeed to the presidency from the vice presidency, or (2) seek renomination amid an intra‐party split. Historical evidence is used to identify the circumstances in which renomination challenges occur and the consequences …
The New Hampshire Effect in Presidential Nominations
The Character Factor
The New Hampshire Effect in Presidential Nominations
In order to demonstrate challenges to conventional wisdom (Aldrich 1980a, b; Bartels 1985 1988; Orren and Polsby 1987), this article develops several forecasting models of the presidential primary vote to compare to a baseline model of the aggregate primary vote (APV) that uses pre-primary and New Hampshire primary data. The models indicate that candidates’ Gallup poll position and cash reserves are significant positive predictors of a candidates…
The President's Legislative Program
Do the president s legislative proposals embody the president's sincere preferences or strategic modifications intended to improve the chances of obtaining a particular outcome? Students of presidential agenda-setting typically assume a sincere preferences approach, while students of congressional agenda-setting have long accepted the possibility of strategic behavior. This essay first reviews this debate and presents arguments supporting a “stra…
Campaigns and Political Marketing in Political Science Context
Key Words: Campaignselectionsdemocracypolitical marketing
Who Wins Nominations and Why
This article builds on previous forecasts of the presidential primary vote by incorporating elite party endorsements and estimates of candidate electability. Elite endorsements are significant predictors of both parties' primary vote, but cash reserves are significant only for Democrats while Gallup poll results are significant only for Republicans. The model updated by the New Hampshire primary results indicates that the primary affects both par…
Interparty Differences in Elite Support for Presidential Nomination Candidates
Studies of the 1970s and 1980s viewed the political party insiders as having little influence on the selection of the presidential nominees. Recent studies, however, find a significant effect for party elite endorsements in presidential nomination campaigns. This study presents a theory of elite influence in the postreform presidential nomination system and analyzes patterns of elite party endorsements to address questions of when and why elites …
Polls and Elections
This study compares the leading primary vote forecasts for a common set of candidates and nomination campaigns, updated through 2008. Pre‐primary and post–New Hampshire primary forecasts are estimated. Models that predicted well the primary vote from 1980 to 2000 produce substantial errors in prediction for the 2004 and 2008 presidential nominations. This suggests that the factors driving presidential nominations during the 1980s and 1990s are ch…
From the Primaries to the Polls
The Viability Primary
Public support before the primaries is the strongest predictor of presidential candidate attrition and of the aggregate primary vote. Yet little is known about the factors that drive candidate preferences before the primaries. This article examines pre-primary candidate support in national Gallup polls for open presidential nomination races from 1976 to 2004. The study finds that candidate background characteristics have marginal effects on mass …
Polls and Elections
This article uses forecasts of the contested vote in presidential primaries to assess competing hypotheses about political power in presidential nominations. Forecasts are estimated using information from the invisible primary and from the earliest nominating elections as a means of assessing which nominations were largely settled during the invisible primary consistent with Cohen et al. (2008) and which were influenced more by momentum during th…
Conditional Arbiters
The 2016 Republican presidential nomination challenges arguments about political party insiders’ influence on the outcome. This article argues, first, that party insider influence is conditional on the participation, coalescence, and timing of party stakeholders behind a front-runner during the invisible primary, and second, that party insider influence has probably declined since the 2000 presidential election. Data on endorsements by elite elec…
Fundamentals Matter
Previous studies used pre-primary variables (e.g., endorsements, national polls, and fundraising) and momentum variables from the Iowa and New Hampshire contests to predict presidential nomination outcomes. Yet, races with no elite favorite and no clear frontrunner in polls, such as in the 2020 Democratic race, are more difficult to forecast. We replicate and extend two forecasting models from 1980 to 2016 used by Dowdle et al. (2016) to predict …
After Reagan
After Reagan is an engaging narrative account of the 1988 presidential election. While Pitney frames the election as a pivotal point between the politics of the post-World War II era and what has f
Forecasting the 2024 Republican Presidential Nomination
Donald Trump’s bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is unique in that no former president since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 has sought the nomination of their political party, nor has a candidate sought the nomination while facing multiple criminal indictments. With data from previous nomination cycles, we use presidential nominations from 1980 to 2020 to create a forecast for the 2024 Republican primaries. The variables in the equa…
Political science (23 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (22 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Presidential system (19 works) · Economics (12 works) · Nomination (9 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Public Administration (8 works)