Candidates Matter: Policy and Quality Differences in Congressional Elections

Abstract

We reexamine voting choice in congressional elections by using panels of district experts to identify the ideological positions and leadership qualities of candidates running in a national sample of districts. We show that: (1) candidate-quality differences affect voting choice; (2) that the effect of candidate quality increases with reduced differences between candidates on ideology; and (3) that the effect of issues on voting depends on candidate differences in quality and ideology. The conditional nature of these effects has consequences for candidate position taking that challenge conventional wisdom because candidates with a quality advantage have an incentive to moderate while candidates who are at a quality disadvantage do not. Analyses that do not include competitors’ differences on both ideology and quality are incomplete because the effects of moderation depend on the position of the opponent and which candidate has the quality advantage.

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