William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

336 Chapter 9 | Elections

and federal gun policy as the most important issues were much more likely to vote

Democratic, while voters who saw immigration or the economy as the most important

issue showed similarly high rates of voting for Republicans.

Unpacking the Conflict

Considering all that we’ve discussed in this chapter, let’s apply what we know about

how elections work to the example of Doug Jones’s victory in the 2017 Alabama special

election introduced at the beginning of this chapter. Ultimately, how meaningful was

Doug Jones’s victory in Alabama—or the combination of Democratic House victories

and Senate defeats in 2018? What can it tell us about why some candidates win and

others lose?

Candidates in American national elections compete for different offices using a

variety of rules that determine who can run for office, who can vote, and how ballots are

counted and winners determined. Election outcomes are shaped not only by who runs

for office and how they campaign, who decides to vote, and how they decide whom to

support, but also by the rules that govern electoral competition. By taking these factors

into account, we can explain why Doug Jones beat Roy Moore, why Donald Trump

defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016—or why Republicans lost the House in 2018 but kept

majority control of the Senate.

It is easy to complain about American elections. Citizens are not experts on public

policy. They often know little about the candidates running for office. Candidates

sensationalize, attack, and dissemble rather than giving details about what they would

do if elected. Even so, however candidates campaign and voters vote, elections matter:

there are clear, systematic differences between Democratic and Republican candidates

that translate into different government policies depending on who holds office.

Government policy is different as a result of Trump’s victory in 2016, and future policy

will reflect the fact that Democrats gained control of the House in 2018.

Campaigns and election outcomes would surely be different if more Americans

were well informed about candidates and campaign platforms, if turnout was higher,

if campaigns always focused on important issues facing the country, and if attack ads

never worked. Even so, despite all their limitations, elections are how we decide who gets

to run the government. And as we have discussed, election outcomes are somewhat

predictable—they are the product of national and local rules and regulations; the

fundamentals of district factors and national forces; candidates’ campaign strategies;

and citizens’ decisions about whether to vote and whom to vote for. The outcome of

every election is the result of all these individual-level choices added together. In that

sense, election outcomes reflect the preferences of the American people.

What’s

Your

Take?

Do the campaigns

that candidates run

significantly affect

election outcomes, or

are the outcomes out of

the candidates’ control?

Are individual election

outcomes representative

of larger trends?

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