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Estimating slim-majority effects in US state legislatures with a regression discontinuity design under local randomization assumptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2020

Leandro De Magalhães Open the ORCID record for Leandro De Magalhães [Opens in a new window]
Leandro De Magalhães*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, Finance and Management, University of Bristol, Priory Road Complex, BristolBS8 1TN, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Regression discontinuity design could be a valuable tool for identifying causal effects of a given party holding a legislative majority. However, the variable “number of seats” takes a finite number of values rather than a continuum and, hence, it is not suited as a running variable. Recent econometric advances suggest the necessary assumptions and empirical tests that allow us to interpret small intervals around the cut-off as local randomized experiments. These permit us to bypass the assumption that the running variable must be continuous. Herein, we implement these tests for US state legislatures and propose another: whether a slim-majority of one seat had at least one state-level district result that was itself a close race won by the majority party.

Keywords

American politicscomparative political economylegislative politicsquantitative methods
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 665 - 674
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2020

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De Magalhães Dataset

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UCW2RY
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