Book Description

"Special elections are a significant, and sometimes more frequent, point of entry into the United States Congress. These electoral contests are not numerous, and their occurrence is largely random. However, they have attracted extraordinary attention from the national parties, political consultants, and the media when control of the House of Representatives is up for grabs in every regular election. Perhaps, never have so many of these irregularly held elections drawn more attention as during the first two years of the Trump presidency. Special Elections: the Backdoor Entrance to Congress provides a detailed case study of the most expensive special House election ever conducted augmented with mini-cases exploring the other competitive special elections held during the first two years of the Trump era. These case studies are placed in the context of quantitative analyses of the almost 300 House special elections held since World War II. Bullock and Owen find the factors associated with success in special elections are similar to those that help incumbents win term after term. Most significantly, they show that the party identification of the previous incumbent correlates strongly with the special election outcomes. Moreover, this volume explores whether the performance of the president's party in special elections predicts the fortunes of the president's party in the next general election. They find that the numbers of losses by the president's party or takeaways from the opposition is significantly related to the next election results. This work highlights not only the unique context and outcomes of special elections, but also their important role in shaping who enters, leads, and controls Congress"--