ARTICLES
“Reconsidering the “Southern Veto”: The Two-Thirds Rule at Democratic National Conventions, 1832-1936,” Studies in American Political Development vol. 38, no. 1 (April 2024) 84-102.
Beginning from 1832, the Democratic Party required a two-thirds majority at national conventions for the nomination of presidential candidates. Despite assessments that this ‘two-thirds rule’ produced excessively long and disruptive nomination battles and low-quality presidential candidates, the rule survived until 1936. The rule’s longevity is generally attributed to it functioning as a “Southern veto”: while the Democratic Party performed strongest electorally in the South in this period, the region’s representation at conventions was small in comparison. By setting the bar for presidential nominations high, the South was given the ability to block unacceptable candidates. However, while the ‘Southern veto’ argument is pervasive, there is little data and few concrete examples of Southern delegates blocking Democratic nominations through the two-thirds rule. In this paper, I re-assess the two-thirds rule’s history and appliance and show that Southern states barely had enough votes to block nominations and generally would need to vote against a candidate at a rate of nearly 90% to do so. As a result, the South almost never vetoed candidates: in only one case (Martin Van Buren in 1844) was Southern opposition pivotal in preventing a candidate with majority support from winning the nomination. Additionally, the two-thirds rule was generally accepted by broad majorities in the party (both Southern and non-Southern) and, while Southerners were among the defenders of the rule, representatives of the region were also among those opposing it. These findings suggest that the two-thirds rule rarely functioned as a Southern veto – not because the South had no power in the Democratic Party but because the necessity of maintaining intra-party consensus applied regardless of the existence of the two-thirds rule.
“Race, Corruption, and Southern Republicanism: The Patronage Scandal of the 1920s,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race vol. 21 no. 1 (Spring 2024) 50-76.
with Jeffery A. Jenkins
While Republicans enjoyed unified control of the national government during the 1920s, scandals involving executive patronage and GOP state bosses in the South dogged the national party throughout the decade. The Republican Party in the South had been a set of “rotten boroughs” for decades, used by national politicians – especially presidents – for the sole purpose of controlling delegates at the Republican National Convention. This patronage-for-delegates arrangement was generally understood among political elites, but the murder-suicide involving a U.S. postmaster in Georgia in April 1928 brought the Southern GOP’s patronage practices to national light. This forced Republican leaders in an election year to call for a Senate investigation. Chaired by Sen. Smith W. Brookhart (R-IA), the committee investigation lasted for eighteen months, covered portions of two Republican presidential administrations, and showed how state GOP leaders in Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas engaged in office selling. The fallout would be a thorn in the side of President Herbert Hoover, who tried to clean up the corrupt GOP organizations in the South – and build an electorally-viable Republican Party in the ex-Confederate states – but largely failed.
“Power in a Union: How Unexpected Group Partnerships Form,” Perspectives on Politics (forthcoming).
with Matthew J. Lacombe
Media Coverage: Washington Post
While scholars have focused extensively on the consequences of partnerships between interest groups, less attention has been paid to the historical dynamics shaping when, how, and why such groups unite. This is especially true of “unexpected” partnerships, which unite groups with seemingly little in common. Such partnerships are important, as they can reshape to an unusual degree which actors, issues, and ideas “fit together” politically. This paper addresses the puzzle of how unexpected group partnerships form through case studies of previously non-existent alliances between labor unions and the gay/lesbian rights movement in the U.S. and U.K. in the 1970s and 1980s. Using these cases, we produce a theory arguing that unexpected partnerships are a product of a favorable political opportunity structure—present when each group experiences shared threats and mutual vulnerabilities—and the actions of entrepreneurial group leaders, who forge cross-group identities, accentuate shared ideological convictions, and build institutional ties.
“Southern Republicans in Congress During the Pre-Reagan Era: An Exploration,” Party Politics vol. 29, no. 3 (2023) 540-553.
with Nicholas G. Napolio and Jeffery A. Jenkins
We examine the composition, background, and voting behavior of Republican members of Congress from the ex-Confederate states in the 1952–1980 period—a time during which Southern GOP membership in Congress began to increase steadily. We find that this new generation of Southern Republicans were often born in the South, came from the private sector—where they previously worked in business like much of the non-Southern wing of the Republican Party—and had few meaningful prior connections to the Democratic Party. In terms of voting behavior, Southern Republicans behaved similarly to non-Southern Republicans—generally voting with their party, and more conservatively on most issues than the Southern Democrats they replaced. However, we find that Southern Republicans and Democrats voted alike in one important way: against civil rights legislation. This latter finding of racial conservatism is consistent with other recent work arguing that the Southern GOP had to become a “White party” to win elections in the former Confederacy.
“Examining Democratic and Republican National Committee Party Branding Activity, 1953-2012,” Perspectives on Politics vol 21, no. 1 (2023) 142-159.
Recent scholarship on the role of national party organizations in American politics – specifically, the Democratic and Republican National Committees – has argued that political science research has thus far undervalued the importance of these organizations. Specifically, these studies have noted the importance party leaders – including presidents, Congressional leaders, and governors – place on the national committees’ role in trying to shape a party brand. Notably, these studies are all qualitative historical accounts – perhaps because finding consistent quantitative data from within the DNC and RNC across time is very difficult. In this paper, I present a new quantitative data set measuring DNC and RNC activity on the basis of an external source: New York Times coverage of national committee activity in the period 1953-2012. I use this data to test the claim that, while ‘party branding’ is a core national committee goal, the DNC and RNC do not consistently engage in it. Specifically, I find that monthly New York Times references of party branding operations decline for parties that hold the White House. Notably, coverage of other service operations does not decline, suggesting committees specifically step back their branding role when their party has control of the executive branch of the federal government.
“The Mixed Effects of Candidate Visits on Campaign Donations in the 2020 Presidential Election,” American Politics Research vol 50, no. 3 (2022) 320-325.
with Nicholas G. Napolio and Jordan Carr Peterson
Recent scholarship on the effect of candidate visits in presidential elections has found that appearances by candidates appear to mobilize both supporters and opponents. Specifically, in the 2016 presidential election, donations to campaigns of the visiting presidential candidates increased, but - in the case of Republican nominee Donald Trump - so did donations to his opponent, Hillary Clinton. In this paper, we extend this research by assessing the effect of visits on campaign donations by presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2020 election. We find evidence that visits by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had strong mobilizing and counter-mobilizing effects, increasing donations to both campaigns. We find weak evidence that visits by Joe Biden increased contributions to his campaign, but we do not find evidence that his visits had a counter-mobilizing effect, and we find no evidence that visits by Mike Pence affected donations in either direction.
“Natural Disasters, ‘Partisan Retrospection,’ and U.S. Presidential Elections,” Political Behavior vol. 44, no. 3 (2022) 1225-1246.
with Jeffery A. Jenkins, Michael P. Olson, and Brenton D. Peterson
Article / Working Paper Version / Data set, do file
Media Coverage: Washington Post - Monkey Cage.
Research investigating whether natural disasters help or hurt politicians’ electoral fortunes has produced conflicting results. Some find that voters punish elected officials indiscriminately in the wake of a natural disaster (i.e., ‘blind retrospection’). Others find that voters instead incorporate elected officials’ subsequent relief efforts in their assessment (i.e., ‘attentive retrospection’). In this paper, we argue that an additional consideration affects voters’ response to natural disasters: the elected official’s partisan affiliation. We contend that whether voters reward or punish incumbents following a disaster is influenced by whether or not the official is a co-partisan. We look for evidence of such ‘partisan retrospection’ by examining the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the 2012 presidential election, and find that voters’ reactions to disaster damage were strongly conditioned by pre-existing partisanship, with counties that previously supported Obama reacting far more positively to disaster damage than those that had earlier opposed him. We then use existing data to investigate the relationship between disasters and presidential elections between 1972 and 2004. We find that incumbent-party candidates performed no worse in disaster-affected co-partisan counties than in non-affected co-partisan counties, but that they underperformed in disaster-affected counties safely in the opposing party column.
“Mobilization and Counter-Mobilization: The Effect of Candidate Visits on Campaign Donations in the 2016 Presidential Election,” The Journal of Politics vol. 83. no. 4 (2021) 1878-1883.
with Brenton D. Peterson and Jordan Carr Peterson
Media Coverage: NBC News, Washington Post - Monkey Cage.
Political scientists studying the impact of campaign visits by presidential candidates have come to conflicting conclusions on whether campaigns change voter behavior in even small ways. In this paper, we argue that, while scholars have generally interpreted campaign effect results as being uni-directional, the traditional metrics of such effects - polls and aggregate vote results - inherently reflect a net effect combining any potential mobilization of a candidate's supporters, offset by any counter-mobilization of their opponents. If such counter-mobilization occurs, weak or null findings in the campaign effects literature may understate or miss the true impact of campaign activities on voter behavior. To assess whether campaign visits produce mixed effects, we measure the extent to which visits by presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the 2016 presidential election produced increases in campaign donations in the immediate aftermath of a visit. Our results show that visits by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton inspired their supporters to donate more money than they otherwise would have. However, we also find a considerable level of counter-mobilization: visits by both Trump and Clinton resulted in an increase in donations to the opposing presidential campaign.
“Whiteness and the Emergence of the Republican Party in the Early Twentieth-Century South,” Studies in American Political Development vol 34, no. 1 (April 2020) 71-90.
with Jeffery A. Jenkins
Media Coverage: Washington Post - Monkey Cage.
In the post-Reconstruction South, two Republican factions vied for control of state party organizations. The Black-and-Tans sought to keep the party inclusive and integrated, while the Lily-Whites worked to turn the GOP into a whites-only party. The Lily-Whites ultimately emerged victorious, as they took over most state parties by the early twentieth century. Yet no comprehensive data exist to measure how the conflict played out in each state. To fill this void, we present original data that track the racial composition of Republican National Convention delegations from the South between 1868 and 1952. We then use these data in a set of statistical analyses to show that, once disfranchising laws were put into place, the “whitening” of the GOP in the South led to a significant increase in the Republican Party's vote totals in the region. Overall, our results suggest that the Lily-White takeover of the Southern GOP was a necessary step in the Republican Party's reemergence—and eventual dominance—in the region during the second half of the twentieth century.
"Trump and the Party-In-Organization: Presidential Control of National Party Organizations," The Journal of Politics vol. 80, no. 4 (October 2018) 1474-1482.
Media Coverage: Washington Post - Monkey Cage.
The election of Donald Trump not only placed a political outsider in the center of power in America’s federal government, it also put him in a dominant position within the Republican Party as a national organization. While political scientists have traditionally described the parties national committees as inconsequential but impartial service providers, scholars have also long argued that incumbent presidents have considerable control over their party’s national committee. In this paper, I explore the nature of presidential power over the party-in-organization, and whether Trump can take advantage of his control over the Republican National Committee. I show that presidential domination over the party-in-organization is based on the president’s ability to nominate and replace the national committee’s chair, and that presidents have used this power to push their committees to promote both their preferred policy positions and themselves. I argue this means Trump has the ability to use the RNC to promote the GOP as ‘his’ party – including during a potential primary challenge for his re-nomination in 2020.
"Party Brands and the Democratic and Republican National Committees, 1952-1976," Studies in American Political Development, vol. 32, no. 1 (2018) 79-102.
Media Coverage: Washington Post - Monkey Cage.
Political scientists have traditionally dismissed the Democratic and Republican National committees as ‘service providers’ – organizations that provide assistance to candidates in the form of campaign funding and expertise but otherwise lack political power. I argue this perspective has missed a crucial role national committees play in American politics, namely that national party organizations publicize their party’s policy positions and, in doing so, attempt to create national party brands. These brands are important to party leaders – especially when the party is in the national minority – since they are fundamental to mobilizing voters in elections. In case studies covering the DNC and RNC in the period 1952-1976, I show that minority party committees prioritize their branding role and invest considerably in their publicity divisions, inaugurate new publicity programs, and create new communication tools to reach out to voting groups. Additionally, I show that in cases where the party is out of the White House, the national committees have considerable leeway in deciding what party image to publicize. Rather than being mere powerless service providers, I show that party committees have played crucial roles in debates concerning questions of ideology and issue positioning in both parties.
"Party Leaders and Electoral Realignment: Democratic and Republican Southern Strategies, 1948-1968," The Forum vol. 15, no. 4 (2017) 631-653.
Political scientists who have studied electoral realignments in the American party system increasingly focus on explaining such changes as the result of major historical developments outside of the control of party leaders. Using both national parties’ approaches to the South in the period 1948-1968, I argue that while party leaders may be unable to cause or prevent a realignment, they do attempt to affect the way in which that process plays out. That is, while the shift of Southern white voters from the Democratic to the Republican Party itself was a largely inevitable process, the timing and context in which it played out was affected by competing strategies from both parties. Specifically, I show that between 1948 and 1964, Democratic leaders hedged their bets between attempting to keep white Southern voters in the party, or expel them in favor of black voters in the Northeast based on their assessments of the party’s electoral position. At the same time, between 1948 and 1968, Republican leaders struggled to balance an appeal to segregationist Southerners and voters in other regions before finding a winning formula in Richard Nixon’s 1968 ‘Southern strategy.’
"Truman Defeats Dewey: The Effect of Campaign Visits in Election Outcomes," Electoral Studies vol. 49 (October 2017) 49-64.
with Brenton D. Peterson
Article / Appendix / Data set, Do-file
Political science research suggests that campaign visits by presidential candidates produce small and short-lived effects, consistent with mixed findings of their influence on election returns. We argue that existing studies are constrained by two issues: most studies rely on state-level data, rather than more localized data, and do not incorporate differentiation in the quality of campaign appearances in their assessment of visit effects. To incorporate these concerns in a study of campaign visit effects on election outcomes, we study the 1948 presidential election, during which Harry Truman engaged in a major whistle-stop train tour and won a surprise victory over his opponent, Thomas Dewey. Using data on campaign stops gathered from archival sources, we estimate the effect of campaign appearances on candidate vote share at the county level. We find that Truman, on average, gained 3.06 percentage points of the overall vote share in counties that he visited. Consistent with contemporary judgments of the “quality” of the two candidates’ campaign stops, we find no effect of Dewey’s appearances on his performance. Our results provide strong evidence that candidate visits can influence electoral returns, rather than merely affect short-term public opinion. In counterfactual simulations, we show that Truman’s extensive campaign tour likely won him the state of Ohio, highlighting the importance of strategic campaign decisions and campaign effects in close elections.
"Disasters and Elections: Estimating the Net Effect of Damage and Relief in Historical Perspective," Political Analysis vol. 25, no. 2 (2017) 260-268.
with Brenton D. Peterson and Jeffery A. Jenkins
Article / Appendix / Data set, Do-file, R-code
Media Coverage: Washington Post - Monkey Cage.
Do natural disasters help or hurt politicians’ electoral fortunes? Research on this question has produced conflicting results. Achen and Bartels (2002, 2016) find that voters punish incumbent politicians indiscriminately after such disasters. Other studies find that voters incorporate the quality of relief efforts by elected officials. We argue that results in this literature may be driven, in part, by a focus on contemporary cases of disaster and relief. In contrast, we study a case of catastrophic flooding in the American South in 1927, in which disaster aid was broadly and fairly distributed and Herbert Hoover (the 1928 Republican presidential candidate) was personally responsible for overseeing the relief efforts. Despite the distribution of unprecedented levels of disaster aid, we find that voters punished Hoover at the polls: in affected counties, Hoover’s vote share decreased by more than 10 percentage points. Our results are robust to the use of synthetic control methods and suggest that—even if voters distinguish between low- and high-quality responses—the aggregate effect of this disaster remains broadly negative. Our findings provide some support for Achen and Bartels’ idea of blind retrospection, but also generate questions about the precise mechanisms by which damage and relief affect vote choice.
"Measuring the Vice-Presidential Home State Advantage with Synthetic Controls," American Politics Research vol. 44, no. 4 (July, 2016) 734-763.
with Brenton D. Peterson
Article / Appendix / Data set, Do-file, R-code
Media Coverage: Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times, Newsweek, NPR, Washington Post - Monkey Cage, US News and World Report
Measuring the effect strategic choices have on electoral outcomes is problematic, since this requires an assessment of the outcome under a counterfactual that is not observed. To overcome this problem we extend the synthetic control approach for causal inference to circumstances with multiple treated cases, and use it to estimate the effect of vice-presidential candidates on their home states' vote. Existing research has concluded that vice-presidential candidates have little effect on the outcome of elections in their home states. However, our results from elections spanning 1884-2012 suggest that vice-presidential candidates increase their tickets' performance in their home states by 2.67 percentage points on average - considerably higher than previous studies have found. Additionally, our results suggest that the vice-presidential HSA could have swung four presidential elections since 1960, if presidential candidates had chosen running mates from strategically optimal states.
"Southern Delegates and Republican National Convention Politics," Studies in American Political Development vol. 29, no. 1 (April, 2015) 68-88.
with Jeffery A. Jenkins
Media Coverage: Washington Post - Monkey Cage.
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Republican Party dominated American elections in all geographical areas except the former Confederacy, which remained solidly Democratic. Despite this, Southern states were consistently provided with a sizable delegation to the Republican National Convention (as much as 26 percent of the total). This raises the question: Why would a region that delivered no votes on Election Day be given a substantial say in the selection of the party's presidential candidate? Previous research on the role Southern delegates played in Republican conventions has been limited to individual cases or to studies only tangentially related to this question. We explore the continuous and sizable presence of Southern delegates at Republican conventions by conducting a historical overview of the 1880–1928 period. We find that Republican Party leaders—and particularly presidents—adopted a “Southern strategy” by investing heavily in maintaining a minor party organization in the South, as a way to create a reliable voting base at conventions. We also show that as the Republican Party's strength across the country grew under the “System of 1896,” challenges to the delegate apportionment method—and thereby efforts to minimize Southern influence at Republican conventions—increased substantially
Book reviews
“The rise of political action committees: interest group electioneering and the transformation of American politics by Emily J. Charnock (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, ISBN: 978-0-19-007551-4),” Interest Groups & Advocacy (2023).
“Bootstrap Liberalism: Texas Political Culture in the Age of FDR by Sean P. Cunningham (review),” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society vol. 120, no. 2 (Spring 2022) 205-207.
“Politicians, Interest Groups, and Next Steps in the Study of American Political Parties as Institutions,” The Journal of Politics 80, no. 4 (October 2018) e91-e96 - review essay.
“Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics. By Timothy Stewart-Winter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016,” The Journal of Politics 78, no. 4 (October 2016) e5-e6.