[EL] California top-two effect on number of Republicans running for US House

[Salvador Peralta]

I've been waiting for someone to remind Richard that correlation is not causation.

In 2008, there were 14 State Representative districts in Oregon in which the Republicans failed to recruit a candidate.  In 2009, Oregon passed its fusion voting law.  In 2010, there were 0 State Representative districts in Oregon in which the Republicans failed to recruit a candidate.  Would anyone therefore argue that the adoption of fusion voting is the reason that the GOP was more successful in recruiting candidates in 2010?   

Or, is it possible that the reason Oregon Republicans were more successful recruiting candidates in 2010 is that the state party mailed and robo-called its members in districts where it had not recruited a candidate and asked them to run for office?

Maybe the decline in recruitment for Congressional seats in California is simply that the state's GOP apparatus is more dysfunctional and less relevant than in years past...?

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/25/local/la-me-cap-mcpherson-20120625




________________________________
 From: "Kogan, Vladimir" <kogan.18 at osu.edu>
To: "richardwinger at yahoo.com" <richardwinger at yahoo.com>; Jack Santucci <jms346 at georgetown.edu> 
Cc: "law-election at uci.edu" <law-election at uci.edu> 
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: [EL] California top-two effect on number of Republicans running for US House
 

 
2010 is a bad baseline, since everyone expected it to be a strong Republican year. If we believe that challengers are strategic about their entry (and incumbents are strategic about their retirements), we would expect 2010 to be a year with a lot of Republican candidates who would not be running in a different year.
 
2008 was very different: California had six congressional districts with no Republicans running (18th, 28th, 30th, 31st, 32nd, 38th). It also had two districts with no Democrats running, if you exclude the write-in Democrat in the 19th. See http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2008_general/23_34_us_reps.pdf
 
If 2012 is more like 2008, the playing field this year may not look all that different.
 
I think strategic entry is important in another respect: If only “low-quality”/placeholder/gadflies-with-no-chance-of-winning candidates run against strong incumbents, and “high-quality” challengers enter only when there is a good year for their party, the we should not be surprised that the top-two party would prevent some of these low-quality candidates from making it to the runoff.
 
Is there empirical evidence showing that: “The absence of a congressional candidate is bad for the morale of the local party in that area”? In particular, is no candidate really worse for party morale than a candidate who gets his/her clock cleaned at the polls?
_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120928/1d8e9f7c/attachment.html>