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Candidate Divergence, Ideology, and Vote Choice in U.S. Senate Elections

Indiana University, Bloomington

Although it has been long established that ideology influences the decisions of American voters, scholars have begun more recently to delineate which voters under what conditions will vote ideologically. Although these studies have been illuminating, most analyses have failed to account for one critical contextual factor: candidate ideological divergence. Using a random-effects probit model and data from the 1988 to 1992 American Senate Election Studies, I show that the ideological divergence among Senate candidates conditions the influence of ideology on vote choice, at least among the more politically knowledgeable segment of the population. This reinforces and extends the findings of Wright and Berkman that ideologically polarized candidates produce ideological voters.

Key Words: congressional campaigns • U.S. Senate • elections • political ideology • voting • political polarization

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