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Political Attitudes of Defeated Candidates in an American State Election*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Chong Lim Kim
Chong Lim Kim*
Affiliation:
The University of Iowa
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Extract

Electoral victories and defeats occur repeatedly. This is especially true in democratic political systems where key governmental roles are filled through periodic elections. The attitude of defeated candidates toward the regime norms directly affects the system stability, because disaffected by defeat, these candidates may withdraw their support for the regime and may also translate such disaffection into radical political action. Despite the potential threat the defeated electoral candidates can pose to democratic stability, their political attitudes have rarely been investigated systematically in political science literature. Do defeated candidates exhibit an attitude toward the democratic rules and norms governing electoral competition significantly different from that of winning candidates? Do defeated candidates become politically less active after the election than they were before? Under what conditions do they become disaffected with the democratic rules and norms? This paper attempts, first, to compare the political attitudes of both winning and losing candidates, and second, to explore the variables which might account for differences in such attitudes.

The data used in this paper are derived from a larger study of political recruitment in Oregon. Structured interviews were conducted with both winning and losing candidates who ran for the Oregon House of Representatives in the 1966 election. The samples were interviewed at three different times: before and after the primary, and after the general election. This research strategy permits us to analyze the effect of the outcome of the election on the attitudes of the candidates. Data were collected on the candidates' degree of support for the democratic rules of competition, their expected changes in political activity as a result of participation in the election, their career ambitions, and the perceived reward-cost, i.e., the material and psychological gains or losses which accrue to the candidates as a direct result of their participation in the election.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , September 1970 , pp. 879 - 887
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1970

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Footnotes

*

I wish to express my gratitude to Professors Lester G. Seligman of the University of Oregon and Michael R. King of the Pennsylvania State University for their support and encouragement in this effort as well as the larger project of which it is a part; and also wish to thank my colleague, Vemon Van Dyke for his thoughtful reading of the manuscript.

References

1 A few exceptions must be noted: Kingdon, John W., “Politicians' Beliefs About Voters,” this Review, LXI (March, 1967), 137–145 Google Scholar; Fishel, Jeff, “Party, Ideology, and the Congressional Challenger,” this Review, LXIII (December, 1969), 1213–1232 Google Scholar; and Seligman, Lester G., Political Recruitment (Boston: Little, Brown, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

2 This study includes three samples: (a) a quota sample of 68 candidates interviewed before the primary election, (b) a mixed-stratified sample of 109 post-primary election candidates, and (c) 77 completed interviews from a total population of 110 general election candidates. The present analysis is based on 46 winners and 31 losers in the general election and 92 winners and 17 losers in the primary election. For further details on the samples and sampling procedures, see Lester G. Seligman, Michael R. King and Chong Lim Kim, Political Recruitment; Winning and Losing in American Politics (forthcoming).

3 The support items are (a) “In general, do you feel that the legal requirements in getting elected in the election give each candidate the same chance of winning or do some have an advantage?” (b) “In general, do you feel that the practical requirements in getting elected give each candidate the same chance of winning or do some candidates have an advantage?” (c) “In running for office in this district, do you believe that a person can succeed primarily on the basis of ability and initiative or are other things important for success in politics?” and “Is this the way it should be?”

4 Hereafter, the term ‘reward-cost’ will be used in the singular, for our concern is with the amount of perceived reward or cost. But, for some other purpose, we can presumably speak of rewards or costs since there may be different kinds of these.

5 Barber, James D., The Lawmakers: Recruitment and Adaptation to Legislative Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 36 Google Scholar.

6 See Wilson, James Q., The Amateur Democrat (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 4 Google Scholar; Clark, Peter B. and Wilson, James Q., “Incentive Systems: A Theory of Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 6 (September, 1961), 134–137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wahlke, John C. et al. The Legislative System: Explorations in Legislative Behavior (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1962), pp. 113–119 Google Scholar.

7 I am presently engaged in a more detailed analysis of the various types of reward-cost attendant upon electoral victories and defeats in order to determine their relative importance to candidates.

8 The following items are used to measure the reward-cost: (1) As a consequence of the election, do you anticipate any change in your job, (2) As a consequence of the election, do you anticipate any change in your circle of close friends, (3) Do you anticipate a change in your income as a consequence of the election, (4) Do you feel that your esteem among your colleagues in your occupation has gone up or down, (5) Do you feel that your esteem among members of your religion has gone up, (6) Do you feel that your esteem among your neighbors has gone up, (7) Do you feel that your esteem in your family has gone up, (8) Do you expect that your loss in the election will help or hinder your chances if you decide to run again for the House, and (9) Do you feel that your political influence has increased as a consequence of the election.

9 Eulau, Heinz, et al., “Career Perspectives of American State Legislators,” in Marvick, Dwaine (ed.) Political Decision-Makers: Recruitment and Performance (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), p. 254 Google Scholar; and also see Schlesinger, Joseph A., Ambition and Politics: Political Careers in the United States (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1966)Google Scholar.

10 Seligman, Lester G., “Political Leadership: Status Loss and Downward Mobility,” (unpublished paper delivered at Annual American Political Science Association meeting, New York, 1966), p. 24 Google Scholar.

11 There are two possible reasons why some candidates wish to continue a political career in spite of electoral defeat. One reason is their belief that they would have a better chance of winning in the next election because they have gained some name familiarity in their districts as a result of the unsuccessful campaign. Another reason is that many of our candidates are what Barber might call “advertisers.” Their main motive for running for an office is not because they want to win it but to promote private interests such as legal practice through electoral participation. See Barber, op. cit., pp. 67–115

12 Both cross-tabulations and between item rank-order intercorrelations are also examined. Although tau values are generally smaller than Gammas presented in Table 4, basically the same pattern is observed.

13 One possible reason why our stratification variables turned out to be weak predictors of the attitudes is the candidates' highly homogeneous social background characteristics. For example, 79% of our respondents have college or advanced degrees, 71% of them have prestigious occupations such as lawyers, doctors, and proprietors of large or medium sized business, and 66% of these candidates make an annual income of $15,000 or more.

14 Labovitz, Sanford I., “Methods for Control With Small Sample Size,” American Sociologica Review, 30 (April, 1965), 243 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

15 For an elaboration of the concept of low risk system, see Seligman, , Political Recruitment and also my “Some Effects of Political Status Loss: A Comparative Approach,” The Laboratory for Political Research, Report No. 17 (The University of Iowa, 1968)Google Scholar.

16 See Seligman, Lester, “Political Parties and the Recruitment of Political Leadership,” in Edinger, Lewis J. (ed.), Political Leadership in Industrialized Societies (New York: John Wiley, 1967), pp. 304–306 Google Scholar, and Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Elites in French-Speaking West Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies, No. 1 (May, 1965), p. 17 Google Scholar.

17 Shils, Edward, “The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States,” in Finckle, Jason L. and Gable, Richard W. (eds.), Political Development and Social Change (New York: John Wiley, 1966), pp. 353–355 Google Scholar.

18 Apter, David E., The Politics of Modernization (Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 179–222 Google Scholar; Emerson, Rupert, “Parties and National Integration in Africa,” in Palombara, Joseph La and Weiner, Myron (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 267–301 Google Scholar; and Schachter, Ruth, “Single Party Systems in West Africa,” this Review (June, 1961), pp. 294–307 Google Scholar.

19 The author's exploratory study of the defeated candidates in Korea revealed that 37% of the sample interviewed were unemployed at the time, which was two years after their electoral defeats. This appears to suggest that the defeated candidates had neither other occupational skills to return nor the wish to pursue non-political occupations. See my “Some Effects of Political Status Loss.”

20 Apter, David E., “Some Reflections on the Role of a Political Opposition in New Nations,” in his Some Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Modernization (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 73 Google Scholar.

21 A perusal of some existing theories of democratic stability proposed by Eckstein, Lipset, and Almond-Verba, indicates that they have not included the reward-cost dimension of political competition and its relation to stability in their theoretical formulations. See Eckstein, Harry, Division and Cohesion in Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)Google Scholar and also, A Theory of Stable Democracy, Research Monograph No. 10, Center of International Studies (Princeton University, 1961)Google ScholarPubMed; Lipset, S. M., Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 45–96 Google Scholar; and Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1965), pp. 337–374 Google Scholar.

22 Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965), p. 201 Google Scholar.

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