Political elites play an important role in determining who wins primaries, yet comparatively
little is known about which voices in party networks matter when different intra-party signals …

The influence of congressional primary elections on candidate positioning remains disputed
and poorly understood. We test whether candidates communicate artificially “extreme” …

From the 1980s to the mid‐2010s, nearly three‐quarters of members newly elected to the
US House of Representatives had previous elected experience; however, only half of the …

Among the many promises made by politicians to their constituents, job creation is universal.
Do firms strategically use job creation to exert influence? We take this question to the …

We evaluate the predictive power of the leading explanatory models of turnout in the
academic literature. We compare the power of using registration, lagged vote …

Over the last twenty years, a remarkable surge in small donor contributing has been
observed throughout the United States. Little is known, however, about the geographic …

How does candidate ideology affect donors' contribution decisions in US House elections?
Studies of donor motivations have struggled with confounding of candidate, donor, and …

While academics have examined how term limits affect elected officials, little work has gone
into understanding the way they alter challenger behavior. I argue that they reduce the …

In this thesis I look at the relationship between political equality and electoral systems. While
I mention several different aspects of electoral systems in the thesis, mostly I focus on the …

Do US Senators anticipate an electoral cost for legislative ineffectiveness? Do they garner
electoral payoffs if they successfully act on this electoral incentive by being more effective …