All Party in the USA? Partisan Forces in Local and Nonpartisan Contests

• In Event: Next Steps in Studying Nationalization

Abstract

Partisanship is one of, if not the most, important drivers of contemporary American political behavior. A growing literature claims electoral results previously independent of traditional left-right divisions have become increasingly structured by partisanship as politics “nationalize;” that is, become oriented around the political divisions of the federal government. How far does the influence of partisanship reach? In this paper, I provide a comprehensive evaluation of the influence of partisanship in contemporary local and non-partisan elections. Analyzing just under 4,000 local elections, I find partisanship strongly structures election results insofar as the contest is explicitly partisan. Variation in non-partisan contests is still generally associated with factors other than partisanship, although a non-negligible amount is related to the traditional left-right dimension. These results amplify the need to distinguish between the content of local politics and how voters engage with such content; voter behavior can appear nationalized even while the functioning of government remains localized.

Author

• Derek Holliday, George Washington University