Polls, realignment, and the incumbency advantage

¶ … Straw polls -- which are non-binding measures used to determine the mood of some political body such as a legislature, by taking a count of every member's opinion, before a more formal vote is taken.

Telephone polls -- consisting of calls to randomly-selected subjects to determine their opinions on some issue of concern or, alternately, their likelihood to vote for some candidate in an election.

Online polls- which are polls distributed to persons who self-select to be subjects by visiting a website, used to provide a less-scientific measure of support for some policy or candidate.

Tracking polls -- which gauge the changes in opinion for some population on some issue over a period of time.

Exit polls -- which are taken on the day of an election to determine which candidates were favored by voters as they leave a polling station, used to forecast winners in elections.

These are the major types. Telephone polls are the most scientific, even when sample selection is weighted to account for difference in the population. Exit polls, Tracking polls, and Straw polls all have their specific uses, and are designed to measure the likelihood of some event occurring so that opinion can be shaped or enhanced through other means. Online polls usually serve merely as marketing devices, unless strict measures are put in to control multiple voting. Finally, there are some additional variants, such as pseudo-polls in the form of push polls, which attempt to ask questions in such a way that the subjects are forced into thinking about or responding to questions in particular ways, to gin up response rates that favor the interests of the polling agent. Sample sizes and selections differ according to the requirements of the poll. Typically margins of error are reported to weigh the validity of the poll dependent on the outcome and sample size.

Realignments

Realignments are major shifts in party affiliations among the general public that seem to occur with an infrequent regularity in American history. They are characterized by the exchanging of party loyalties among wide swathes of the electorate, as new ideas are presented by the two dominant parties in the American system, and the positions taken by these parties cause people to change their affiliations. It is a little like a nationwide game of musical chairs.

Realignments can occur over a generation, across many elections, so that people who typically voted with one party now vote with another. Such has occurred in the South, as the region changed during the last decades of the Twentieth Century from a historical allegiance to the Democratic Party to a solid backing of the Republicans in most major elections. It has also occurred among black voters, who shifted allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party during roughly the same period. These gradual shifts are called secular realignments.

Realignments can also occur quickly among large groups in the electorate during the course of a single election. These are usually driven by heated national debates over contentious issues, or by singularly provocative national figures. They have occurred (at a minimum) during the Civil War, as the gold standard was being debated and William Jennings Bryan was running for president, and during the Great Depression. Such realignments are called party realignments or critical realignments, and the earthquakes they send throughout the American political system can often be felt for generations afterward.

Incumbency Advantage

The incumbency advantage is a phenomenon in which politicians who are in office have a greater chance of being reelected than those who are challenging for office. In fact, the difficulty of challenging an incumbent is often so severe that gifted politicians who might otherwise run for a given office will wait until the incumbent moves on or retires before announcing their own candidacies. (Of course, this is not always true. Some politicians run, expecting to lose, but hoping to make a strong enough challenge that they come to be thought of as next-in-line.)

What constitutes the incumbency advantage? There are several factors: name recognition, money, experience and the powers and privileges of the office.

The first and perhaps most important reason that incumbents are reelected so easily is that they have been serving in the capacity they seek and they are known by their constituents. Even if people don't otherwise know whether they agree with a candidate, if they recognize the name they may be more likely to vote for that candidate. Incumbents can associate their names with the office to present a formidable wall for challengers to scale.

Second, because incumbents are in office and able to operate as powerbrokers among likely donators (and because they are, after all, more likely to win), they can raise more money, to use in campaigning to make their names even better known, to further ward off challengers.

Third, incumbents have records that can be judged and experience they can point to in order to prove their competence for the job. Of course, they may have to defend their records, but skilled politicians do that for a living. The experience counts for extra votes among the electorate and the fact that incumbents can point to ways that have already benefitted their districts is a big reason for this.

Fourth, incumbents have the ability, under the franking privilege, to send mail to their constituents free of charge. This allows them to further exploit their already-significant advantage in raising money to campaign. Due to the high cost of campaigning for public office, therefore, only very wealthy or very well-connected candidates can afford to challenge an incumbent. Also, incumbents have local offices in their districts that serve as liaisons to their constituents and can be easily converted into a campaign force.

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