Thomas L Brunell
Biographic Data
| ID | 701607 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas L Brunell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas L |
| FAMILY NAME | Brunell |
| SIGNATURE | BRUNELL T L |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Dallas |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3077-5037 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 686 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Identifying the “Downsian Ceiling”: When Does Polarization Make Appealing to One’s Base More Attractive than Moderating to the Center
There are two basic strategies in which candidates in two-party partisan contests may engage: (1) the Downsian strategy of tailoring their platform to appeal to the views of the median voter in the electorate, and (2) seeking to motivate high turnout levels among their key supporters (their partisan base) by taking positions popular with that base. High polarization alters expected payoffs from each strategy by enhancing party loyalty, on average…
Minority Success in Non-Majority Minority Districts: Finding the “Sweet Spot”
Though African-American and Latino electoral success in state legislative and congressional elections continues to occur almost entirely in majority-minority districts, minorities now have new opportunities in districts that are only 40–50% minority. This success can primarily be explained in terms of a curvilinear model that generates a “sweet spot” of maximum likelihood of minority candidate electoral success as a function of minority populatio…
How Do State‐Level Environmental Policies Impact the Voting Behavior of National Legislators
Objective We investigate whether state‐level policy adoption of environmental regulations leads to nationalization of similar policies and, if so, the mechanisms by which members of Congress are incentivized to vote strategically. Method We examine several key environmental policies (i.e., renewable portfolio standards and regional cap‐and‐trade agreements) and utilize historical state‐level inventories and congressional roll‐call votes in our an…
Using US Senate Delegations from the Same State as Paired Comparisons: Evidence for a Reagan Realignment
The fact that two senators are elected from each state offers the potential for natural paired comparisons. In particular, examining historical and geographic patterns in terms of changes in the number of divided US Senate delegations (i.e., states whose two senators are of different parties) is a useful route to testing competing models of American politics, including theories of split-ticket voting, party polarization, and realignment. Brunell …
The volatility of median and supermajoritarian pivots in the U.S. Congress and the effects of party polarization
Components of party polarization in the US House of Representatives
We specify the level of polarization in a two-party legislature as an explicit function of three factors: (1) the ideological heterogeneity of district median voters, (2) the distance between candidates of different parties in the same or ideologically comparable districts, and (3) partisan bias in choosing between candidates equidistant from the median voter. Our key empirical finding, reinforced by two alternative methods of calculation, is tha…
Election administration and perceptions of fair elections
Replacement in the U.S. House: An outlier-chasing model
We know that most House seats remain within the same party over the course of a redistricting decade. For example, over 75% did so in the last decade. This gives rise to the question: “Why do some seats change hands and others not?” We seek to go beneath the standard answers (such as extent of electoral vulnerability as indicated by the previous victory margin, challenger qualifications, relative spending of challenger and incumbent, midterm loss…
Modeling the electoral dynamics of party polarization in two-party legislatures
While there are many formal models that generate predictions about polarization, only a handful address the question of how, with no change in electoral rules, levels of polarization can dramatically vary over time, as they have in the US House during 150 years of two-party competition. We propose a model that emphasizes national party constraints on district candidates’ ability to locate at positions far from the national party stance. The model…
Trustee Courts and the Judicialization of International Regimes: The Politics of Majoritarian Activism in the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization
The article focuses on judicial politics in three international regimes. The courts of these regimes are trustee courts, operating in an environment of judicial supremacy with respect to states. An international trustee court meets three criteria: (1) the court is the authoritative interpreter of the regime’s law; (2) the court’s jurisdiction is compulsory; and (3) it is virtually impossible, in practice, for contracting states to reverse the cou…
Magnitude and durability of electoral change: Identifying critical elections in the U.S. Congress 1854–2010
Towards a theory of bicameralism: The neglected contributions of the calculus of consent
The European Court of Justice, State Noncompliance, and the Politics of Override
In an article previously published by the APSR , Carrubba, Gabel, and Hankla claim that the decision making of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been constrained—systematically—by the threat of override on the part of member state governments, acting collectively, and by the threat of noncompliance on the part of any single state. They also purport to have found strong evidence in favor of intergovernmentalist, but not neofunctionalist, int…
Who Wants Electoral Competition and Who Wants to Win
This article employs data gathered in a 2006 national survey to study how the American electorate evaluates a trade-off between competitive elections and winning to implement preferred policies. The results show that voters do not share in the prevailing elite consensus about the overriding virtues of competition. A multilevel model indicates that ideological extremism, partisanship, social trust, and several other individual-level variables have…
Do British Party Politics Exhibit Cycles
Evidence for long-term cycles in the parliamentary seat share of the major British parties is presented in this article. Spectral analysis of data from 1832 to 2005 suggests a cycle period of about twenty-eight years, similar to findings in US studies and to cycle-length estimates restricted to the post-1950 period in Britain. A four-parameter voter–party interaction model developed by Merrill, Grofman and Brunell is adapted and applied to Britai…
Special Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives: A General Election Barometer
Vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives are filled using special elections. These elections occur off the usual American electoral cycle, and their results are routinely portrayed by the American mass media as indications of what to expect in the next general election. We examined the predictive power of special elections results with respect to the general election outcomes for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1900 to 2008. We found…
Why candidate divergence should be expected to be just as great (or even greater) in competitive seats as in non-competitive ones
Basic Downsian theory predicts candidate convergence toward the views of the median voter in two-candidate elections. Common journalistic wisdom, moreover, leads us to expect these centripetal pressures to be strongest when elections are expected to be close. Yet, the available evidence from the US Congress disconfirms this prediction. To explain this counterintuitive result, we develop a spatial model that allows us to understand the complex int…
Has the Voting Rights Act Outlived Its Usefulness? In a Word, “No
Race‐conscious redistricting remains crucial to the election of an overwhelming number of African American and Latino officials. We present descriptive evidence, easily interpretable by nonspecialists, from recent elections at the state and federal levels to support our claims. The Voting Rights Act remains a valuable tool to protect the ability of minorities to elect their preferred candidates
Ideological representation and competitive congressional elections
Testing sincere versus strategic split-ticket voting at the aggregate level: Evidence from split house-president outcomes, 1900-2004
The presidential and congressional elections in the USA, November 2008
Descriptive Representation, District Demography, and Attitudes toward Congress Among African Americans
We examined the effects of subjective and objective descriptive representation and district demography on African Americans' attitudes toward their member of Congress and the U.S. Congress as an institution. We investigated whether or not African Americans in more‐racially homogeneous districts differ in their attitudes from counterparts in districts with fewer African Americans. We also studied the effects of descriptive representation and distr…
Cycles in American National Electoral Politics, 1854-2006: Statistical Evidence and an Explanatory Model
Are there cycles in American politics? In particular, does the proportion of the Democratic/Republican vote share for president and/or seat share in Congress rise and fall over extended periods of time? If so, are the cycles regular, and what are the cycling periods? Moreover, if there are regular cycles, can we construct an integrated model-such as a negative feedback loop-that identifies political forces that could generate the observed pattern…
Rethinking Redistricting: How Drawing Uncompetitive Districts Eliminates Gerrymanders, Enhances Representation, and Improves Attitudes toward Congress
In every contested election there are inevitably winners and losers, both among the candidates and among the voters. Some candidates will take their seats as elected officials, and others will not. Some voters will be happy with the outcome, others will not. Here I seek to better understand the relationship between whether a voter casts a ballot for the winning candidate in U.S. House elections and that voter's evaluations of her representative. …
Expressive Politics: Issue Strategies of Congressional Challengers
Expressive Politics: Issue Strategies of Congressional Challengers. By Robert G. Boatright. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004. 280p. $44.95. In an era in which fewer and fewer congressional elections are competitive, why do candidates emerge at all to challenge entrenched incumbents who typically preside over very safe districts? In this book, Robert Boatright provides us with an explanation for this phenomenon. Not all challengers thin…
Constructing a Supranational Constitution: Dispute Resolution and Governance in the European Community
We present a theory of European legal integration that relies on three causal factors: transnational exchange, triadic dispute resolution, and the production of legal norms. After stating the theory in abstract terms, we explain the construction of the legal system and test the relationship among our three variables over the life of the European Community. We then examine the effect of the EC legal system on policy outcomes at both the national a…
Election administration and perceptions of fair elections
The Relationship Between Political Parties and Interest Groups: Explaining Patterns of PAC Contributions to Candidates for Congress
Interest groups are policy maximizers, while political parties are focused on maximizing the number of seats they win in Congress. These competing goals have important implications for the relationship between interest groups and parties. In this study I develop and test a theory concerning the patterns of hard money contributions from Political Action Committees (PACs) to candidates for the U.S. Congress. I argue that interest groups have prefer…
The European Court of Justice, State Noncompliance, and the Politics of Override
In an article previously published by the APSR , Carrubba, Gabel, and Hankla claim that the decision making of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been constrained—systematically—by the threat of override on the part of member state governments, acting collectively, and by the threat of noncompliance on the part of any single state. They also purport to have found strong evidence in favor of intergovernmentalist, but not neofunctionalist, int…
An integrated perspective on the three potential sources of partisan bias: Malapportionment, turnout differences, and the geographic distribution of party vote shares
The European Court and the national courts: A Statistical Analysis of Preliminary References, 1961–95
The article presents comprehensive data on Article 177 (EEC) activity. The data, never before collected and analyzed, are coded by date, member state of origin, referring court, legal subject matter of the reference, and other categories, which permit us to construct a dynamic, multidimensional picture of the litigation of EC law across the Community. Using this data, we assess a range of approaches to European legal integration. The evidence cor…
Ideological representation and competitive congressional elections
A Propensity Score Reweighting Approach to Estimating the Partisan Effects of Full Turnout in American Presidential Elections
Borrowing an approach from the literature on the economics of discrimination, we estimate the impact of nonvoters on the outcome of presidential elections from 1952–2000 using data from the National Election Study (NES). Our estimates indicate that nonvoters are, on average, slightly more likely to support the Democratic Party. Of the 13 presidential elections between 1952 and 2000 we find no change in the eventual outcome of the election with tw…
Has the Voting Rights Act Outlived Its Usefulness? In a Word, “No
Race‐conscious redistricting remains crucial to the election of an overwhelming number of African American and Latino officials. We present descriptive evidence, easily interpretable by nonspecialists, from recent elections at the state and federal levels to support our claims. The Voting Rights Act remains a valuable tool to protect the ability of minorities to elect their preferred candidates
Explaining Divided U.S. Senate Delegations, 1788–1996: A Realignment Approach
We maintain that the rise and fall in the number of states with divided Senate delegations can be explained primarily in terms of long-run forces of realignment/dealignment and staggered Senate elections. We test our model with election data from 1788–1996 rather than only the post–World War II period, which was common in previous research. We show that a large number of divided Senate delegations is not new; indeed, the highest percentage occurr…
A New Look at Split-Ticket Outcomes for House and President: The Comparative Midpoints Model
We argue that conservative districts that go Democratic for the House should be likely to choose a Republican for president, while liberal districts represented by a Republican should be likely to opt for a Democrat for president. We test these and related predictions about split-ticket voting with election data from the eight presidential elections between 1964 and 1992. We show that ideological differences in the estimated location of the distr…
Distinguishing between the effects of swing ratio and bias on outcomes in the US Electoral College, 1900-1992
Rethinking Redistricting: How Drawing Uncompetitive Districts Eliminates Gerrymanders, Enhances Representation, and Improves Attitudes toward Congress
In every contested election there are inevitably winners and losers, both among the candidates and among the voters. Some candidates will take their seats as elected officials, and others will not. Some voters will be happy with the outcome, others will not. Here I seek to better understand the relationship between whether a voter casts a ballot for the winning candidate in U.S. House elections and that voter's evaluations of her representative. …
The Potential Electoral Disadvantages of a Catch-All Party: Ideological Variance among Republicans and Democrats in the 50 US States
In two-party competition, the more ideologically concentrated party may be advantaged in that its party median may be closer to the overall median voter than is that of the more dispersed party. Because of party activists and the intermediating effects of party primaries which tend to lead to the selection of candidates near the party median, voters often choose in a general election between candidates with widely divergent views. It follows that…
Trustee Courts and the Judicialization of International Regimes: The Politics of Majoritarian Activism in the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization
The article focuses on judicial politics in three international regimes. The courts of these regimes are trustee courts, operating in an environment of judicial supremacy with respect to states. An international trustee court meets three criteria: (1) the court is the authoritative interpreter of the regime’s law; (2) the court’s jurisdiction is compulsory; and (3) it is virtually impossible, in practice, for contracting states to reverse the cou…
Cycles in American National Electoral Politics, 1854-2006: Statistical Evidence and an Explanatory Model
Are there cycles in American politics? In particular, does the proportion of the Democratic/Republican vote share for president and/or seat share in Congress rise and fall over extended periods of time? If so, are the cycles regular, and what are the cycling periods? Moreover, if there are regular cycles, can we construct an integrated model-such as a negative feedback loop-that identifies political forces that could generate the observed pattern…
The R 2 = .93: Where Then Do They Differ? Comparing Liberal and Conservative Interest Group Ratings
The Entrance of Women to the U.S. Congress: The Widow Effect
This article explores what is perhaps the single most important method of entrance into Congress for women—replacing a deceased husband. As was evident with the death of Governor Mel Carnahan (D-MO) and his wife, Jean Carnahan (D-MO), who subsequently served in the Senate, the succession of dead congressmen by their widows has been treated popularly by the news media, but has not received too much scholarly attention. In this study we examine the…
Testing sincere versus strategic split-ticket voting at the aggregate level: Evidence from split house-president outcomes, 1900-2004
Partisan Politics: The Impact of Party in the Confirmation of Minority and Female Federal Court Nominees
Only a few studies of the lower federal court confirmation process consider the role of the race/gender of nominees in that process and none consider the intersection of party politics with those characteristics. We address this deficiency, arguing that the different electoral incentive structures of the two major parties have consequences for the treatment of minority and female nominees. The levels of minority and female support enjoyed by the …
The Power of Ideologically Concentrated Minorities
In two-party competition, it is well known that the party whose supporters/identifiers are more ideologically concentrated can pull the overall median in the direction of its party median, while the overall mean is essentially simply an average of the two party means weighted by the number of supporters/identifiers of each party. Yet the exact nature of the relationship between the overall median and the party-specific medians has never, we belie…
Why candidate divergence should be expected to be just as great (or even greater) in competitive seats as in non-competitive ones
Basic Downsian theory predicts candidate convergence toward the views of the median voter in two-candidate elections. Common journalistic wisdom, moreover, leads us to expect these centripetal pressures to be strongest when elections are expected to be close. Yet, the available evidence from the US Congress disconfirms this prediction. To explain this counterintuitive result, we develop a spatial model that allows us to understand the complex int…
Why Gain in the Senate but Midterm Loss in the House? Evidence from a Natural Experiment
In this note we use the Senate's six-year election cycle to explain why the iron law of midterm that applies so consistently to the House works with less certainty in the Senate; in fact, since 1946 there have been three instances (1962, 1970, and 1982) where the Senate has experienced no midterm loss. To explain the differing nature of midterm seat change in the Senate, we employ a natural experiment in which Senate midterm elections (1946-1994)…
Lip-Reading, Draft-Dodging, and Perot-Noia: Presidential Campaigns in Editorial Cartoons
We conducted a content analysis of 505 editorial cartoons drawn from a national sample of newspapers during the 1992 presidential campaign. Our analyses demonstrate that cartoons are less interested in policy and more concerned with candidate personalities and the nature of the campaign. In addition, negativity is the hallmark of editorial cartoon reporting. We find that there was no measurable advantage given to the incumbent in 1992. Furthermor…
Changes in the Location of the Median Voter in theU.S. House of Representatives, 1963–1996
Lip-Reading, Draft-Dodging, and Perot-Noia: Presidential Campaigns in Editorial Cartoons
We conducted a content analysis of 505 editorial cartoons drawn from a national sample of newspapers during the 1992 presidential campaign. Our analyses demonstrate that cartoons are less interested in policy and more concerned with candidate personalities and the nature of the campaign. In addition, negativity is the hallmark of editorial cartoon reporting. We find that there was no measurable advantage given to the incumbent in 1992. Furthermor…
Death, Where Is Thy Sting? The Senate as a Ponce (de Leon) Scheme
Maltzman, Sigelman and Binder (1996), in what we regard as monumental work, have reinvigorated the study of death in office. But their data analysis is incomplete. First, they fail to project realistically the trends in actual and expected congressional deaths illustrated in Figure 1 of their paper. Second, like many congressional scholars, they do not pay sufficient attention to the Senate. We provide new evidence that the U.S. Senate may offer …
An integrated perspective on the three potential sources of partisan bias: Malapportionment, turnout differences, and the geographic distribution of party vote shares
Distinguishing between the effects of swing ratio and bias on outcomes in the US Electoral College, 1900-1992
Explaining Divided U.S. Senate Delegations, 1788–1996: A Realignment Approach
We maintain that the rise and fall in the number of states with divided Senate delegations can be explained primarily in terms of long-run forces of realignment/dealignment and staggered Senate elections. We test our model with election data from 1788–1996 rather than only the post–World War II period, which was common in previous research. We show that a large number of divided Senate delegations is not new; indeed, the highest percentage occurr…
The European Court and the national courts: A Statistical Analysis of Preliminary References, 1961–95
The article presents comprehensive data on Article 177 (EEC) activity. The data, never before collected and analyzed, are coded by date, member state of origin, referring court, legal subject matter of the reference, and other categories, which permit us to construct a dynamic, multidimensional picture of the litigation of EC law across the Community. Using this data, we assess a range of approaches to European legal integration. The evidence cor…
Constructing a Supranational Constitution: Dispute Resolution and Governance in the European Community
We present a theory of European legal integration that relies on three causal factors: transnational exchange, triadic dispute resolution, and the production of legal norms. After stating the theory in abstract terms, we explain the construction of the legal system and test the relationship among our three variables over the life of the European Community. We then examine the effect of the EC legal system on policy outcomes at both the national a…
Why Gain in the Senate but Midterm Loss in the House? Evidence from a Natural Experiment
In this note we use the Senate's six-year election cycle to explain why the iron law of midterm that applies so consistently to the House works with less certainty in the Senate; in fact, since 1946 there have been three instances (1962, 1970, and 1982) where the Senate has experienced no midterm loss. To explain the differing nature of midterm seat change in the Senate, we employ a natural experiment in which Senate midterm elections (1946-1994)…
A Divided-Government-Based Explanation for the Decline in Resignations from the US Senate, 1834-1996
We note the declining number of US Senate resignations that have occurred from 1834 through to 1996. While certainly this trend is related to the rise of careerism in Congress, we analyze it from the perspective of divided government (where the channels of power are shared by both parties). The results of our analysis show that most of the resignations that do occur happen when the party of the outgoing senator will retain the seat being vacated.…
The R 2 = .93: Where Then Do They Differ? Comparing Liberal and Conservative Interest Group Ratings
The Potential Electoral Disadvantages of a Catch-All Party: Ideological Variance among Republicans and Democrats in the 50 US States
In two-party competition, the more ideologically concentrated party may be advantaged in that its party median may be closer to the overall median voter than is that of the more dispersed party. Because of party activists and the intermediating effects of party primaries which tend to lead to the selection of candidates near the party median, voters often choose in a general election between candidates with widely divergent views. It follows that…
The Power of Ideologically Concentrated Minorities
In two-party competition, it is well known that the party whose supporters/identifiers are more ideologically concentrated can pull the overall median in the direction of its party median, while the overall mean is essentially simply an average of the two party means weighted by the number of supporters/identifiers of each party. Yet the exact nature of the relationship between the overall median and the party-specific medians has never, we belie…
Making Sense of the Census: It's Political
With “Partisan Politics at Work,” Anderson and Fienberg continue their spirited, if misleading, defense of the plan to statistically adjust the census count. Unfortunately, their argument in favor of making the adjustments misses the mark and they gloss over some of the most serious of the evidence presented against the methods of adjustment. Rather, they are more interested in trying to remove politics from an inherently political process, which…
Rejoinder to Anderson and Fienberg
In “History, Myth Making, and Statistics,” Anderson and Fienberg purport to have debunked one of the “myths” opponents of statistically adjusting census counts repeatedly invoke. The authors strive to show that critics have misplaced blame on a computer coding error for artificially inflating the national undercount by more than one million people and producing adjusted state population totals that would have provided justifications for shifting …
Using Statistical Sampling to Estimate the U.S. Population: The Methodological and Political Debate over Census 2000
One of the most hotly debated issues of the past four years has been the method to be used to count the population in Census 2000. Broadly, the debate is over whether to incorporate statistical sampling in the decennial census for the purposes of enumerating the population. Each of the previous 21 U.S. censuses has failed to count all persons. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were certain that the state population totals tallied for th…
A New Look at Split-Ticket Outcomes for House and President: The Comparative Midpoints Model
We argue that conservative districts that go Democratic for the House should be likely to choose a Republican for president, while liberal districts represented by a Republican should be likely to opt for a Democrat for president. We test these and related predictions about split-ticket voting with election data from the eight presidential elections between 1964 and 1992. We show that ideological differences in the estimated location of the distr…
Census 2000–Epilogue
Census 2000 is over; the debate over adjusting the census is not. In this essay I respond to a number of points from Anderson and Fienberg (2001) and report some of the results from Census 2000
Rational Response to Irrational Attitudes: The Level of the Gasoline Tax in the United States
Rational Response to Irrational Attitudes: The Level of the Gasoline Tax in the United States
Retailers often price items at $9.99 rather than $10.00. They may do so to fool consumers into viewing the price as closer to $9.00 than to $10.00, or to signal consumers that the product is on sale (e.g., Stiving and Winer, 1997). Similarly, workers highly desire a six-figure income-a salary of $100,000 sounds much more impressive than a salary of $99,999. This paper explores related behavior by government. Suppose legislators attempt to reduce …
Changes in the Location of the Median Voter in theU.S. House of Representatives, 1963–1996
Science and politics in the census
Why There Is Still a Controversy About Adjusting the Census
There is still a controversy over adjusting the census because the statistical adjustment of the census did not work in 1990, nor did it work in 2000. The adjustment process, in both theory and practice, is complicated and flawed. The chance of it working in future censuses without major changes is small. Anderson and Fienberg continue to twist language and report partial results in order to confuse the debate
The Entrance of Women to the U.S. Congress: The Widow Effect
The Entrance of Women to the U.S. Congress: The Widow Effect
This article explores what is perhaps the single most important method of entrance into Congress for women—replacing a deceased husband. As was evident with the death of Governor Mel Carnahan (D-MO) and his wife, Jean Carnahan (D-MO), who subsequently served in the Senate, the succession of dead congressmen by their widows has been treated popularly by the news media, but has not received too much scholarly attention. In this study we examine the…
Barry C. Burden and David C. Kimball, Why Americans Split Their Tickets: Campaigns, Competition, and Divided Government
Political science (51 works) · Law (45 works) · Law (41 works) · Politics (39 works) · Economics (34 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (34 works) · Political economy (24 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Public Administration (13 works) · Democracy (11 works)