The Electoral Benefits of Oppositional Strategies in American Legislatures

• In Event: Legislators and Their Constituents

Abstract

It has long been held that the primary job of the minority party in a legislature is to win back the majority. While this is almost certainly an overstatement, research in recent years has demonstrated how minority parties Congress and in state legislatures have strong electoral incentives to oppose and obstruct the majority’s legislative efforts (see, e.g., Clark 2015; Green 2015; Lee 2016). In doing so, they hope not only to focus the political agenda on issues that are unfavorable to the majority party, but also make the majority look ineffectual or political extreme. The idea is that the majority’s loss is the minority’s gain, and successful opposition strategies can help the minority party and its candidates win in the next election.

While we know a lot of about what drives minority parties and their members to use oppositional tactics, we know a lot less about whether or not they obtain the electoral gains they hoped to obtain. In this paper, we focus on one especially dramatic form of oppositional strategy that minority parties in some state legislatures can use: the walkout. In several states, a minority of legislators can obstruct the majority’s legislative efforts by “walking out,” or leaving the chamber (and state) entirely. Without their presence, the legislature does not have a quorum to conduct business, and therefore the majority cannot pass the legislation it wants (even though it has the votes to do so). Walkouts have been a dramatic part of legislative politics in several states in the last decade, including in Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, and Oregon.

We draw on data from Oregon, which has experienced several legislative walkouts in recent years, to assess whether the minority party (the one doing the walkout) benefited electorally from the oppositional effort. Specifically, we analyze several forms of data, including campaign finance data and electoral returns, to assess if the minority secured any identifiable gains from the oppositional effort. We also compare Oregon to other states, including Texas and Indiana, which provide for advantageous comparisons. Our findings will provide some initial insight into the benefits minority parties actually earn from utilizing dramatic oppositional strategies in American legislatures.

Authors

• James M. Curry, University of Utah

• Andrew Welhouse, University of Utah