“Why Is There So Much Competition in U.S. Elections?”

Bernard Fraga and Eitan Hersh have this working paper.  Here is the abstract:

Most elections in the United States are not close, which has raised concerns among social scientists and reform advocates about the vibrancy of American democracy. In this essay, we demonstrate that while most elections are not close, most Americans regularly experience competitive contests. In the four-cycle period between 2006-2012, 90% of Americans were in a highly competitive jurisdiction for at least one office. Since 1914, about half the states have never once gone more than four election cycles without a close statewide contest. We examine how hierarchical, temporal, and geographic variation in the locus of competition results in most of the country regularly experiencing close elections. We discuss two implications. First, dispersed competition result in nearly all Americans being represented by both political parties for different offices. Second, once accounting for multiple offices and multiple years, we find a strong positive relationship between closeness and voter participation.

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