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Partisan-Ideological Divergence and Changing Party Fortunes in the States, 1968-2003: AFederal PerspectiveAuthor(s): Robert D. Brown and John M. BruceSource: Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Dec., 2008), pp. 585-597Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the University of Utah

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Partisan-Ideological Divergence and

Changing Party Fortunes in the

States, 1968-2003

A Federal Perspective

Robert D. Brown

John M. Brace

University ofMississippi

We expand on previous literature on party competition in the American states by examining competition for both state

and national offices. We find significant differences inDemocratic Party electoral advantage within states, along with

across-state variation in changes in these differences over time. We attribute these results to movement in the partisanship and ideology of the states' citizenry. As consistency in these core political attitudes increases, parties are able

to campaign and govern on messages that are more consistent across electoral levels. The result is greater consistency

in party electoral performanceacross state and national offices.

Political Research Quarterly

Volume 61 Number 4

December 2008 585-597

? 2008 University of Utah

10.1177/1065912908317795

http://prq.sagepub.comhosted at

http ://online. sagepub.com

Keywords: party competition; ideology; partisanship; federalism

S

chattschneider's famous assertion that modem

democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the par

ties (1942, 1) rests on an implicit foundation of com

petitive parties. Appropriate to its significance, the

competitive nature of party systems has been subjectto a great deal of scholarly scrutiny. In the United

States context, work on party competition has pro

ceeded in all electoral arenas, following the contours

of the constitutional framework into examinations of

competition at federal, state, and local levels. Yet,

while commonly recognizing the often decentralized

nature of U.S. political parties, as well as the fact that

partisan elections take place within the structure of

federalism, surprisingly few analyses of party compe

tition incorporate this important contextual feature

into their analytical framework. Rather, most efforts

tend to focus overwhelmingly on party competition at

one level, either national or state, to the exclusion of

the other.1 The result is that despite a large body of lit

erature covering a significant variety of topics, state

and national electoral competition are rarely discussed

within the context of the same electoral setting.

We believe this to be a significant oversight in the

literature examining the nature of party competition

in American politics. While there is overwhelming

scholarly agreement that political parties have been

shaped by the opportunities and constraints created

by federalism, precious little work has been done to

relate these realities to what is arguably the single

most important aspect of political parties: their abil

ity to contest elections at each electoral level.

From our perspective, a key step in understanding

party competition in a federal context is to acknowl

edge the variation in political character of the states.

Even a cursory scan of the states reveals a range of

political profiles. State parties will respond to their

environment, developing messages and images that

maximize their competitiveness in that state. Their abil

ity to adjust in this fashion stems from the organiza

tion's operational boundary matching the political

boundaries of the state. In contrast, the national parties

have little ability to adjust their message or image to

match any particular region or state. Indeed, the mod

ern information age seems likely to create a very

homogenous national party image across the states.

However, the nature of how that image is received in

any particular state is going to be a function of the polit

ical character of that state. The greater the disparity

Robert D. Brown, Professor of Political Science, University of

Mississippi; e-mail: [email protected]

John M. Bruce, Associate Professor of Political Science, University

of Mississippi; e-mail: [email protected]

585

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586 Political Research Quarterly

between the perceptions of the state and national party

(Democratic or Republican), the greater the possibility of

significant differences inparty advantage and party com

petition. Thus, we are describing not just competition

among fifty state Democratic and

Republican parties,but also among fifty potentially different perceptions of

the national Democratic and Republican parties.

In previous work (Brown and Bruce 2002), we doc

umented differences in party competition within

states, offering measures of partisan electoral compe

tition and advantage that shed light on both national

and state competition within and across the states.2 In

this article, we expand on that initial effort and exam

ine within-state differences in party advantage for

national and state offices over time (1968-2003). Our

data indicate significant change in the relative elec

toral advantage of the parties during this time period

and, importantly, variation in advantage across levels

of elections within the same general electoral context.

In addition, we offer an explanation for these changes

and differences, focusing on the shifting partisan and ide

ological environments of the states. Drawing on work

from Erikson, Wright, and Mclver, we focus primarilyon the degree of congruence or divergence in the partisan

and ideological proclivities of state electorates. In

Statehouse Democracy (1993), these authors laid out an

argument for how ideology and partisanship may factor

in voting for various levels of office. The choices offeredto the voters in a given state by the parties are already

shaped by the ideological nature of the state, with both

partiesmoving left inamore liberalstate,and to therightin a more conservative state. Erikson, Wright, and

Mclver find that ideology fails to exert an influence in

their model of state legislative balance because the par

ties have already adapted to the states' environments. As

such, we should expect party to play amore prominent

role in election outcomes at the state level. In contrast,

they argue that the national parties lack such leeway for

adjustment.

Given that constraint, Erikson,Wright

and

Mclver expect (and ind) thatideologydoes play a largerrole in presidential elections.

While our data and research question differ from

that of Erikson,Wright, andMclver (1993), the basics

of the relationship they identify are easily applied to

our work. Our thinking here is straightforward. We

argue that consistency among state electorates in

their partisan and ideological orientations should lead

the state parties (more likely to be evaluated along

party lines) to fare about as well as their national

counterparts (who are more likely to be evaluated

along ideological lines). Conversely, when state elec

torates are decidedly more liberal or conservative

than their declared partisanship, we should to see some

impact of these differential criteria for evaluation.

This greater heterogeneity in the partisan-ideological

nature of the state environment makes itmore likely

that a

party

will

experience

better electoral fortunes

at one electoral level (e.g.: state vs. national) than the

other. Thus, as the partisan and ideological nature of

the states change over time, we should expect to see

changes in the relative ability of the parties to contest

elections for both state and national offices. Importantly,

improvement in the ability to contest elections at one

level, be it state or national, does not necessarily con

tribute to similar advantages at the other level.

We proceedwith abrief discussion of the literature n

these areas and then move on to an examination of mea

surement strategies. From there, we highlight state-level

changes in partisan electoral advantage as they exist for

both state and national offices. Finally, we offer some

analyses that we believe lend insight into the nature of

these changes, as they vary across space and time.

Integrating State and National Party

Competition/Advantage in the States

Scholars in the subfield of U.S. state politics have

long been interested in the potential importance of par

tisan competition. From examinations of differencesand changes in state party competition (Patterson and

Caldeira 1983;Barrilleaux 1986), to the role of party

competition in explaining state policy outputs,3 to

issues of measurement (Holbrook and Van Dunk 1993),

the result has been a body of research that has con

tributed a great deal to our understanding of the role of

political parties in democratic governance in die states.

Despite the volume and value of the present state of

research on state-level party competition, little atten

tion has been given to cross-state variation in com

petition

for national offices. Studies of

presidentialelections often give nodding acknowledgment to these

contests as state-level phenomena, but with very few

exceptions (e.g., Rabinowitz and Macdonald 1986;

Nardulli 1995), rarely are the state electoral settings

included as important factors in understanding partisan

electoral advantage in presidential and other national

contests. Similarly, with the exception of those that

examine partisan change in a regional setting, studies

of realignment tend to treat this phenomenon as mono

lithic, proceeding at the same pace and intensity

through the nation (or region) as a whole.4

The lack of any significant integration of state and

national competition/advantage in the literature is







unfortunate. While the U.S. is frequently described as

having a two party system, each of those parties is

composed of any number of national, state, and local

party committees (Beck 1997). These layers of party

structure have a reasonable degree of autonomy and

legal independence. It seems very likely, therefore,

that the fate of the party in a given state may differ in

state and national political contests. One need only

consider recent history in many southern states to

find such a situation. In any number of these states

there was a significant disparity between the success

of the Democratic Party in state elections and that of

the Democratic presidential nominee.

More generally, though, we see ample reason to

believe that levels of partisan competition/advantage

for national offices and state offices deserve compar

ison at the analytical and political level of the state.Scholars have long extolled the fact that the federal

constitutional structure impacts a broad variety of

phenomena, and clearly, the partisan underpinnings

of electoral competition are no exception.5 As Jewell

and Morehouse note, the basic flavor of party com

petition in each state is itself a product of national

political forces as well as factors unique to the state

(Jewell andMorehouse 2000). The end result is that

partisan competition at the state and national levels

are related within the electoral context of the states.

To be sure, the extent of this connection will vary across

the state electoral settings depending on responses to

historical, political, and social forces. We view this as

another important reason to examine the confluence

between national and state electoral competition in

the states. Moreover, we view this as an important

reason to add a temporal component to these analyses. Not only are the state partisan environments

subject to different forces across levels of electoral

contest, but they are also likely to respond to these

forces in different ways and at different speeds. In

short, we believe that a full understanding of electoral

advantage in the states requires an explicit recogni

tion of the dual nature of party advantage as it varies

both within and across states, as well as over time.

Measuring Party Electoral

Advantage in a Federal Setting

To examine these potential relationships we first

need a measure of electoral advantage that has utility

for both state and national offices. Not surprisingly,

themeasurement

of party competition/advantage isnot without its conceptual difficulties and nuances.

Traditionally conceptualized as party dominance in

Brown, Bruce / Partisan-Ideological Divergence 587

government (Ranney 1971), our measurement strat

egy follows along more recent efforts that emphasize

actual competition for elected office (Holbrook and

Van Dunk 1993). Our main issue with party domi

nance measures is that they are, at their core, outcome

based, focusing on whether one party or the other

controls the branches of government. While certainly

a reasonable way to conceptualize competition,

outcome-based measures suffer from an inability to

distinguish between a state where one party domi

nates absolutely (i.e. there is no significant electoral

threat from the opposing party) and one where both

parties are viable but one is still winning more often

(i.e., close contests for most offices that tend to run in

favor of one party).6 We think a better approach is to

focus the degree of electoral pressure in the party sys

tem (Holbrook andVan Dunk 1993). That is, for anygiven election in a state, what is the degree that both

candidates have ameaningful chance to win the elec

tion? To what extent do elected officials feel pressure

from the electorate?

Following this distinction, Holbrook and Van

Dunk (hereafter, HVD) offer an aggregate measure of

state partisan electoral competition based on several

constituency-level indicators: the percentage of the

popular vote for the winning candidate, the margin of

victory, whether or not the seat is safe, and whether

the race was contested or not.

By using

electoral

results, this measure is much more likely to reflect

concern about electoral viability and pressure from

opponents, and thus, we believe this measure repre

sents a significant conceptual improvement.7

Yet, like Ranney, this measure is not without its lim

itations. Focusing solely on contests for state House and

Senate, one significant issue is the measure's lack of a

gubernatorial component. To the degree that Ranney

suffers for undervaluing the role of gubernatorial con

tests (King 1989), the HVD measure suffers even more

for excluding it completely. It just does not seem rea

sonable to us that a measure of state electoral competi

tion can exclude all partisan voting for the state's most

visible and (generally) hotly contested office.

Additionally, and very important for our purposes,

the components of the HVD measure make it difficult

to use when there are a small number of cases within a

category. Application of these criteria in a single race

for governor, for example, may make the safe com

ponent go to one hundred. For our purposes here?

examining both national and state party competition

within the states?this is a decided disadvantage, as the

measuredoes not work well beyond the realm of the

lower national House (and even there does not work

well in small states).








To examine party competition in a federal setting,we need a measure that can function within a federal

context that can be applied at both levels within the

states. Such ameasure would benefit from keeping the

best aspects of both Ranney and HVD while down

playing their more important limitations. In our view,this means retaining the focus on partisan electoral

competition offered by HVD, but including an execu

tive component in the calculation (Ranney). Ideally,

this measure would also provide both directional and

overall competition analyses, as in Ranney. Finally, it

must work well within the context of a small number

of cases to be portable to the national level.

Elsewhere (Brown and Bruce 2002), we put forth a

competition measure that is actually a simplification of

HVD (1993), but one that provides more information

about thecompetitive

nature of

parties

at different

levels of elections. We start with one component of the

HVD measure (margin of victory) andmodify it to

facilitate directionality (i.e., Democratic vs. Republican

advantage), the inclusion of the executive office in the

calculation, and greater portability to national party

competition in the states. Like HVD, we use vote

margin as the foundation of our measure because

we believe this taps most directly into the conceptual

underpinnings of partisan electoral competition?

whether or not elected officials feel pressure from the

electorate, and whether those running for office have a

reasonable chance of winning.8

Rather than using the winning candidate's margin

of victory, we first calculate vote margin so as to allow

for directionality in partisan competition. Specifically,

we use the Democratic Party candidate's vote share as

an anchor, and calculate margin of victory differently,

depending on whether the Democrat won or lost. If

the Democrat won, then the vote margin is simply: %

Democratic vote -% second place vote share. If the

Democratic candidate lost, we modify the calculation

accordingly: % Democratic vote-

% winner's vote

share.9 The result is a measure of partisan electoral

competition that focuses first on Democratic Party

advantage. The measure has a theoretical range of-100

(total Democratic failure) to 100 (total Democratic

domination).10

This information is consistent with the directional

information on party advantage provided by Ranney,

but with the constituency-level focus advocated by

HVD.11 This strategy also allows us to include an exec

utive component, meaning we can tap the most visible

state and national offices (and those that receive the

highestturnout),

adding

to the measure's face

validity.Most importantly, our approach allows us to cal

culate two sets of competition measures: one for state

level competition and one for national competition in

the states.

After settling on vote share as the indicator that is

both theoretically most appropriate and portable across

electoral levels, we proceed to constructing the actual

measure. We first determine the component parts basedon Democratic margin of victory or defeat in each con

stituency (state house, state senate, governor; U.S.

House, U.S. Senate, president) for eight year cycles

beginning in 1968 (the first year for which data are

available).12 This leaves us with six measures of con

stituency level competition for the eight-year period?one for each state and national constituency. The

margin for each separate constituency was then aver

aged by office (house, senate, executive) within states

and across years. Consistent with HVD, all initial cal

culations are made at theconstituency

level and then

aggregated to a state level average for each office.

These averages were then combined to form our base

line measures of state party advantage (state legislative

chambers and governor) and national party advantage

(U.S. legislative chambers and the presidential vote in

the state).13 We weight the three arenas of electoral

competition equally in our measure.14

To examine trends in party advantage, we also add

a temporal component to the measure. There are sev

eral methods by which this can be done.15 The first,

and perhaps most simple, would be to pick several

time periods, calculate the measures for each, and

examine the results. We find this to be a less than sat

isfactory approach, in that the arbitrary selection of

time points can force certain possible interpretations

to be more or less plausible. The second approach,

and the one followed here, is to create amoving aver

age type of measure. We simply take an eight-year

slice for one period, shift the time frame by two years,

take another slice for the next period, and repeat.

Under this approach, each point in time is included in

four different eight-year periods. The data used in this

paper cover fifteen such eight-year periods, startingwith 1968 to 1975 and ending with 1996 to 2003.16

State Democratic Party Advantage

for State and National Office

In this section, we examine broad patterns in our

Democratic Party advantage measure. We know that

individual-level partisan attachments vary and that par

ties are fluid entities, free to morph into any position

seen as most advantageous in terms of contesting office.

We also know that the political environment of each

state is influenced both by broad, national trends, as well








Figure 1

State and National Democratic Advantage, by State (1968-2003)

Arizona

* ?^

8h>*t?7*v?r ***? ****

Oeorg?a

^?LlLfe*^-*j*u o ^ |A^~

:; ;*?*

f

Kentucky

Missouri

*:h*.

?*ut;v

*T7*T**^*'

?1 * *.

Soi?hCarolina

**?

?

^**** ,*;*% ******

Michigan

NewHampshire isle? ersey

**$

pJ tf*

H,j?:_?:.v_ i

Virginia Washington

...,. , ? i~,.-'-y'' '', ,t,.,,,,.,', ? T7~'rr7?'7'rr'''7'7'7 'T'7ii ... . *,*

West Virginia

?i **Wyoming

* Democratic Advantage-

State Democratic Advantage-

National

as by its own unique political, social, and economic sit

uation. Thus, we find it reasonable to expect change

over time in terms of party advantage. The interesting

question involves the nature of that change and how it

varies across both electoral levels and the states.

In figure 1,we show party advantage calculated for

state and national contests, with each state presented

separately. We recognize that the amount of data pre

sented is daunting, but we offer this first glimpse to

facilitate initial observations. Across the x-axis is time,

where the unit is the eight year periods discussed pre

viously. The y-axis represents is the party advantage

scale.17 Recall that 0 represents the point of parity

between the parties, with positive numbers indicating

an increasingly Democratic state and negative

numbers showing amore Republican state. Each graph

has two lines plotted, one for the state advantage mea

sure and one for the national advantage measure.

Across the states, the two dimensions of interest are

clearly apparent. First, it is obvious that, within most

states, the welfare of the parties varies across the level

of electoral conflict. There is no state where the mea

suresof party advantage for state and national offices

are essentially equal. There are cases where the two

lines may trend together, but they maintain different

fundamental values. Important for our purposes, there

is clear cross-state variation here, with state and

national Democratic party advantage being far more

similar inUtah and Tennessee, for example, than New

Mexico and Maryland. Thus, at least on the surface of

things, our basic assumption holds true: within states

the relative balance of party advantage is different for

state and national offices. What is interesting to us at

present is that the magnitude of these within-state dif

ferences in party advantage varies considerably across

the different state political environments.

In addition, we see clear trends in these measures

over time, as well as regional differences in these

trends. In all the southern states, both measures are

clearly trending in an increasingly Republican way.

This is hardly a surprise. Alabama, Georgia, South

Carolina, and Texas are clear cases of this pattern.

Note also that in most southern states, the loss of

Democratic advantage at the state level far exceeds

their loss at the national level. Again, this is not nec

essarily surprising given well-documented changes in

the formerly one-party South during this period, butwe find these patterns instructive nonetheless.








Figure 2

National and State Democratic Electoral Advantage, 1968-2003

3

LU

Democratic Advantage- State Democratic Advantage

- National

Still, we see that the South is not monolithic. In

Arkansas, for example, we see the general trend to the

GOP, but we still note significant separation between

the patterns for state and national office. Democratic

fortunes have declined both nationally and at the state

level, yet Democrats still do very well when running

for state office. While a border state, and thus not tech

nically southern, Kentucky exhibits a similar pattern.

In the nonsouthern states, the trend lines are far

less consistent. Some states have diverging lines

(Connecticut, New York), with Democrats doing better

at the national level than the state. New Hampshire is

particularly interesting here, showing substantial

swings in the level of party advantage. Other states

are shifting increasingly Democratic at both state and

national levels (Massachusetts, California). Again,

while the overall tendency is for state and national

Democratic Party advantage to track together, this

brief summary illustrates the substantial within-state

differences in these measures as well as the cross

state variation that we expected.

While the within-state trends are our primary focus,

the broaderaggregate

trends over time are alsointrigu

ing. Even though every office we consider is built

around the state or district as the electoral unit, the over

all pattern should offer some insight into the compara

tive electoral welfare of the parties. For this reason, we

offer figure 2, which shows themean values of the state

and national party advantage measures for each time

period, and is based on all forty-eight states for which

we have data.18 The two trend lines stand in rather stark

contrast. The national measure moves about the parity

line, crossing three times and ending up with the most

pro-Republican outcome in the entire series. The state

advantage line, however, shows an almost monotoni

cally decreasing level of pro-Democratic advantage.

While there has been an ebb and flow in the national

balance, the aggregate results for state returns suggest a

dramatic decline in the electoral advantage of the

Democratic Party in state elections.

To isolate regional differences in these patterns,

we replicated the previous figure, breaking the states

into South and non-South (see figure 3). Clearly, the

biggest changes have occurred for state offices in the

formerly one-party South. From a high of forty in

1968-1975 (meaning the Democrats won with an

average marginof

victoryof almost

forty points),state Democratic electoral advantage in the South has








Figure 3

Democratic Party Advantage, by Region

i?i?i?i?i?i?i?\?i?i?i?i?i?r?r68-7570-772-79 48176-8378-850-87 2-89 49186-93 8-95 0-97 2-999401 6-03

i?i?\?i?i?i?i?i?i?i?i?\?i?ree-7570-772-79748176-8378-850-87 2-898491 6-9388-9590-9792994019&03

Time Frame (moving average)

State -South ?*? State -NonSouth -?4>? National -South National -NonSouth

dropped to almost parity over the thirty-five-year

time frame. While party changes in the South have

been well-documented, the visual evidence provided

by our data is still quite striking.

While obviously less dramatic, we also see interest

ing patterns for state Democratic Party advantage in the

nonsouthern states. Here, state party advantage starts

Democratic and is relatively static before dropping sig

nificantly. It is interesting to note that at the end point

of our data, Republicans carry a slight overall advan

tage in the nonsouthern states on this measure.

Turning to patterns in party advantage at the national

level, we note that while less pronounced than for state

offices, we still see substantial movement over the time

frame examined here. Among southern states, national

Democratic advantage starts off almost ten points in the

Democrats favor, then almost doubles, before proceed

ing to approximately a ten-point Republican advantage

by the last time period. We also see significant move

ment in national Democratic advantage in the non

southern states. In the aggregate, the line ebbs and

flows around theparity line, dropping during

the

Reagan/Bush era, and then rising and eventually dropping

again during the Clinton/Bush years. Interestingly, the

southern and nonsouthern national trend lines tend to

track together until around the tenth period (1986-1993),

after which the southern line moves dramatically into

the Republican realm.

Figure 3 offers simple, yet compelling evidence of

dramatic movement toward the Republican Party that

has permeated both state and national offices. Clearly

these trends are strongest for state offices in the South,

if for no other reason than these offices had the fur

thest road to travel toward competition. By the end of

the period under consideration here, this outlier has

moved into close proximity with the performance of

the other measures. At the same time, however, we

should not discount the level of change in the non

southern states. While not as dramatic as the South

(which reflects as much as anything else the change

from one party domination to competition), our data

reveal that region is not the only force driving overall

movement in Democratic electoral advantage. As a

set, the four lines drift in a Republican direction, but

in a manner that is notnearly

aspronounced

as the

shift in the advantage held by the Democratic Party in








state contests. At the end of the time frame, we see evi

dence that corresponds very nicely to the current era

of American electoral politics, an era marked by close

divisions and increased competition at all levels. In the

remainder of the paper, we examine the impact that

partisan-ideological divergence in state electorates

has on these patterns of partisan electoral advantage.

State Partisanship, Ideology, and the

Changing Democratic Party Advantage

To gain insight into these empirical patterns, we

examine the ideological and partisan foundations of

the state electorates. As noted earlier, our focus is

on the degree of consistency in these two attitudes

within the given state electorates. We argue that, all

things being equal, the nature of national contests is

more likely to generate the ideological messages

necessary to animate ideology as a voting force.19

Presidential contests are increasingly couched in ide

ological terms, be it liberal Democrats, or family

values as a surrogate for conservative policies and

practices. Congressional elections are increasingly

fought on ideological terms as well. As such, we

expect that the ideological leanings of state elec

torates will be an important force in determining

these national outcomes for each state electorate. Incontrast, we see partisanship

as working more promi

nently in determining state level electoral outcomes.

The relatively low information nature of these con

tests reduces their ideological tone, making it far

more likely that partisanship will guide the voting

process. Earlier work by Erikson, Wright, and Mclver

underscores these observations, finding that while

party and ideology are indeed linked (with ideology

driving partisan attitudes), party plays a stronger role

at the state level and ideology is more prominent at

the national level.

With regard to how state partisanship and ideology

account for the shifting patterns we observe in

Democratic Party advantage, more recent work by

Wright et al. (n.d.) indicates that patterns of state par

tisanship are changing as well, with state partisanship

and ideology becoming more congruent over time.

Interestingly, the patterns in these new data indicate

that state ideology had remained remarkably stable

during the 1977-2003 period they examine, with

state partisanship moving considerably.20

We note here that we are not saying that ideology

has no role in state level contests, nor are we sug

gesting that, with state ideology relatively stable, that

party is the only mechanism for change here. Rather

we follow Wright et al. in their conclusion that the

partisan change they note in state electorates is being

driven by ideology. Our belief is that to the degreethat state electorates diverge in terms of ideology and

partisanship, it is because partisanship is inconsistent

with ideology, and the movement away from these

long held ties is difficult and slow. To the degree that

we are seeing convergence in public opinion and par

tisanship, it is because ideology is driving partisan

ship, slowly and inexorably, away from its moorings

and toward a partisan orientation that ismore consis

tent with ideological foundations.

It is this combination of observations that drive

our hypothesis about differential patterns of electoral

behavior for state and national offices. To the degree

that ideology and partisanship serve different purposes

in evaluating national and state candidates, we expect

that differences in the partisan and ideological attitudes

of citizens within any given state will be related to the

differences we observe in party electoral advantage.

That is, when citizens are far more Democratic than

they are liberal, we should expect to see greater levels

of support for Democratic Party candidates at the state

level than we do at the national level. With regard to

the longitudinal patterns we observe, we follow the

same line of thinking. As overall state ideology and

partisanship becomemore

in line (that is, less divergent), we should expect to see this play out with more

consistent voting across electoral levels.

To explore this further, we calculate a measure of

state partisan-ideological divergence.21 Taken from

updated measures of the original Erikson, Wright,

and Mclver (1993) study, we calculate divergence as

simply the difference between state partisanship and

ideology in each state.22 State partisanship ismeasured

as themean of individual responses to CBS/New York

Times survey questions asking respondents if they

consider themselves, Democrat (scored 1), Independent

(scored 0), or Republican (scored -1). Similarly,

responses to the ideology question are scored: Liberal

(1), Moderate (0), or Conservative (-1). State means

are calculated on these attitudes for each state and for

each of the time frames examined in the previous dis

cussion of patterns in party advantage. It is from

these state means that we derive divergence, simply

by subtracting state ideology from state partisanship.

Our thinking here is straightforward: to the degree

that state electorates are more Democratic than they

are liberal (which is the case in every state), we should

expect to see greater differences in voting patterns forstate and national office. In states where we observe








Figure 4

Democratic Advantage Differential and Partisan-Ideological Divergence

h*N g

i?i?i?i?i?i?i?i?r76-83 78-85 80-87 82-89 84-91 86-93 88-95 90-97 92-99 94-01 96-03

State-NationalAdvantageDifferential Partisan-IdeologicalDivergence

Figure 4b: South

i

<^

~i-1 i r76-83 78-8580-8782-8S

i?i?i?i?i-r~B-9388-95 90-97 92-99 94-01 96-03

Figure 4c : Non-South

,-: .

- i?i?i?i?i?i?i?i?i?i?r~76-83 78-8S 0-8782-8984-9186-93 88-95 90-9792-99 94-01 96-03

State-NationalAdvantage Differential Partisan-IdeologicalDivergence State-NationalAdvantage Differential 4> Partisan-IdeologicalDivergence

the converging of these attitudes over time, we should

expect greater balance in the party fortunes at each

electoral level.

We begin our analysis by overlaying this divergence

measure on a measure tapping state and national dif

ference inDemocratic Party advantage, which we cal

culate simply by subtracting national advantage from

state advantage. This also allows us tomatch the con

cepts more appropriately, as the party advantage dif

ference measure (state advantage-national advantage)

is constructed so that positive scores represent a state

that ismore Democratic in state races than in national

races. We show these comparisons in figure 4, which

illustrates rather clearly the relationship between

partisan-ideological divergence and within-state dif

ferences in state and national electoral outcomes.23

The first portion of the figure (4a) shows the rela

tionship between partisan-ideological divergence and

state and national differences inDemocratic electoral

advantage for all states. The relationship between the

two variables is readily apparent, and the overall cor

relation of .664 is nosurprise.

In theearly

time

frames, differences inDemocratic advantage for state

and national level offices are quite high, averaging

between ten to almost fifteen points for all states. At

the same time, we see state electorates at their most

divergent in terms of partisanship and ideology. As we

move forward in time, we see the measures move

together, dropping throughout the 1980s with a slight

resurgence in the 1990s.

Figure 4b and figure 4c repeat these patterns, split

ting the data by region.24 For the southern states, we

see the strongest evidence yet of a relationship between

divergence differences inDemocratic advantage (r = .84).

This is hardly a surprise, as we expected the relation

ship to be strongest in the South, where the difference

in Democratic prowess in state and national elections

is seen most prominently, and where partisan and ide

ological attitudes have historically been most distinct.

Yet, figure 4c shows quite clearly that the relationshipwe are positing cannot be dismissed as merely just

the South. The correlation between the two mea

sures is lower at .44, but still impressive, and the rela

tionship is readily apparent in the data illustration.

We turn now to theempirical

test of ourproposed

linkage between state partisan-ideological divergence








Table 1

Partisan Ideological Divergence and

Differences in Democratic

Electoral Advantage

Variable All States South Non-South

Lag of Democratic electoral 0.806** 0.641**

0.844**

Advantage (state-national) (0.074) (0.012) (0.792)

Partisan-ideological 36.14** 69.94** 27.83**

Divergence (10.08) (16.12) (10.51)Constant 8.39* 16.56** 8.71**

(4.21) (5.41) (3.04R2.86 0.86 0.83

N58 100 358

Note: Table entries are unstandardized coefficients. Panel cor

rected standard errors are in parentheses.*

significant at/? < .05.**

significant at/? < .01.

and differences inDemocratic electoral advantage. To

account for the pooled nature of the data, we employ

an ordinary least squares model with a lagged depen

dent variable and panel corrected standard errors. The

lag accounts for the propensity for serial correlation in

the data, as well as the fact that, in terms of electoral

outcomes, history matters. That is, we should expect

that differences in state and national electoral advan

tage should be related over time.25

Table 1 shows the results of our analyses. To high

light the relationship between partisan-ideological

divergence and Democratic advantage differences, we

opted to use themost simple and parsimonious approach.

We include just the lag of the dependent variable and

divergence on the right hand side of the equation. The

first column in table 1 shows the results for all states,

with the remainder of the table documenting effects

when examined by region.26

The results strongly support our hypotheses

regarding partisan-ideological divergences and dif

ference in state and national electoral outcomes. For

the entire set of states, the coefficient is positive and

significant, and indicates that a point movement in

divergence results in a thirty-six-point change in dif

ferenced party advantage. Given the actual range of

the divergence measure among the states examined

here (.578), we find that at itsmaximum, divergence

accounts for an almost twenty-one-point difference

between state at national electoral advantage. We find

these results to be particularly noteworthy, as they

occur in the face of the expected strong performance

of the lagged dependent variable.

Turningto the remainder of the table, the results

are even stronger for southern states?almost twice

as strong in fact. This fits nicely with what we know

about realignment in the South, and the ideological

underpinnings of this partisan change. As the data in

figure 3 indicate, southern states have moved from

a point of noncompetition at the state level and

relatively little competition at the national level to a

situation of strong competition for state offices and

emerging Republican dominance at the national level.

Accordingly, the within-state differences in party per

formance have declined considerably in these states.

Our results indicate that increased consistency in polit

ical attitudes, that is, declines in partisan-ideological

divergence, are playing an important role here.

Perhaps most importantly, our results confirm that

the impact of partisan-ideological divergence is not

merely a regional phenomenon. The results for non

southern states include a strong relationship between

partisan-ideological divergence and consistency in

national and state electoral outcomes. Our analyses con

vincingly show that it is the increased alignment of ide

ological and partisan attitudes that is helping to drive

this change. As both southern and nonsouthern elec

torates have changed and become more consistent in

their core political attitudes, the parties are able to cam

paign and govern on messages that are more consistent

across electoral levels. As these partisan and ideological

messages are increasingly in sync with the attitudes of

the electorate, differences in party performance for stateand national offices decline accordingly.

Discussion and Conclusion

The literature on party competition and partisan elec

toral advantage is replete with studies documenting

the importance of viable parties for the democratic

health of a nation. In the context of the United States,

these studies have tended overwhelmingly to focus

on one electoral level to the exclusion of the other,

something we find unfortunate and deficient as we

attempt to understand the nature of party competition

in a federal electoral setting. In an earlier manuscript,

we offered a new measure that allowed for the exam

ination of party competition and advantage across

electoral levels within the states. In this article, we

extend that work by adding a temporal component to

the analysis of state-level variations in both state and

national Democratic electoral advantage. First, we

find that the electoral fortunes of the parties have

converged over the thirty-five years examined in this

study.

Differences between Democratic electoral

advantage at the national and state levels have moved








over time, with the overall result being one of general

parity. Overall, Democrats hold less of an advantage

at both levels, and within-state outcomes for state and

national offices have become much more consistent

over time.

Of course, the relationship between state and

national outcomes within states varies considerably

across states. In examining these differences, we find

the role of partisan-ideological divergence to be pow

erful and intuitive factor in understanding how parties

fare at different levels of electoral contests, and how

these differences have changed over time. As elec

torates become more consistent in their political atti

tudes (i.e., as ideology drives partisanship to a point

where the attitudes are more consistent) within-state

differences in electoral outcomes for state and national

offices are reduced considerably.

The patterns observed here may allow this discus

sion to be linked to other works inmass behavior that

focus on the nature of campaigns at different levels of

office. To the degree that national offices are more the

realm of ideological messages, and state offices more

prone to partisan appeals, we see here that these dif

ferences are becoming increasingly less important. In

a broader sense, our analyses bolster our theoretical

argument regarding the need to pursue examinations

of party competition with a direct recognition that

party politics takes place in a federal electoral setting,

with different contextual forces at play across elec

toral contexts. The analyses shown here highlight this

important aspect of political parties in the American

states and illustrate that even within the same state,

national, and state party fortunes may respond to dif

ferent forces at different rates over time.

Notes

1. See Gimpel (1990) and Jewell andMorehouse (2000) for

exceptions.

2. The concept being addressed here is generally referred to as

competition in the literature. However, we find it useful to dis

tinguish between advantage (a directional concept, much like

the Ranney index) and competition (a nondirectional measure,

similar in spirit to the folded Ranney index). Here, we are con

cerned only with advantage, though throughout the discussion of

literature we will refer to competition where appropriate. See

Brown and Bruce (2002) formore.

3. This is arguably the largest body of literature examining

party competition in the states. For prominent examples,see

Dawson and Robinson 1963; Cnudde andMcCrone 1969; Dye

1966, 1984; Jennings 1979; Garand 1985; Plotnik andWinters

1985; Barrilleaux 1986; Erikson, Wright, and Mclver 1989;

Barilleaux, Holbrook, and Langer 2002.

4. For an interesting exception looking at variation in the

pace of realignments across the states, see Nardulli (1995). See

also Bullock (1988) for an examination of electoral strengthacross a range of offices over time.

5. This literature is varied, and we offer but a few important

exampleshere:Wekkin

1984;Rabinowitz, Gurian,andMacdonald

1985; Lewis-Beck and Rice 1982;Garand 1988; Simon, Ostrom,andMorra 1991; Campbell 1986;Herrnson 1993;Maggiotto and

Wekkin 1992; Perkins and Guynes 1976; Barth 1992; Hadley

1985;Niemi, Wright, andPowell 1987;Clark and Lockerbie 1998;

andBruce andClark 1998.

6. See King (1989) for a more complete discussion and cri

tique of the Ranney measure.

7. Note that a recent effort by Ceaser and Saldin (2005)follows Ranney and creates a state measure using both guberna

torial election results and state legislative party dominance (mea

sured as proportion of seats). Ceaser and Saldin cite the lack of

availability of recent state legislative election returns as a princi

palreason for this choice. For theoretical reasons, we favor the

use of elections data, and, as discussed below, employ them here.

Ceaser and Saldin also argue against using district-level analyses.

We respectfully disagree and believe an elections-based measure

premisedon a constituent level focus best captures the theoreti

cal concept of competition we are trying to evaluate.

8. Focusing on margin of victory isolates the primary ingre

dient of competition and mitigates some of the problems inherent

in the HVD measure. Most importantly, this allows for measure

ment of party competition at the national level within the states.

Given the high correlation between winning vote margin and the

overall HVD measure (0.972), we believe the loss of information

created by dropping the other three components has no negative

impact and substantial positive impact.

9. In almost all cases, the measure is simply % Democratic

vote-

% Republican vote. However, this slight modification

allows for those instances when athird-party or

independentcan

didate performs better than one of the major party candidates.

While these cases arerelatively rare, they are far more likely in

state legislative races. Moreover, state legislative races where

third-party candidates tend to do well are not randomly distrib

uted across the states, but are clustered in a small number of

states (e.g., New York). Such clustering would bias the remaining

analyses of third-party votes were not included.

10. Imagine a two-party system in which Democrats lose

every race with 100 percent of the vote going to the Republican

Party: 0-100 = -100. The opposite would have Democrats win

ningevery race

by

unanimous votes: 100-0 = 100. In a situation

where all races are ties, the results would be: 50-50 =0, or per

fect competition.

11. Any focus on electoral results as a measure of party com

petition assumes that district results are (in the aggregate) unbi

ased assessments of party strength. We recognize that any type of

consistent bias in district boundaries (e.g., via gerrymandering)

would threaten that assumption. We agree that the potential

impacts of gerrymandering areimportant for measuring electoral

competition, but note that ameaningful exploration of this topicis beyond the scope of the present article.

12. The eight-year period allows for a minimum of two elec

tions for each office in each state, minimizing the influence of

specific candidate or election effects. This is also consistent with

theHolbrook and Van Dunk approach.








13. Our measure, like Holbrook and Van Dunk, does include

uncontested races. This type of contest, found far more com

monly at the state level, does tend to shift the resulting assess

ment of party competition. However, we do not feel that this is a

problem, but merelya fact. Our view is simply that uncontested

races reflect an utter lack of electoral party competition, and

inclusion of these races simply reflects that situation.

14. One additional advantage of this measure is that its foun

dation allows for the possibility of significant support for a

minor party or independent candidate. It is possible, for

example, that such a candidate may draw support disproportion

ately from one candidate over the other, thereby shrinking the

gap between the Democratic and Republican candidates and

shifting the nature of electoral advantage and competition. We

account for this possibility by basing the initial calculations of

Democratic advantageon total votes cast, rather than the

Democratic percentage of the two-party vote. Thus, when there

is athird-party

or independent presence, the measure of advan

tageshifts

accordingly,with the result

being

a more

competitivescore. For more on the details of how the measure is constructed,

see Brown and Bruce (2002).

15. The data used to build our measures are drawn from a number

of sources. The archives of the Interuniversity Consortium for

Political and Social Research (ICSPR)hold national returnsthrough1990 and state legislative returns rom 1968 to 1989. It is the end of

this latter data file that has precluded any efforts at updatingmea

sures of competition. We spent considerable time gathering state leg

islative election results to extend our measure of party advantage into

more recent years. At the same time, we are aware of a similar effort

undertaken by Carsey et al. We use the Carsey et al. data here, as

their data gathering effort was a National Science Foundation

funded project thatwe believe will become the standard for data on

state legislative outcomes during this time frame. Our data, collected

independently,was used to check the Carsey et al. data.

16. The fifty eight-year periods are as follows: 1968-1975,

1970-1977, 1972-1979, 1974-1981, 1976-1983, 1978-1985,

1980-1987, 1982-1989, 1984-1991, 1986-1993, 1988-1995,

1990-1997, 1992-1999, 1994-2001, 1996-2003.

17. To allow for as much information aspossible in the visi

ble presentation,we allow each state to vary on its y-axis, rather

than presenting all states on a common axis.

18. Louisiana and Nebraska, are excluded because their gen

eral elections are not traditional partisan conflicts.

19. Our references to ideologyare in the broadest possible

terms. In the context of candidate and party behavior, itmay be

merely theuse

of labels. Among voters,it is

simply self-placementon the standard ideological spectrum. We are not imposing a

more demanding notion of ideology (i.e., Converse 1964).

20. The notion of stability of ideology is consistent with the

work on ideology in parties by Gerring (1998). He argues that

ideology is along-term and stable factor in American parties. The

difficulty inparties quickly changing their ideology is in linewith

the conclusions of Kessel (1984) regarding the presidential par

ties being a sum of their pasts.

21. We appreciate the assistance of Jerry Wright in providing the

updated state opinion data so that we can calculate these measures.

22. See Erikson,Wright, andMclver (1993) for an elaboration

on the source, reliability, and validity of these data. Because of

small samples, Alaska and Hawaii are excluded from these data,

droppingour overall number of states to forty-six (after the pre

vious exclusion of Nebraska and Louisiana).

23. As in the previous figures,we use aggregate measures for

all states, by time period, to illustrate these overall patterns.

24. Because of the magnitude of southern Democratic advan

tage in the earlier years of our analysis, it is difficult to plot both

the southern and nonsouthern states on the same scale. Since our

primary concern is with the patterns of these relationships over

time and within regions,we allow the y-axis to vary to facilitate

interpretation of the data.

25. See Keele and Kelly (2005) formore for recent work on

using lagged dependent variables. Note that we tried other esti

mation strategies (e.g., fixed effects models) and came away with

very similar results.

26. Note that state dummy variables, while included in the

analysis, are not included in table 1.

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