Electoral Rewards for Political Grandstanding in Committee Hearings

• In Event: Committee Dynamics in the U.S.

Abstract

Members of Congress use committee hearings as a venue to send political messages to the public which I call ``grandstanding.’’ However, we lack clear understanding of who the target audience is and whether and how the members are electorally rewarded by grandstanding in hearings. Using a dataset of 12,820 House committee hearing transcripts from the 105th to 114th Congresses, I find that an increase in a member’s grandstanding tendency in given Congress leads to increased vote share in the following election but does not help soliciting more political donations. Also, the voters’ reactions are stronger in salient hearings, but this electoral connection is severed when redistricting occurs. This study further analyzes the frequency of public exposure to members’ statements in hearings using conventional and social media data and tests mechanisms through which voters reward members’ grandstanding efforts using the CCES panel survey data. The results further show that members’ grandstanding has a persuasion effect among out-partisans rather than a mobilization effect among in-partisans, which eventually boosts members’ vote share in the following election. The findings suggest that grandstanding, often considered wasteful, can be useful for politicians to communicate campaign messages to their constituents and does have electoral consequences.

Author

• Ju Yeon Park, University of Essex