"Voting the Agenda: candidates, elections and ballot propositions"

Voting the Agenda: Candidates, Elections and Ballot Propositions

By Stephen P. Nicholson, Princeton University Press, March 2005

Pete Wilson was in trouble. With California smarting from an economic recession, the Republican governor's 1994 re-election prospects looked dim.

More than a year out from Election Day, Wilson had the lowest approval rating of any California governor in the history of the California Field Poll, trailing his likely Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, by more than 20 points. She was an adroit fund-raiser and well known in the state as the daughter of former Democratic Gov. Pat Brown. In short, many believed Wilson's defeat was a foregone conclusion.

Wilson was not the only one in trouble. Michael Huffington, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, was also a long shot candidate that year. He had thin political credentials limited to a single term in the House and few legislative accomplishments. On the other hand, Huffington's opponent, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was a popular, well-recognized figure in California politics. Few pundits thought Feinstein would have any trouble defeating Huffington for the seat that she had easily won just two years before in a special election. Indeed, a little more than a year before the election, the California Field Poll showed Huffington trailing Feinstein by 27 percentage points.

In an ending that few anticipated, both Republican candidates surpassed expectations. Wilson defeated Brown by a 14-point margin and Huffington, although falling short of defeating Feinstein, lost by a two-point margin.

What helped these long-shot Republicans? In California's 1994 elections, the agenda included hot-button ballot initiatives, most notably Proposition 187, an initiative that sought to deny illegal immigrants public benefits. The initiative was the topic of extensive political debate in the media as well as candidate races, resulting in a majority of voters naming it as the most important issue or race in the elections.

Support for Proposition 187 was also high; roughly three out of five voters favored it throughout the campaign season. Since the parties had taken clear positions on the initiative--Republicans were for it and Democrats against it,--Proposition 187 cast the election in terms favorable to Republican candidates. Thus, illegal immigration helped define the meaning of the election, boosting the electoral fortunes of Republican candidates, especially Wilson, who had made it the cornerstone of his campaign.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The story of Pete Wilson, Michael Huffington and Proposition 187 is dramatic, but not unique insofar as it illustrates how ballot measures may define the agenda, a topic covered at length in my forthcoming book, "Voting the Agenda: Candidates, Elections and Ballot Propositions," (Princeton University Press, to be released in March 2005). The last 20 years have seen the heaviest use of initiatives, the types of direct legislation most often associated with politically charged issues.

Many ballot measures shape electoral agendas. In the last few election cycles, controversial issues such as affirmative action, animal rights, abortion, medicinal marijuana, school choice, gun control, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, taxes, health care reform, environmental reform and bilingual education were the topics of ballot initiatives. Issues of this kind shape agendas and thus the criteria voters use in making candidate judgments.

The California Republican Party was a major contributor to the Proposition 187 campaign, for good reason. Ballot initiatives can be an effective way to set the agenda for a party's candidates up and down the ballot. Finding popular issues with strong partisan dimensions for the ballot provides an effective means for a party to not only get public policy passed into law but also to get voters in a mindset favorable to a party's candidates.

Coupled with an unpopular president, California voters in 1994 went to the polls with Republican-owned issues on their minds in large part because Republicans had skillfully used the initiative process as a means for agenda setting. Indeed, supporters of the initiative were 16 percent more likely to vote for Republican House candidates than opponents of Proposition 187.

What is remarkable about this finding is that four-fifths of House candidates ignored Prop. 187. Furthermore, even for those House candidates who did campaign on the initiative, it is unlikely that many voters knew they had done so.

Survey researchers have shown that few voters are able to correctly identify the issues from congressional campaigns. In "The Spectacle of U.S. Senate Campaigns," Kim Fridkin Kahn and Patrick J. Kenney show that across three election cycles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, only 19 percent of voters were able to correctly identify an issue from their states' Senate contest. Given the low success rate of candidates to set the agenda, it is little surprise that Proposition 187 defined voting decisions across high and low-visibility contests.

Although California is certainly a leader in using the initiative process, the effect of ballot propositions on candidate races is not limited to the Golden State. Indeed, across the 1988, 1990 and 1992 election cycles, voters in states with ballot measures on abortion, taxes and environmental regulation were significantly more likely to mention these issues as important in their voting decisions for congressional candidates. For many political observers, this is an unexpected result given that ballot propositions, by definition, concern state policy whereas House and Senate members are responsible for federal policy.

The effect of ballot measures on candidate races was also pronounced in the 1982 midterm elections where 10 states had initiatives or referenda on the nuclear freeze. Taking into account evaluations of President Ronald Reagan and economic evaluations, the freeze issue had a significant effect on voting for Democratic candidates in states with freeze ballot measures but little to no effect in states without them. The effect of freeze ballot measures was also found across different offices. It helped shape voting decisions for congressional candidates and for gubernatorial candidates, despite the fact that no gubernatorial candidates campaigned on the freeze issue.

Although it will take some time to sort out the role of gay marriage ballot propositions in the 2004 elections, the presence of this issue on the ballot in 11 states underscores the need to recognize that ballot propositions are an integral part of understanding voting behavior in many candidate elections.

Stephen P. Nicholson is assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Campaigns & Elections, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group