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The 2011 Debt-Ceiling Controversy and the 2012 US House Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

James E. Monogan III
James E. Monogan III*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Abstract

This article considers how a key legislative vote—that is, the August 2011 vote to raise the federal debt ceiling—influenced the 2012 elections for the US House of Representatives. Two outcomes are analyzed: (1) the incumbents’ ability to retain their seats through the 2012 general election, and (2) their share of the two-party vote for members who faced a general-election competitor. In developing this study, the research design was registered and released publicly before the votes were counted in 2012. Therefore, this article also illustrates how study preregistration can work in practice for political science. The findings show that seat retention did not vary with the treatment; however, incumbents who voted against raising the debt ceiling earned an additional 2.4 percentage points of the two-party vote.

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Features
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 420 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2015 

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