Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-m259h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-12T00:19:20.265Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why Local Party Leaders Don't Support Nominating Centrists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2019

David E. Broockman ,
Nicholas Carnes ,
Melody Crowder-Meyer Open the ORCID record for Melody Crowder-Meyer [Opens in a new window]  and
Christopher Skovron
David E. Broockman*
Affiliation:
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Nicholas Carnes
Affiliation:
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Melody Crowder-Meyer
Affiliation:
Davidson College, Davidson, NC
Christopher Skovron
Affiliation:
Civiqs and Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: dbroockman@stanford.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Would giving party leaders more influence in primary elections in the United States decrease elite polarization? Some scholars have argued that political party leaders tend to support centrist candidates in the hopes of winning general elections. In contrast, the authors argue that many local party leaders – especially Republicans – may not believe that centrists perform better in elections and therefore may not support nominating them. They test this argument using data from an original survey of 1,118 county-level party leaders. In experiments, they find that local party leaders most prefer nominating candidates who are similar to typical co-partisans, not centrists. Moreover, given the choice between a more centrist and more extreme candidate, they strongly prefer extremists: Democrats do so by about 2 to 1 and Republicans by 10 to 1. Likewise, in open-ended questions, Democratic Party leaders are twice as likely to say they look for extreme candidates relative to centrists; Republican Party leaders are five times as likely. Potentially driving these partisan differences, Republican leaders are especially likely to believe that extremists can win general elections and overestimate the electorate's conservatism by double digits.

Keywords

polarizationelite surveys

Information

Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 724 - 749
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ansolabehere, S and Schaffner, B (2013) CCES Common Content, 2012. Available from dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:1902.1/21447.Google Scholar
Bansak, K et al. (2018) The number of choice tasks and survey satisficing in conjoint experiments. Political Analysis 26(1), 112–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, MJ (2016) Ideological donors, contribution limits, and the polarization of American legislatures. The Journal of Politics 78(1), 296–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, M and McCarty, N (2015) Causes and consequences of polarization. In Persily, N (ed.), Solutions to Political Polarization in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blee, KM and Creasap, KA (2010) Conservative and right-wing movements. Annual Review of Sociology 36, 269–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowler, S, Donovan, T and Karp, JA (2006) Why politicians like electoral institutions: self-interest, values, or ideology? Journal of Politics 68(2), 434–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D, Broockman, N, Carnes, M, Crowder-Meyer, C, Skovron (2019), “Replication Data for: Why Local Party Leaders Don't Support Nominating Centrists”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/L5PBPL, Harvard Dataverse, V1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broockman, DE and Skovron, C (2018) Bias in perceptions of public opinion among American political elites. American Political Science Review 112(3), 542–563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broockman, DE et al. (2015) 2014 National Candidate Study. Unpublished computer file.Google Scholar
Buchler, J (2015) Asymmetric Polarization and Asymmetric Models: Democratic and Republican Interpretations of Electoral Dynamics. Presented at the 2015 MPSA Annual Meeting. Available from https://artscimedia.case.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/14182045/asymmetry.pdf.Google Scholar
Butler, DM and Nickerson, DW (2011) Can learning constituency opinion affect how legislators vote? Results from a field experiment. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 6, 55–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caughey, D, Xu, Y and Warshaw, C (2017) Incremental democracy: the policy effects of partisan control of state government. The Journal of Politics 79(4), 1342–1358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowder-Meyer, M (2010) Local parties, local candidates, and women's representation: How county parties affect who runs for and wins political office. PhD thesis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.Google Scholar
Crowder-Meyer, M (2011) The party's still going: county party strength, activity, and influence. In Green, J and Coffey D, (eds), The State of the Parties. 6th ed. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 115–134.Google Scholar
Crowder-Meyer, M (2013) Gendered recruitment without trying: how local party recruiters affect women's representation. Politics and Gender 9(4), 390–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Benedictis-Kessner, J and Warshaw, C (2016) Mayoral partisanship and municipal fiscal policy. Journal of Politics 78(4), 1124–1138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Benedictis-Kessner, J and Warshaw, C (forthcoming) Politics in forgotten governments: the partisan composition of county legislatures and county fiscal policies. Journal of Politics.Google Scholar
Eldersveld, SJ and Walton, H Jr (2000) Political Parties in American Society. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, MP and Abrams, SJ (2009) Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Goss, KA (2008) Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Grossmann, M and Hopkins, DA (2016) Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacker, JS and Pierson, P (2005) Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hainmueller, J, Hopkins, DJ and Yamamoto, T (2014) Causal inference in conjoint analysis: understanding multidimensional choices via stated preference experiments. Political Analysis 22, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, AB (2015) What happens when extremists win primaries? American Political Science Review 109(01), 18–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassell, H (2017) The Party's Primary: Control of Congressional Nominations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassell, H (2018) Principled moderation: understanding parties’ support of moderate candidates. Legislative Studies Quarterly 43(2), 343–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hershey, MR (2013) Party Politics in America. 13th ed. Pearson.Google Scholar
La Raja, RL and Schaffner, BF (2015) Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lawless, JL (2012) Becoming A Candidate: Political Ambition and the Decision to Run for Office. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lax, JR and Phillips, JH (2009) How should we estimate public opinion in the states? American Journal of Political Science 53(1), 107–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layman, GC et al. (2010) Activists and conflict extension in American party politics. American Political Science Review 104(2), 324–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, FE (2009) Beyond Ideology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitsky, S and Ziblatt, D (2018) How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.Google Scholar
Maisel, LS (2001) American political parties: still central to a functioning democracy. In Cohen, JE, Fleisher, R and Kantor, P (eds), American Political Parties: Decline or Resurgence. Washington, DC: CQ Press, pp. 103–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, TE and Ornstein, NJ (2013) It's Even Worse Than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the new Politics of Extremism. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Masket, SE (2009) No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masket, SE (2016) The Inevitable Party. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, JD (1973) Opinion structure of political parties: the special law of curvilinear disparity. Political studies 21(2), 135–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarty, N (2015) Reducing polarization by making parties stronger. In Persily, N (ed.), Solutions to Political Polarization in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 32–57.Google Scholar
Miler, KC (2009) The limitations of heuristics for political elites. Political Psychology 30(6), 863–894.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moncrief, GF, Squire, P and Jewell, ME (2001) Who Runs for the Legislature? Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
National Conference of State Legislatures (2016) Abortion Action Abounds. Available from http://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/magazine/articles/2016/SL_0916-Stats.pdf.Google Scholar
National Conference of State Legislatures (2017) Report on State Immigration Laws, January–June 2017. Available from http://www.ncsl.org/research/immigration/report-on-2017-state-immigration-laws-january-june.aspx.Google Scholar
Park, DK, Gelman, A and Bafumi, J (2004) Bayesian multilevel estimation with poststratification: state-level estimates from National Polls. Political Analysis 12(4), 375–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persily, N (2014) Interview with Rebecca Rolfes. Available from http://www.gailfosler.com/party-control-solution-partisanship-interview-nathaniel-persily.Google Scholar
Persily, N (2015) Stronger parties as a solution to polarization. In Solutions to Political Polarization in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, T and Hertel-Fernandez, A (2016) The Koch network and Republican Party extremism. Perspectives on Politics 14(3), 681–699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, T and Williamson, V (2011) The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tausanovitch, C and Warshaw, C (2013) Measuring constituent policy preferences in congress, state legislatures, and cities. Journal of Politics 75(2), 330–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tausanovitch, C and Warshaw, C (2014) Representation in municipal government. American Political Science Review 108(3), 605–641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teele, D, Kalla, JL and Rosenbluth, FM (2018) The ties that double bind: social roles and women's underrepresentation in politics. American Political Science Review 112(3), 525–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomsen, DM (2014) Ideological moderates won't run: how party fit matters for partisan polarization in Congress. Journal of Politics 76(3), 786–797.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomsen, DM (2015) Why so few (Republican) women? Explaining the partisan imbalance of women in the US Congress. Legislative Studies Quarterly 40(2), 295–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomsen, DM (2017) Opting Out of Congress: Partisan Polarization and the Decline of Moderate Candidates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vasilogambros, M (2018) Since Sandy Hook, More NRA-Backed Gun Legislation Has Passed than Laws to Restrict Guns. Available from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hundreds-of-new-state-gun-laws-most-expand-access_us_5a995f07e4b06a04fecca7e6.Google Scholar
Warshaw, C and Rodden, J (2012) How should we measure district-level public opinion on individual issues? Journal of Politics 74(1), 203–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Broockman et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/L5PBPL
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Broockman et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Broockman et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.8 MB