Pork and Primaries in a Polarized Era

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Organizations and Parties & Elections and Voting Behavior
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Elections and Political Behaviour

Abstract

Classical work on distributive politics highlights the ability of incumbents to use pork barreling to deter the emergence of high quality challengers. This has been observed in both general and primary elections. One issue with these conclusions is their basis in data from periods of relatively low political polarization. As polarization increases, however, the pork barrel becomes less relevant to the emergence decisions of primary challengers, especially in Republican primaries. This conclusion is supported by analyses of House elections from 1986 through 2014. Combined with the increased importance of ideological extremity and the partisan safety of gerrymandered districts, the irrelevance of distributive benefits to electoral politics provides an additional explanation for the reduced productivity of Congress. The results imply that House leaders are less able to use distributive benefits to strike bargains both with their colleagues across the aisle and with uncooperative members of their own conference.

Author

• Andrew H. Sidman, CUNY-John Jay College