Predicting Presidential Appearances During Midterm Elections:
The President and House Candidates, 1982-2010
Rob Mellen Jr.
Mississippi State University
Kathleen Searles
Augusta State University
Abstract
Due to limitations in both time and resources, presidents who wish to assist their copartisans electoral endeavors must make strategic choices when offering their assistance.
Much research has attempted to explain why presidents devote their limited resources
during a midterm election, yet we know little about the factors that lead to a presidential
visit to a particular congressional district. Our research addresses this gap in the
literature by narrowing the focus to the congressional district level. We ask: are the same
factors that lead to a presidential visit at the state level operational at the district level?
The results suggest they are not. Moreover, we find that while presidents do indeed
behave rationally when they make appearances for their co-partisans: visits are more
likely to occur when there are multiple higher-level competitive races in a district, and
presidents are more likely to go where they are already popular.
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Predicting Presidential Appearances During Midterm Elections:
The President and House Candidates, 1982-2010
Thomas Jefferson once said, “Traveling makes a man wiser, but less happy.”
Unfortunately, for the happiness of the modern president, traveling is part of the job.
Whether visiting a foreign nation or a small town in Ohio, modern presidents spend a lot
of time outside of Washington, D.C. However, what factors do presidents consider when
choosing where to go when they leave Washington? Presidents, we assume, are rational
actors who wish to maximize the return on the investment of their limited resources
(Downs, 1957). Scholars differ on what strategic return presidential travel is designed to
accomplish. Some scholars argue that presidential travel is self-centered and designed to
further the president’s own reelection efforts (Eshbaugh-Soha & Nicholson-Crotty, 2003)
while others argue it is designed to maximize the number of his co-partisans in Congress
(Cohen, Hamman, & Krassa, 1991; Hoddie & Routh, 2004). We do not view these goals
as mutually exclusive, though our own work is theoretically closer to the latter approach.
Before addressing the question of what factors presidents consider when deciding where
to travel it will be helpful to review each of the theoretical arguments stated above. We
begin with a look at the self-centered approach.
Presidential Travel and the Permanent Campaign
As noted previously, some scholars studying presidential travel suggest it is
designed to further the president’s own reelection effort and build public support at the
state level (Cohen & Powell, 2005; Eshbaugh-Soha & Nicholson-Crotty, 2003, 2009).
Presidential travel then becomes part of what has been labeled the ‘permanent campaign’
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(Blumenthal, 1982; Ornstein, 2000), or the idea that everything a president does from the
time he decides to seek the office until the day he leaves office is a part of the campaign.
In this vein, Eshbaugh-Soha and Nicholson-Crotty (2003) argue that presidential travel
during the first term should be viewed as a ‘dress rehearsal’ in anticipation of the next
presidential election. If so, presidents will travel to competitive states with many
electoral votes, although this logic only applies to a first presidential term due to the 22nd
amendment limiting presidents to two terms in office. Indeed, Charnock, McCann, and
Tenpas (2009) examined first-term presidential travel from the Eisenhower
Administration to the George W. Bush Administration and found that presidents
increasingly allocated their trips to large competitive states while neglecting smaller
states with fewer electoral votes. Doherty (2007) agrees but suggests that presidential
travel has different purposes at different times during a presidential administration. One
such purpose may be ‘going local’, which features the president taking his message
directly to the people in an effort to create public pressure on Congress to enact the
president’s legislative program. President George W. Bush attempted to do this in 2005
with his plan for Social Security privatization, albeit unsuccessfully (Eshbaugh-Soha &
Peake, 2006). Whether a president is building support for his reelection, his legislative
program, or raising funds for his party, each of these scholars suggest that presidential
travel is strategic and self-centered.
Maximizing Co-Partisans
A second theoretical approach to the study of presidential travel suggests that
the president’s strategy is to maximize the number of co-partisans in the next Congress.
After all, more co-partisans in Congress should enhance the prospect of legislative
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success for the president’s agenda (Bond & Fleisher, 1990; Edwards, 1990). Presidents
may seek to increase the number of their co-partisans in Congress by assisting their
electoral efforts through use of the ‘bully pulpit’ and the ‘power to persuade’ (Neustadt,
1990). One way a president may do this is through direct interaction with citizens at
public appearances with candidates for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives,
or state governor (Sellers & Denton, 2006). However, given scheduling constraints, the
president cannot possibly travel everywhere. Thus, most researchers argue that
presidential trips are strategic in their timing, location, and type of visit (Doherty, 2007,
2010). Doherty finds that presidents frequently travel as their party’s ‘fundraiser in chief’
to aid a co-partisan’s effort to raise cash for a congressional campaign. Herrnson and
Morris (2007) suggest that President George W. Bush’s fundraising trips on behalf of
Republican congressional candidates helps to explain the historic Republican victories in
the 2002 midterm congressional election. That brings us to the focal point of our own
research.
Presidential Travel During Midterm Elections
Some researchers studying presidential travel focus on travel specifically during
the midterm election year, as do we. Lang, Rottinghaus, and Peters (2011) codify
presidential travel during midterm election years into three categories: 1) fundraisers; 2)
campaign rallies and; 3) ‘virtual’ visits. We focus our attention on the second of these
categories, campaign rallies, which take place during the roughly two-month period prior
to a midterm election. The literature in this area divides roughly into one of two themes:
the effects of midterm presidential travel (Cohen, Hamman, & Krassa, 1991; Herrnson &
Morris, 2007; Keele, Fogarty, & Stimson, 2004; Vaughn, 2004) or the predictors of
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midterm travel (Eshbaugh-Soha & Nicholson-Crotty, 2009; Hoddie & Routh, 2004). Our
work falls into the latter category but it is helpful to review the theoretical foundations of
the former category first.
The Effects of Midterm Presidential Travel
Scholars focusing on presidential efforts to assist their co-partisans disagree about
whether or not such efforts actually have the intended effect. Cohen et al. (1991)
examined presidential efforts on behalf of Senate candidates from 1966-1986 and found
that presidential visits may help a candidate’s fundraising efforts and exert an influence
on a candidate’s vote share under specific conditions.1 The authors argue that the effects
of a presidential visit are likely to be most pronounced in the most competitive races. In
such races, Cohen and colleagues argue, a campaign appearance by the president may
convert a loss to a victory for the president’s co-partisan. Similarly, Keele et al. (2004)
examine presidential travel in 2002 with the goal of determining whether President
Bush’s efforts on behalf of his co-partisans led to just such effects. The authors suggest
that presidential visits were not all that important in 2002 as President Bush spent most of
his time in states where he was already quite popular and his co-partisans were likely to
win anyway. In fact, the authors conclude that Republicans whom Bush visited
underperformed on the two-party vote share when compared with Republicans who did
not receive a visit. Herrnson and Morris (2007) also examine President Bush’s efforts in
2002 and reach the opposite conclusion, though their data includes fundraising visits as
well as rally appearances.
The Predictors of Presidential Midterm Travel
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The second theme found in the midterm visits literature moves beyond the
question of what effect presidential travel has on the fortunes of presidential co-partisans
by examining the motivation for presidential visits. Vaughn (2004) looks at whether the
president ‘rewards’ a senator who supports his legislative agenda with a visit or
‘punishes’ a senator who fails to support him by withholding a visit. Neither hypothesis
is supported by the data, though with only six observations generalizations are very
difficult. More recently, Bryan and McClurg (2009) examine President Bush’s campaign
visits on behalf of Senate candidates in 2002 and 2006. They posit that presidential
appearances are likely to be a function of several variables, including previous legislative
support, competitiveness of the race, incumbency, and presidential popularity (nationally
and within the particular state in the most recent presidential election). The authors find,
as expected, Bush’s visits in both 2002 and 2006 were tilted toward the most competitive
races and that he was more likely to appear for an incumbent than for a challenger. The
authors also suggest that previous legislative support played little role in determining
which states Bush visited in 2002 but the opposite was true in 2006. Essentially, Bush
ventured into unfriendly territory more often when he was popular nationally than he did
once his national popularity diminished. Finally, Hoddie and Routh (2004) engage in a
state-level analysis of presidential visits from 1954 to 1998 and find that presidential
travel in midterm congressional elections is strategically designed with a focus on states
with the highest combination of competitive races for Senate, House, and Governor. In
direct contrast to the permanent campaign literature, the authors suggest that the
president’s primary concern appears to be securing the election of as many of his copartisans as possible to individual statehouses and the U.S. Congress.
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The Congressional District Level and Redefining Competitive
Each of the preceding analyses provides us with some interesting insights about
how and where presidents devote their limited resources during a midterm election. Yet,
they are not designed to tell us much about the criteria a president may consider when
making the decision to campaign in a specific congressional district. Our research builds
upon the knowledge produced by previous studies and allows us to address this gap in the
literature by narrowing the focus to the congressional district level. Are the same factors
that lead to a presidential visit at the state level operational at the district level?
Specifically, we examine presidential rally appearances for co-partisans at the
congressional district level. We define a rally appearance as one in which the president
makes a public appearance and delivers a speech on behalf of a co-partisan seeking
election to the House of Representatives. We only include rally appearances specifically
labeled as an appearance on behalf of a specific candidate by the Public Papers of the
Presidents of the United States as catalogued by the American Presidency Project
(Wooley & Peters, 2012). Our search identified 88 such appearances by presidents
between 1982 and 2010.
The primary question we seek to answer is why does a president appear at a
campaign rally in one district but not in another district? To make this determination we
advance a series of district-centered hypotheses. Like several of the preceding studies,
we expect race competitiveness to be a key factor. However, these studies use a
statewide measure that defines competitiveness using a post-election standard employed
by Mayhew (1974), which labels a race as competitive if the winner received fifty-five
percent or less of the popular vote in the previous election. We take issue with that
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definition because declaring a race competitive ex post facto may obfuscate our ability to
predict presidential campaign appearances by including races that became competitive
due to presidential involvement. It may also lead to the exclusion of races that turned out
to be non-competitive due to presidential involvement. As such, we operationalize
competitiveness using CQ Weekly’s pre-election forecast for each midterm election
included in this paper.2 The forecasts rely on an independent analysis of each race,
including district level polling and insider information. Since a president makes his
decision to make an appearance before the outcome of the race is known, we think this
standard makes more sense than one which relies on the results of the election (or the one
prior) to label the race as competitive.
A District Driven Approach
Congressional districts vary greatly in their degree of safety for one party or the
other. In fact, in most congressional midterm elections only about ten percent of the seats
in the House are considered competitive. The rest either strongly favor one party or the
other, or are considered safe for one of the parties. Safe districts account for well over
half of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives each election cycle. Given the
relative safety of most seats, we expect that presidents will focus their midterm efforts on
those districts most likely to be competitive in the upcoming midterm election. These
districts hold out the greatest prospect for a return on the investment of time and energy
by a president as he gains little, if anything, by scheduling an appearance in a district his
party is already likely to win (or lose). It is the uncertainty of winning (or losing) that
drives a president to appear in a competitive congressional district. Stated as a
hypothesis:
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H1: Presidential campaign appearances during midterm elections are more likely to be
allocated to competitive districts than to districts that are not competitive.
Though we expect to find that presidents choose to appear in competitive rather
than uncompetitive races, not all competitive races are likely to draw the attention of a
president. Congressional races may be competitive for a variety of reasons ranging from
candidate quality, a scandal involving a current member of Congress, or even a huge
investment in campaign spending by a non-party organization. None of these factors may
have anything to do with the president. Yet, the president will have either won or lost the
popular vote for president in the district two years earlier. We expect presidents to prefer
campaign appearances in friendly territory. This preference will shape the universe of
districts that a president is willing to visit. Thus:
H2: Presidential visits during a midterm election are more likely to occur in competitive
districts in which the president is more popular than in competitive districts in
which the president’s opponent is more popular.
Presidential Visits and Open Seats
So far, we expect presidential visits to be concentrated in congressional districts
that are both competitive and were won by the president in the last election. There are
still likely to be many more districts than a president is able to visit during the course of a
single election campaign so it is necessary to identify other factors that influence a
president’s strategic choice to travel. One potential criterion is for presidents to allocate
visits to competitive districts with an open seat. One reason a president might choose to
campaign in an open seat district rather than for an incumbent is the incumbency
advantage identified by David Mayhew (1974). Incumbents enjoy exceptionally high
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reelection rates, even in down years for their party. In any given midterm, 90-95% of
incumbents seeking reelection are successful, though incumbents in competitive districts
enjoy a slightly lower success rate. Even in the “wave” elections of 1994 and 2006, in
excess of 90% of incumbents seeking reelection to the House were successful. Open seat
districts tend to be much more competitive than races featuring an incumbent seeking
reelection (Jacobson, 1987). Rather, candidates seeking election to open seats do not
enjoy the incumbency advantages a sitting member of Congress does, resulting in a
greater likelihood of a more competitive race, and the possibility of the seat switching
parties. Since a president needs support in Congress from likeminded members, it seems
logical that a president would direct his campaign efforts during a midterm election
towards those districts most vulnerable for his party, those with an open seat. Perhaps an
appearance by the president can provide a co-partisan seeking election in an open seat
district with some of the advantages typically enjoyed by incumbents, such as name
recognition and superior fundraising capability. We hypothesize that:
H3: Presidential visits are more likely to occur in a competitive district with an open seat
than in a competitive district in which an incumbent is seeking re-election.
Senatorial and Gubernatorial Contests
An additional factor that might contribute to a president’s strategic decision to
visit is the presence of one or more higher-level races on the same ballot. Competitive
congressional districts in states that also have a competitive Senate or gubernatorial
contest, may be more likely to draw the interest of the president than a single competitive
house race might. Stated as a series of hypotheses:
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H4: A president is more likely to visit a competitive district featuring a competitive
Senate contest than a competitive district that does not have a competitive Senate
contest.
H5: A president is more likely to visit a competitive district that has a competitive
gubernatorial contest than a competitive district that does not have a competitive
gubernatorial contest.
Data and Methods
Variables
The dependent variable is a presidential visit to the district in a midterm election
year. To test the hypotheses in this paper we examined CQ Weekly’s midterm election
forecasts for each midterm election between 1982 and 2010 and recorded their rating for
each congressional district3. CQ Weekly rates each district contest as either a toss-up,
leaning Democratic, leaning Republican, likely Democrat or Republican, or safe for the
party currently holding that seat. CQ operationalizes race ratings based on several
independent criteria including the strength of the candidates, partisan makeup of the
district population, district level polling, and expert evaluation of the race. We coded a
race as competitive if CQ classified the race as a toss-up or leaning to one of the parties.
This coding produced a data set containing 422 races ranked as competitive and 3058
races ranked as uncompetitive. Over the 28-year period covered in this study,
approximately 12.4% of all races for the United States House of Representatives were
rated as competitive.
In line with our first hypothesis (H1), the primary independent
variable of interest is competitiveness of the congressional district, which we coded ‘1’ if
leaning towards the opposing party, ‘2’ if a toss-up, and ‘3’ if leaning towards the
president’s party. Category ‘1’, leaning towards the opposing party, is omitted as the
baseline category. This independent variable improves upon previous work that uses
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binary competitive variables, resulting in a loss of specificity (Cohen et al., 1991).
Additionally, the competitive independent variable lends nuance to our understanding of
strategic presidential visit allocation: rather than examine a safe seat versus an unsafe
seat, we are able to investigate how gradations of competitiveness might affect a
president’s strategic decision to visit.4 To capture the effects of popularity of the
president in the district (H2), following in the footsteps of Cohen et al. (1991), we include
a measure of the difference between presidential vote share and opposition vote share in
the previous presidential election. Additional independent variables coded for each
congressional district included whether or not the incumbent in the district sought
reelection (H3), and whether or not the state featured a competitive race for the United
States Senate (H4), state governor (H5), or both. We relied upon the same CQ Weekly
pre-election forecasts to determine whether a Senate or gubernatorial race was
competitive as we did for categorizing the competitiveness of House races.
Controls
Several control variables of interest were also included in the data set used to
construct the model, such as the number of electoral votes the state possessed, the
president’s national popularity ratings, and president (Reagan, G.H. Bush, Clinton, G.W.
Bush and Obama).5 These controls were included for several reasons. First, each control
is drawn from the literature and speaks to our focus on district-level characteristics and
the strategic nature of presidential visits (Bryan & McClurg, 2009; Cohen et al., 1991;
Hoddie & Routh, 2004; Keele et al., 2004). Second, the two controls focused on the
Oval Office – president and presidential approval ratings – help us to account for the
president’s reputation. Third, as our data span a 28-year period, we are limited in the
13
controls available for practical reasons. For example, other popular controls such as the
partisan voting index is available only after 1997 and legislative support measures would
preclude our inclusion of challengers or open seats – the latter of which we expect to be a
significant factor.
Results and Discussion
Our analyses proceed in two parts. First, in an effort to identify strategic patterns
behind allocation of presidential visits based on district-level characteristics of the race
we conduct extensive descriptive analyses. Second, to uncover direct and conditional
effects of race characteristics on the likelihood of a presidential visit we estimate a simple
and multiplicative logistic regression model. This two-stage approach allows us to first
understand how the president allocated time strategically in the past, and second build
upon this understanding to make predictions about how a president might make the
decision to aid a co-partisan by scheduling a visit in the future.
Presidential Visits and District Competitiveness
The first hypothesis states that presidents are expected to devote their campaign
visits to districts classified as competitive and avoid districts classified as safe for the
party holding the seat. The data provide support for this hypothesis. As stated above,
presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama visited 88 congressional districts on
behalf of their fellow partisans running for the House of Representatives. Seventy-seven
of these visits were to congressional districts that were rated as either a toss-up or leaning
to one of the two parties by CQ. Only eleven presidential visits were made to
congressional districts rated as safe. Thus, 88.5% of presidential campaign visits were
14
allocated to congressional districts rated as competitive by CQ Weekly. Figure 1 reflects
the distribution of these campaign visits according to the CQ weekly rating.
Overall, presidents allocated 34.1% of their visits to congressional districts that
their co-partisan was favored to win, 27.3% of their visits to districts where the other
party’s candidate was favored, and 26.1% of their visits to districts rated as tossups.
Presidents also allocated 12.5% of their campaign appearances to districts that were rated
as “safe or favorable” for one party or the other. Of the eleven visits made by presidents
to districts not forecast to be competitive, fewer than ten percentage points decided seven
of the contests. Given that seven of the eleven districts visited by the president not
forecast as competitive turned out to be competitive using the Mayhew standard, initial
analyses suggest that presidential midterm campaign visits predominantly reflect strategic
thinking on the part of the president and his aides.
<Insert Figure 1 approximately here>
Counter to what was expected, presidents were least likely to devote their
energies to districts rated as tossups. Presidents visited just 13.5% of tossup districts
even though tossups account for 40% of all competitive districts. In addition, as the data
in table 1 show, presidents visited nearly a quarter of the competitive districts favoring
the opposition even though such districts accounted for only 23.5% of all the competitive
districts in our dataset. This may be a function of the president’s district level popularity,
as we discuss below. Nevertheless, the data strongly supports the idea that presidential
visits during a midterm election are most likely to occur in competitive districts.
<Insert Table 1 approximately here>
Presidential Visits and Prior Performance in the District
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The second hypothesis proposes that presidential visits are more likely to be
allocated to competitive districts in which the president is more popular than his
opponent is as measured by the net margin of the district level two-party vote in the
previous election. The data in table 2 support this hypothesis. Surprisingly, though,
presidents scheduled a greater percentage of their visits in competitive districts favoring
the opposing party’s candidate. Perhaps the rationale is that since the district had
previously supported the president, a presidential endorsement might motivate some
voters to support his co-partisan. In some districts, presidents may view this as an
opportunity to swipe a seat from his opponents, while in others it may be a last ditch
effort to hang on to a seat his party is in danger of losing.
<Insert Table 2 approximately here>
Presidential Visits and Open Seat Districts
The next question is whether presidential visits were more likely to be scheduled
in a competitive district with an open seat than in a competitive district with an
incumbent standing for reelection. Open seat districts account for 30% of all the
competitive districts in our study and 36% of presidential midterm visits. Overall, 128
competitive districts featured a race for an open seat and presidents visited 28 of those
districts, or 21.9% of such districts. Meanwhile, there were 294 competitive districts
with an incumbent seeking reelection. Presidents paid a visit to 49 of those districts, or
17.3% of such districts. Contrary to our expectations, presidents allocated the largest
percentage of their open seat visits to districts favoring the opposition party and the
lowest percentage of such visits to districts rated as tossups. The details are shown in
table 3.
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<Insert Table 3 approximately here>
Presidential Visits and Higher Level Races
The final two hypotheses relate to whether presidents were drawn to competitive
districts located in states with competitive higher-level contests. Each district was coded
to indicate whether there was a competitive Senate or gubernatorial race on the same
ballot using election forecast data from CQ Weekly. On the first measure, 89 of the
competitive districts also featured a competitive race for the U.S. Senate. Presidents
visited 20 of those 89 districts, or 22.5% of such districts. In contrast, presidents visited
57 of the 333 competitive districts that did not have a corresponding competitive race for
the Senate, or 17.1% of such districts. The data suggest presidents were slightly more
likely to visit a district with a competitive Senate race present.
Turning to gubernatorial races, 88 competitive districts featured a competitive
race for governor. Presidents visited 27 of these 88 districts, or 30.7% of such districts.
However, presidents visited only 50 of the 334 competitive districts without a
competitive gubernatorial race, a visitation rate of only 15%. The data strongly suggests
that the presence of a competitive gubernatorial race is more likely to result in a
presidential visit to a competitive district. Further, 44% of such visits occurred in
districts favoring the opposition party, which lends credibility to the idea that presidents
allocate their visits strategically to assist embattled co-partisans. The full breakdown of
the data is in table 4.
<Insert table 4 approximately here>
Full Model
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Finally, two logit models estimating the effect of the set of independent variables
upon the likelihood of a presidential visit were constructed. The first is a simple logit
model that estimates the singular effects of each independent variable of interest on the
dependent variable, whether the president visited the district or not. The second is a
multiplicative logit model that allows us to examine the conditional effects posited by
hypothesis 2, 3, 4, and 5 by including interactions between competitiveness and open
seat, type of race (Senate, gubernatorial), and popularity. This approach allows us to
discern whether district-level characteristics help to explain the observed patterns of
presidential midterm travel. Diagnostics tests suggest the assumptions of logistic
regression are met and multicollinearity is not an issue. Results from both models are
displayed in table 5.6
<Insert Table 5 Approximately Here>
Significant variables include popularity of the president in the district, presence of
a competitive Senate race, and each of the presidents with the exception of Obama – each
significant positive predictors of a presidential visit. These significant covariates support
the singular effects of popularity, a Senate race, and a gubernatorial race as suggested by
hypothesis 2, 4, and 5.7
As logit models report log odds – a relatively unintuitive unit – we provide further
analysis of predicted probabilities for each of the significant variables (see Table 6). The
results suggest that the predicted probability of a visit to a district where there is a
competitive gubernatorial race is .206, and 2.16 where there is a competitive Senate race.
For districts characterized by the lowest level of popularity for a president (measured by
the difference between presidential vote share and opposition vote share in the previous
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presidential election), the predicted probability of a presidential visit is .083. On the
other hand, there is a .335 probability of a presidential visit for districts characterized by
the highest level of popularity for a president.
<Insert Table 6 Approximately Here>
Given the methodological complexity presented by reporting interactions, prior to
estimating the multiplicative model the authors took care to ensure it meets the
recommended guidelines for specification, and reporting (see interaction term checklist,
Braumoeller, 2004). Results from the multiplicative model, featuring interaction terms
for each pertinent conditional relationship, are displayed column 2 of table 5.
Immediately noticeable is the lack of support for the conditional effects of
competitiveness on each of the independent variables including popularity, and the
presence of a competitive Senate race, gubernatorial race, or incumbent. The one
exception is significant effect of a competitive gubernatorial race conditioned upon the
president’s favorability in a district. The significance of this interaction does support
hypothesis 5, which suggest that the effects of race characteristics – specifically the
presence of a competitive gubernatorial race - are important inasmuch that the president’s
party is favored in a district. Also evident, again, is the significant and positive effect for
competitive Senate and gubernatorial races on the likelihood of a presidential visit. Upon
review of the simple and multiplicative model, the results indicate that while the singular
effects of the independent variables of interest affect the likelihood of a presidential visit,
these effects are not mitigated by the competitiveness of the district as suggested in
hypotheses 2-4, with the exception being districts with a competitive gubernatorial race
that favor the president’s party. In other words, our results indicate that presidential visits
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to congressional districts are indeed strategic – shaped by the presence of competitive
higher races and the president’s popularity – but for the most part not strategic inasmuch
as they are focused primarily on the competitiveness of the district itself.
Conclusion
This paper has examined several independent variables that might explain the
pattern of presidential travel during midterm congressional elections between 1982 and
2010. We take a two-stage approach to uncovering the effects of district-level
characteristics on presidential visits by first examining past visits to uncover strategic
patterns, and second testing these patterns as both direct and conditional relationships by
estimating a simple and multiplicative logistic regression model. The results lend support
to the idea that presidents are indeed rational actors with strategic goals in mind when
choosing to invest their time and energy to campaign for a fellow partisan during a
midterm election. Appearances are not randomly distributed across congressional
districts. Descriptive analyses suggest visits are largely allocated on the basis of
competitiveness with presidents choosing to become involved in those races where they
believe they can be influential, predominantly districts they themselves have previously
carried. Interestingly, the full model indicates the most significant strategy seems to be to
maximize the president’s impact by selecting races where he is popular, and there are
other higher-level competitive races.
In addition, the conditional effects for competitiveness on Senate races,
popularity, and open seats are not borne out. However, the results do support a
conditional relationship for competitive gubernatorial races and districts in which the
president’s party is favored. Aside from this set of conditions, for the most part, when it
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comes to competitiveness a more nuanced approach is needed: it is not so simple as to
assign resources to districts where visits could tip the balance; rather, presidential
advisers seem to avoid such circumstances, in favor of districts where a president can
draw on already high levels of popularity.
This popularity-based strategy is supported by the logit model results. Rather
than competitiveness motivating presidential visits, a more self-serving strategy is
evident: rather than allocating visits based on district competitiveness, which arguably
involves assigning resources (here presidential visits) where most needed, advisors are
more concerned first with the friendliness of the territory. This popularity-first approach
may be because presidents hedge their bets – presidential advisers may opt out of risking
a visit to an unfriendly district where the president may not help matters for his copartisan, and worse, risk appearing foolish. On the other hand, advisers may think more
selfishly – visits to friendly districts may not only help a co-partisan, but can also further
buoy the popularity of the president.
Past visits and both logit models support a multiple-race strategy. Presidents are
also drawn to districts that feature other competitive races on the ballot, such as
Senatorial and gubernatorial elections. Perhaps presidential advisers see visits to districts
where there is more than one race on the ballot at stake a practical matter – a more ‘bang
for your buck’ sort of strategy.
In contrast, the data also indicate that some factors just are not very important
when deciding whether to campaign for a fellow partisan. The numbers of electoral votes
in a state, and whether a seat was open do not prove to be significant predictors of a
presidential appearance. The null finding for electoral votes is significant in and of itself,
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as previous studies argue that strategic presidential visits are based on the available
electoral votes (Charnock et al., 2009; Doherty 2007, 2010; Eshbaugh-Soha &
Nicholson-Crotty, 2009; Hoddie & Routh, 2004). Presidential travel during midterm
elections appears to be driven more by the desire to assist his co-partisans than the desire
to further his own electoral efforts.
Of course, all of these factors contribute to the primary question every president
and his advisors are likely to ask. That is, can a president’s visit actually aid the copartisan in winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives? If the answer is no,
the president is unlikely to make an appearance, but if the answer is yes, the odds of a
presidential appearance improve substantially. Above all, the data confirm that when a
president hits the campaign trail during a midterm election, he or she is most likely to
appear in a friendly congressional district where there are multiple competitive races and
his co-partisan has a chance at electoral success. Presidents, like most politicians, spend
their time with the people who like them most.
22
Figure 1: Percentage of Presidential Appearances by Race Rating
Source: Compiled by author from the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States and CQ Weekly.
23
Table 1: Presidential Visits by District Category, 1982-2010
n
Visited
Unvisited
%
Visited
Non-Competitive
President's Party Favored
Opponent’s Party Favored
Toss Up/ No Favorite
3059
152
99
170
11
30
24
23
3048
122
75
147
0.36%
19.70%
24.24%
13.53%
12.5%
34.1%
27.3%
26.1%
Total
3480
88
3392
2.52%
100.0%
Category
% of Visits
Source: Compiled by author using the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States and CQ's election
forecast published in October of each midterm election year.
24
Table 2: Presidential Visits by Category/President Won Previously, 1982-2010
Category
n
President Carried
Visit
No Visit % Visited
President Did Not Carry
Visit No Visit % Visited
President's Party Favored
Opponent's Party Favored
Toss Up/ No Favorite
152
99
170
25
18
18
82
49
93
23.36%
26.87%
16.22%
5
6
5
40
26
54
12.50%
18.75%
8.47%
Total
421
61
224
21.40%
16
120
11.76%
Source: Compiled by authors from the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States and CQ's election forecasts
published in October of each midterm election year.
25
Table 3: Presidential Visits to Open Seat Districts, 1982-2010
Category
n
Visited
No Visit
% Visited
President's Party Favored
Opponent's Party Favored
Toss Up/ No Favorite
33
33
62
8
9
11
25
24
51
24.24%
27.27%
17.74%
Total
128
28
100
21.88%
Source: Computed by authors from data in CQ's election forecast published in October of each
midterm election year.
26
Table 4: Presidential Visits to Districts with Higher Level Races, 1982-2010
Category
n
Visited
Senate
No Visit
President's Party Favored
Opponent's Party Favored
Toss Up/ No Favorite
31
16
42
8
5
7
23
11
35
25.81%
31.25%
16.67%
Total
89
20
69
22.47%
% Visited
% Visited
Category
n
Visited
Governor
No Visit
President's Party Favored
Opponent's Party Favored
Toss Up/ No Favorite
30
25
33
8
12
7
22
13
26
26.67%
48.00%
21.21%
Total
88
27
61
30.68%
Source: Computed by authors from data in CQ's midterm election forecast published in October
of each midterm election year.
27
Table 5: Logit Models of Presidential Midterm Visits, 1982-2010
Variable
Electoral Votes
Competitive District
Tossup
President Favored
Popularity of President in District
Open Seat
Senate Race
Gubernatorial Race
Approval
G.H. Bush
Clinton
G.W. Bush
Obama
Simple
Model*
Multiplicative
Model*
-.014 (.009)
-.014 (.009)
-.319 (.375)
-.529 (.505)
.276 (.375)
-.070 (.479)
1.573 (.651)**
.537 (.96)
.152 (.268)
.280 (.456)
.521 (.290)*
.38(.416)
.441 (.254)*
.024 (.370)
-.011 (.013)
-.013 (.013)
1.028 (.387)**
.969 (.365)**
..829 (.435)*
.894(.414)**
1.507 (.362)**
1.517 (.357)**
-.143 (.531)
-.175 (.544)
Interaction Terms
Popular x tossup
Popular x President Favored
Open x Tossup
Open x President Favored
Senate x Tossup
Senate x President Favored
Gubernatorial x Tossup
Gubernatorial x President Favored
N
Nagelkerke R-Square
1.89 (1.18)
1.6 (1.79)
.06 (.562)
-.487 (.839)
.14 (.61)
.355 (.8)
.292 (.804)
1.12 (.493)**
421
421
.106
.115
Note: **= p < .05, *= p <.1; Standard Errors in parentheses clustered by district. Reagan is the omitted category
for presidents.
Source: Compiled by authors.
28
Table 6: Predicted Probabilities of Presidential Midterm
Visits, 1982-2010
Variable
Predicted
Probability of a
Visit
Open Seat
Popularity of President in District
Low
Average
High
Senate Race
Gubernatorial Race
G.H. Bush
Clinton
G.W. Bush
.169 (.029)**
N
421
.083 (.029)**
.224 (.022)**
.335 (.076)**
.216 (.039)**
.206 (.037)**
.213 (.051)**
.181 (.036)**
.304 (.036)**
Note: **= p < .05, *= p <.1; Standard Errors in parentheses. All other variables are
held at means.
Source: Compiled by authors.
29
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Footnotes
1
The conditions under which presidential visits may matter is beyond the scope of this
paper, thus we do not discuss them here. See Cohen, Hamman, and Krassa (1991) for a
full explanation of these conditions.
2
CQ Weekly publishes a single pre-election forecast approximately one month prior to
each midterm election. Races are ranked as either tossups, leaning Democrat or
Republican, likely Democrat or Republican, or safe Democrat or Republican.
3
We begin with 1982 due to the availability of precise race classification data by CQ
Weekly.
4
Given presidents have this information when making the decision to visit, it is important
to include it in our analysis to better understand potentially influential factors.
5
We use the Gallup poll for presidential approval ratings. For the presidential dummy
variables, Reagan is the omitted category. The authors estimated the models with each
president as the baseline, and the results are unchanged.
6
Both VIF and tolerance measures for each model indicates multicollinearity is not an
issue. To account for correlation between observations in the same district, standard
errors are clustered by district.
7
The authors estimated models with each of the three levels of competitiveness as the
excluded category, the results are unchanged.
33