The Lingering Effect of Scandals in

Congressional Elections: Incumbents,

Challengers, and Voters
Rodrigo Praino, University of Connecticut
Daniel Stockemer, University of Ottawa
Vincent G. Moscardelli, University of Connecticut
Objective. We have two goals. First, we investigate both the short- and long-term
electoral impact of involvement in scandals on reelection margins of incumbents in
U.S. congressional elections. Second, we evaluate the impact of scandals on districtlevel turnout. Methods. We model the impact of involvement in a political scandal
on incumbents electoral margins in the election cycle in which the scandal comes
to light, as well as in future election cycles. We also model the impact of scandal
on district-level turnout. Results. Involvement in a scandal exerts not only an immediate, negative effect on incumbents margins, but one that also lingers beyond
the initial reelection cycle. Elections involving incumbents embroiled in scandals
experience a small boost in turnout. Conclusion. In tandem, these results implicate
the mobilization of previous nonvoters intent on throwing the bum out as one
mechanism through which incumbent vote share is depressed in scandal elections.

Scandals involving sitting members of Congress of both parties have sparked

renewed interest in the impact of such behavior on incumbent reelection rates,
margins of victory, and decisions to retire. The dramatic swings of recent
elections notwithstanding, the number of House seats actually in play in any
given election remains small (Engstrom, 2012). Given this context, the role
of scandals in congressional elections is an important topic of study, in part
because scandals have emerged as one of the few forces capable of dislodging
incumbents who represent otherwise safe seats (Herrnson, 2012:25255). It
is not surprising, then, that scandals have received continued attention from
students of congressional elections over the years. Since the first systematic
efforts to understand this relationship appeared, analysts have consistently
identified involvement in a scandal as a factor that depresses the vote share of

Direct correspondence to Vincent G. Moscardelli, Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 062691024 vin.moscardelli@uconn.edu. The authors
will share all requests for data and coding for replication purposes. The authors thank Robin
Kolodny for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article at the Annual Meeting of the
Northeastern Political Science Association, November 1719, 2011. Moscardelli thanks Briana
Bardos and Jeremy Galtieri for research assistance and gratefully acknowledges the support of
T. A. Borradaile and the UConns Alan R. Bennett Fund.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 94, Number 4, December 2013


C 2013 by the Southwestern Social Science Association
DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12046

1046

Social Science Quarterly

incumbents who choose to run for reelection (Rundquist, Strom, and Peters,
1977; Peters and Welch, 1980; Abramowitz, 1991; Welch and Hibbing, 1997;
Brown, 2006; Long, 2011). But despite consensus on the impact of scandal on
incumbents general election margins, many questions remain unanswered. In
this article, we investigate two of them.
First, existing studies (e.g., Welch and Hibbing, 1997; Brown, 2006) have
limited themselves to modeling the impact of scandal on incumbents margins in the election cycle in which the scandal comes to light. However, it
seems plausible that involvement in a political scandal might have a lingering,
negative effect on an incumbents electoral performance in future elections as
well. Just as cultivating a personal brand (Mayhew, 1974:49; Lott, 1991)
may help insulate incumbents from the ebbs and flows of the partisan national tide, damage to that brand might cut into electoral margins beyond
the current electoral cycle. We propose a method for estimating the impact of
involvement in a scandal in elections beyond the proximate one and apply it
in an analysis of all contested U.S. House races involving incumbents between
1972 and 2006. We find that, controlling for other factors, the impact of
involvement in a scandal does extend beyond the election cycle in which the
scandal comes to light; incumbents recover much of their lost margins in their
first postscandal election, but it is not until four to six years after the scandal
that their predicted vote share approaches the level one would expect had they
never been involved in a scandal in the first place.
Second, we investigate the impact of scandal on district-level turnout. We
find that districts in which scandal-plagued incumbents run for reelection
experience a small, marginally statistically significant, increase in turnout.
However, this boost in turnout accrues entirely to challengers. Following
a brief discussion of the possible processes through which scandal might
simultaneously depress incumbents margins and increase turnout among
supporters of the challenger, we conclude that any effort to isolate the causal
mechanism(s) through which scandals reduce incumbents electoral margins
must account for the mobilization of previous nonvoters intent on throwing
the bum out.
Scandals and Elections

The existing literature on scandals involving members of Congress (MCs)

can be divided into three separate lines of inquiry. The first deals with scandals
as an object of study per se. It seeks to classify and understand different types
of scandals, their causes, and their historical development (see, e.g., Thompson, 1995). The second, concerned with understanding career decisions of
representatives, treats involvement in a scandal as a possible cause of strategic retirement. These analyses conclude that involvement in a scandal not
only affects members decisions to retire instead of seeking reelection, but also
virtually precludes their seeking higher office afterwards (Kiewiet and Zeng,
1993; but see Groseclose and Krehbiel, 1994).

The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections

1047

The third strand of research deals with the electoral consequences of scandals. Beginning with Rundquist, Strom, and Peterss (1977) experimental
analysis of electoral support for corrupt politicians, analysts have consistently
identified scandal as a factor that depresses the vote share of incumbents who
choose to run for reelection (Peters and Welch, 1980; Abramowitz, 1991;
Welch and Hibbing, 1997; Brown, 2006).1 The type of scandal in which
one is involved (e.g., moral, financial, or abuse of power) can also affect ones
margin of victory, although this impact may be conditioned by ones party
(Brown, 2006; Doherty, Dowling, and Miller, 2011).
These findings have proven robust to model specification as well as operationalization and measurement of both the dependent and independent
variables. However, extant studies have not examined whether the impact of
scandals lingers beyond one election cycle or not. There are reasons to believe it might. While Mayhew (1974:49) uses the concept of brand name
as a metaphor, the marketing literature on product-harm crises and brand
crises documents the damage adverse events inflict on firms and the steps
management must take to recover (Siomkos and Kurzbard, 1994; Siomkos,
1999). Such crises have been shown to cut into sales (Van Heerde, Helsen, and
Dekimpe, 2007), consumer confidence (Dawar and Pillutla, 2000), and stock
valuations (Pruitt and Peterson, 1986; Chen, Ganesan, and Liu, 2009). But for
firms that survive, the damage done by a crisis can be undone with time (Vassilikopoulou et al., 2009:178). In other words, time heals all wounds (Vassilikopoulou et al., 2009:174) because, eventually, consumers tend to forget
about the crisis and its effects (Vassilikopoulou et al., 2009:178). Conceptualizing scandals as a sort of brand crisis suggests that the initial damage inflicted
by a scandal should dissipate over time rather than disappear immediately.
Beyond the unaddressed questions surrounding the lingering effects of
scandals on incumbents involved in them, we also revisit the relationship
between scandal and turnout in House elections. Specifically, we examine if
districts with scandal-ridden incumbents experience systematically higher or
lower levels of voter turnout. Peters and Welch (1980) find that more serious
charges of corruption will stimulate a net increase in turnout (1980:706)
in congressional districts. But since theirs, to our knowledge no study has
reevaluated the relationship between an incumbents involvement in a scandal
and voter turnout at the district level.2 Therefore, we investigate this link in
the second part of the article. However, we first turn to our examination of
the relationship between scandals and electoral margins of incumbent MCs.
1
Some research suggests that involvement in a scandal may exert its largest effect on incumbents electoral fortunes in primary elections. See, e.g., Jacobson and Dimock (1994), Peters
and Welch (1980), and Brown (2006) (but see Welch and Hibbing, 1997:232). Boatright identifies scandal as the second most frequently cited motivation for primary challenges between
1970 and 2008 (2013:67).
2
Bowler and Karp (2004) demonstrate that scandals involving legislators can have a negative influence on their constituents attitudes toward institutions and the political process
(2004:271; see also Maier, 2011), and such attitudes have been shown to depress political
participation at the individual and macro levels (Anderson and Tverdova, 2003; Kostadinova,
2009).

1048

Social Science Quarterly

TABLE 1
Scandals, Incumbents, and Outcomes, 19722006

Outcome
Won general election
Defeated in general election
Resigned/retired
Defeated in primary election
Total

Scandal Races

Nonscandal Races

43 (48.9%)
12 (13.6%)
23 (26.1%)
10 (11.4%)
88 (100.0%)

6,657 (86.5%)
304 (4.0%)
653 (8.5%)
79 (1.0%)
7,693 (100%)

SOURCE: Information on House Ethics Committee actions taken from Historical Summary of Conduct Cases in the House of Representatives, 17982004 (available at
http://ethics.house.gov/publication/historical-summary) and Summary of Activities from
various years (available at http://ethics.house.gov/reports/summary-activities). Data on
electoral outcomes of scandal cases were collected by the authors. Data on nonscandal
races were computed by the authors from Ornstein, Mann, and Malbin (2008:57, Tables
27).

Scandals and Electoral Margin: Concepts, Data, and Methodology

For purposes of this analysis, an MC is involved in a scandal in the election

cycle in which any of the following occur:
1. The House Ethics Committee votes to open a formal investigation of,
or inquiry into, member activity.
2. The House Ethics Committee is directed to open a formal investigation
of, or inquiry into, member activity by a resolution of the full House.
3. The House Ethics Committee appoints an outside or special counsel to
investigate member activity.
4. The House Ethics Committee indicates that it received a complaint
about a member but chose to delay opening an investigation due to
pending state or federal criminal proceedings.
5. The House Ethics Committees investigation of an incident (as opposed
to an individual) results in a member being singled out in the final report
on the results of that investigation.
This Ethics-Committee-based operationalization ensures both the replicability of our study and the inclusion of only high-profile and reasonably
founded allegations of professional misconduct. This approach yielded 88 instances of scandal, 65 of which involved incumbents who went on to seek reelection (U.S. Congress, House Committee on Ethics, 2004, n.d.). As Table 1
reveals, between 1972 and 2006, incumbents involved in scandals were about
three times more likely to resign or retire, three times more likely to be defeated
in the general election, and 11 times more likely to be defeated in a primary
than other incumbents. Figure 1 graphs the relationship between scandal and
the electoral margins of incumbents who sought reelection. In the bivariate, the immediate impact of the opening of an investigation by the House

The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections

1049

FIGURE 1
Mean Electoral Margin of Incumbent Candidates Involved in Scandals, 19722006

NOTE: The line depicts the mean margin of victory for the subset of incumbents involved
in scandals over time, with a value of 2 on the x-axis representing the margin in the
election immediately preceding the scandal, 0 representing the margin in the election cycle
during which the House Ethics Committee opens its investigation, and subsequent values
representing margins in two subsequent elections.

Ethics Committee is substantial. On average, incumbents election margins

drop almost 12 percentage points below their preinvestigation levels once an
investigation is formally opened (from an average of about 33 points to an
average of about 21 points).3 Furthermore, the scandal-plagued incumbents
who survive do not recover immediately, regaining only about 5 percentage
points of their lost margins in the subsequent election. It is not until the
second postscandal reelection bid (year 4) that the average scandal-plagued
incumbent returns to his or her prescandal margins.
In the multivariate analysis that follows, our dependent variable, Electoral
Margin, is the difference between the share of the vote obtained by incumbents
and the share of the vote obtained by opponents in each contested U.S. House
election between 1972 and 2006. To capture the immediate and lingering
3
Applying a more expansive operationalization of scandal to the 2006 and 2008 election
cycles as a validity check, we find that incumbents reelection margins drop by comparable
amounts when scandal hitsfrom an average of about 33 points to an average of about 18
suggesting that while identifying fewer cases, our operationalization effectively captures the
underlying concept of interest. In those cycles, we reviewed the biographies of all incumbents
in CQs Politics in America to identify those involved in scandals (see Boatright, 2013 for a
similar approach). This method yielded 27 cases of scandal in those two cycles, as compared
to 16 using our Ethics-Committee-based method.

1050

Social Science Quarterly

effects of scandals on vote margins depicted in Figure 1, we operationalize

scandals in two ways. In the first, a dummy variable, Scandal Immediate Effect, is coded 1 for every member of Congress who meets one of the criteria
outlined above and 0 otherwise. For computational reasons that become clear
below, this variable is also coded 1 for surviving scandal-plagued MCs for every
electoral contest subsequent to the opening of the investigation. The variable
captures the immediate impact of involvement in a scandal on incumbents
reelection margins and should thus carry a negative sign. We also include a
second variable, Scandal Lingering Effect, that allows the impact of scandal to
diminish (i.e., predicted margins to increase) over time relative to the baseline
established by Scandal Immediate Effect. Scandal Lingering Effect is a counter
variable that takes the value of 0 for the scandal cycle and all cycles before
that, 2 for the election two years after the scandal, 4 for the election four
years after the scandal, and so on. It is also coded 0 for incumbents who are
never the subject of an Ethics Committee investigation. Since the recovery
function necessarily tapers off over time, we take the natural log of Scandal
Lingering Effect. Because (ln)Scandal Lingering Effect captures scandals effect
on election margins relative to the baseline established by Scandal Immediate Effect, its coefficient should be positive, and its impact should diminish
over time.
Following Abramowitz (1991), we include several controls. District Partisanship, which captures the districts underlying partisanship, is calculated
as the district-level margin of victory or defeat of the incumbents partys
most recent presidential candidate, adjusted by subtracting the margin he
or she obtained nationwide. Personal Advantage, our measure of the personal
electoral advantage enjoyed by incumbents, is the margin obtained by the candidate in the previous electoral contest. Incumbent Expenditures and Opponent
Expenditures are the amount of money the incumbent and his or her opponent, respectively, spent in each election in 2006 U.S. dollars. Both are also
squared to capture the nonlinear effect of campaign spending on incumbent
margins. Adjusted ADA Distance captures the ideological distance between an
incumbent and the most ideologically extreme member of his or her party
caucus using Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyders (1999) adjusted ADA ratings as
our metric. For Republicans, this variable takes the value of the incumbents
adjusted ADA score (AADA) minus the minimum AADA for congressional
Republicans in that congress. For Democrats, it is calculated as the maximum
AADA value for congressional Democrats minus the incumbents score.4
We also control for seniority (Years in the House), freshman status
(Freshman), membership on a reelection committee (Reelection Committee

4
Abramowitz (1991) uses conservative coalition support scores to capture the frequency with
which MCs defect from their partys position on controversial roll call votes. Our measure
almost certainly taps into a similar dynamic since moderates of both partiesthose most likely
to defect in the way Abramowitz has in mindwill have the highest scores on our measure.

The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections

1051

Member)5 , and the quality of the incumbents challenger (Opponent Score).6

In conclusion, to capture national party tides at specific points in time, we
calculate a dedicated Partyyear variable for every election year included in the
analysis. It is coded +1 for Democrats running in that year, 1 for Republicans running in that year, and 0 for both Democrats and Republicans running
in any other year (Abramowitz, 1991).
Scandals and Electoral Margin: Model Estimation and Results

We estimated our electoral margin model as a cross-sectional time-series

generalized least squares (GLS) regression with random effects and robust
standard errors clustered by individual members of Congress. The results are
presented in Table 2.
The model performs well ( 2 = 4,939, df = 30) and fits the data nicely
2
(R = .58). Turning first to the immediate effects of scandal, the results
corroborate the relationship we observed in the bivariate. On average, involvement in a scandal reduces an incumbents margin of victory by about
14.5 points.7 More importantly, once we control for other factors, our results
provide strong support for our expectation that the electoral impact of involvement in a scandal lingers beyond an incumbents initial, postscandal reelection
bid. Incumbents involved in scandals recover much of their lost vote share,
but not all of it, in the election immediately following the scandal election. To
facilitate the interpretation of the coefficient associated with (ln)Scandal Lingering Effect, the solid line in Figure 2 plots the predicted margin of victory for
incumbents embroiled in scandals at five points in time: their last scandal-free
election bid, the scandal cycle, and the three subsequent postscandal election
cycles. The dotted line traces the same values for scandal-free incumbents
over a comparable period of their careers as a comparison.8 After the initial,
5
Reelection Committee Member is a dummy variable coded 1 for those incumbents who were
members of one or more reelection committees in the Congress leading up to the election
(Smith and Deering, 1997:64). We thank Charles Stewart for making the data from 1993
forward available on his website (Stewart and Woon, 2011).
6
Opponent Score is an ordinal variable that measures the quality and experience of the
incumbents opponent in each election. It is coded 1 if the opponent never held elective office
in the past, 2 if the opponent held elective office, 3 if the opponent was a state legislator, and
4 if the opponent was a former U.S. Representative. We thank Gary Jacobson for making his
data on challenger quality available to us.
7
We should remind the reader that our dependent variable is reelection margin of victory in
contested races. The mean of this variable from 1972 to 2006 is about 31, which corresponds
to 65.5 percent of the vote share in a two-candidate race. So, for the average scandal-plagued
incumbent, the coefficient of 14.5 would correspond to a 16.5-point margin, or 58.25
percent of the vote in a two-candidate race.
8
In our data, scandals emerge, on average, during an incumbents seventh term. Previous
research suggests that while incumbents electoral margins tend to increase during their first
few electoral successes, they also tend to taper off and decrease after a few terms in office (Praino
and Stockemer, 2012a, 2012b) Thus to facilitate comparison, the dotted line traces predicted
margins of victory for scandal-free incumbents in their sixth through tenth terms.

1052

Social Science Quarterly

TABLE 2

Immediate and Lingering Effects of Scandal on Incumbent Reelection Margins,

19722006
Independent Variables
Scandal immediate effect (dummy)
(ln)Scandal lingering effect
District partisanship
Personal advantage
Years in the House
Freshman (dummy)
Reelection committee member
Incumbent expenditures
Incumbent expenditures2
Opponent expenditures
Opponent expenditures2
Opponent score
Adjusted ADA distance
Party 1972
Party 1974
Party 1976
Party 1978
Party 1980
Party 1982
Party 1984
Party 1986
Party 1988
Party 1990
Party 1992
Party 1994
Party 1996
Party 1998
Party 2000
Party 2002
Party 2004
Party 2006
Intercept
R2
Chi-square
N

Coefficient

Standard Error

14.468
2.990
0.339
0.102
0.142
0.668
0.610
0.003
0.000001
0.023
0.000004
2.825
0.054
0.312
14.208
3.972
1.284
2.627
7.550
2.978
4.802
0.999
1.562
0.921
7.137
2.894
2.909
2.209
0.786
2.618
7.630
37.113

(2.132)
(0.630)
(0.015)
(0.009)
(0.035)
(0.475)
(0.462)
(0.001)
(0.0000004)
(0.002)
(0.0000009)
(0.244)
(0.012)
(0.750)
(0.829)
(0.700)
(0.784)
(0.731)
(0.733)
(0.559)
(0.701)
(0.650)
(0.829)
(0.711)
(0.552)
(0.594)
(0.569)
(0.567)
(0.744)
(0.514)
(0.552)
(1.685)

0.584
4,939.43
5,453

NOTE: Dependent variable is incumbent margin of victory (or defeat) in U.S. House elections,
19722006. Numbers in second column are random effects GLS regression coefficients.
Robust standard errors, clustered by individual members of Congress, are reported in the
third column.
p 0.1; p 0.01; p 0.001 (two-tailed tests).

steep decline of over 14 points, incumbents involved in scandals recover a

substantial amount (almost nine points) of their lost margins in the subsequent electionenough to move the average incumbent out of any danger
zone into which he or she might have fallen in the wake of the scandal. But
after that, the rate of recovery slows, and it is not until the scandal-plagued

The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections

1053

FIGURE 2
Mean Predicted Electoral Margin of Incumbent Candidates Involved in Scandals,
19722006

NOTE: The solid line plots the mean predicted margin of victory (derived from the model
specification presented in Table 2 while holding other variables constant) for incumbents
involved in scandals over time, with a value of 2 on the x-axis representing the margin in
the election immediately preceding the scandal, 0 representing the margin in the election
cycle during which the House Ethics Committee opens its investigation, and subsequent
values representing margins in three subsequent elections. The dotted line depicts the same
values for incumbents not involved in scandals over comparable periods in their careers.
See text for further details.

incumbents third postscandal reelection bid (year 6) that the lines approach
convergence, indicating that he or she has returned to the margin of victory
expected for scandal-free incumbents with (on average) comparable seniority.
Our control variables behave as expected and the coefficients associated
with these variables corroborate previous efforts to model individual House
election outcomes (Jacobson, 1981; Abramowitz, 1991). Reelection margins
are higher for incumbents who represent districts in which their partys presidential nominee performed well, and a representatives margin in the previous
election is positively associated with his or her margin in the current one.
Margins taper off over the course of a representatives career, and the presence
of a quality challenger significantly reduces an incumbents margin of victory
(or defeat). The spending variables also behave as expected; all four are statistically significant and in the expected direction, and challenger spending
exerts a larger impact on incumbent margins than does spending by the incumbent. Finally, the election-specific variables included to capture national
forces (coded so that a positive coefficient would capture a national swing
toward the Democrats) corroborate conventional wisdom: for example, the

1054

Social Science Quarterly

largest positive coefficient is associated with the Watergate Babies election

of 1974, and the largest negative coefficient is associated with the Republican
Revolution election of 1994.
Having demonstrated that involvement in a scandal carries a lingering
electoral cost for incumbentsa cost that carries forward two to three election
cycles beyond the scandal itselfwe now turn to the question of what, if
any, costs incumbent misbehavior might have for the system. Specifically, we
investigate the relationship between incumbent scandals and voter turnout at
the district level.
Scandals and Turnout: Concepts, Data, and Methodology

In order to understand the impact of scandals on district-level turnout,

we specified and estimated a model of turnout, controlling for a variety
of theoretically informed socioeconomic, political, and geographical districtlevel covariates: age (Flinders et al., 2009; Franklin, 2004; Jankowski and
Strate, 1995; Clark et al., 2006), education (Comber, 2003; Flanagan, 2003),
income (Barkan, 2004; Burns, Schlozman, and Verba, 2001), percent of the
population that is urban (Monroe, 1976), percent of the population that
works in blue-collar jobs, percent of the population that is an ethnic/racial
minority (Paulsen, 1991), total campaign spending in the district (Cox and
Munger, 1989), a concurrently held Senate or gubernatorial race (Cox and
Munger, 1989), the quality of the incumbents challenger, and region. We also
included in the model election-specific dummy variables for each election,
leaving 2006 as our baseline.9
Our dependent variable, Turnout, is the total number of votes cast in each
congressional district as a percentage of that districts voting-age population.
The independent variable of interest, Scandal Allegation, is a dichotomous variable coded 1 if an MC is involved in a scandal (using the Ethics-Committeebased approach described above) in that cycle and 0 otherwise. The descriptive
statistics presented in Table 3 reveal that the only indicator of turnout for which
we observe a statistically significant difference between scandal-free districts
and districts in which scandal is present is the mean number of votes cast for
the challenger, which increases by 11,503.
9
In tables reporting results of the turnout models, we have tried to use variable labels
that make the operationalizations and measurements of these variables transparent. Various
district characteristics like Age 1824 and College Educated capture the percent of the district
population that falls into each category according to the Census for that decade. Opponent Score
and Personal Advantage take the same form they took in the model of incumbent reelection
margins. Our regional dummies utilize the ICPSR categorization scheme, and we estimate the
model with the East region as the omitted category. The election-specific dummy variables
are included in the model but omitted from the table reporting the results. Since the Census
Bureau only collects data every 10 years, for elections held between censuses, we assumed a
linear increase (or decrease) of each socioeconomic variable and included the adjusted value
for each year. We also estimated a model with reported, rather than adjusted, values on these
variables, and our results were unchanged.

The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections

1055

TABLE 3
Scandal and District-Level Turnout, 19722006
Indicator
of Turnout
Mean percentage
(voting-age
population)
Mean N of votes cast
(all candidates)
Mean N of votes cast
(incumbents only)
Mean N of votes cast
(challengers only)

ScandalFree Districts

Incumbent Involved
in Scandal

Difference

46.0%

46.27%

+0.27

180,932

184,020

+3,088

118,178

109,763

8,415

62,754

74,257

+11,503

Bivariate

difference of means (independent samples t-test) statistically significant at

p 0.01 (two-tailed test).

Scandals and Turnout: Model Estimation and Results

To evaluate the impact of scandals on district-level turnout, we estimate

a multilevel model (MLM) of turnout.10 Diagnostics reveal autocorrelation
within the error terms due to the fact that districts with high turnout in one
election tend to have high turnout in the next. We eliminate this first-order
autocorrelation through the addition of random district intercepts (OConnell
and McCoach, 2008).11 Our results are presented in Table 4 in the column
labeled Turnout (Model 1).
Holding everything else constant, the model predicts that turnout increases
moderatelyjust under 1.6 percentage pointsin elections in which the
incumbent is the subject of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
While the estimate falls short of statistical significance at traditional levels
(p = 0.081; two-tailed test), this finding is consistent with Welch and Peters
(1980), who report that severe instances of scandal (which we believe are
captured in our operationalization of the concept) are associated with modest
increases in turnout in the subsequent election. We also note that all of our
control variables (except one region indicator) are statistically significant and
have the expected sign.
Of course, the real-world impact of a 1.58 percentage point increase might
seem rather modest, especially if it were spread approximately equally across
both candidates in the race. According to U.S. census figures, the average
congressional district in the 1990s had a voting-age population of 424,164.
10

The same specification, estimated using GLS regression with robust standard errors and
Cochrane-Orcutt regression, yields similar results.
11
So-called null models, which partition variance into within- and between-district variance,
confirm that there is significant between-district variance, which we capture in the model
through the random intercepts.

1056

Social Science Quarterly

TABLE 4
Impact of Scandal on Turnout in Congressional Elections, 19722006

Fixed Effects
Scandal allegation
Urban population
Blue-collar workers
Nonwhite population
Age 1824
College educated
Median family income (ln)
Total campaign spending ($
millions)
Total campaign spending2
($ millions)
Concurrent Senate
elections
Concurrent gubernatorial
elections
Years in the House
Opponent score
Personal advantage
South
Midwest
West
Intercept
Random Effects
Intercept
Residual
Log-likelihood
N

Turnout
(Model 1)

Incumbents
(Model 2)

Challengers
(Model 3)

1.580
(0.904)
0.093
(0.010)
0.097
(0.027)
0.208
(0.010)
0.727
(0.081)
0.218
(0.032)
2.771
(1.103)
1.584
(0.251)
0.150
(0.036)
0.699
(0.170)
2.588
(0.353)
0.027
(0.012)
0.213
(0.123)
0.013
(0.004)
0.396
(0.623)
4.621
(0.624)
5.162
(0.654)
20.059
(11.282)

6435.983
(2931.878)
55.761
(32.022)
218.912
(86.623)
659.272
(32.777)
2,052.251
(260.079)
1,088.327
(102.520)
13,807.070
(3,555.491)
11,535.21
(813.082)
1,062.386
(115.645)
2,923.255
(550.573)
6,355.458
(1,140.243)
153.925
(39.819)
2,707.957
(398.017)
124.460
(12.571)
578.672
(1971.758)
12,943.490
(1971.546)
8,411.411
(2065.833)
284,929.900
(36,338.810)

11,915.420
(2277.387)
78.748
(22.807)
46.197
(65.167)
508.308
(23.772)
922.764
(190.273)
241.548
(75.755)
4,096.976
(2,590.255)
19,424.48
(629.046)
1,768.081
(89.696)
462.649
(429.604)
4,829.735
(859.213)
24.623
(30.605)
3,354.555
(309.003)
141.725
(9.716)
5,261.038
(1244.027)
8,153.422
(1224.646)
9,235.041
(1283.149)
13,452.180
(26,410.830)

18.634
(1.451)
32.215
(0.648)
17,651.978
5,445

1.84e+08
(1.46 10+07 )
3.39 10+08
(6,818,308)
61,376.275
5,445

6.32e+07
(5,618,433)
2.07 10+08
(4,159,845)
59,855.271
5,438

NOTE: Congress-specific dummy variables are omitted from the table; complete results
available from the authors upon request. Dependent variable in Turnout Model is the
percent of a districts voting-age population that cast a ballot in the congressional race.
Dependent variables in the Incumbent and Challenger models are the number of votes
cast for each. Numbers in cells are maximum likelihood coefficients of multilevel models
with random district intercepts, estimated using Statas xtmixed command (standard errors
in parentheses).
p 0.1; p 0.01; p 0.001 (two-tailed tests).

The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections

1057

Turnout in congressional elections in presidential election years in that decade

(1992, 1996, and 2000) averaged 50.46 percent (214,033 votes cast) in the
nations 435 congressional districts. So, a bump of 1.58 percentage points to
52.04 percent in a presidential election year would represent an increase of
only about 6,702 in the total number of votes cast (to 220,734) in the average
congressional race in those years.
However, the descriptives presented in Table 3 suggest that modeling
turnout at the aggregate level may mask interesting patterns present in the
disaggregated data. So, we also estimate separate multilevel models of the raw
number of votes cast for incumbents and for challengers. The results of these
models (presented in the final two columns in Table 4) reveal that the boost
in turnout accrues entirely to challengers. In fact, involvement in a scandal
reduces an incumbents vote total by an estimated 6,436 (p 0.01) votes
once we control for other factors (Model 2). In contrast, challengers running
against incumbents involved in scandals enjoy an increase of 11,915 (p
0.001) votes over those running against scandal-free incumbents (Model 3).
So, while races involving incumbents embroiled in scandals appear to experience a small boost in turnout, disaggregating the analysis reveals that it is the
substantial increase in the number of voters casting their ballots for challengers
that is entirely responsible for this result.
Discussion

Taken together, the results of the two parts of our analysis beg a simple, yet
surprisingly unaddressed, question: What is the causal process through which
scandal-plagued incumbents electoral margins decline by such considerable
amount? Does the decline in support stem primarily from reduced turnout due
to the demobilization of previous supporters of the incumbent? Do challengers
mobilize new voters intent on throwing the bum out? Do previous supporters
of the incumbent convert en masse and cast their lot with the challenger? Or are
the aggregate numbers we observe driven by some complex and unrecoverable
combination of all of these mechanisms? While Peters and Welch (1980:699
700) provide a thorough discussion of the various mechanisms through which
scandals might affect incumbents vote shares, they ultimately conclude that
this question is unanswerable absent unavailable individual-level behavioral
data (including longitudinal data on turnout, awareness of the scandal, and
vote choice). However, some of the possible causal mechanisms they identify
are difficult to reconcile with patterns we find in the district-level data on
margins and turnout. For example, to the extent that elections involving
incumbents embroiled in scandals experience a modest bump in turnout, our
results reveal that this boost in turnout accrues exclusively to challengers.
Furthermore, the number of votes gained by challengers far outstrips the
number lost by scandal-plagued incumbents. Thus, even the implausible total
conversion scenario, in which all of the voters who abandon the incumbent

1058

Social Science Quarterly

switch their allegiances to the challenger, would still require the mobilization of
thousands of previous nonvoters to generate the estimated bump in challenger
votes.12 And of course the more realistic scenario in which some previous
supporters of the scandal-plagued incumbent convert to support the challenger
but many simply chose too stay home implicates even more strongly the
mobilization of previous nonvoters intent on throwing the bum out as one of
the mechanisms through which scandal reduces incumbents electoral margins.
Conclusion

Consistent with previous studies, we find that incumbents involved in

scandals suffer at the polls when they choose to run for reelection. Using
the literature on brand crises to frame our expectations, we offer the first
systematic test of the hypothesis that the impact of scandal on an incumbents
electoral margin might linger beyond the election cycle in which the scandal
occurred. We find evidence of this lingering effect and demonstrate that
incumbents involved in scandals do not return to their scandal-free predicted
margins of victory until four to six years after the scandal cycle. However,
incumbents who survive their initial reelection bid do recover a substantial
amount (just under two-thirds) of the immediate loss after just one cycle,
quickly moving the average incumbent back out of any danger zone into
which he or she might have tumbled in the immediate aftermath of the scandal.
We also find that turnout rates increase slightly in the wake of a scandal, but
this boost is not reflected in an increase in the number of votes cast for the
incumbent. In fact, the number of votes cast for scandal-plagued incumbents
declines significantly. Instead, this turnout bonus appears to accrue exclusively
to challengers, leading us to conclude that any satisfactory description of
the causal mechanism through which scandals depress incumbents electoral
margins must incorporate the mobilization of previous nonvoters.
Future research on this topic should attempt to address at least two limitations of existing studies. The first limitation involves the specification and
estimation of empirical models. Analysts should explore the possibility that
the impact of scandal on incumbents electoral margins is felt both directly and
indirectly (through quality challenger emergence, and possibly other mechanisms).13 Also, given issues of survivor bias that plague any study of the
12
Here, we follow Peters and Welch, who reason that it would be highly unlikely that
charges of corruption against a candidate would cause voters to defect to the allegedly corrupt
candidate from a position of abstention or support for the noncorrupt candidate (1980:699).
13
Brown (2006:157) provides a depiction of this sort of relationship, but does not provide
a corresponding statistical model, nor does she conduct an investigation of the extent to
which the univariate and bivariate patterns in the data are consistent with it. Nonetheless, her
presentation could prove to be a useful starting point for such an investigation. Swearingen
and Jatkowski (2011) find that the presence of a scandal does increase the amount of money
spent by the party challenging an open seat (2011:319) but does not improve the quality of the
candidate nominated by the challenging party (2011:318). Our data reveal the same pattern
holds for races involving incumbents embroiled in scandals: both challenger and incumbent
spending increase by over 80 percent when the incumbent is embroiled in a scandal but there
is no difference in challenger quality in the presence or absence of a scandal-ridden incumbent.

The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections

1059

electoral impact of scandals, we believe explicit modeling of retirements, defeats, and margins would prove fruitful.
Second, while experimental studies (e.g., Doherty, Dowling, and Miller,
2011) hold much promise to discern with confidence the relative importance
of mobilization of previous nonvoters in favor of the challenger, demobilization of previous supporters of the incumbent, and conversion by former
supporters of the incumbent to the challenger, analysts will need access to
individual-level, multi-election panel data on vote choice, turnout, and awareness of scandals that do not exist at this time. Until those data exist, however,
our best bet is to continue exploring the impact of scandal through the sort
of aggregate analysis we present here. The swings of the last several election
cycles notwithstanding, the number of House seats actually in play in any
given election remains relatively small. As a result, scandals have emerged as
one of the few causal forces capable of dislodging incumbents who represent
otherwise safe seats. They therefore merit our continued attention despite the
evidentiary and inferential difficulties they present.

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