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Sweating the Vote: Heat and Abstention in the US House of Representatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

Alexander Cohen
Alexander Cohen
Affiliation:
Ashford University
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Abstract

Several recent studies noted systematic links between weather conditions and voting turnout amid the mass public. This article extends this logic to the elite level by exploring the relationship between summer heat and abstentions in the US House of Representatives. In controlled multivariate regressions, heat is a significant predictor of abstentions across all votes held between 1991 and 2000. This finding provides new insight into legislative behavior as well as the motivation behind some abstentions, which could inform the understanding of the literature on legislative shirking.

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Features
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PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 74 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012

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