¹Catholic University of America

^*The author thanks Richard Bensel, Donald Green, Michael Heaney, Jeffrey Jenkins, Matthew McDonald, David Mayhew, Naomi Murakawa, Wendy Schiller, Colleen Shogan, Rogers Smith, Richard Valelly, Dorian Warren, the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, and the anonymous reviewers for Polity for their helpful comments and suggestions. This paper was written in part under the auspices of a 2002–2003 Brookings Research Fellowship.

Abstract

Recent studies of contested elections in the House have pointed to party electoral goals as motivating their resolution in Congress. However, little systematic research has been conducted on why such elections were contested to begin with. Using historical data and new statistical analysis of such elections from the late nineteenth century, I find that, in contrast to the claims of some scholars, political principles as well as electoral objectives mattered to parties seeking to contest elections. In addition, election conditions, particularly the means by which southern white Democrats attempted to repress the vote of southern blacks, independently influenced the probability of contestation. This finding has implications for our understanding of Republican Party strategies and electoral conditions in the South during the period, and the origins of contested elections at other times in American history.